But then he heard someone calling into the tent, and Peter once again was left alone. Whoever had been there had just turned around and left to supervise or take on some other task. Peter closed his eyes and, though he hadn’t set foot in a church since his second marriage, said a small prayer of thanks in his head. Then he worked his way beneath the netting and underneath the back flap of the tent. He saw a lone acacia in one direction and thorn brush with some kind of thick tree with leaves and branches in another. He tucked the pistol into the back of his khakis, the grip against his spine, and crawled toward the thorn brush and that fat tree: it would give him more cover than the single acacia. If someone saw him, he hadn’t a chance. Best case, they’d yell for him to stop. Worst case, they’d shoot him as easily as they might a solitary Thomson’s gazelle.
But he made it. He was sweating and filthy, and his bare elbows were bleeding from the dry ground. His chest hurt like hell, and he wondered if he was about to have a heart attack. Now that would be ironic. But as he leaned against the rough bark of the trunk, shielded by the brush, the sound of the criminals—no, they were worse than that; they were murderers, for God’s sake, they were murderers—was mostly a distant murmur punctuated by the clink of metal as struts and supports and pots and pans and jerry cans were tossed into the lorries, and his heart began to slow. With any luck, the men on the other side of the brush would be gone in an hour or two and he could start toward that Maasai boma. If he could make three or four miles an hour on foot, he might be there before dark.
Assuming, of course, that he could find it. And that he didn’t get eaten.
He closed his eyes. No, he wouldn’t get eaten. He hadn’t survived so far just to wind up as lunch for a leopard or lion.
When he opened his eyes, he understood he was wrong. Absolutely and completely mistaken. He sensed the animal before he saw it. There, on a branch above him, was a leopard. Maybe, Peter thought, I have it too: Charlie Patton’s sixth sense. I had felt leopardy （or something）， and there it was. The animal.
Slowly he reached behind his back with his right hand for the Smith & Wesson, walking his fingers like small, elderly legs. What was that children’s rhyme? Itsy bitsy spider? He hadn’t had kids, so if he’d ever said it or sung it out loud, it had been over sixty years ago with his mother. When he’d been a child. But he recalled the beginning of it, as once more his heart started to thump behind his ribs. Now he was touching the grip of the pistol with his fingertips. He would shoot the animal and run, because the gunshot would alert the sons of bitches at the camp to his presence. He would aim for the head, even though that was a smaller target than the body and who the hell knew what kind of aim he had. But he couldn’t risk a gut shot that only wounded the creature and left her both hungry and mad. He wrapped his fingers around the grip and was just starting to slide it from his waistband when the leopard sprang from the tree, leaping not onto the ground but onto him. Reflexively he tried to shield his face and his neck with both arms. What was it Patton had once said? You hoisted your rifle perpendicular to your throat and hoped the damn thing would bite down on the barrel until help came. The handgun was utterly forgotten. But it was too late. He saw the big cat’s haunting amber eyes for a brief second as a front paw clawed away his arms with the ease with which he would whisk away a mosquito, and the barbs on her hind feet ripped through his shirt and slashed open his stomach. Then he felt the sting of the animal’s bayonet-like teeth slicing through his neck and tearing open his throat, all but severing the human head that no longer had voice—there was no scream—from the human body.
Meanwhile, the men at the camp continued their work, most of them oblivious to the leopard that now was dragging her prey to the nearby kopje, where she had cubs waiting to feed. The two porters that saw it took note, and the younger of the pair wondered aloud at the possibility of retrieving the headless corpse before it was devoured as an act of kindness to the person’s family, but the older man told him that would be dangerous and futile. The Russian supervising them snapped at them to let the body be, and the younger porter shook his head ruefully and continued loading the truck.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Katie Barstow
“I’ve dated actors. You all know that,” said Katie. “And you all know that it never worked out. So, why not date a nice man who has nothing to do with this crazy business?” Of course, that nice man will soon be her nice husband. Moreover, Katie has known David Hill since they were children and David was Katie’s older brother’s best friend.