There were lights moving in the forest as Bishop stepped down from the cockpit. There were footsteps approaching on the fallen leaves. Another moment and two men emerged from the trees, came onto the runway. The men were wearing fatigues and watch caps. They were carrying Stinger flashlights. Each had a Heckler & Koch MP5—a machine gun—slung by a strap over his shoulder.
It was a lot of firepower out here in the middle of nowhere. Even Bishop, fearless as he usually was, felt suddenly very alone, very far from any chance of help, any avenue of escape.
“Let’s go,” said Hirschorn.
Bishop got his traveling bag out of the Cessna’s backseat. At a nod from Hirschorn, one of the gunmen started back into the woods. Bishop and Hirschorn followed him. The second gunman brought up the rear.
There was no trail. Patches of tangled roots sprung from the night under the swinging beams of the gunmen’s Stingers. Patches of forest in patches of swirling mist. Then those lighted places sank away again, were replaced by others in a confusing, moving jumble. Bishop couldn’t always make out where he was stepping. But the lead gunman moved fast. There was no choice but to march after him, to stumble after him, deeper into the trees.
It was cooler in the woods than in the town but muggier too. Bishop’s T-shirt hung damp on him within minutes. His face felt slick and clammy. As they went, the mosquitoes found them. Sometimes, in a flashlight’s outglow, Bishop could see them swarm. He heard their wearying high-pitched whisper of attack. He cursed at them. He swatted at his neck and cheek, smeared himself with his own blood as he dragged their corpses off his skin.
But the walk wasn’t long. Ten minutes, maybe less. Then the rumble of a generator reached him. Dangling vines and twisted branches appeared, black against a ghostly white glow, a light in the distance filtering to him through the rising mist.
Even with that warning, though, it was startling to arrive at the campsite. There was no clearing. Not much of one anyway. There were just a couple of instant buildings, set up and wedged between the trees. One building was a two-story barracks: two rectangular boxes of steel stacked one on top of the other. There was one window on each side of each box and even a stairway slapped onto one end of them. The windows were curtained and only that dim, ghostly glow escaped from them, seeping into the forest vapors and carried away in their slow, rising spiral.
The other building was larger, a shed. It was completely dark.
As he approached, marching with the little band, Bishop glanced upward instinctively. He saw one star, one jagged sliver of blue-black sky. The rest was blocked out by the canopy of leaves. And over the shed, where there was a wider break in the treetops, there was some kind of cover—mosquito netting maybe—hung to act as camouflage. You could fly over this site at two hundred feet, he thought, and never spot it. Especially in the dark. There was no question about it: If he didn’t make it out of here on his own, no one would ever find him.
The lead gunman stopped. Bishop and Hirschorn stopped. So did the gunman behind them. Now, as the crunch of their footsteps ceased, there was only the rumble of the generator, and the burr of crickets and the rattle of cicada and the bleat and belch of peepers and bullfrogs in the thickening night all around.
Hirschorn wiped his chiseled features with a white handkerchief. Bishop could just make him out in the light of the Stingers. The silver-haired man still looked elegant and composed as he daubed the sweat off his neck and forehead. Then he gestured with the handkerchief toward the shed.
“I’ll let you get washed up and settled in a minute,” he said, “but first I want to give you a look at my baby.”
He lifted his chin to the lead gunman. The gunman went to the front of the shed. At another gesture from Hirschorn, Bishop followed.
The gunman wedged the flash under his arm. By its unsteady light, Bishop could see him working the shed latch. Then the gunman drew one-half of the shed front open. He returned and drew the other half open the other way.
Bishop stood in front of the wide-open shed. He looked in. He saw the gunman’s flashlight jouncing here and there, but beyond that he made out nothing but blackness. Then with a queasy feeling, he began to distinguish a darker darkness, a blacker black hunkering in the shed’s depths.
The gunman slipped inside the steel box. He threw a switch. A pair of fluorescent lights attached to the shed’s sides began to work their way on. In that flickering blue light, Bishop saw what was in there.
He whistled. Hirschorn laughed, delighted by his reaction.
Bishop tried to think of something to say. He couldn’t. All he could do was whistle again. And finally he managed a stunned murmur: “Man oh man oh man.”