LITMIR.BIZ

      CHAPTER TWELVE

      “Who turned off the lights?” Kissinger whispered.

      He’d taken less than a dozen steps into the rain forest, but it was as if he’d crossed time zones to a place where the sun had already set. Engulfed in a bleak twilight, he and the others found themselves surrounded by a preternatural world of looming, shifting shadows.

      “Let’s take it slow till our eyes adjust,” Bolan advised.

      “No argument there,” Cowboy replied.

      The group had split up before entering the forest. Jayne Bahn had paired up with one of the commandos while, somewhere off to Bolan and Kissinger’s right, Sergeant Latek and the other commando had already forged ahead and disappeared from sight.

      The ground beneath Bolan’s and Kissinger’s feet was a soft, peatlike layer of decomposed vegetation that padded each step they took. Not that anyone could have heard them above the cacophony. The noise surrounding the men was almost deafening. Up in the treetops, orangutans and smaller monkeys howled to one another, competing with the caterwaul of unseen birds and buzzing of insects, and the unsettling moan of the wind filtering through the upper branches.

      And then there was the river, lapping and gurgling its way through the forest. Adding to the sensory overload was a cloying scent of exotic, overripe fruit. The smell was every bit as strong as that of the damp peat and, for the first time since stepping off the plane in Samarinda, Bolan realized he was unable to detect the smell of smoke. So much for sniffing their way to the enemy campfire, he thought to himself.

      “Let’s stay close to the river,” he suggested. “Odds are they pitched camp near it.”

      Kissinger followed Bolan. Their eyes continued to become accustomed to the darkness, and once they reached the river they were able to make out scores of boot prints along the banks. The tracks led in both directions.

      “Seems like we want to keep heading north,” Kissinger whispered. “The other way’s going to take us back out of the forest.”

      “You’re right,” Bolan agreed. “North it is.”

      As they continued along the river, the men spotted pigs milling near the water’s edge. As Bolan and Kissinger drew closer, they quickly scattered, squealing their way into the undergrowth. The commotion spread as a flock of small dark-feathered birds burst out of the brush with a flurry of beating wings. The men froze momentarily, rifles at the ready, wary that their position had been given away.

      “I don’t know about you,” Kissinger muttered, “but this place gives me the creeps.”

      Bolan nodded. He was looking out at the river.

      “Look at the water,” he said.

      Kissinger took another step closer and peered into the current. The water had a reddish coloring to it.

      “It’s not blood, if that’s what you’re thinking,” Kissinger said. “I remember reading about tannic acid or something like that in the peat. It gets leeched into the water and turns it—”

      “I’m not talking about the color, Cowboy,” Bolan interrupted, pointing farther upstream. “I meant that slick over there.”

      Kissinger shifted his gaze and spotted a wide, luminescent clot suspended on the water. Even in the relative darkness, the shape gleamed, rainbowlike, as it drifted toward them.

      “Gotta be some kind of fuel spill,” Kissinger surmised. “Outboard motor, most likely. I’ll bet you anything these guys use some kind of boat to haul in supplies and any other—”

      Kissinger’s voice was drowned out by a faint, sudden boom. Seconds later, a vibrant flash illuminated the jungle, momentarily blinding both men with its fiery brilliance.

      “Take cover!” Bolan yelled.

      Even as he was shouting the warning, Bolan was lunging away from the river and rolling into the nearby foliage. His instincts were once again on target. As he and Kissinger scrambled for cover, the forest around them thundered with the incessant rattle of automatic gunfire. The fusillade was so loud and persistent it quickly drowned out all other sounds save for the muffled thud of bullets plowing into the peat banks where the two men had been standing a moment before.

      “You all right?” Kissinger whispered to Bolan.

      “Yeah. So far at least.”

      The flare tumbled through the upper branches of the nearby trees, then dropped straight down to the forest floor, even as another was taking its place, bathing the forest with another blast of harsh light. Bolan blinked his eyes several times, then peered out through the foliage and saw enemy gunmen up in the trees, firing down at the intruders.

      Soon there was yet another burst of light, this one down near the river’s edge eighty yards from where Bolan and Kissinger had taken cover.

      “Flamethrower,” Bolan said.

      “Oh, man,” Kissinger groaned. “Something tells me that fuel spill was no accident.”