Target Response by William W. Johnstone, J. A. Johnstone Read Free Book Online Page A

mindful of the danger of swamping the craft or putting a booted foot through its bottom. He landed lightly in the beam of the boat, its widest part, touching down easily in a muscular crouch.
    His weight caused the shallow-draft dinghy to sink deeper into the water, for an instant sinking it so that black water rose dangerously close to the tops of the gunwales. He rode out the disturbance like a surfer on a board, minutely adjusting his position and maintaining his balance until the boat rose and righted itself.
    He was…Kilroy.
     
    Kilroy piloted the boat farther along the channel, whose switchback course ultimately wound toward the west.
    A night and a day, and half a night again had passed since the ambush that killed Raynor and saw Kilroy flee into the depths of the flooded forest.
    He had evaded his pursuers by the simple strategy employed by most successful fugitives—by being willing to take the chase to more extreme limits and endure more unremitting hell than those who were hunting him were willing to undergo.
    A heavy rainfall on the night following Raynor’s death had allowed Kilroy to slake his thirst and fill his canteen with fresh water. With Raynor gone, Kilroy had enough MREs to last for several days.
    Plastering his flesh with handfuls of black mud, smearing it over every inch of exposed skin, had won Kilroy some relief from plaguing insect pests. He had caught a few blessed hours of fitful sleep wedged into a treetop.
    Daybreak. He’d expended his assault rifle’s last rounds escaping the ambush in the valley. No matter. He still had his .44 Magnum handgun and survival knife to take the war to the enemy.
    The flooded forest was ideal for bushwhacking; it made it so easy for lone troops to become separated from their fellows. A hand from behind clapped over a foeman’s mouth to stifle his cries, a razor-edged knife blade cutting a throat—and the deed was done.
    The first Nigerian soldier he’d slain had furnished him with a rifle and ammunition to further fuel the ongoing fight. As the long, murderous day had worn on and their numbers decreased, the men of Tayambo’s elite bodyguard had grown unsure of who was hunting whom.
    Night fell, and with it had come teams of torch-bearing boatmen to ply the flooded forest and bring him to bay. Kilroy had welcomed their advent; a motorized dinghy was his ticket out of the swamp.
    Hours had passed before the proper opportunity to strike presented itself. A lone boat separated from its fellows, taking a course that would deliver itself into his hands.
    He had raced to get ahead of it and intercept it, jumping from matted tussocks to gnarled mangrove root works, climbing trees and crawling out to the ends of their branches to leap to his next solid stepping-stone through blackwater channels. He had lost a rifle along the way.
    But he had reached the critical junction point ahead of the boat, whose bow-mounted torch glowing fuzzily through green mist heralded its arrival from a long way off.
    Kilroy had scaled a mangrove tree, climbing out along a branch that overhung the channel. It had groaned with creakings and sagged dangerously under his weight but held. Crouched on a crooked limb, hidden by masses of leafy boughs, he had waited with drawn gun and a hunter’s terrible patience for the boat to arrive.
    As it neared, he had drawn a bead on the spotter in the bow and shot him in the heart. A second shot had taken the steersman above the eyebrows…and the boat was Kilroy’s.
    He now moved to take control of the boat, a type familiar to him. It was the same basic model of slim, shallow-draft craft used in swamplands around the world, from Central Europe’s Pripet Marshes to the archipelagoes of Malaysia.
    The engine was about the size and horsepower of a lawn mower motor. The tiller was fitted with a handgrip throttle controlling the rate of fuel flow.
    The boat nosed against a cluster of half-submerged mangrove roots, bumping into them. Kilroy’s form