The answer was yes. Roger had pulled out the Colt.
The others all froze, except for Chung who yelled out, ‘Shoot it! Shoot it!’
No one was quite sure what was going to happen next.
They certainly weren’t expecting the tiger to suddenly start running at full pelt away to their right. They spun round to see what it was up to, and then for the first time saw another group of predators that had been lying in wait for them, as two beautiful, sleek lionesses ran to meet the charge of the tiger.
‘What’s happening, Mum?’ asked Amazon.
‘Lions and tigers haven’t lived together in India for many years. But they’re ancient enemies, and won’t tolerate each other on their own territory. Any one tiger will usually beat any single lion in a fight, but two against one … Who knows?’
The big cats met in a ball of fury, with teeth and claws flashing, ripping, tearing.
‘Let’s go,’ said Ling-Mei, ‘before they remember that we’re here.’
She tried to help Roger get to his feet, but his foot could not bear any weight and he collapsed with a swallowed groan.
‘Go. Leave me. You’ve got to get to that river. Not just the lions and tiger – the hunters – before they realize we’ve left the temple area. I can’t run on this stupid ankle. There’s no option. Just get out of here.’
Amazon let out a wail of despair.
‘No, Dad! I’ve only just found you again. There’s no way we’re leaving you.’
‘Yeah, Uncle Roger,’ said Frazer, ‘at TRACKS we never leave a foot soldier behind.’
‘Look, kids, there’s no other way. I can hide out. It’ll take them a long time to find me and, before they do, you’ll have crossed that river and come back with the police. This way we all win. If I slow you down enough for them to catch us then we all lose.’
The battle between the lions and tiger still raged. The tiger landed a searing blow with its paw, the claws raking along the flank of one of the lionesses. She snarled and twisted away, as the other lioness lunged to her defence, her teeth seeking the tiger’s throat. The tiger was too quick, and the teeth snapped at thin air. But now the rest of the pride were coming, and the tiger tried to disengage and flee back to its refuge in the jungle. Amazon knew that, as soon as the lions had defeated their foe, they would turn their minds to breakfast …
And then another voice piped up.
‘You Hunts argue like a true family. All very good fun, but we’ve got work to do. You could say that I owe you a favour. Or you could say that I’m just sick of hearing you yack. Anyway, time to go.’
Then Leopold Chung trotted over to where Roger Hunt was sitting. In one slick move, he swept Roger up and into a fireman’s lift, and began to walk swiftly on in the direction of the river.
The others gazed at each other, astonished, then hurried after the pair, leaving the sounds of battling felines behind them.
Amazon and Frazer simply couldn’t believe that their old adversary would do this for them. It was almost as hard to believe that he was even able to. Roger was slender, but he was also tall – he probably weighed 85 kilos. But Chung seemed hardly to notice. His short legs carried him so quickly that the others struggled to keep up.
‘I guess we misjudged Mr Chung,’ said Frazer.
Amazon looked more sceptical. ‘Unless he’s up to something devious. You never know with that man.’
Each time they rested, Chung lowered Roger to the floor. And, at each break, Roger argued again that he should be left behind.
‘Roger, is this just because you think it’s undignified to be carried?’ said Ling-Mei, unable to fight the tiny little twitches of laughter at the corners of her mouth.
‘Hey,’ said Chung, ‘it’s no shame to be carried by Leopold Chung. I am black belt in kali – Filipino martial art. Also judo, karate, you name it. Don’t get to be leader of gang of cut-throats unless you pretty tough guy. OK, off we go again.’
As they marched, the world began to grow gradually lighter around them as the trees thinned. The ground underfoot was now dry and sandy, and they were in much more open countryside, with a few tall trees and clumps of lower bushes and shrubs. They stepped across another narrow stream, which gave them a chance to quench their thirst. Chung got down on his hands and knees and scooped up the water greedily into his mouth, and the others joined him.
Amazon saw another mango tree, with fruit low enough for her to reach up and pluck them. They looked a little unripe, but even a greenish mango was better than nothing.
‘No!’
Ling-Mei’s voice was close to a screech. Amazon wondered what she’d done wrong.
‘Cerbera odollam,’ said Ling-Mei, slapping the fruit out of her daughter’s hand. ‘It kills hundreds, maybe thousands in India every year.’
Chung picked up the fruit that Amazon had dropped.
‘Ah yeah, we call it suicide tree. Very good if you want to kill someone without getting found out – poison very hard to detect.’
‘Chung, you are one creepy guy,’ said Frazer.
Chung shrugged, and they walked on, leaving the deadly fruit behind.
Half an hour later, Ling-Mei – who had moved to the front of the group – put up her hand to signal that they should stop.
‘Hah,’ said Chung, ‘lady tired already. Chung can go on, even carrying man on his back.’
‘Shut up,’ hissed Ling-Mei, crouching down. ‘There’s something ahead.’
Even as she spoke, Amazon and Frazer heard a sound – a rough squawking and squabbling. Amazon joined Ling-Mei, and she pointed towards a gap in the trees. There was a mob of vultures hopping and flapping around. Whatever it was that they’d been eating, there didn’t seem to be much of it left over.
‘It should be safe,’ said Ling-Mei. ‘Those lions must have made the kill. There may be enough left to use to distract the crocodiles in the river.’
Chung stayed with Roger, while the other three approached the vultures. Amazon saw that there were at least three different species – some were brown, some black, all of them had the bald, scrawny neck and that generally scruffy, disreputable look that all vultures have.
‘Yuck,’ she found herself saying, ‘I hate vultures.’
Ling-Mei pointed to one of the birds, which had a few flashes of white among the black feathers.
‘That’s a white-rumped vulture. Thirty years ago they were the commonest birds of prey in the world. They were regarded as a pest in India. They lived in the cities, in the countryside, everywhere. Now ninety-nine per cent of them have perished and the species is almost extinct. The same goes for those other vultures out there – the Indian vulture – see that rather handsome grey-backed fellow – and that one with the pink face and red wattles – that’s a red-headed vulture.’
‘But how? I mean, is someone hunting them?’
‘No, it’s all to do with a medicine they give to cattle here. The cattle work very hard, and people give them a painkiller to keep them going. The trouble is that the painkiller is lethal to vultures – even in the tiny doses left in the animals’ flesh. And, as you know, Hindus won’t eat beef, so when the cows die they’re just left out in the fields and woods. The vultures eat the cows, and the medicine kills them.’
‘That’s awful,’ said Amazon. She never thought she’d ever feel sorry for a vulture. ‘They should ban that stuff.’
‘Well, they have, but there’s still quite a lot of it in circulation. But the vultures are beginning to make a very slow comeback.’
By now they were quite close, and the vultures began to stretch their wings and flap away. There really wasn’t much left to detain them. A few scraps of red-brown fur, some picked-clean bones. Amazon had expected to find one of the Indian species of deer or gazelle, but the carcasses didn’t look like that.
‘These were dhole …’ said Ling-Mei, looking at the remains.
‘But what kills dhole?’ Frazer said. ‘I thought even lions and tigers were afraid of them?’
‘People do,’ said Ling-Mei, crouching down and picking up a bullet casing. ‘The hunters must have been out yesterday, having fun. Looks like they killed the whole family. There are lion tracks around, so I guess the pride came along and helped clean up. That must be the dhole den over there.’
She pointed to a low hummock in the ground, with an opening about the right size for a small dog to squeeze through. And at exactly that moment a little face peeped out.
‘Oh, is that a pup?’ said Amazon.
And almost at once she – and the others – grasped the situation. The whole family – probably eight or ten of them, including some of the bigger pups – had been lured out and massacred. Somehow this little one had escaped. It had been alone and terrified since the day before, and now it was hungry and thirsty.
It looked to Amazon a lot like a fox cub – it had the same long, narrow face and quick, intelligent eyes. Twice it retreated back into the blackness of its den, and twice more it emerged. At last the little creature came scampering out. It shied away from Frazer’s outstretched hand and went straight to Amazon.
‘Typical,’ sniffed Frazer, who was actually a tiny bit jealous of Amazon’s way with animals. Big or small, wild or tame, they all seemed to love her.
Amazon let the dhole pup sniff her hand. It made a feeble growling noise, ran halfway back to the den and then came back again. Amazon gently picked it up.
‘We can’t abandon it,’ she said. ‘Not if its family has all been killed by those monsters. I’m not leaving it here to starve to death all by itself.’
Ling-Mei looked at her. She knew her daughter well; there was no point arguing about it.
‘I know, my darling,’ she said softly. ‘Come on then – how far to the river, Frazer?’
‘If you were right about the original distance then it’s about another four kilometres.’
They went back to Roger and Chung. Roger looked at the pup nestled in Amazon’s arms, and then at Ling-Mei, and some silent communication passed between them. They both knew that bringing the pup was not a good idea. Chung, however, was not silent.
‘Ah, excellent,’ he said, ‘you brought breakfast.’ Then he picked up Roger again and off they went.
Amazon put the pup inside her jacket and zipped it up.
‘I’m famished,’ she said.
‘Oh, don’t talk about it, Zonnie,’ replied Frazer. ‘I’m trying real hard not to think about food, but I keep seeing hamburgers and fried eggs and roast chicken floating before me. That’s the trouble with eating fruit – it may be good for you, but it doesn’t fill you up, no matter how many mangoes you eat.’
‘We’ll eat all you want when we get out of this,’ said Roger Hunt, dangling over Chung’s shoulder. ‘I’ll take you to the best restaurant in London when we’re home. You too, Chung.’
‘I’ll hold you to that,’ said Chung.
The land around them had become more arid and brown, but now that they were getting nearer the river a line of green became visible.
‘Chung,’ said Ling-Mei, ‘do you know of any other defences, apart from the crocs in the river. It seems too … easy, somehow.’
‘I don’t know,’ replied Chung. ‘I’ve never been here before. All I’ve done is send animals, until I make mistake of bringing this boy with the big snake. Chung should have retired from game long ago. But that the trouble with money. You can never have enough. Can never say stop, I don’t need another swimming pool. Anyway, if Chung gets out of this place alive, he is changed man.’
Ever since the site of the dhole massacre, they’d been looking for other kills to use to draw away the crocs, and at last they saw the telltale black mass of vultures. This time they were sitting on something more sizeable than a dead wild dog.
‘OK, let’s get there quickly, before anything nasty turns up.’
They scared the vultures off and found the half-eaten body of a chital – a large Indian deer, speckled with white spots. Like the wild dogs, it had been shot the day before. Unlike the dhole, there was enough left to use as bait.
‘Perfect,’ said Ling-Mei. ‘OK, let’s drag this poor old girl down to the river.’
It was one of the most unpleasant things Frazer had ever done. The smell was the worst thing. And the blood and slime from the carcass. It was also, despite being half-eaten, surprisingly heavy. And, even more than heavy, it was an awkward shape. Amazon wasn’t much help as she still cradled the little pup. But they got it back to Chung and Roger, and together they pushed through the trees lining the river.
Before they got to the bank, Ling-Mei told them to stop while she scouted ahead.
‘I still don’t believe they have no guards other than the crocodiles,’ she said. Roger tried to give her the gun, but she shook her head and pulled a face like the one Frazer had worn when smelling the rotten deer.
Frazer, Amazon, Chung and Roger waited for her return by a fallen tree. Now Frazer could see how much the effort of carrying Roger had cost Chung. The morning was still cool, but Chung was drenched in sweat. He looked about ten years older than he had done the day before.
‘Will we be safe when we’re on the far side, Dad?’ asked Amazon.
‘Safer,’ he replied. ‘But we’ve got to get to a village with a phone. And I don’t think Chung will be able to carry me much further. Why don’t you two go and see if you can find a couple of forked sticks big and strong enough to serve as crutches. But stay in the treeline – don’t show yourselves to anyone waiting out on the far side.’
‘Hey,’ said Chung, his voice as weak and quavery as an old man’s, ‘Chung can carry. Chung has debt to pay.’
‘Consider it paid, Chung,’ replied Roger.
Amazon watched Roger and Chung as they in turn looked at each other. There was something grave and serious in the look, but also something light-hearted. It ended in a smile and a nod.
At that moment Ling-Mei came back.
‘I think we could swim it,’ she said. ‘But it is thick with muggers. And not only muggers. They’ve got Nile crocodiles there as well. And hippos.’
‘Oh sheesh,’ said Roger. ‘I hate hippos. Those guys are meaner than Kaggs.’
‘Is it worth trying to build a raft, Dad?’ Amazon suggested. She was thinking in part about the little dhole nestled on her chest. He was going to get awfully wet if they swam across.
‘It’s tough without rope or twine, or a machete to cut the logs into shape …’
‘We could probably build a loose raft by weaving thin leafy branches together,’ said Ling-Mei. ‘I don’t know how well it’ll hold together, but it might be worth trying.’
They crept carefully down to the riverbank, Roger hobbling as best he could on his improvised crutches. Compared to some of the rivers she’d seen in the Russian Far East and Canada, this one didn’t seem too intimidating to Amazon. It was a dull brown colour – almost grey, in fact – reflecting the earth that it moved through. And it had a lazy look to it. It seemed to stroll and amble along, as if it had nowhere special to go.
On the far side she could see more of the same sort of dry, open woodland that they’d been passing through. But, without the extra animals with which the Maharaja had stocked his land, it seemed to hold less of a threat.
Yes, she was sure that if they could only get across then they’d be free and safe.
Then she saw the shapes in the water. She noticed the hippos first – the twitching ears and wide nostrils poking out of the river, then the wide backs breaking the surface.
‘Those guys are just about the biggest killers in Africa,’ said Frazer. ‘Bite a guy right in two.’
‘Thanks, Fraze,’ said Amazon. ‘I really didn’t need to hear that.’
‘What? Oh yeah, sorry. But don’t bother them and they won’t bother you. Usually …’
And then Amazon saw the longer, narrower shapes in the water.
The crocs.
There were dozens of them. Even more were sunning themselves on the fa
r bank of the river. Amazon thought that she could recognize the two different types, each species sticking with its own kind. One was two or three metres in length, with a broad head. The muggers, she thought. The others were twice the size and exuded menace. Those were the Nile crocodiles.
‘At least there aren’t any saltwater crocs,’ said Roger, standing close beside her. ‘These crocs here are pussycats in comparison.’
He smiled at her and put his arm round her shoulder. ‘And I’m not going to let anything happen to my girl, OK?’
Amazon looked back at him and did her best to smile.
Ling-Mei organized the construction of the raft – although ‘construction’ was too grand a word for it. Amazon sensed how frustrated her mother was getting with the job – they had no tools, except for Frazer’s pocketknife, and nothing to tie it together with.
‘I’m basically just trying to copy the way a gorilla makes its nest every night,’ she said, as she bent and twisted armfuls of foliage together. She did her best to make string from long strips of willow bark, cut away with the knife, but the strips were brittle and kept breaking.
‘I hate to rush you, honey,’ said Roger, ‘but we’ve got some killers on our tail …’
‘Fine, fine,’ said Ling-Mei, although she was clearly concerned that things were not fine.
Frazer and Amazon looked at the raft. It was little more than a mass of leaves, twigs and branches as big as a bed.
‘I don’t think it’ll take anyone’s full weight,’ said Ling-Mei, ‘but we can hold on and kick for the far side. And, if a hippo attacks, it’ll go for the raft and not us. I hope …’
Frazer and Ling-Mei dragged the remains of the chital downstream for a hundred metres, and threw it into the water. Then they thrashed at the river with branches. It took the crocs a minute or two to work out what was happening. Then those already in the river angled themselves towards the floating remains, and the ones on the bank scuttled and waddled down to the water, and then, again in their element, beat their tails to take them to the feast.
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