Page 42

CHAPTER 41

Democratic Republic of the Congo, 2 a.m.

KIRA WIPED THE sweat from her forehead.

She was nestled in the brush about twenty yards from the mercenary unit’s command center—a cluster of large military tents and a row of plastic outhouses.

A flag hung on the back wall of an open-sided hut the men used as a bar. It had black and red stripes with a yellow star in the center. Kira had been staring at it for hours, but couldn’t ID it. Maybe the unit’s official banner?

From where she was nestled, Kira could see the glow of distant campfires from the squalid tent city where the workers slept— barely slept—between shifts.

Kira heard footsteps approaching. Two sets. She leaned back into the shadows and took slow, even breaths.

She’d been waiting all night for this.

Two men were stumbling from the bar toward their quarters on the far side of the compound. Krupen and Horvat. Kira had learned their names by reading lips. They were always posted side by side on the rim of the mine pit, taking frequent potshots at the workers from above—and laughing about it.

Everything about them was predictable.

Every night, they drank themselves into a stupor at the bar. And every night, they took the same path back to their tent. Like rats.

For three nights straight, Kira had watched. And listened.

Krupen was German. Horvat was Croatian. They communicated with each other in a crude pidgin English, with a lot of wild gesturing involved.

Kira peeked through the foliage as Horvat grunted and pointed to his crotch. He unzipped, then took a few steps off the path and into the brush. Kira heard a mild sigh as a hard stream of piss hit the leaves.

Krupen kept heading down the path.

Fine with Kira. She didn’t care which one went first.

Kira heard another zip. Horvat reemerged and stepped back onto the path.

A loud snap sounded from the darkness, then a guttural gasp.

Horvat froze. He pulled out his .45 and moved toward the sound. Kira eased herself out of her hiding spot and crawled in the same direction.

Horvat called out. “Krupen?”

Silence.

Kira crouched behind a tree to watch as Horvat rounded a curve in the trail.

He rocked back as he saw his drinking buddy suspended in the air from a bent branch, his neck snapped and reddened from a wire wrapped tight below his jawline.

Horvat could see what it was. A spring trap. The kind used to snare animals. But man-sized.

He spun around, pointing his pistol into the dark jungle. He inched over and tapped Krupen’s leg. Then he bent over and vomited his entire night’s beer consumption into the bushes.

Horvat staggered back toward the lights of the compound. Along the way he fired a succession of three shots into the air. Then another three. Sounding the alarm.

Kira headed in the opposite direction, back into the deep jungle.

By the time they cut Krupen down, she would be sleeping like a baby.