Chapter 3
It was Lawton himself who provided the means for Dooley to get even.
They had been making slow progress through the jungle, when the Brit called a
halt. Then, ignoring the rules he had set for the others, he took advantage of a
few moments alone with Sheena to remove her halter and lick her splendid
nipples. He didn't know he was being observed by Akbar and Gene, who quickly
reported the news to Dooley.
To make matters worse, much worse, for Lawton, Dooley had bugged the
Brit's satellite radio and had recorded several interesting conversations.
So the confrontation, when it came, found Lawton with only one sure
ally, Michael, a fellow Brit.
They sat around a campfire in a clearing near the river. Dooley waved
his hand toward Sheena and Rosie, who were tied together on the river bank.
"These two cunts, they don't mean nothin' to me, Lawton. I'd as soon
snuff 'em as fuck 'em. But the blonde is the big lottery ticket, and I don't
want to queer the payoff."
"Kind of you," Lawton said dryly.
"But here's the deal," Dooley continued. "We know you've been foolin'
around with this jungle honey, while tellin' the rest of us to keep hands off."
Lawton, who was sitting on a fallen log, straightened up with a look of
indignation.
"That's a dirty lie," he said.
"Yeah. Well, tell it to Akbar and Gene. They seen you chowing down on
her tits."
"That's right," said Gene. Akbar nodded his assent.
"Do I detect a whiff of mutiny here?" Lawton asked.
Dooley snorted. "Whiff? What you detect, mother-fucker, is a whole
shit-load of mutiny!"
"Well, so what if I licked her lovely titties?" said the Brit. "I did no
damage. She's as good as new - which we all know wouldn't be the case if you had
a few minutes with her. The point, after all, is ensure that she's sold for our
asking price."
"Yeah, well, that brings me to my next point," said Dooley. He pulled a
tape recorder out of his backpack. "We're all supposed to be in this thing
together. All for one and one for all, right? But here's you talking to your
pals back in Kisangani."
He punched the play button, and a voice that was tinny but unmistakably
Lawton's said, "I don't think we'll get there any sooner than Tuesday. We're
still in the jungle. After that, we'll be coming up the Opala Road in three Land
Rovers. Michael, I and the package will be in one. The others will be
following."
Another voice said, "Check. You'll be in the lead."
"Right," said Lawton. "At the market, there will be a lot of congestion.
All you have to do is block the road with a truck after we get through. I don't
need much time - five or ten minutes at the most."
"Do we kill them?" asked the other voice.
"No. I don't want any bloodshed if you can possibly avoid it. Just slow
them down. Five minutes or so, and we'll at the airstrip. Julian is bringing in
the Aeronca."
"And the girl . . . ."
"The package," Lawton corrected.
"The package. You've got it?"
"We've got it."
Dooley stopped the recording.
"This was Lawton talking this morning," he said quietly. "He was
planning to cut us out of the action." He turned to face Lawton. "You were going
to fuck us, you British mother-fucker."
Lawton made a wry face. "Don't you know it isn't polite to eavesdrop on
private conversations?"
"So what do we do, gentlemen?" Dooley asked.
"We kill the son of a bitch," snarled Gene. "And Michael, too."
Louie tried to calm things down. "Listen," he said. "Lawton tried to
screw us. That's clear. But he's the only one who knows the buyer. Without him,
we don't have shit."
"Wrong," said Dooley. "We've got the jungle cunt. We'll find a buyer on
our own."
"Oh, right," Louie said sarcastically. "You hang around with lots of
billionaires with kinky tastes."
The discussion dragged on for half an hour, until Louie agreed to throw
in his lot with Dooley.
"Okay, you're right," he said wearily. "We can't trust him. So we'll
take the girl and do the best we can to unload her."
"After we kill Lawton and Michael," Dooley said with a crooked smile.
"No, we ain't going to kill them," said Louie. "You heard what the Brit
said on the radio. He told whoever he was working with not to shoot us -
leastways, not if they could avoid it. Well, let's give him the same break he
was going to give us. We take Sheena and all the guns and equipment."
"And Michael and I?" said Lawton.
"You get a knife apiece and a can of mosquito spray. And you can have,
Rosie, too, for amusement. If you're as smart as you think you are, you should
be able to figure out how to get out of this fucking jungle."
Michael turned pale. "We'll never make it," he said.
"You'll have knives," Louie said. "Carve yourselves a fucking canoe."
# # #
With Lawton out of the way, leadership of the party fell by default to
Louie. He was the biggest, physically, and though no one ever accused him of
being smart, he had common sense. Dooley, his only potential contender, was full
of angry energy that made the others uneasy.
Louie knew this energy could be useful, if he could figure out how to
keep Dooley focused on the task at hand: getting out of the jungle, finding the
Rovers, then finding a buyer for the babe. This meant he'd have to make some
concessions. The most crucial was allowing Dooley to sexually torment Sheena.
Dooley would have to understand that he couldn't get too rough. But so long as
he inflicted no permanent damage, Sheena was his to play with.
Trouble was, Sheena was taller and stronger than Dooley, and despite the
handcuffs and the drugs they kept injecting into her, she might be difficult to
handle. Louie tried to explain this to Dooley as they followed the river east.
"What, you think I can't handle the bitch?" Dooley asked angrily. "All I
want is twenty minutes alone with her the next time we stop. I don't want you
around. I don't want Gene or Akbar or Tremain around, either. Just me and the
cunt."
Louie looked up into the sky, then at his watch. "Hell," he said. "It's
too goddamn hot. We'll break now. There's clouds moving in. Maybe we'll a little
rain." He dropped the packed tent he was carrying and unhitched his backpack.
"Gene, Akbar, we're taking a break. Dooley's gonna have a little fun with Jungle
Bitch."
They watched as Dooley shoved Sheena from behind. "Move, cunt," he
barked. Her wrists were shackled behind her, and Dooley held the end of a nylon
rope that was looped around her neck. They disappeared into the forest, headed
toward the river.
"I got a bad feeling about this," Gene said.
"Gotta cut him a little slack, Gene," said Louie. "I don't want him
exploding on us."
(To be continued.)
