River of Nightmares (Rogue Angel)

by Alex Archer

  “Guerillas in this part of the country?” Annja asked. “I thought that was settled.” In the close air inside the tent, Dillon’s sweaty odor was stronger. Annja backed up a few steps. She noticed cases of batteries stacked on the opposite side of the tent. The printing on each side showed there were 336 D batteries per box, and there looked to be twenty boxes—though how many were full was a mystery. She did the mental calculation: roughly five thousand batteries. Boxes under the center table were marked double-A batteries, again, cases of them. Dillon had a generator; what did he need all these batteries for? The quantity was obscene and more than a little suspicious.

  “Guerillas are still around. Though we haven’t seen any here specifically, but I’ve heard rumors. And I’d rather keep me and my employees safe. Seems those kids are the worst threat.”

  “They have a cause is all,” Marsha said. “All fired up and righteous.” Annja detected the sympathy in her tone. “They want to protect the rainforest.”

  “I say again, I well understand how valuable this rainforest is,” Dillon said. “Ladies, my brother died of bone cancer in his senior year in high school. His pain...the drugs didn’t work in the end. My grandfather died of Alzheimer’s. I promised my grandmother I’d find a cure for the disease. I fully intend to keep that promise. Lymphoma later took her, and that one is on my hit list, too. My son...my infant son...died of neuroblastoma. Apparently cancer runs in my family.”

  “I’m sorry to hear—” Marsha started.

  “Not just in my family. Hammond’s father, he died of non-Hodgkin’s. It’s in a lot of families.” Dillon waved her pity away and spoke louder and with passion. “I know the secret is in plants. The secret is here in this rainforest. All the medical miracles are right here. It’s just a matter of finding them. I’ve had a bout with melanoma. So it has personally touched me, too. The cure for cancer is here. Alzheimer’s. The cure for a lot of things. I’m counting on finding the cures to so very many of the world’s most wretched ills right here along this big river. But those two kids out there, they have blinders on. They see trees, and they don’t see the people that can be helped by those trees. I’m taking only pieces of this forest. Only little pieces.”

  Dillon demonstrated that the plants were vacuum sealed, some dried, some refrigerated, some frozen. Some had been liquefied, roots pulped. Cartons were marked for laboratories in Atlanta and Dallas. He showed them how they processed roots, and Marsha recorded everything.

  “I send a shipment out once every seven to ten days,” he said. “Even the CDC’s got a stake. And despite what those kids would have you believe, I am careful with my harvesting. My men range pretty far, not taking all the samples from any one spot. What the kids should be going after are the industries cutting down the trees for lumber and oil. They clear the land for cattle and to grow commercial soybeans. The real value of the trees is keeping them alive. Many of the trees here are hundreds possibly thousands of years old.”

  “So the kids,” Marsha prompted. “Why do they think you’re up to no good?”

  Dillon looked exasperated. “I don’t know. Maybe they think I’m the enemy because I’ve cut down some trees—I had to for this camp. I have a smaller camp about thirty miles due west, and no trees cut there. I cull plants and roots in the hope that scientists will discover cures, new life-saving drugs. Does that make me a villain? Or a hero? A sedge root we discovered early on can treat headaches, muscle cramps, dysentery and fever. This place is the world’s pharmacy...if we use it right.”

  Marsha turned off the camera and reached in her pocket for more batteries. “Some great quotes here, thanks.”

  “Please, film as much about this camp and our activities as you’d like. And tell your eco-minded young friends that next time they cross my path I will contact the authorities. And I will press charges.” He tapped a satellite phone holstered at his waist. “Maybe I should’ve reported them, got them out of my hair the first time I caught them destroying my equipment. Maybe I still will report them.”

  “What actual damage have they done?” This from Annja. “You mentioned equipment.”

  “What damage haven’t they done? They’ve busted microscopes, liquefiers, ruined one of my freezer units—and thereby destroyed all the prepared samples inside, set fire to sleeping tents—clothes and personal belongings in the process, destroyed roots we’d processed—why do that if they’re so eco-minded? They tossed one of my chainsaws in the river...and how is that helping the environment?” He squeezed down an aisle to the lone desk, rifled through a tub drawer, and came out with a folder. The pages inside were in plastic sheet protectors. He spread them out on the only empty space. “My permits. Take a look.”

  Annja did just that, skimming quickly, noting the permitted locations, length of stay, fees, signatures. It all looked legitimate. “Why didn’t you just show this to them?”

  “Because it wouldn’t have made a difference,” Dillon said. “They would’ve come up with some other thing to go on about.”

  “I suspect you’re right.” When Annja was finished looking through the papers, she handed them back.

  “Tell your young friends to leave me alone, Ms. Creed, or—quite seriously, I won’t leave them alone. I’ll get them tossed out of Brazil.”

  They returned to the table outside, and he offered to brew tea. They’d been inside about a half hour, and in that time the sky had darkened and the scent of rain hung in the air.

  “We need to get back,” Annja said. “Apparently it’s not wise to be in the forest after dark, and we’ve got a few hours’ hike.”

  “I understand. And it looks like it’ll go dark very soon. A storm’s coming.” Dillon looked at his watch. “Will you be in the area much longer? You could film my men taking samples. You could go with them tomorrow if you’d like.”

  Marsha shrugged and pointed at Annja. “She’s in charge.”

  “I think we have enough footage from your camp,” Annja said. “Like I said, really we’re here for a series on river monsters.” Edgar muttered something under his breath. “But we’ll be sticking around a few more days at least. The Dslala have tales of some of the creatures we’re highlighting in this segment. They’ve been quite cordial.”

  “But two of them are missing,” Moons said. “The two Dslala who came with us yesterday. You did something to them.”

  Dillon closed his eyes and sighed.

  “Time to go,” Annja said. “Mr. Dillon, thank you for your hospitality.”

  When they could no longer see the camp, Annja whirled on Moons and Edgar and put her hand in front of Marsha’s camera, not wanting the confrontation recorded. “Vandalism? Really? Destruction of his property? Fires?”

  Edgar shrugged. “We were sending a message. He shouldn’t be here.”

  “You’re the ones who shouldn’t be here,” Annja returned. “A chainsaw in the river. Really? Whose good idea was that? How good for the river’s ecology is a chainsaw?”

  Moons looked deflated. “Well, maybe that we shouldn’t have done.”

  “You think?” Annja slowly simmered. Thunder rumbled, complementing her mood, and the large drops of rain started to fall.

  Annja and Marsha fell in step behind Moons and Edgar, letting a few yards separate them. Annja heard something moving through the foliage to their right, probably Hammond making sure they really were going back to the Dslala village. The hairs stood up on the back of her neck.

  She should have paid more attention the moment they left the pharma camp. But she was distracted, wondering about the two men in the tent she hadn’t gotten a good look at. There’d been two shadows, two men moving around in there when she’d first arrived. But those two men weren’t inside the big tent when she and Marsha got the tour. They’d obviously slipped out the back before Dillon escorted Marsha and her inside. Why had they left? Had they taken something out t
hat Dillon didn’t want her to see?

  “So Dillon wasn’t such a villain,” Marsha said. She stopped and got some footage of a pair of scarlet macaws flying below the lowest canopy; despite the failing light their brilliant plumage stood out starkly against all the green. “He’s all fired up about finding cures for Alzheimer’s and cancer, keeping a promise to his grandma. Nice to run into someone so driven. Kind of inspiring, huh?”

  Annja didn’t doubt Dillon was sincere in his desire to discover some medical miracle, but there was more to the man.

  Marsha put her camera away. “So maybe the sidebar should be about him, do you think?”

  “Actually, Moons and Edgar are right,” Annja said, keeping her voice low. “Dillon is very definitely up to something.” She felt it in her gut. And nothing was going to prevent her from going back on her own and finding out what.

  Chapter 17

  “They could ruin everything,” Dillon said.

  “So you want me to kill them? Those kids?” Hammond stood just outside the main tent, looking in at Dillon, the rain pinging off his hard hat. “Joe and me can take care of it tonight, like we did with them two nosey—”

  “They’d be missed.”

  “But never found, Mr. Dillon. Caiman and piranha eat the evidence around here. Could drop them in the hole, too. They’d die down there.”

  Dillon managed to keep the smirk off his face. Hammond had that part right; it was effortless to dispose of bodies in the Amazon. Not even a finger bone would be found. “The authorities aren’t going to spend even a handful of seconds looking for missing tribesmen from nameless villages, but U.S. citizens? That’s bad for tourism. They might send some people out to poke around, parents raise a fuss in the media, and we need to stay under everyone’s radar.”

  “Then what do you want us to do? Scare ’em? Run ’em out of the forest like we should’ve done a while back? They can’t keep coming back here, especially if they have a television reporter along. Make ’em hightail it to—”

  “The kids aren’t the problem, Ham.” He heard the soft rumble of thunder; he liked the sound. Soon the rain would play against his tent. “The kids are insignificant. A burr is all.”

  “A burr? A pain in the ass is what they are.”

  Dillon chuckled. “They’re a nuisance, I’ll grant you that...but Annja Creed and her photographer?” Something worried Dillon about that pair. He didn’t understand it, and couldn’t explain it, but her presence did not sit well, and he was always one to play to his instincts. He didn’t like the way she walked through his tent, looking so close into the corners, skimming his documents while her eyes kept drifting. She was observant, maybe too observant.

  “They could be trouble. They’re television people.” He really didn’t want any attention, despite his invitation to them to “film anything you want.” He hadn’t meant one word of that, and he didn’t like her comment that they’d be in the area another few days. He wanted them long gone—now. He considered waiting it out.

  His British partner would have been pleased to have seen Miss Creed, though; he’d been all happily enthused at seeing the TV archaeologist in the Belém marketplace a few days ago. Had wanted his picture taken with her. What odd circumstances had brought her to his camp in the middle of nowhere? It was a fateful encounter that made his teeth ache.

  “You’re resourceful, Ham. They had to come in by boat, right. And the boat has to be at the village.”

  “So I should do something to the boat. I could sink it.”

  “Heavens, no. I want them to be able to take that boat out of here...and the sooner they take it, the better. Like I said, an American goes missing, people will come looking. We just need them gone. Safe and gone.”

  “I got you.” Hammond pulled his lips into a thin line. “I’ll make it so they need to leave soon, then. Like at first light. I’ve a few ideas.”

  “As I said, you’re resourceful.” Dillon held the tent flap open. “You’ll need the night goggles and a transmitter. I’ll want to watch if you don’t mind.”

  “Nah, I don’t mind. Be glad to have you along for the show. I’ll need a few other things, too.”

  “The lab is at your disposal.” Dillon suspected Hammond was looking forward to the night’s activities.

  * * *

  IT WAS ALMOST like going himself. Dillon was dry and ensconced in the lab tent, fingers wrapped around a large mug of Darjeeling, eyes fixed on his laptop screen. The rain was white noise, a constant tat-tat-tat-tat against the canvas that he found soothing.

  Hammond’s goggles had a viewer fitted onto the bridge, and so Dillon watched as his loyal and capable assistant started down the narrow path that Annja and her videographer had taken—a path created by Moons and Edgar’s numerous forays from the village to this camp. Then Hammond left the path and cut at a right angle, forging into the thick vegetation. Dillon shuddered; as much as he loved what the rainforest provided, he disliked trudging through it. He was pleased Hammond never minded such excursions.

  Hammond was ex-special forces, a key hire. Back from Afghanistan, living with a brother in Atlanta, looking for work, Dillon snapped him up for security a year and a half ago. Hammond was used to travel, liked violence, and was unswervingly loyal, never questioning orders; Dillon paid him very well.

  Dillon sipped the tea and split the screen, the left side showing Hammond’s slow and steady progress through the rainforest, everything looking eerily green-black with the night vision goggles, the sounds haunting—the rain in stereo from the mic in the goggles and drumming on the tent, frogs chirping like birds, big cats, who knew what else moving through the vegetation. Good that Hammond wasn’t afraid of anything. Dillon turned down the volume and concentrated on the right side of the screen, information and images of Annja Creed and Chasing History’s Monsters.

  Chestnut hair, green eyes, lived somewhere in Brooklyn, and the sole reason Chasing History’s Monsters was successful and beamed into television sets around the world. She was radiant in a series of promotional stills he flicked through. Most of the pictures showed her in a khaki shirt with numerous pockets and often with a tan broad-brimmed hat, he mused. In one she was accepting some sort of television award and was radiant in a long blue gown, close to the color she’d turned herself with the Dslala dreaming ceremony, trimmed with sequins and with spaghetti straps. He considered her gorgeous. He stared at that picture a moment more, and then moved to the next result.

  Chasing History’s Monsters episodes were available online for watching. He noted one on chupacabras, another on Mayan relics found in a Wisconsin lake. Interesting and perhaps would provide some future amusement. He bookmarked that site and kept looking. A link to a map showed all the places where the series had been filmed. She got around. And it appeared that trouble followed her. He checked newspaper archives that matched the times of her visits to various locals, his scowl deepening as he skimmed the articles. It was indeed fortunate he sent Hammond out tonight; he didn’t need Annja Creed snooping around his base camp. It wasn’t like he could move this operation, and he wasn’t ready to abandon it just yet. There was too much money to be made.

  He clicked open a link that traced to a Belém travel writer’s blog. It was dated a few years ago, and it took some work to find a cached file, as the original page no longer existed. Apparently Annja had been hired to find a lost city named Promise in Brazil, where legend said there was a key to eternal youth. No mention if she found it, but links off that post suggested she was a part-time treasure hunter.

  Dillon definitely needed her out of Brazil. He didn’t want her uncovering his treasure.

  He dropped the split screen and focused on Hammond. It was close to midnight when the man reached the boat. The rain had intensified, and was now pelting the river, loud enough to drown out the sound of the frogs that had been singing a loud chorus. Dillon was
impressed with the size of the boat; he’d expected a tug, something along the lines of the African Queen, not something that looked like a Mississippi riverboat, sans the paddlewheel. There were lights on the bow and stern, a light glowing from a window on the second tier, but otherwise the boat was dark. He made out part of a word on its hull, but then Hammond was moving.

  Annja Creed might be prone to venture to dangerous places, but it seemed she liked to travel in style and comfort.

  Hammond slogged out into the river, and Dillon sucked in a breath when he saw a caiman surface and come close. Hammond stretched out a gloved hand and pushed it away, and the caiman got the message and floated out of sight.

  He suspected Hammond’s heartbeat had remained steady. The man truly was afraid of nothing.

  Dillon guessed the water was about up to Hammond’s waist. He circled the boat, until he was on the side that faced away from the village and pulled himself up. The railing groaned softly and the wood deck creaked under the man’s weight.

  “Be quiet,” Dillon urged. “So very quiet.” He could talk to Hammond if he wanted; there was an earpiece attached to the goggles, but Dillon hadn’t turned his mic on. He didn’t want to be a distraction. He finished the Darjeeling, yawned, and discarded the notion of a fourth cup of tea; it might keep him up, and Dillon wanted to get to bed soon. He had a big day planned and wanted to be well-rested for it.

  He could only see Hammond’s arms from the elbows down, and his hands. It was like one of those popular video games, where you looked out through the eyes of whatever character you’d picked to run through an electronic gauntlet. Hammond was an exceptional “character.”

  The rain sounded angry striking the boat. Dillon followed Hammond’s progress, into a dining room that had books and maps spread out on a table. There was a camera bag on a chair. Hammond’s night vision goggles distorted things, but it looked like the bag that Annja Creed had rescued from the thief in the Belém marketplace. Hammond picked up two of the maps, along with some other papers—Dillon could not read what was on them—folded them, stuffed them in the camera bag, and carried it outside. He eased it over the side by the strap and let it sink in the river. Then he returned to the dining room, went through it and into the kitchen, and methodically dosed sauces, soups, a breakfast casserole and bottles of juice with some extracts from the lab. It was similar to ipecac syrup, but to the tenth power. It would make whoever ingested it violently ill. The effect could linger for days and would no doubt force the boat to turn back toward Belém with its state-of-the-art hospital facilities.