Burning Angels

They pressed on for another three gruelling hours. Finally the gang called a halt. The giant, blood-red African sun was sinking swiftly towards the horizon. Jaeger and Narov crept closer, belly-crawling along a narrow ravine that ended at a patch of dark and stinking mud, marking the fringes of a waterhole.

The poachers were camped on the far side, which made perfect sense. After the long day’s march, they’d have need of water. The waterhole, though, looked to be a festering mud pit. The heat had dissipated slightly, but it remained stultifying, and every crawling, buzzing, stinging thing seemed to be drawn here. Flies as big as mice, rats as big as cats and vicious stinging mosquitoes — the place was swarming.

But nothing bothered Jaeger as much as the dehydration. They’d drained the last of their water a good hour back, and he had little or no fluid left in his body to sweat out. He could feel the onset of a splitting headache. Even lying utterly still, keeping watch on the poachers, the thirst was unbearable.

They both needed to rehydrate, and soon.

Darkness descended across the landscape. A light wind got up, whipping away the last of the sweat from Jaeger’s skin. He lay in the dirt, still as a rock and staring into the wall of the night, Narov beside him.

Above them a faint shimmer of starlight flickered through the acacia canopy, with just the faintest hint of the moon breaking through. To left and right a firefly skittered in the darkness, its fluorescent blue-green glow floating magically above the water.

The absence of light was to be welcomed. On a mission such as this, the darkness was their greatest friend.

And the more he watched, the more Jaeger realised that the water — repulsive though it might be — offered the ideal route in.

51

Neither Jaeger nor Narov had a clue how deep the water was, but it would take them right into the heart of the enemy’s camp. On the far side of the waterhole, the light of the poachers’ cooking fire gleamed on its stagnant surface.

‘Ready to go to work?’ Jaeger whispered, gently nudging Narov’s boot with his own.

She nodded. ‘Let’s get moving.’

It was gone midnight and the camp had been still for a good three hours. During their time spent observing the place, they’d not seen a single sign of any crocs.

It was time.

Jaeger turned and slid himself in, feeling with his boots for something solid. They came to rest in the thick, gloopy detritus that formed the bottom of the waterhole. He was in up to his waist, but at least the bank shielded him from view.

To either side, unseen, nameless beasts slithered and slopped about. Unsurprisingly, there wasn’t the faintest hint of any flow to the water. It was stagnant, fetid and nauseating. It stank of animal faeces, disease and death.

In short, it was perfect — for the poachers would never think to watch for an attack from here.

During his time in the SAS, Jaeger had been taught to embrace what most normal souls feared; to inhabit the night; to welcome darkness. It was the cloak to hide his and his brother warriors’ movements from hostile eyes — just as he hoped it would prove now.

He had been trained to seek out the kind of environments — sun-blasted desert, remote, hostile bush and fetid swamps — that normal human beings tended to shun. No other sane people would be there, which meant that a small group of elite operators could sneak through unnoticed.

No poachers would be joining Jaeger and Narov in this foul and stinking waterhole, which was why — despite the numerous downsides — it was perfect.

Jaeger got himself down on to his knees, his eyes and nose just above the water, his hand gripping his pistol. Like this he could maintain the lowest profile possible, while crawling and shuffling silently ahead. He made sure to keep the P228 out of the water. While most pistols still worked when wet, it was always better to keep them dry — just in case the dirty water fouled up the weapon.

He glanced at Narov. ‘You happy?’

She nodded, her eyes sparkling dangerously in the moonlight.

The tips of the fingers of Jaeger’s left hand gripped the squelchy, gooey mush as his feet shoved him into forward motion. He flailed about amongst a mass of rotting, putrid vegetation, his hand sinking up to the wrist with each thrust.

He prayed there weren’t any snakes in here, then drove the thought from his mind.

He pressed ahead for three minutes, counting each forward thrust by hand and feet, and translating that into a rough estimate of distance travelled. He and Narov were moving blind here, and he needed a sense of where the poachers’ camp lay. When he figured they’d covered about seventy-five yards, he signalled a halt.