by Nick Thacker
He squeezed her hand, and she looked over at him. It’s going to be fine, he thought. They didn’t speak, opting instead for the unusual silence of the jungle.
They reached a clearing, and Reggie held up a hand. He crouched down right at the edge, then slowly stood and stepped forward. Ben could see the pond in front of him, on their right, collecting the stream’s water and providing a natural lake for the animals and plants around them. The cabin Reggie had mentioned was straight ahead, marking the opposite edge of the clearing. A dirt road led away from the cabin and into the forest nearby, twisting around the larger trees. It was a picturesque scene, a greener and denser version of his own cabin at home.
“What’s wrong?” Ben asked, stepping closer to Reggie. Reggie had stopped again, still examining the cabin from a distance. Ben could see a car, a mid-sized SUV similar to Reggie’s own vehicle, parked outside the cabin. He assumed Reggie was being cautious, not wanting to scare whoever might be inside.
“Look at the window,” he replied, his eyes still glued straight ahead.
Ben squinted, not able to see at first what Reggie was referring to. Then, as his eyes adjusted to the growing morning light, he saw it.
The window was broken, a large round hole cracked away from the glass. The lower pane on that window had two smaller holes in it, barely visible from this distance. Bullet holes. The idea that whoever was following had beaten them here was more terrifying than the thought that they’d already killed whoever was inside the cabin.
Ben hoped to God the husband and wife — Reggie’s friends — hadn’t been inside when they’d come.
But he knew these people wouldn’t have wasted bullets just to shoot through windows. Something had happened here, and it had no doubt ended in bloodshed.
Reggie started walking toward the cabin, holding a pistol. Ben hadn’t seen him draw the gun, but it had appeared in the man’s hand somehow. Ben started forward, but Reggie turned and held up a hand.
“Stay there. All of you,” he said. “Let me check it out first.”
Ben stopped, and felt Julie’s hand grab the inside of his arm. He wanted to follow, wanted to see what had happened inside, and he wanted more than anything to help. If something happens to Reggie…
He didn’t allow himself to finish the thought.
Reggie reached the cabin and crouched below the window. He lifted the gun up, holding it near his face, and peered over the windowsill and into the house. Time stood still as Ben watched the man. Reggie didn’t move, holding steady at the window, taking it all in.
In a moment, everything changed.
19
THE WINDOW CRACKED, SHATTERING OUTWARD in a tiny explosion, and Ben heard the sound of gunfire from inside the cabin. Reggie yelled something, stood up again and aimed his gun into the single-room cabin.
Ben couldn’t take it any longer. He started running forward. He had a weapon but it felt useless now in his hands, nothing but dead weight. He hadn’t fired a gun nearly enough times in his life for the action to be natural, but he ran anyway. The man who’d saved their lives multiple times in less than a day was in danger, and he reacted the only way he knew how.
But before he could reach the window Reggie was still standing in front of, Reggie turned to Ben. “False alarm,” he said. “It’s a kid. Might need help. Says he fired at a shadow — must’ve seen me coming.”
Ben wasn’t convinced they were safe, but he followed Reggie to the front door of the cabin. Reggie turned the knob, swung the door open, and called out. “You in there?”
A muffled ‘yes’ reached Ben’s ears.
“Okay, kid,” Reggie replied, “we’re coming in. Don’t shoot, okay?”
Another muffled response, then Ben saw a gun slide across the wooden floor toward the threshold. Reggie stopped it with his foot and picked it up. He handed it to Ben, who held it gingerly with his fingers, as if it were police evidence he was afraid to tamper with.
“I’m sorry…” he heard a voice say. “I — I freaked out, and shot. I thought they came back.”
Reggie stepped inside and rushed over to the couch. Ben followed behind him, at once taking in the scene around him.
The cabin was small, and he could see the entirety of it from the doorway. The kitchen and fireplace sat at one side, a bed at the other, and a small couch faced the window at the back of the cabin. An outdated, round-faced television sat below the window on a stand.
The furniture inside the cabin was mostly what Ben would have expected, but it was the blood that took him by surprise. On the back of the couch, smeared against the wall, and nearly covering the floor, streaks of blood were caked and drying. No surface seemed safe from it. In the kitchen, Ben could see two dirty piles of clothing, legs sticking out from them. Bodies. Ben nearly vomited as he stepped inside. His shoes immediately tracked blood-stained footprints below him, but he wanted to see the person on the couch.
The young man looked to be college-aged, with sandy blond hair that hung over his ears and into his scared eyes. He was tall, skinny, and seemed every bit as out of place in this corner of the world as Ben felt. The kid was shaking, holding the right side of his torso.
“You’re wounded?” Reggie asked.
The kid nodded, and Reggie tried lifting the kid’s hand. He yelped in pain, but Reggie comforted him. “I’ll need to take a look at it, if we’re going to patch you up. Where’d you get the gun, by the way?”
Reggie ignored the bodies, and Ben wondered if he’d seen them or not. Were they his friends? The husband and wife?
The kid spoke slowly, trying to breathe in a gentle, steady rhythm between words. “I — I grabbed it from the table right here. Bernard kept it there.”
Reggie didn’t seem to react to the statement, but Ben knew the man would be comparing the kid’s words with what he knew of the man and woman who lived here. This statement must have checked out, as Reggie didn’t respond.
There was a roll of gauze in the kid’s hand, covered in blood. Reggie took the roll and ripped off the outer layer of dirtied fabric, then started dressing the wound.
“Looks like a knife wound,” Reggie said. “Ragged hole, definitely not cut with a bullet.”
The kid nodded again, still struggling in pain, but let Reggie work on the wound.
“The good news is that it’s relatively small. Should heal up on its own, pretty quickly actually. You’ll be able to walk, but it’s going to hurt like hell, though.” The kid seemed to struggle a bit with this information, but to his credit he clenched his jaw and nodded. Reggie continued dressing the wound.
Finally, Reggie looked up. Ben could see something in his eyes. Anger? The man’s voice was calm, gentle even, but his eyes held a fury that terrified Ben more than the blood, the dead bodies, and their attackers. Reggie didn’t say anything to Ben, but instead turned and addressed the kid.
“What’s your name?”
“Rh — Rhett,” he stuttered.
“Rhett, what happened here? Who killed the man and woman?”
“Bernard? And that’s his wife, Emelia. They were shot, the same guys that stabbed me.”
Reggie flashed a glance to Ben. They beat us here. “They stabbed you, but shot them?”
“They — they were trying to enter the house quietly, I think. I was at the door. Opened it, then… we couldn’t get to the gun in time.”
Reggie nodded. “Okay, just relax. I’ll get you some water.”
Ben followed Reggie into the kitchen and the two of them pushed the bodies to the side, out of the way of the sink. Ben struggled with the task, still feeling uneasy from all of the bloodshed, but Reggie’s calm resolve strengthened him. When they finished, Reggie turned the faucet on and grabbed a plastic cup sitting nearby. Ben heard a noise at the door and saw the three others — Amanda, Paulinho, and Julie — standing in the doorway.
Ben’s eyes immediately met Julie’s, and he saw the horror on her face. No one spoke, but the message had been received. They beat us h
ere.
Reggie came back to the couch with the water, and raised Rhett’s head to help him drink from it. When he had finished drinking, Reggie helped him sit up a bit higher on the sofa, his back supported by a pillow. “Rhett, we need to find whoever it was that hurt you, and killed the Olivars.”
Rhett looked at Reggie when he said the couple’s last name, but Reggie continued before the kid could ask any questions. Julie, Dr. Meron, and Paulinho stepped into the house and closed the heavy wooden door behind them.
“They were my friends, and I have a feeling that I have something to do with why they were killed; why you were targeted. Anything you can tell me about what they looked like, or what they may have said?”
Rhett thought for a moment, then said what Ben had been afraid of. “Not much, no. They were dressed in black, like some sort of military special forces group or something.” He took a long, slow breath. “They didn’t say anything, either. Just stabbed me, left me for dead, and raided the house.”
Ben looked around. Aside from Rhett’s and the couple’s blood everywhere, the cabin looked to be in order. Not even a picture on the wall was hanging improperly.
“Raided the house?” he asked.
“Yeah — looking for something, I guess. Not sure what, but they only stayed in here for a few minutes. They walked around the cabin a few times, but then they left. That was about half an hour ago.
Looking for something? Ben had no idea what they would have been looking for, aside from Dr. Meron.
“Rhett, why are you here?” Reggie asked the question in his blunt, no-nonsense way, but Ben sensed no hostility toward the young man.
“I was here to help the Olivars with their deliveries. I’m out of law school for the season, and needed to get my flight hours in. I’d always wanted to visit the rainforest too, so I thought I could make a little money on the side doing it. I didn’t know they were in with some bad people, but I guess…”
“They weren’t,” Reggie said. “Like I said, this isn’t your fault. Those men are after us — you were all just in the wrong place at the wrong time.” He turned and looked at the rest of the group; four scared and worried faces looked back down at him. “The good news is that you’re going to be just fine. That’ll start healing up and you’ll be as good as new in no time.”
Reggie pulled Ben aside. “They were looking for any other ways out of here,” Reggie said so only Ben could hear it. “Keys to the car, any cellphones, that type of stuff. That SUV parked out front is no doubt rigged, but if we hurry we still might be able to get to the plane. The runway’s through the trees that direction, and it’s impossible to see from the road.”
Ben took in this information. They came here to make sure we couldn’t get out of the jungle. They killed the pilot, and the wife and kid he was with. If they already found the plane…
He waited for the inevitable.
“The bad news is,” Reggie continued. “We still need to get out of here, because they’re very likely making a pass through the jungle and will come back here to check for us. You need to come too, or you’ll most certainly be dead.”
“Okay,” the kid said.
“And,” Reggie added, looking back into the kitchen at the legs of his friend Bernard Olivar poking out, “we need a pilot.”
20
JULIE HOPED RHETT WAS MORE skilled than he was giving himself credit for. After Reggie told him they needed a pilot, Rhett argued for a few minutes, telling them all he wasn’t capable of flying on his own yet. Reggie argued back, reassuring him that he himself had some limited flight experience, and would be an able copilot in a small bush plane like Bernard’s. Julie was unconvinced that the kid would be good enough to take off on what seemed to her like a terribly short runway, but she knew there were no other options.
She hoped stab wounds didn’t make it harder to fly airplanes.
They’d found the plane exactly where Reggie said they would — nearly hidden by the tall trees and dense forest canopy at the end of a narrow path about a half mile from the cabin. Bernard had liked the pseudo-secret hiding spot, according to Reggie, as it made him feel like a drug-running outlaw every time he disappeared below the canopy to land the plane. The plane itself was unregistered, another fact Bernard had been proud of. A 1983 Cessna P210N Centurion, the small plane was capable of holding five passengers and a pilot, with room for luggage or gear. Rhett explained to everyone that Bernard often took the seats out and used the extra space for hauling more equipment to drop zones on the supply routes he frequented. He’d flown with Bernard three times already, usually taking over the controls once Bernard had gotten the plane to cruising altitude.
“You’re going to be fine, kid.” Julie heard Reggie encouraging Rhett near the front of the plane, while Ben and Paulinho loaded their backpacks into the storage area. “Like I said, I’ve held the controls once or twice, and as long as you handle the landing, we’ll be all right. How’s that cut?”
Rhett nodded, not looking away from the controls.
Julie tried to ignore the conversation, but couldn’t. Both men seemed to consider themselves only amateur pilots. And I’m going to fly with them willingly? She looked at Ben.
“We’re going to be fine,” he said. She knew how he felt about flying, and she was amazed that he seemed to actually believe what he’d just said.
Reggie spoke again to the group. “Everyone stand over by the tree line. I’m going to get her started up.”
He didn’t explain why he wanted them to stand back, but Ben sidled over to Julie and whispered in her ear. “He said the SUV in front of the cabin was very likely rigged with explosives. He probably thinks the plane —“
“Stop,” she said. “I don’t want to know.”
Ben shrugged, and Julie turned and walked toward the trees as Reggie climbed up into the cockpit of the aircraft. She heard the door slam.
A minute passed, then the airplane’s engine sputtered to life, the low hum reaching her ears. She waited. Ben pressed his hand over hers, and she felt him squeeze. He’s nervous too, she thought.
Another minute passed, and Reggie hopped out of the pilot’s seat and waved over to them. “If she was going to blow, she’d have done it already.”
Julie wondered how the man could seem so nonchalant, but she followed Ben and the others over to the plane. Ben helped her inside, and they all buckled their seatbelts as Rhett taxied the plane to the runway. He waited at the edge, checking and re-checking the instruments and displays in front of him. Reggie was smiling from the copilot’s seat, but his eyes contradicted the rest of his face in their hard, semi-closed way. She waited.
Finally she felt the lift force as Rhett pushed the throttle down and started the plane on its takeoff sequence. The kid seemed calm, collected, and perfectly focused on the task at hand as the plane accelerated, then finally rose slightly as the lift forces pulled the plane upward. He pulled the nose up, and Julie felt the momentary weightlessness as their centers of gravity shifted and they became airborne. She’d never flown in a plane as small as this, and the jumpiness caused by the bumpy runway was immediately replaced by the smooth and gliding feeling of flying.
She looked over at Ben. His knuckles were white, his eyes fixed straight ahead, but she didn’t bother him. Once they reached their cruising altitude, he would calm down a bit and be able to relax.
“What do you think we’re looking for?” Paulinho suddenly asked.
Julie and Amanda looked over at him, and Ben, still starting straight ahead, raised his eyebrows slightly.
“I mean, what’s the big deal? Amanda’s company has been doing amazing research since they started. Why are they after you now?”
Amanda shrugged. “I don’t know. It all seems so strange. One week we were working on capturing dreams, and now I’m a fugitive.”
“What do you think the golden man has to do with all of it?” Julie asked.
“Again, I have no idea. That seems to be the beginning of it all, thou
gh. When one of our employees uploaded the data, I believe someone on the other side accessed it right away. After that, all of this started.”
“One of the investors?”
“Probably. They were always hands-off, but their only requirement for continued funding was first access to anything we discovered.”
Julie considered this. She didn’t know anything about high-tech venture capitalism, but it seemed odd that an investor would seem disinterested enough in their investment to be hands-off, yet require immediate access to any new findings. It definitely didn’t check out, but Julie didn’t press Amanda for more.
A few minutes later the plane pushed out of its steady ascent and leveled out. Ben released his grip on the armrest and his hand immediately found Julie’s. She looked over at him, trying to gauge how he was feeling without explicitly asking. His eyes seemed tired, their brows bent into an expression of worry. Or stress, she wasn’t sure. He stared back at her, nodding slightly. She smiled, then turned to look out the window once more.
“We’re on our bearing now,” Reggie called out from the cockpit. “We’ll fly into Manaus, then find a boat to take us upstream.”
Paulinho tapped Reggie on the shoulder. “Where exactly are we going? Those lines crossed, but they didn’t exactly tell us the destination.”
Reggie smiled. “No, I suppose not. But that location is remote enough that we’ll be able to narrow it down much easier when we get close. I jotted down the coordinates before we left my place.” Reggie flashed up a piece of paper, on which he’d written some numbers. “It’s in the middle of the Basin, between the Purus and Jaruá Rivers. Still a pretty large region, but it’s a good place to start.”
Julie wasn’t convinced. “Pretty large region? Seems like that’s quite the understatement.”
“Yes, that’s probably true. But we’re not in Manaus yet, so there’s not much we can do.”
“What’s in Manaus?” Paulinho asked.
“A professor. I’ve never met him in person, but we’ve exchanged emails before. He has some pretty interesting — and compelling, I might add — theories about that particular region of the jungle, so I thought of him right away when the maps came up on the screen. He’s also a Jesuit priest, someone who’s got access to some of the things we don’t. Like records.”
