Pendergast struggled across the expanse of mud until he reached the point where Dunkan had disappeared. He noticed that the dried grass had been mashed and broken into such wild and random tangles it was nearly impossible to tell which broken stalks might have been the work of a passing man and which the result of wind and storms. But Dunkan had left traces of his passage in faint smears of mud.
As Pendergast forced his way inward, the grass became even thicker. Initially, smears of mud guided him through the dry grass, but soon those traces vanished and he lost the trail. The moon was once again obscured and there was near-zero visibility; even his flashlight was of little use in the dense grass. Dunkan was no longer upwind; he could be anywhere.
After several more minutes of fighting his way through the grass and dry reeds, Pendergast once again stopped to listen, Les Baer .45 in hand. Silence. Dunkan, it seemed, had the uncanny ability to move with a minimum of sound, without disturbing the grass—a feat that Pendergast knew he could not reproduce.
As he stood motionless in the dense thicket, Pendergast realized that, in his zeal of pursuit, he had made a serious tactical error. He was, to all effects and purposes, blinded on all sides by the walls of tall grass. Even though he was armed, he was at Dunkan’s mercy. For all he knew, Dunkan was aware of his position and was at that very moment preparing an attack. The wind had picked up and was masking the sound of Dunkan’s movements.
He became quite sure Dunkan was going to strike at him, sooner rather than later.
He thought fast, turning in a rapid circle, senses on high alert. It might be just a matter of moments. He tensed, every muscle at the ready.
And then, with the faintest flicker of grass, the bayonet flashed out from the darkness, gripped by a muddy hand, the cold steel plunging directly toward Pendergast’s heart.
39
At the last moment, Pendergast—from long-honed instinct—twisted away from the blade with such speed that he was briefly airborne. As he came crashing down, Dunkan burst from the grass, bayonet in hand, slashing at Pendergast and cutting a long slice across the fabric of his sleeve, sending the flashlight spinning. Flipping over and leaping to his feet, Pendergast got off a shot from his Les Baer. But the feral man had vanished back into the jungle of salt grass. Pendergast fired again in the direction he had disappeared—once, twice—then stopped to listen. He was just wasting ammunition. The man was certainly maneuvering back around for another attack.
Pendergast knelt to retrieve his flashlight, feeling around in the dark, but found it broken. He was now totally blind, in unfamiliar territory. The next attack could come at any time, from any direction. The tide had now come in to such an extent that he was trapped on this grass island with Dunkan. Neither could escape the other. But despite his firearms, he was the one at a severe disadvantage. With this dense grass and rattling wind, Dunkan could once again literally creep to within a few feet of him unobserved. If he stayed there and waited for the attack, he would lose.
The question was how to turn the odds in his favor. There was a possible solution. It was extreme—but it might work.
Even as he worked out the solution, he realized Dunkan must be edging in for the next attack, and this time he might not be so lucky as to avoid it. One thing he was sure of: Dunkan would approach upwind, so as not to betray his presence by his stench.
Upwind. That was crucial.
He seized a bunch of dry grass, bundled it together, pulled out his pocket lighter, and lit it on fire. It flared up in the wind, crackling loudly; he thrust the burning bundle into the dense vegetation, sweeping it along, instantly igniting the dry stalks into loud, crackling flames. The gusts drove the fire fast downwind, as Pendergast backed himself upwind, moving diagonally away from the propagating fire. He then thrust the improvised torch into the dry grass again and again, each new fire leaping up and combining with the rest.
In less than a minute, a veritable wall of fire was advancing across the island, crackling and roaring like mad, sparks and flames leaping upward. Pendergast continued to move upwind, through the unburnt grass, until he reached the point where the mudflats that ringed the island began. The clouds were a little thinner now, and the tide was still rushing in. The whole scene was lit up in the ghastly light of the fire, which reflected off the shiny mudflats, turning them the color of blood.
Pendergast watched the conflagration carefully. As he had anticipated, the fire—guided by the rising wind—moved in an arc, like a hinge closing in on itself. The blaze now became an inferno, the surrounding air increasingly hot. Minute by minute, the area of unaffected grassland dwindled. Les Baer at the ready, Pendergast began to circle the island, keeping to the very edge of the grass, moving swiftly and silently.