"I imagine," Munro said.
He took Amy into his tent and put on the sturdy chain leash she often wore in California. He tied one end to his cot, but it was a symbolic gesture; Amy could move it easily if she chose to. He made her promise to stay in the tent.
She promised. He stepped to the tent entrance, and she signed, Amy like Peter.
"Peter like Amy," he said, smiling. "Everything's going to be fine."
He emerged into another world.
The red night lights had been doused, but in the flickering glow of the campfire he saw the goggle-eyed sentries in position around the compound. With the low throbbing pulse of the electrified fence, this sight created an unearthly atmosphere. Peter Elliot suddenly sensed the precariousness of their position - a handful of frightened people deep in the Congo rain forest, more than two hundred miles from the nearest human habitation.
Waiting.
He tripped over a black cable on the ground. Then he saw a network of cables, snaking over the compound, running to the guns of each sentry. He noticed then that the guns had an unfamiliar shape - they were somehow too slender, too insubstantial and that the black cables ran from the guns to squat, snub-nosed mechanisms mounted on short tripods at Intervals around the camp.
He saw Ross near the fire, setting up the tape recorder.
"What the hell is all this?" he whispered, pointing to the cables.
"That's a LATRAP. For laser-tracking projectile," she whispered. "The LATRAP system consists of multiple LGSDs attached to sequential RFSDs."
She told him that the sentries held guns which were actually laser-guided sight devices, linked to rapid-firing sensor devices on tripods. "They lock onto the target," she said, "and do the actual shooting once the target is identified. It's a jungle warfare system. The RFSDs have maclan-baffle silencers so the enemy won't know where the firing is coming from. Just make sure you don't step in front of one, because they automatically lock onto body heat."
Ross gave him the tape recorder, and went off to check the fuel cells powering the perimeter fence. Elliot glanced at the sentries in the outer darkness; Munro waved cheerfully to him. Elliot realized that the sentries with their grasshopper goggles and their acronymic weapons could see him far better than he could see them. They looked like beings from another universe, dropped into the timeless jungle.
Waiting.
The hours passed. The jungle perimeter was silent except for the murmur of water in the moat. Occasionally the porters called to one another softly, making some joke in Swahili; but they never smoked because of the heat-sensing machinery. Eleven o'clock passed, and then midnight, and then one o'clock.
He heard Amy snoring in his tent, her noisy rasping audible above the throb of the electrified fence. He glanced over at Ross sleeping on the ground, her finger on the switch for the night lights. He looked at his watch and yawned; nothing was going to happen tonight; Munro was wrong.
Then he heard the breathing sound.
The sentries heard it too, swinging their guns in the darkness. Elliot pointed the recorder microphone toward the sound but it was hard to determine its exact location. The wheezing sighs seemed to come from all parts of the jungle at once, drifting with the night fog, soft and pervasive.
He watched the needles wiggle on the recording gauges.
And then the needles bounced into the red, as Elliot heard a dull thud, and the gurgle of water. Everyone heard it; the sentries clicked off their safeties.
Elliot crept with his tape recorder toward the perimeter fence and looked out at the moat. Foliage moved beyond the fence. The sighing grew louder. He heard the gurgle of water and saw a dead tree trunk lying across the moat.
That was what the slapping sound had been: abridge being placed across the moat. In that instant Elliot realized they had vastly underestimated whatever they were up against. He signaled to Munro to come and look, but Munro was waving him away from the fence and pointing emphatically to the squat tripod on the ground near his feet. Before Elliot could move, the colobus monkeys began to shriek in the trees overhead - and the first of the gorillas silently charged.
He had a glimpse of an enormous animal, distinctly gray in color, racing up to him as he ducked down; a moment later, the gorillas hit the electrified fence with a shower of spitting sparks and the odor of burning flesh.
It was the start of an eerie, silent battle.
Emerald laser beams flashed through the air; the tripod-mounted machine guns made a soft thew-thew-thew as the bullets spit outward, the aiming mechanisms whining as the barrels spun and fired, spun and fired again. Every tenth bullet was a white phosphorous tracer; the air was crisscrossed green and white over Elliot's head.
The gorillas attacked from all directions; six of them simultaneously hit the fence and were repelled in a crackling burst of sparks. Still more charged, throwing themselves on the flimsy perimeter mesh, yet the sizzle of sparks and the shriek of the colobus monkeys was the loudest sound they heard. And then he saw gorillas in the trees overhanging the campsite. Munro and Kahega began firing upward, silent laser beams streaking into the foliage. He heard the sighing sound again. Elliot turned and saw more gorillas tearing at the fence, which had gone dead - there were no more sparks.
And he realized that this swift, sophisticated equipment was not holding the gorillas back - they needed the noise. Munro had the same thought, because he shouted in Swahili for the men to hold their fire, and called to Elliot, "Pull the silencers! The silencers!"
Elliot grabbed the black barrel on the first tripod mechanism and plucked it away, swearing - it was very hot. Immediately as he stepped away from the tripod, a stuttering sound filled the air, and two gorillas fell heavily from the trees, one still alive. The gorilla charged him as he pulled away the silencer from the second tripod. The stubby barrel swung around and blasted the gorilla at very close range; warm liquid spattered Elliot's face. He pulled the silencer from the third tripod and threw himself to the ground.