13

Connor and Amber lay pressed against each other in the cramped confines of the hollow. The three hyenas snarled and scratched at the entrance, frustrated at being so close yet unable to sink their teeth into their prey.

“What now?” shrieked Amber as she desperately tried to avoid their probing forepaws.

“Don’t worry—they can’t get to us,” said Connor, glad the hyenas’ heavily built shoulders barred them entering any farther.

“But we have to get out! We need to rescue Henri!”

A wave of guilt consumed Connor. He dared not think about the poor boy’s fate. But how could he be expected to protect two individuals at once? Especially against a pack of hunting hyenas. He and Amber had barely escaped with their own lives—and they weren’t out of trouble yet.

“We’ll find him,” said Connor, hearing the hollowness in his own promise.

“Not before those hyenas have finished him off!”

Amber began to sob—fear, shock and grief all welling up at once. “Why did we ever come to Burundi? Why? This is a living hell! My parents murdered . . . my brother eaten alive . . . I—I . . .”

Connor drew Amber close, letting her cry herself out. The horrors of the past twenty-four hours were enough to break anyone. In fact, he was surprised that she’d held it together for so long. Despite all his hostile environment training, even he was on the point of snapping. Connor had thought his previous two missions would have prepared him for any eventuality. But it dawned on him that nothing could have prepared him for Africa. Violent ambushes, murdering gunmen, deadly snakes and man-eating hyenas—Operation Lionheart had been woefully underestimated in terms of threat level and required security support. His only comfort was that he’d failed to call in at two consecutive report times. Alarm bells would be ringing back at HQ and Charley would be investigating the problem, establishing the reason for the communication breakdown and implementing a search-and-rescue operation.

They just had to stay alive until rescue arrived.

Amber’s sobbing faded and Connor became aware that the hyenas had gone quiet too.

“Do you think they’ve given up?” whispered Amber, her head still resting against his chest.

Shifting closer to the entrance, Connor peered out. The sun glared down on an empty patch of scrub and bare rock, a flurry of paw marks in the dirt the only evidence that hyenas had been there at all.

“Maybe,” he replied, edging farther out for a better look.

Suddenly he was nose to nose with a snarling hyena. Connor jerked back into the hollow. The hyena whooped and began to dig more furiously than before.

“I guess that answers your question,” said Connor, shocked at the calculating nature of the animals. He’d spotted the other two hyenas patiently waiting on a boulder, ready to pounce as soon as they emerged.

Connor searched frantically for another way out of their tiny refuge, but they were well and truly stuck between a rock and a hard place. The hollow backed up against another immovable boulder, and any openings were barely large enough for a rabbit to fit through. Desperation had driven him to think this gap offered some sort of escape. Now it was destined to be their grave.

The hyena’s claws continued to rip at the ground, the entrance hole growing by the minute. Soon the opening would be large enough for its shoulders to pass through and its jaws to enter the hollow and rip them limb from limb.

Amber began her own frantic attempt at digging, using a stone to gouge out a hole behind her. As dirt rained in on them, Connor realized she had entered into a race that they were guaranteed to lose. He drew his father’s knife. He’d have to kill the beast before it dug its way in first. But the broad bony skull looked impenetrable, even with a survival knife, and the sharp-pointed teeth appeared fearsome weapons to overcome. It would be a bloody and fraught fight to the death for one of them.

As Connor steeled himself for an attack, a gunshot rang out, startling the hyena, and it stopped digging. More heavy gunfire caused it to turn tail and flee. Connor and Amber exchanged a glance, at once relieved yet fearful of what was to come next.

They heard the sound of heavy boots crunching in the dirt.

“I saw them enter the gully, Blaze,” said a boy’s voice.

“Then where are they?” growled a deeper voice that Connor recognized as belonging to the rebel with mirrored sunglasses.

A shadow passed across the hollow’s entrance, and Connor spotted a pair of black boots and the bare feet of a boy worryingly close to their hiding place.

“Maybe they escaped.”

Suddenly Amber’s body went rigid. Disturbed by her earlier digging, a small oil-black spider with a bulbous abdomen had emerged and was crawling across her arm. Realizing Amber was about to scream and give away their location, Connor clamped a hand over her mouth. Her eyes grew wide with sheer terror as the eight-legged arachnid crept up her arm and toward her neck.

“Did you see them escape?” Blaze questioned.

“No,” replied the boy.

As the spider reached her shoulder, Connor noticed a distinctive red hourglass marking on its underbelly. At once he felt Amber’s paralyzing fear seep into his own bones.

“Then search the gully, top to bottom,” ordered Blaze. “Leave no stone unturned.”