that could only be blood.
Saragossa eased her arm up from her side, bringing the mini-Uzi around should she need to use it. Her breathing sounded as loud as a furnace bellows to her. The rebel walked a few steps into the room. She smelled cheap tobacco burning and an almost overwhelming stench of body odor.
The material of Saragossa’s shirt was stuck tight to the small of her back from the humidity and her own sweat. In the next moment she felt a fat weight drop onto her from the bottom of the mattress. She tensed in horror.
She felt the tiny presence scuttle up her back. She closed her eyes against the shudder of revulsion that threatened to ripple across her body. The thing was too short to be a centipede, but the legs felt too close together to be a spider. To Saragossa’s mind that left two options—one creepy the other deadly. The first was a roach. West African roaches were prevalent, disgusting and huge. The second was a scorpion. If a Death Stalker scorpion was to crawl up her back and become entangled in the thick mass of her long hair, she knew she was in very real danger.
The poison of the Death Stalker was fierce, deadly in children and the elderly, and likely to make her so sick she’d be unable to save herself if the rebels attacked her. In the field pack hidden behind her under the bed she had a first-aid kit complete with antivenin shots for insects and snakes. But nothing would help her if she was discovered by the gunmen in the room.
The creature scurried up her body, and Saragossa bit down hard on her trembling lower lip to stifle any sound. A young bass voice called out something from the hallway. The thing perched between Saragossa’s shoulder blades froze as the man in the room answered, his voice loud and slurred.
Saragossa held her breath. A sting from a scorpion that close to her spine and central nervous system could be fatal. If the gunmen discovered her under the bed and forced her to move and fire in self-defense, she was damned. There was no way that one of the aggressive African scorpion species would not strike.
Let it be a roach, she thought. Or a beetle. Let it be a goddamned dung beetle.
The man walked farther into the room. From where she lay Saragossa could see the ragged bottoms of the man’s cutoff jeans hanging down past his knees. The gunman relaxed—apparently satisfied the room was empty—and lowered his weapon so that Saragossa could see the muzzle and front sight of the assault rifle.
She heard the light switch snap on and off and the man curse in frustration. She had unscrewed the lightbulbs earlier but left them in the outlet to make it appear as if they had only burned out. On her back the creature began to move again, climbing up her nape where her hair was held in place by a cloth strip from a field medic kit used to splint broken bones or wrap wounds.
A tiny puddle of sweat had pooled in the hollow there. She felt the hard, sticky legs of the creature play themselves across the goose bumps of her flesh as it paused, drinking in her perspiration. The monsoon rains had kept the malaria-bearing mosquitoes and potential deadly flies inactive, and Saragossa hadn’t bothered using her insect repellant for days. She was an inviting playground to the bugs driven indoors by the rain.
The rebel opened the door to the hotel room all the way, spilling in more light. He dropped his half-smoked cigarette to the floor, and Saragossa watched him grind it out inches from her face. It lay on the room’s only rug and smoldered. A trail of smoke streamed up from the half-crushed cigarette and into her face.
The weight at the back of her neck shifted with sudden purpose and scurried onto her left shoulder. She breathed out slowly and cautiously. Afraid to turn her head, Saragossa shifted her eyes to follow the gunman as he walked deeper into the room. Predictably, he was headed for the closet.
The legs on her shoulder began a lazy trail down her arm toward her elbow. The thing was in such disgustingly intimate contact with her that Saragossa was almost positive it was no cockroach or dung beetle.
The rebel opened the door to her closet and chuckled. He called out to the other gunman in the hallway, and then he started throwing Saragossa’s luggage onto the bed. The mattress spring bounced in protest as her heavy backpack bounced onto the rickety bed.
The bed undulated above her, threatening to press down against her head. The thing on her arm froze in midstride. Saragossa could hear a hiss and knew without a doubt it was a scorpion. She felt a surge of adrenaline as her stomach clenched and sour bile flooded the back of her throat.
She heard footsteps and shifted her eyes to the door. The second gunman had entered to see what the first had found. This one wore dirty black sweatpants tucked into battered old army boots. He said something to the first gunman, and both pairs of feet crowded up to the bed.
Agitated, the scorpion crawled off Saragossa’s arm, running down her bicep to the plank wood floor. She gritted her teeth against the horror of how close the thing was to her face, especially her eyes. She had felt the segmented serpentine sway of the arachnid’s stinger as it slid off her arm.
Above her the bed bounced as the two gunmen began to open and rifle through her bags. Dust scattered by the activity trailed down into Saragossa’s face. She shifted her eyes to the left, trying to see the scorpion, but her hair hung in her way.
Terrified, Saragossa risked moving her head. She felt the searching grasp of the creature’s brittle-haired legs reach her left wrist. She felt the wiry folds of the front pincers bump across her skin as it climbed onto her hand.
She could see the thing clearly now. The arachnid had a brown banded back and abdomen set in the dull yellow amber color of the body. The stinger was raised like a fist over the segmented and armored torso. It was ugly and with a sinking sense of horrified certainty, Saragossa realized it was as deadly a scorpion as there was—the Death Stalker. Ounce for ounce it was one of the most poisonous creatures on the planet.
The rebels began to chatter in earnest. Articles of clothing began to litter the floor at their feet. A new voice called out from the hallway, and one of the men beside Saragossa’s bed answered.
There was laughter from the hall, then the bed suddenly sagged as one of the rebels fell onto the mattress, roaring with laughter. The tired old bedsprings sang in protest, and the bottom sank so low it smacked Saragossa hard on the top of her head. Her chin bounced off the floor, and she hissed in surprise as she bit down on her tongue. The copper-tang metallic taste of blood filled her mouth. Her body tensed tight against the sudden pain.
That pain was nothing compared to what came next.
She felt like her hand had been struck by a baseball bat. She spasmed at the brutal, all encompassing shock of the scorpion strike. She bit down hard against the pain. Tears filled her eyes.
Then the scorpion struck again.
This time she couldn’t control herself. The moan was ripped from her body. The scorpion scurried off her arm and disappeared into the gloomy shadows at the head of the bed. Through a prism of involuntary tears Saragossa’s vision swam. She was in trouble.
The two men above her were quiet. For one long moment they were simply still and silent as the voice from the hallway called out to them. Then there was an explosion of motion.
The man on the bed sprang up and off the mattress, knocking Saragossa’s luggage to the floor. The rebel gunman already standing ripped the cover of the bed up. Saragossa was suddenly confronted with a grimacing male face, eyes wide with emotion and red veined with drug use.
The man snarled something and a hand the size of a dinner plate reached out and grabbed her by the arm. Saragossa let herself be taken
