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“Forgot about crocodiles,” Sam said a couple minutes later.
“Me too. I spotted them in the shallows about fifty yards upstream. The commotion must have woken them up. Are you okay? Any broken bones?”
“Don’t think so. How’d I do?”
Remi pointed toward the middle of the river. Sam focused on the spot, but it took several seconds for his eyes to adjust. All that remained visible of the helicopter was a branchlike shard of rotor blade jutting a half foot above the surface.
“The rest of the chunks went into the water.”
“Just as I planned,” Sam said with a weary smile.
“Planned?”
“Hoped. How’s the bell?”
“Aside from a few cracks in the wood, the crate’s surprisingly intact. I collected our packs and the guns. Let’s find some cover in case we have visitors.”
CHAPTER 21
WARY OF LEAVING TELLTALE DRAG MARKS, THEY CHOSE TO LEAVE the crate where it sat. Unintentionally, they’d dropped it in an ideal location—a dry rivulet near the riverbank. They covered it with scrub brush and then, using bundled foliage to obscure their tracks, they back-walked off the sandbar to solid ground and into a copse. A hundred feet inside the tree line they found a ten-by-ten-foot depression surrounded by fallen logs. It gave them a vantage point of not only the crate but the open ground down to the beach.
After probing the area with the muzzles of the rifles to drive off any snakes or sundry creepy crawlies, they settled into their bolt-hole. While Sam kept an eye out for visitors, Remi took inventory of their packs. “Remind me to send a thank-you letter to Ziploc,” she said. “Most everything is dry. The satellite phone looks okay.”
“How much battery life?”
“Enough for one call, maybe two.”
Sam checked his watch. It was just after two in the morning. “It might be time to take Ed Mitchell up on his offer.” Remi fished Mitchell’s card out of her pack and handed it over. Sam dialed.
A gravelly voiced Mitchell picked up on the fourth ring: “Yeah.”
“Ed, it’s Sam Fargo.”
“Huh?”
“Sam Fargo—your Mafia Island charter a couple days ago.”
“Oh, yeah . . . Hey . . .what the hell time is it?”
“About two. I don’t have much time. We need an evac.”
“That’s a word I ain’t heard in a while. You in trouble?”
“You could say that.”
“Where you at?”
“On the mainland, about four and half miles due east of Big Sukuti,” Sam replied, then gave him a description of the area.
“You guys get around,” Mitchell said. “Hang on a minute.”
Sam heard the sounds of paper crinkling, then silence. Mitchell came back on the line: “You know you’re sitting smack-dab in the middle of crocodile hell, don’t you?”
“We do now.”
“Can’t get a fixed wing in there. I’ll have to use a helo. That’ll take a little doing.”
“We’ll make it worth your while.”
