It didn’t take long. There was a dull bang—not much louder than a couple of firecrackers—followed by inevitable screams. The girl’s were like breaking glass and Auma’s, if anything, were even more piercing.

She appeared first, splattered with blood, but sprinting with an athletic grace that suggested it wasn’t hers. Auma staggered from the cave a few seconds later, crimson from mid-thigh to mid-belly. No weapons were visible on him and there were none accessible beyond the two AKs tangled up in his fallen guards. Gideon Auma—the terror of Africa—now posed so little threat that Rapp turned away and started toward the chopper.

He paused just inside the trees when he heard the quiet voices of young girls. They were starting to inch into the clearing and he couldn’t help but watch.

He missed his guess as to who the instigator would be. She was smaller than most of the others, wearing a tattered dress that had probably once been a floral print. Rapp saw her pick up a hefty rock, stare at it for a moment, and then bring it down on the skull of one of the boys who was still breathing.

And that broke the dam.

There were more of them than he’d first estimated. A good twenty came flooding out of the trees, picking up rocks and going to work on the survivors. When no live victims were at hand, they went after the corpses. Auma tried to make it to cover but was slowed by blood loss and what looked like a badly damaged pelvis. Four girls tracked him like lions trying to decide whether a wounded buffalo was still capable of defending itself. When the man stumbled and dropped to his knees, they swarmed him.

It was only then that Rapp continued toward the chopper. Hopefully, they wouldn’t let that iron maiden go to waste.

34

THE dirt track turned steep enough that even the Land Cruiser was struggling to hold traction. There was a landing zone near the camp they’d stashed Nicholas Ward in, but it was a little tight for Rapp’s piloting skills. Coleman had suggested that he put down in a clearing near the base of a mountain and had left the vehicle there for him.

Rapp knew he was being watched from the trees on either side of the road, but never saw any evidence of it. Any unwanted guests trying to take this path to the lodge would find themselves caught in a withering crossfire. Anyone coming through the jungle would be picked up by sensors and die never even having laid eyes on Charlie Wicker’s team. And, finally, anyone coming in from the air would face a state-of-the-art SAM battery purchased with Ward’s inexhaustible checkbook.