Jungle Justice by Don Pendleton

Author:Don Pendleton
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Worldwide Library
Published: 2013-01-25T05:00:00+00:00

13

Naraka stood over the corpses of his men, examining their wounds with a detachment born of long experience with violent death. Both had been shot, that much was plain. A single bullet each, and it appeared that Ganesh Shakti’s throat might have been cut, but it was difficult to say.

The swampland’s scavengers had been at work before the two dead men were found. Vultures and rats had claimed their share of carrion, followed by ants, worms, beetles, flies. Within another day, at most, the bodies would’ve been unrecognizable, but they’d been found in time for confirmation that they were—had been—Naraka’s men.

They hadn’t been the best, of course.

On any scale of ranking, Shakti would be near the bottom, leader of village idiots, but loyal in his way. Vasitri had been somewhat better, but the pair of them together still barely possessed a single working brain. Both were impulsive, prone to drunkenness, likely to make small tasks more difficult than necessary.

Together, they were dead.

On their last day alive, Vasitri and Shakti had been assigned to scout a quadrant of Naraka’s eastern hunting ground for tiger spoor. They weren’t supposed to track or kill the cats, simply observe the traces and report. It was a one-or two-day job, no special rush, but they’d been gone three days when searchers found their corpses gnawed and rotting in the swamp.

Murdered. Shot down by trespassers who would be punished for their crime, once they had been identified.

Naraka knew he couldn’t blame their deaths on wildlife officers or soldiers. If the killers had authority, the bodies would have been removed for burial in some detested pauper’s cemetery. Leaving them behind suggested that the triggermen were outlaws in their own right, or perhaps involved in some covert agenda that defied Naraka’s present understanding.

Poachers?

It was always possible, of course. Naraka’s group was not the only gang at work, although it was the largest, strongest and most ruthless. Few of his competitors would risk an overt hostile move against him, but there was a chance that Shakti or Vasitri might have angered rivals they encountered in the field, thus bringing death upon themselves.

In that case, Naraka thought, it should not be difficult to find the men responsible. Some time would be required, but he could speak with local villagers, make inquiries among his rivals, ferret out the ones who acted most suspicious. Barring evidence of a conspiracy against him, punishment would be restricted to the man or men who did the killing.

It was only fair.

The other possibility, however, nagged at Naraka’s nerves. If some clandestine operation was unfolding in the Sundarbans, who was the likely target, other than himself? Who was proclaimed in headlines as the nation’s most notorious, most-wanted criminal?

No one but himself.

“Take them,” Naraka ordered, turning from the corpses toward Jalil Salmalin. “Send someone to find the men who did this. Understand that I want them alive, able to speak.”

Salmalin frowned. “We’ll look, of course. But I’m not sure—”

“Have them search everywhere, Jalil. Each village. Every hermit’s hut. Turn over every log and stone.

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