Chapter 2

It was Lawton himself who provided the means for Dooley to get even. They had been making slow progress through the jungle, when the Brit called a halt. Then, ignoring the rules he had set for the others, he took advantage of a few moments alone with Sheena to remove her halter and lick her splendid nipples. He didn't know he was being observed by Akbar and Gene, who quickly reported the news to Dooley.

To make matters worse, much worse, for Lawton, Dooley had bugged the Brit's satellite radio and had recorded several interesting conversations.

So the confrontation, when it came, found Lawton with only one sure ally, Michael, a fellow Brit.

They sat around a campfire in a clearing near the river. Dooley waved his hand toward Sheena and Rosie, who were tied together on the river bank.

"These two cunts, they don't mean nothin' to me, Lawton. I'd as soon snuff 'em as fuck 'em. But the blonde is the big lottery ticket, and I don't want to queer the payoff."

"Kind of you," Lawton said dryly.

"But here's the deal," Dooley continued. "We know you've been foolin' around with this jungle honey, while tellin' the rest of us to keep hands off."

Lawton, who was sitting on a fallen log, straightened up with a look of indignation.

"That's a dirty lie," he said.

"Yeah. Well, tell it to Akbar and Gene. They seen you chowing down on her tits."

"That's right," said Gene. Akbar nodded his assent.

"Do I detect a whiff of mutiny here?" Lawton asked.

Dooley snorted. "Whiff? What you detect, mother-fucker, is a whole shit-load of mutiny!"

"Well, so what if I licked her lovely titties?" said the Brit. "I did no damage. She's as good as new — which we all know wouldn't be the case if you had a few minutes with her. The point, after all, is ensure that she's sold for our asking price."

"Yeah, well, that brings me to my next point," said Dooley. He pulled a tape recorder out of his backpack. "We're all supposed to be in this thing together. All for one and one for all, right? But here's you talking to your pals back in Kisangani."

He punched the play button, and a voice that was tinny but unmistakably Lawton's said, "I don't think we'll get there any sooner than Tuesday. We're still in the bush. After that, we'll be coming up the Opala Road in three Land Rovers. Michael, I and the package will be in one. The others will be following."

Another voice said, "Check. You'll be in the lead."

"Right," said Lawton. "At the market, there will be a lot of congestion. All you have to do is block the road with a truck after we get through. I don't need much time — five or ten minutes at the most."

"Do we kill them?" asked the other voice.

"No. I don't want any bloodshed if you can possibly avoid it. Just slow them down. Five minutes or so, and we'll be at the airstrip. Julian is bringing in the Aeronca."

"And the girl..."

"The package," Lawton corrected.

"The package. You've got it?"

"We've got it."

Dooley stopped the recording.

"This was Lawton talking this morning," he said quietly. "He was planning to cut us out of the action." He turned to face Lawton. "You were going to fuck us, you British mother-fucker."

Lawton made a wry face. "Don't you know it isn't polite to eavesdrop on private conversations?"

"So what do we do, gentlemen?" Dooley asked.

"We kill the son of a bitch," snarled Gene. "And Michael, too."

Louie tried to calm things down. "Listen," he said. "Lawton tried to screw us. That's clear. But he's the only one who knows the buyer. Without him, we don't have shit."

"Wrong," said Dooley. "We've got the jungle cunt. We'll find a buyer on our own."

"Oh, right," Louie said sarcastically. "You hang around with lots of billionaires with kinky tastes."

The discussion dragged on for half an hour, until Louie agreed to throw in his lot with Dooley.

"Okay, you're right," he said wearily. "We can't trust him. So we'll take the girl and do the best we can to unload her."

"After we kill Lawton and Michael," Dooley said with a crooked smile.

"No, we ain't going to kill them," said Louie. "You heard what the Brit said on the radio. He told whoever he was working with not to shoot us — leastways, not if they could avoid it. Well, let's give him the same break he was going to give us. We take Sheena and all the guns and equipment."

"And Michael and I?" said Lawton.

"You get a knife apiece and a can of mosquito spray. And you can have, Rosie, too, for amusement. If you're as smart as you think you are, you should be able to figure out how to get out of this fucking jungle."

Michael turned pale. "We'll never make it," he said.

"You'll have knives," Louie said. "Carve yourselves a fucking canoe."

With Lawton out of the way, leadership of the party fell by default to Louie. He was the biggest, physically, and though no one ever accused him of being smart, he had common sense. Dooley, his only potential contender, was full of angry energy that made the others uneasy.

Louie knew this energy could be useful, if he could figure out how to keep Dooley focused on the task at hand: getting out of the jungle, finding the Rovers, then finding a buyer for the babe. This meant he'd have to make some concessions. The most crucial was allowing Dooley to sexually torment Sheena. Dooley would have to understand that he couldn't get too rough. But so long as he inflicted no permanent damage, Sheena was his to play with.

Trouble was, Sheena was taller and stronger than Dooley, and despite the handcuffs and the drugs they kept injecting into her, she might be difficult to handle. Louie tried to explain this to Dooley as they followed the river east.