"Y-yes." Stumbling backward in the clutch of the shopkeeper's determined fingers, a shocked Taneer had to rip his gaze away from the nightmarish scene in front of him. Once, the tiger looked up, glaring green eyes meeting his own. He had seen tigers before; in zoological parks, from elephant back in Bandhavgarh. But not like this. It stunned him, threatened to root him to the spot as effectively as an infinitesimal dose of the deadly fluid contained in the tracker's syringets. Only when the big cat looked down to check on its unmoving prey did the scientist find his feet again. It helped that Depahli, too, was now tugging at him.
Together the three of them turned and sprinted, stumbled, staggered back the way they had come. Only Sanjay dared to occasionally check back over his shoulder to see if the cat was in the mood to take multiple prey tonight. Mercifully, the jungle trail behind him remained empty in the pale starlight.
What was it with him and cats, anyway?
They were halfway back to the fence line before Taneer realized he was still clutching the security case tightly to his chest.
Mr. Vaclav, alias Karlovy Milesclova, was used to dealing with the dangers of large, civilized cities. He knew how to negotiate with muggers, with prostitutes plying their trade on public streets, with beggars and the desperately drug-addicted. He knew how to find his way rapidly and efficiently through airports and other congested public transportation termini. He understood traffic flow and corporate intrigue and social backbiting.
He had not wanted to be here, in Sagramanda, doing this thing. But the consortium's overboard had voted, and he had been designated. Or lost out, depending on one's perspective. More than willing to forgo the promised bonus, he had done his tactful best to beg off. His polite pleading had been turned down.
Now he found himself running for his life. Not from some addled street person with a knife, not from some bomb-throwing antiglobalization terrorist, not from some irate religious fanatic whose personal precepts the consortium he worked for had inadvertently offended, but from a tiger. A tiger, of all things! In this day and age! It was absurd, outrageous, unbelievable. That he, Vaclav Milesclova, executive vice president of an international family of companies whose name was known throughout the world, should be frantically huffing and puffing his way through the jungles of the subcontinent without a chauffeured Mercrysler or Rollsbach in sight, was too much to countenance.
Wild of eye, flushed of face, his heart pounding like a runaway bass drum despite all the hours he had spent on his office treadmill and electronic toner, he looked back. Nothing stirred in the dark behind him except the fronds of the plants he had brushed up against. The starlit path was devoid of devils and empty of pursuit. Though he knew nothing of the habits of wild creatures, it seemed to him quite possible that the beast might well be preoccupied with its fresh… meal. Shuddering, he turned to run on.
He tripped over an unkind tree root, and fell.
His face smacked into the dirt. Raising his head almost immediately, he wiped grit from his flesh and looked apprehensively back over his shoulder. Was that movement, there in the night? Or only wind stirring the trees? Hastily, he scrabbled to his knees and began searching the area where he had fallen. On contact with the ground, he'd dropped both of the prized packages. He found the one containing the molly almost immediately. Like most modern forms of portable information storage, it was well made and had survived the fall with no visible damage. The second envelope…
The second precious, irreplaceable envelope had ripped on impact. While a small portion of its contents lay scattered nearby, the bulk had thankfully remained inside the transparent glassine container. Rising to a kneeling position, he started to pick up what had fallen out, when he heard what was a loud cough somewhere behind him.
Utterly consumed with sheer terror, he struggled the rest of the way to his feet and ran on, heading for the pickup point located just inside the preserve's fence line. He would have used the communicator zippered into his inside shirt pocket to request an immediate pickup instead of the one already scheduled, but he did not want to spare either the time or the wind to make the call.
If the general outline of the massive heat signature that had appeared so suddenly and unexpectedly on his spinner had not been enough to identify its source, the reverberant snarl that traveled through brush and across trees to the place where Keshu had set up his temporary command post was confirmation enough.
"Vishnu!" Johar muttered as he stared at his own readout. He looked over at the chief inspector. "Seems to me I remember seeing something on the news about a rogue cat taking people in this part of the preserve."
"I knew we'd have to coordinate this operation with Transport, but not with Wildlife and Game." Keshu's words came sharp and fast. His difficult decision had been made for him. By an animal. "Tell the two flying squads to head this way. Instruct everyone on the ground to move in." He took a deep breath. "Pick up the Frenchwoman."
Johar eyed his superior uncertainly. "But Chief Inspector, you've been saying all along that without unassailable proof, a court case can't be-"
Keshu cut him off. "It doesn't matter now, Lieutenant. We've done as much as we could, and it's all flown to pieces. I won't risk letting this woman slip away and hide."
"What about the others-these other people?"
Keshu adjusted his turban as he regarded the officer. "One crisis at a time, please, Lieutenant Johar. First the Frenchwoman. Then we'll see if we have a need, or responsibility, to deal with these others." Motioning for the officer to follow, he started forward along a pre determined route that led through the jungle. "Inform everyone as to what is happening out there and instruct them to be extra alert, though all the noise and activity should be enough to frighten off-"
Johar reached out and gestured with his spinner. "Chief Inspector- look."
Frowning, Keshu rechecked his own instrument's readout. Some where overhead, above the ground and below the clouds, the drone was still doing its job. Only now the images it was transmitting made no sense: no sense at all.
When the new arrival had shot the big man and then confronted the others by the water hole, a puzzled Jena had decided that events had become too complicated. Her redemptions were models of simplicity and purity. Not knowing how to proceed under such increasingly baffling circumstances, she had decided to give up on her evening's original intent and had begun to withdraw.
And then the tiger had appeared, striking out of nowhere, slicing through the night like the incarnation of a god. The assassin had found himself slain. It had been a paralytic moment, one of those instants of unforeseen stupefaction capable of numbing even those who thought themselves permanently inured to all manner and kind of violence.
Unlike those clustered by the water hole, Jena hadn't screamed. She had just stared, hardly breathing, looking on as the tiger proceeded to first slay efficiently and then begin to dine on its prey. She crouched in awe, looking on in admiration. She was not frightened.
She was envious.
Never before had she been witness to such studied ferocity. Was the tiger nothing more than a big cat? Or was it truly, as the sacred scriptures declared, the mount of the goddess Durga herself? Jena's mind was awhirl, overwhelmed with the rigors of the long night's stalking, the warm enveloping smells of the jungle, the heat, and now this unexpected miraculous presentation right before her very eyes of death by tiger. From where she knelt she could smell the blood. It was something they shared. Deep, deep within herself, she knew she was more closely akin in spirit and desire to the tiger than she could ever be to its victim.
Was not the great goddess Durga, more properly known as Mahadevi, shown riding upon a tiger? Thus mounted, had not she defeated the demonic Mahisha against whose powers the combined might of all the other gods had shown themselves to be useless? And afterward, was not Durga acclaimed by all and anointed the leader of the gods in all matters of battle?