Jim McKenna looked at Lamont. The guy must be what . . . Forty? Fifty, even? He’d kind of written him off at that first meeting. He’d been reassessing the man ever since. He’d come to realize that Lamont Jackson was no pushover. He never even mentioned the subject, but the way he fitted into any combat said: military experience. If Cruz wasn’t around . . . of all the people here, he’d be the one to take over the sergeant’s role.
“You were in the service, Lamont?”
Lamont smiled. “I forget. It was a long time ago.” Something about the way he said it indicated: subject closed.
Jim McKenna was learning to grow up at last. He changed the subject. “Well, you obviously know how to deal with that goddamn anti-American bigot.”
Lamont smiled again. “You should try being black for a while. Eventually you learn to fight hard when it’s worth fighting for, and to ignore assholes otherwise.”
The boat juddered slightly as they brushed another mud bank.
* * *
“I hope like hell we don’t have to get out and push,” said Jerry, nervously looking at the dark water. The moon was down, and sunrise was not yet due. It was actually pretty cold. No time was a good time to go wading around here, but somehow the dark water in the predawn was even less appealing. But Thoth and Anubis thrust them forward with poles instead. And it was apparent that they’d reached their destination. A fire burned on the low island between the acacias.
Well, Henri said that they were acacias. They were thorny enough. That figured.
32
A sew-sew job.
“What happens now?” Liz asked Jerry.
Jerry tugged his goatee. “Well, according to the myth, Isis will sew the bits together, and Osiris will be reanimated. He will answer Set’s accusations and vindicate himself before the tribunal of gods. Then he’ll go off to become lord of the dead.”
“I meant: what are we going to do? I want to go home, Jerry. Lamont needs to go home. Medea also wants to get back to her kids.”
“Yeah. Well, I was getting to that. Isis and Thoth both seem to believe that if anyone can help us, it will be Osiris. He’s a pretty major ancient Egyptian god. You don’t go much higher except for Ra . . . or perhaps Amon, although the two get confused and once again we are dealing with a mishmash mythworld . . . ”
Liz stamped her foot. “I wish you’d stop lecturing and just get to the point, Jerry. Do I need to know all this stuff?”
“He only lectures when he gets nervous,” said Lamont.
Liz shook her head. “So what’s spooking him now?”
Lamont’s shoulders shook slightly. “You, at a guess.”
Liz raised her eyes to heaven. “Oh, for goodness sake, Jerry. You can tell Odysseus off, come up with spells under pressure, you even give a surprisingly good account of yourself in a fight. Why should I frighten you?”
Jerry wisely did not answer that all women made him nervous and the more attractive he found them, the more nervous he got. He was fine with Liz most of the time, just so long as he wasn’t thinking about it. “Sorry. Habit,” was all he said.
“Well, break it!” she snapped.
“How many smokes have you got left in that packet?” asked Lamont dryly.
Liz sighed. “Touché. So you reckon we are stuck here until Isis gets through with sewing up her husband.”
Jerry decided that monosyllables couldn’t be construed as lecturing. “Yes.”
“Then I’m off to help with the sewing,” said Liz.
“Bully them, you mean?” Lamont asked.
She smiled. “Something like that.”
Jerry found his eyes tracking the sway of her hips as she walked away. He shook his head. “I didn’t know I was that obvious. Life’s complicated, Lamont.”
The older man leaned back against the bank. “And then you die.”
* * *
The early morning sun sent streamers of mist rising smokelike from the limitless green extent of the marsh. The birds raised a paean to the dawn. Anibal Cruz sat looking out across the limpid water of one of the channels. He felt kind of like singing himself. He’d known last night, when that crocodile had seized his leg, that he was dead. The beast must have been at least fourteen feet long and immensely powerful. It had already begun to pull him into the murky depths when he’d hit out at it, and he’d known that blow was totally ineffectual. A severed arm in mummy wrappings is no sort of weapon to fend off a giant reptile.
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