Bodyguard: Ambush (Book 3) (24 page)

A few metres ahead of them a zebra was being
ripped apart in a feeding frenzy by a pack of spotted hyenas. Their powerful jaws
snapping, their fur stained with blood, they squabbled over the kill, cackling and
giggling like lunatics from an asylum.

The lower-ranked hyenas, pushed out by the
dominant females, instantly turned their attention to the human intruders. Staring at
their newfound prey with dark hungry eyes, they bared their teeth, drool dripping from
their ravenous mouths. One by one, the other hyenas fell silent as
they became aware of the presence of Connor, Amber and
Henri.

Faced by such a fearsome pack of wild
animals, it took all Connor’s willpower not to simply turn and flee. But he knew
from Gunner’s advice to do such a thing would trigger the hunting instinct.

‘
Back away
,’ he
whispered, trying to keep the panic out of his voice. ‘
Slowly.
’

Amber managed the slightest of nods in
acknowledgement. They retreated a step at a time, drawing back into the cover of the
thicket. The hyenas advanced in slow deliberate paces, determined to keep their quarry
in sight. Henri glanced behind to see where he was walking and a large hyena with a
ripped ear stealthily closed the gap.

‘
Don’t
take your eyes
off them,’ Connor warned. ‘As soon as you do, they’ll
attack.’

They were almost concealed within the
thicket when the matriarch of the clan let out a haunting
whoop
and all of a
sudden the hyenas launched themselves. Survival instinct overruling any ranger’s
advice, Amber, Henri and Connor ran for their lives. They fled through the bush, not
caring as the thorns of a wait-a-while tore at their clothes and ripped their skin.
Maniacal giggles and growls pursued them on all sides and Connor caught flashes of
sandy-brown hair, black snouts and muscular forelegs closing in.

The three of them broke from the thicket and
into the long grass. The hyenas matched them pace for pace, boxing them in but not yet
attacking. For a brief second
Connor
wondered why – then realized the pack was simply tiring them out to make the kill
easier.

‘The trees!’ cried Amber,
pointing to a copse of acacia further up the slope.

Connor saw them too and, recalling Gunner
saying that hyenas couldn’t climb, shepherded his two Principals towards the
promised sanctuary of the trees. But they were forced to change direction when a huge
snarling hyena blocked their path. They ran across a slope, skirting round a huge pile
of boulders as they looked for another way through. Henri was wheezing heavily by now,
his face pale with the exertion.

‘Up there,’ Connor shouted,
spotting a narrow gully between the massive boulders.

Taking advantage of a gap in the pack, he
led the way to the opening. But the moment they reached it the hyena with the ripped ear
lunged at Henri. Panicking, Henri fled in the opposite direction and was soon lost from
sight in the tall grass. Connor could hear the pack whooping and howling as they hunted
down the youngest and weakest of their chosen prey.

‘We have to save him!’ Amber
cried.

But the hunt wasn’t over for them
either. Two hyenas were pursuing them up the gully. Then another appeared at the top.
Trapped, Connor searched frantically for a different escape route.

‘In there,’ he said, spotting a
narrow gap between two gigantic boulders.

‘It’s too small,’ cried
Amber.

Faced with no
alternative and the hyenas bearing down on them, Connor shoved her towards the hole.
Slender as she was, Amber still struggled to wiggle through. He tossed in his Go-bag,
then sucked in his chest as he scrambled after her. But he got stuck halfway, the rocks
seeming to press down on him, crushing the breath from his body. He could hear the
hyenas bounding towards his exposed flailing legs. Amber, who’d managed to crawl
into a little hollow beneath the boulders, tugged frantically on his arms. With a final
desperate squirm, Connor scraped through the suffocating gap, just as the hyenas’
jaws snapped at his disappearing feet.

Connor and Amber lay pressed against one
another 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 further.

‘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
with him!’

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
further 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, no more
than a couple of metres from their hidingplace.

‘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 towards 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 paralysing fear seep into his own bones.

‘Then search the gully, top to
bottom,’ ordered Blaze. ‘Leave no stone unturned.’

The black widow continued its slow yet
deliberate journey up Amber’s neck. Neither Connor nor Amber could move, both held
captive by the venomous spider as it probed her cheek with its forelegs, its multiple
eyes glistening in the hollow’s dim light.

Amber closed her own eyes as her worst
nightmare stared directly at her. Connor could feel a cold sweat break out on her skin
as the spider crawled across her face. Its legs brushed against his fingers, which were
still clamped over Amber’s mouth. But he dared not knock the black widow off. They
had nowhere to go and a single bite from such a spider could inject a lethal neurotoxin,
resulting in burning pain, vomiting, swelling and even death.

In the gully, the soldiers were working
their way down, searching every nook and crevice. Connor could hear them getting closer
with each passing second. Amber was now as pale as death, the spider passing across her
right eyelid. She twitched in panic and the black widow stopped, probing her soft skin
with its two front legs.

Footsteps approached
their hollow, the entrance darkening as a soldier bent down to look inside. Then a
second gunshot went off, swiftly followed by several more blasts.

‘Over here!’ came a distant
cry.

The shadow disappeared from their entrance,
the crunch of feet on earth rapidly receding. But neither Connor nor Amber could risk
moving. The black widow was now painstakingly making its way through her tangle of red
hair. Connor prayed the creature wouldn’t decide to make a nest there. Amber had
her eyes fixed on his, utter desperation filling them as she heard the whisper of the
eight-legged creature pass her ear.

After what seemed an eternity, the spider
crawled out on to the rock and disappeared into a dark fissure.

‘It’s gone,’ whispered
Connor.

As if woken from a trance, Amber bolted for
the entrance.

‘No!’ hissed Connor. ‘They
might still be out there.’

But Amber was paying him no heed. She
scrambled out of the hollow and into the sunlight. Left with no other choice, Connor
shoved his Go-bag through the opening and followed close behind. He found Amber sitting
on a rock, panting rapidly, her hands trembling. Connor quickly scanned the gully.
Thankfully there were no soldiers or hyenas in sight. He knelt before Amber.

‘Are you OK?’ he asked.