His eyes were itching, and he was able to run his thumbs over them. That felt better.
It was then that he heard the gunshot: a single pop and—at the exact same time—the sound of a human being crying out. A man, he thought, and he grew still more frightened. Instantly his hunger was gone, replaced by nausea and the fear that he might shit his pants, and he could feel that his heart was starting to race.
He didn’t know enough about firearms （in fact, he understood nothing） to know what kind of weapon it was, but it was discharged not far from where he was bound to the pallet. It crossed his mind that their captors had killed one of them, but he told himself—forced himself to believe—that this was unlikely. Impossible. Yes, things had gone off the rails, but there was no way that they’d kill their American captives. They couldn’t. They wouldn’t. It was far more probable that one of the guards had shot an animal for food or to frighten it away from the boma. That human sound? Had to have been wildlife. Had to have been. Once more, he wanted to reassure Katie that there was nothing to fear. Nothing at all. This would all turn out fine in the end.
But he knew he was deluding himself when he heard the second gunshot.
For the first time the idea grew real in his mind: I might really be going to die out here. We all might.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Carmen Tedesco
Carmen Tedesco is the perfect sidekick to Shirley MacLaine, her comic timing pitch-perfect as the eager young prostitute with very big dreams, a very big heart, and the common sense to know that what she does best is best done behind closed doors.
—The Hollywood Reporter, July 1963
The baobab was dead, listing at least twenty degrees, which was the only reason why she was able to scale it and reach that broad lower branch. The tree seemed as wide and round as a castle turret, but she was able to claw her way up the rough and stippled bark, though her first step had been into Reggie’s cupped hands. With a strength that she’d always supposed he had but had never seen manifested, he hoisted her up onto the trunk and gave her just enough momentum that she could climb to that branch. She was easily eight feet off the ground and she had their pistol, and so while she was not safe, she was safer. She couldn’t lie down, and she didn’t dare fall asleep: if she did, the odds seemed pretty good that she’d tumble from the tree and best case break a leg and worst case break her neck. But if she stayed awake, she might make it through the night. She didn’t think she had a concussion, though Reggie wasn’t so sure.
Certainly, Reggie had to stay awake. By the time they reached the tree, he could barely even limp. Their pace had slackened inexorably throughout the endless afternoon. He tried a couple of times to clamber up the trunk, but it was clear that he was no longer capable of doing so. And so he was sitting below her with his back against the baobab and the rifle across his lap, watching their little fire. He tried to reassure her that his eyes were good and he’d shoot anything that got near him. They’d rounded up some scrub and scrounged a couple of dead branches and been able to start the small blaze, but they didn’t have enough wood to feed it for long. Soon it would burn itself out. And then one man in the dark against a pack of hyenas or jackals or a couple of lions? He might get one, but he wouldn’t get two.
“Aren’t the stars beautiful?” he asked her. “Nights like these, I can almost understand why the ancients supposed heaven was up there.”
“Reggie?”
“Yes, my dear?”
“I know you’re trying to keep up my spirits, but I don’t think we should be talking. I don’t think we should be making any noise.”
“You’re worried about animals.”
“I am.”
“This probably won’t comfort you, but any animals that might want to eat us already know we’re here. The fire’s a beacon. They smell us or see us. Some, I suppose, have been following us for miles.”
“How far do you think we walked?”
“Not as far as I would have liked. I let us down. Or my leg did,” he said. After a moment he added, “Somewhere between eleven and twelve miles.”
“How did you come up with that number?”
“A bad guess. Normally I walk three miles an hour. I reduced it—randomly—to two and a third miles because I’m gimpy and pathetic, and we walked about five hours.”
“Not counting when we rested.” God, there had been some moments when she had been so hot and sweaty that she thought she was going to vomit. Heatstroke. Sunstroke. Whatever. She had melted. Puddled.