man was crouched by a giant fern, his rifle between his legs, stock butted against the ground. Beyond, Tucker could see in the moonlight the outlines of the lean-to at the far left of the clearing. Anyone crossing the campsite was in the man's direct line of fire.
The fern ruled out a knife. A blade that did not enter precisely at the required location could cause a victim to lunge, to shout. The fern concealed the man's back too well. It was possible, but awkward.
There was a better way. Sam recalled the vine that had dropped from the trunk of the ceiba tree.
He reached into his pocket and withdrew a coil of ordinary azimuth line. Thin steel wire encased in nylon, so handy for so many things...
He crept silently towards the giant spray of tiny leaves.
His enemy sniffed again.
Sam rose, half inch by half inch, behind the fern. In front of him now, unobstructed, was the silhouette of the man's neck and head.
Sam Tucker slowly separated his gnarled, powerful hands. They were connected by the thin steel wire encased in nylon.
Charles Whitehall was furious. He had wanted to use the river; it was the swiftest route, far more direct than the torturously slow untangling that was demanded in the bush. But it was agreed that since Lawrence had been on guard at the river, he knew it better. So the river was his.
Whitehall looked at the radium dial of his watch; there were still twelve minutes to go before the first signal. If there was one.
Simple signals.
Silence meant precisely that. Nothing.
The short, simulated, guttural cry of a wild pig meant success. One kill.
If two, two kills.
Simple.
If he had been given the river, Charles was convinced, he would have delivered the first cry. At least one.
Instead, his was the southwest sweep, the least likely of the three routings to make contact. It was a terrible waste. An old man, authoritative, inventive, but terribly tired, and a plodding, unskilled hill boy, not without potential, perhaps, but still a misguided, awkward giant.
A terrible waste! Infuriating.
Yet not as infuriating as the sharp, hard steel that suddenly made contact with the base of his skull. And the words that followed, whispered in a harsh command: 'Open your mouth and I blow your head off, mon!' He had been taken! His anger had caused his concentration to wander. Stupid.
But his captor had not fired. His taker did not want the alarm of a rifle shot any more than he did. The man kept thrusting the barrel painfully into Charles's head, veering him to the right, away from the supposed line of Whitehall's march. The man obviously wanted to interrogate, discover the whereabouts of the others. Stupid.
The release-seizure was a simple manoeuvre requiring only a hard surface to the rear of the victim for execution. And it was, indeed, execution.
It was necessary for the victim to rebound following impact, not be absorbed in space or elastically swallowed by walled softness. The impact was most important; otherwise, the trigger of the rifle might be pulled. There was an instant of calculated risk - nothing was perfect - but the reverse jamming of the weapon into the victim allowed for that split second of diagonal slash that invariably ripped the weapon out of the hands of the hunter. Optimally, the slash coincided with the impact. It was all set forth clearly in the Oriental training manuals.
In front of them, to the left, Whitehall could distinguish the sudden rise of a hill in the jungle darkness. One of those abrupt protrusions out of the earth that was so common to the Cock Pit. At the base of the hill was a large boulder reflecting the wash of moonlight strained through the trees. It would be sufficient... actually, more than sufficient; very practical, indeed.
He stumbled, just slightly, as if his foot had been ensnared by an open root. He felt the prod of the rifle barrel. It was the moment.
He slammed his head back into the steel and whipped to his right, clasping the barrel with his hands and jamming it forward. As the victim crashed into the boulder, he swung the weapon violently away, ripping it out of the man's grasp.
As the man blinked in the moonlight, Charles Whitehall rigidly extended three fingers on each hand and completed the assault with enormous speed and control. The hands were trajectories - one towards the right eye, the other into the soft flesh below the throat.