T-Bob had been born in the bayou-literally birthed in a canoe like this one. He had hunted these parts since he could first walk. The bayou was as much kin to him as his own brother.
As they headed through the swamp, he listened to the forest around him. Night in the bayou was a noisy time. He heard the bullfrog, the owl, the twitter of nesting birds. To either side, saw grass and reeds rustled as his brother glided their canoe through the dense growth. Closer at hand, the whirring of mosquitoes buzzed his ears.
In the distance, he still heard the hungry grumble of fire eating wood, but it had grown muffled as they paddled deeper into the forest. Still, the heat and smoke continued to drive animals outward. A pair of marsh hares burst out of the reeds and bounded across the creek. A moment later, a red deer followed, flagging her white tail at them.
T-Bob studied their passage.
The animals weren’t in full panic, so the flames must still be a ways off. From the path and direction of the fleeing creatures, he kept track of the fire’s edge.
T-Bob had full confidence he could find a way around the flames. He tested the water with a fingertip, judging currents, and guided his brother with hand signals. He avoided channels that seemed too stagnant, knowing they’d only dead-end into a pond or pool. Instead, he kept to the flowing water and aimed them in a sweeping arc around the fires.
As he helped turn the canoe into a new stream, a strange odor struck his nose. Though it was faint, it was still like a slap in the face. The smell of the swamp was as familiar as his wife’s slim body. He knew every exhalation of the bayou, no matter the season or the weather. His nostril crinkled. What he smelled had no part here.
He lifted a hand and formed a fist. Peeyot turned his paddle and slowed the canoe to a gentle and silent stop.
“Why are we-” one of the men asked.
T-Bob silenced him with a glare and an upraised hand. With the goggles in place, the agent looked more like an insect than a man.
Stupid couyon.
T-Bob turned his attention to the dark forest. He let the others keep watch with their high-tech gadgets. His senses were sharper.
Something had passed through here.
But was it still around?
T-Bob again let his eyelids drift lower, listening with his entire body to each splash, chirp, crackle, and rustle. A picture of the bayou formed in his mind’s eye. As he sank deeper, he discerned a funnel of sound off in the distance, shaped both by noises and silences: a series of plopping frogs, the sudden interruption of a woodpecker’s tapping, the chittering flight of a squirrel.
Something was out there and on the move.
Slowly, furtively.
It was heading toward the fire, rather than away.
Coming toward them.
T-Bob pointed, and his brother shoved off the muddy bottom of the stream. He glided the canoe expertly down the indicated channel. T-Bob no longer avoided the flames. He aimed their canoe straight toward the heart of the inferno. It was their only chance, to vanish into the fire’s heat and smoke and hope the hunter didn’t follow.
But for that to succeed, they needed to move swiftly and silently.
Behind him, a radio squelched loudly-then a voice called. “Team One. Report in.”
The Border Patrol agent placed a hand on his radio, but T-Bob stopped him from unclipping it and shook his head. The four in the boat went dead still, eyes staring outward. They waited a long breath.
Except for the fire’s rumble, the swamp had gone silent around them.
“I’M GETTING NO answer from Mansour’s team,” Scott reported in.
Seated stiffly in the canoe, Jack was about to reply when a spat of rifle fire echoed across the bayou. It sounded as close as the next tree, but he knew it had to have come from at least a mile off.
They had their answer.
Lorna was right. The cat was here.
Jack lifted the radio. “How long until the chopper gets here?”
“ETA in five.”
“Have it sweep to the east. Toward where the others went.” He remembered Lorna’s concern about the helicopter’s lights, rotorwash, and engine scaring off the jaguar. He prayed it would work. “Tell the pilot to keep low to the tree line. Maximum noise.”
Randy called from the back of the boat. “What’s going on?”
Jack kept the radio to his lips. “And, Scotty, watch yourselves over there. Get everyone back on board.”
“Already done. We’re watching both shorelines. Are you heading back to the boat?”
Jack felt the eyes of the other men on him. “No. We’ll continue on. Try to circle past the fire and offer support to whoever’s trapped at the farm. They may need our firepower with that cat on the loose.”
“Aye, sir. Understood.”
Jack lowered the radio.
Randy spoke from the stern. “So we’re going on?”
He nodded. “We’re almost around the fire.”
Jack stared through his goggles. The heat and glow of the inferno were plain through the trees. He hated to turn his back on the Thibodeaux brothers and his other teammates, but it would take them longer than five minutes to retreat out of the swamp and even longer to track the other canoe’s path on the far side of the canal.
Jack pointed to a wider flowing stream heading due south. If it ran relatively straight, they could use it to skirt the edge of the fire and reach the alligator farm.
Randy sighed and shoved off. The two other men paddled. The canoe glided into the channel, and they were off again. Jack tracked the encroachment of the forest fire.
Unfortunately, the channel grew narrower and tree limbs lowered, until it felt like they were traveling through a chute, made even more pronounced by the tunnel vision of his goggles. Jack crouched low, and still low-hanging branches batted at his helmet and beards of moss slapped his face.
Randy swore behind him.
But at least the fires stayed to the east of them.
Unfortunately the stream grew more tortuous, taking sudden twists and opening into stagnant side pools. Fireflies swirled in the night, creating luminous silver-green clouds through his goggles.
Half blinded by a swarm, Jack did not see the branch. It smacked him in the face and clawed at his cheek. He shoved it out of the way, only then realizing his mistake.
The branch was soft, covered in cloth.
The body fell out of the tree overhead and crashed atop the canoe. Limbs tangled; men shouted in surprise and horror. Jack ripped off his goggles and yelled for everyone to calm down.
The corpse draped half in the water, facedown, over the edge of the canoe. It was missing a leg, a hand.
Randy pointed a paddle ahead.