“You think this boat will handle all of us and our gear and food?” Lauren asked.
As always, Motzi gave her his shrug, as if like all things this was in the hands of the gods. “Perhaps,” he said, grinning and winking at Mason at the look of horror on Lauren’s face.
“I do believe the boy is teasing you, silly lady,” Mason said, returning Motzi’s wink.
She assumed a fierce glare and whispered, pointing at him, “There is an old American saying you need to learn, Motzi… paybacks are hell!”
He assumed an innocent look and spread his hands, “Que?”
She took Mason’s hand and let him help her into the boat. “Oh, I think you understood me, Motzi. So you better watch your back from now on… and you, too, mister boss man,” she added with a look at Mason that should have frozen his testicles.
He pushed the boat off from the shore and jumped aboard, picking up one of the oars as Motzi did the same thing on the other side of the wide, flat-bottomed craft.
“How about the other boats?” Mason asked Motzi as they paddled out into the middle of the rapidly moving current.
Motzi pointed to a small hatchet in the bottom of the boat. “They no float no more,” he said, quietly, as if the sabotage he’d carried out on his friends and neighbors’ boats caused him some shame.
“Don’t worry, Motzi,” Lauren assured him, “we will make sure the village gets many boats, newer and better boats so that they can catch many fish.”
Since the current was moving so fast, they didn’t have to row at all, just use the oars as rudders to keep the boat heading straight down the middle of the river.
Mason leaned back against his backpack and smiled. “Man, this is much easier than I thought it was going to be. If we keep this pace up we should be at the coast by dawn.”
Just then they rounded a wide bend in the river and a loud crashing noise could be heard from up ahead of them.
Lauren leaned forward and peered into the semidarkness ahead and saw a white, frothy phosphorescence as the rapidly flowing river seemed to fall off a small cliff and crash into and around large boulders scattered throughout the water.
“Uh-oh, Captain Ahab, I think you’re about to earn your captain’s bars. Rapids ahead!” Lauren called over the increasingly loud noise.
“Oh, shit!” Mason cried, sitting up and gripping his oar so tight he was afraid he was going to leave gouges in the rough wood.
Motzi glanced over at him. “When I say left, you paddle fast, when I say right, you dig oar in and hold tight.”
“What about me? Is there anything I can do?” Lauren shouted, looking over her shoulder at them.
“Hang on and try not to get thrown out of the boat!” Mason shouted back at her.
Lauren shook her head and turned back around and grabbed the sides of the boat with death grips, mumbling to herself, “Great advice, I never would have thought of that.”
The Navy SEAL watch on Psycho’s wrist beeped softly twice, signaling him that it was midnight and time for him to relieve Jinx, who was keeping watch on the house in case the doctor and his woman decided to leave early.
As he rolled out of his sleeping bag, Bear whispered to him, “Hey, Psycho, if you think you can do it without raising an alarm, take a peek in the window of the house and make sure everything is copacetic.”
“No problem, boss. As hard as those two worked today, I’ll bet I could go in there and shake the bed without waking them up.”
Bear grinned around a yawn. “That won’t be necessary, just a quick and dirty recon should do the trick.”
“You got it.”
Fifteen minutes later, a sleepy-eyed Jinx slipped silently into the camp and over to his sleeping bag. “Hey Bear,” he whispered.
“Yeah?”
“Psycho wanted me to tell you he peeked in the window and both our targets are sleeping like babies.”
Bear raised an eyebrow. “In the same bed?”
“Yeah, why?”
Bear smiled. “If they’re getting friendly, then that might just give us an edge if we have to question the doctor. If he cares about the lady, my guess is he’ll tell us whatever we want to know to keep her from getting hurt.”
Jinx smiled as he pulled the sleeping bag up over his head. “You’re right. Never hurts to have an edge.”
Due to extensive combat training, both men were asleep within thirty seconds of laying their heads down.
Blade lay in his sleeping bag unable to sleep. He just lay there, getting more and more furious with Bear for the way he’d been treated.
“I’ll make that son of a bitch pay if it’s the last thing I ever do,” he told himself.
As he lay there, he ran various scenarios through his mind, trying to come up with some way to make Bear sorry he’d dissed him, and at the same time to earn his respect again.
Finally, just before dawn, it came to him. The perfect plan. Bear had objected to Blade’s plan to kill the doctor and the bitch now and take the samples because he said there would be too many witnesses in the village, and they’d have to kill a bunch of people and that would piss off the man who hired them.
Well, Blade reasoned, what if I sneak into their house before the sun comes up, silently slit their throats, steal the plants and blood samples, and get back here before dawn with none of the villagers the wiser? Hell, Bear can’t object to that. We’d get the goodies, and we’d be on our way before the natives even found the bodies and nobody would ever know who killed the two Americans.
He chuckled to himself. Sounds like a perfect plan to me, he thought. And since Psycho is the man on guard until sunup, he will probably be willing to go along with my plan, since the only thing Psycho likes better than killing a man is killing a woman.
Blade eased out of his sleeping bag and crept out of camp and toward where Psycho was standing guard. He made sure to make enough noise so that Psycho wouldn’t think he was trying to sneak up on him.
When he got to within ten yards of Psycho’s location, he whispered hoarsely, “Hey, Psycho, it’s me, Blade.”
Suddenly there was a KA-BAR knife pressed against the back of Blade’s neck. “Whatchu want, Blade? Didn’t Bear tell you to stay in camp?”
Blade swallowed around a lump in his throat. Good thing he hadn’t tried to sneak up on Psycho or he’d be lying on the ground with his spine severed.
“Well, uh, that’s what I wanted to talk to you about, Psycho.”
“So, go on, talk,” Psycho answered lowering the knife but keeping it in his hand and his hand ready to strike a killing blow if Blade made the wrong move.
“Okay. You know how Bear practically tore my head off for suggesting we kill those two now and head on back to the plane right away?”
Psycho laughed low in his throat. “Yeah, thought you was gonna turn white you was so scared.”
Blade bristled. “I wasn’t… oh, never mind. Anyway, I’ve been thinking that maybe we could kill those two now, while everyone in the village is still asleep, get the stuff, and get back on the trail toward home and our paycheck before anyone even discovers the bodies.”
Psycho pursed his lips and used the blade of his knife to scratch the whiskers on his cheek. “Uh-huh, an’ did you run this brilliant idea by the boss?”
“Uh, not really. I thought we might surprise him with the goods and the job already done.”
Psycho laughed again, tapping Blade’s chest with the point of his knife. “You just don’t get it, do you, Blade? That’s why the man is called boss, an’ why he gets the big bucks… ’cause he gets to do the thinkin’ for all of us so’s we don’t have to bother.”
“But I thought…”