by Greig Beck
By that description, Alex guessed he meant Jack Hammerson.
Lugo gestured to some chairs around an enormous walnut desk and spoke briefly to Garmadia in Spanish, who nodded in reply and turned to smirk briefly at Alex.
‘I believe Captain Garmadia mentioned there has been a complication,’ Lugo said. He turned a map around so Alex could see it. A red circle had been drawn around a dark green zone roughly halfway between the cities of Asunción and Concepción and close to the Paraguay River. There were no markings for towns, roads or any other sign of human habitation.
Lugo sat back and folded his hands across his flat stomach. ‘This complication is something far more dangerous to us than bandits or mercenaries, Captain Hunter. The area has been closed by an extreme quarantine order from the highest level. Even our people cannot go in, neither can our vehicles, aircraft or helicopters — nothing. Until the source of infection has been identified, or has burned itself out, we must wait.’
He leaned forward and brought his hands together on the map, looking hard at Alex, perhaps expecting anger or some other type of outburst. Alex, however, barely reacted to the information. His voice was even and unemotional.
‘My team will be completing its assignment. We are going in, whether I have to buy or steal an aircraft. We leave in thirty minutes.’
One of Lugo’s eyebrows went up and a small smile touched the corner of his mouth. ‘Are you sure you are not related to Cabeza Dura?’
Sergeant Banks finally spoke. ‘There are no planes, Captain Hunter, or choppers. They’ve all been deployed to the Bolivian border for security exercises. Even if there were, you’d probably be shot down if you tried to fly across the exclusion zone. I’ll do what I can to help, but we’re a little restricted on foreign soil.’
Colonel Lugo had turned the map back around and was examining its green lines and swirls. He spoke without looking up. ‘It is a problem we are becoming more familiar with, Captain. As we push further into the jungle, we are seeing more and more sporadic outbreaks of disease — such as the hantavirus hotspots. We fully intend to keep such infections out of populated areas.’
‘You North Americans need to be reminded that you must follow the rules while you are guests here,’ Garmadia said with a self-satisfied grin. He allowed his eyes to drift across to Banks. ‘While all of you are guests here. The United States needs this base; you don’t have too many friends in Latin America anymore, Captain Hunter.’
Alex could feel the blood surging in his chest and a small bloom of pain in the centre of his head. He sat immobile and tried to keep his breathing calm. His eyes remained, unblinking, on Garmadia. The smaller man swallowed, perhaps thrown off by not getting the reaction he had expected. He went on, this time sounding a little less sure of himself.
‘You probably think you will walk out of here, make a phone call and go over our heads, but be warned that it could be us phoning your superiors.’
Alex’s eyes slid across to Colonel Lugo. He saw that the man’s face had gone a deep shade of red.
‘That is enough, Captain Garmadia,’ Lugo said. ‘North America is like a big brother to us. There will be no insulting of family — especially while I am in the room.’
He held Garmadia’s eyes a moment longer, the glance carrying a warning, then returned to the map and the HAWCs’ destination. He opened his mouth about to speak, but Garmadia was there before him.
‘If I may remind you, Colonel,’ he said, raising his finger, ‘even the Minister for Foreign Affairs has said that we must look to our own neighbours for our security in the future, rather than bowing before fading superpowers—’
‘That’s enough!’ Lugo exploded and slammed one hand down on his desk. He squeezed his eyes shut for a second then opened them again, a roguish smile creeping across his face. ‘Captain Garmadia, I was about to send you out of the room, but I believe you may be of assistance on a little trip I am about to authorise.’
He turned to Alex. ‘It is true what Sergeant Banks has told you. There are no aircraft available to you now, and the zone is under mandatory quarantine. However, I believe your CDC scientists should be allowed to enter the area to assist our country with any diagnoses and, we hope, the containment of this health hazard.’ He smiled and pointed at a red line running down the interior of the country. ‘This is the main road all the way to Asunción — and you can’t be shot down travelling by vehicle, can you? You have two choices. First, leave the highway at Pozo and head towards Concepción, where you can obtain a boat and travel down the Paraguay River to this spot close to the camp.’
Alex did some quick calculations: just over 200 miles by truck, forty by boat, then another forty-mile trek. A lot of distance over some tough terrain. He wasn’t sure how the scientists would cope.
‘But if it was me,’ Lugo went on, ‘I would be tempted to drive to a point just past Pozo and obtain a guide there to take you through the jungle to the camp. This way you avoid the river altogether, which is unpredictable coming into rainy season. Two-fifty miles by truck, then about twenty miles through some dense jungle — should take maybe two days, or less if you have a good guide.’
Alex looked up from the map and nodded.
‘Good. How long until you can be ready?’ Lugo asked.
‘We’re ready now, Colonel.’
Lugo looked over his shoulder. ‘And you, Captain Garmadia?’
‘What?’ Garmadia’s smirk vanished.
‘I think you would be of enormous assistance to our North American friends in providing translation services, obtaining a guide and generally showing them some real Paraguayan hospitality,’ Lugo said. ‘Only a few days. I’m sure your wife will not miss you. Get yourself a light field pack and be out front in twenty minutes. That’s an order. Dismissed.’
Garmadia looked as though he had just received an electric shock.
Lugo rose from his desk, clapped the Paraguayan captain on the shoulder and walked him to the door. As the two men left, Lugo leaned in close to Garmadia’s ear. Alex could hear the colonel’s muted words as though they were whispered into his own ear.
‘You may have the ear of the minister, but I have the ear of the President. Take care, Captain, and take care of them, or I will make sure you are stationed deep down in the jungle permanently.’
TEN
Twenty minutes later, Captain Garmadia roared up to the waiting team in a camouflaged Humvee. The cigar between his lips pointed forwards like a small brown diving board as he seemed not to want to make eye contact with any of the HAWCs.
Sam walked around to the front of the enormous vehicle and had a quick look underneath. ‘Thought so. Armour’s been stripped out to make it lighter, and the suspension’s been raised for better ground clearance. Jungle Hummer — this’ll do nicely.’
He looked over his shoulder at Alex, who was staring in the direction they would be going. His face was slightly raised, as if he was trying to catch a scent on the breeze. Sam guessed what he was thinking.
‘Aimee’ll be fine,’ he said, walking up beside him. ‘She’s tougher and more resourceful than most of us put together.’
Alex half-smiled. ‘We need to get there, Sam. Something’s not right; I can feel it.’ He stood there a moment longer then drew in a deep breath through his nose and slapped his second-in-command’s shoulder. ‘Let’s load it up, Sam. You and Dr Vargis in the front with Garmadia; everyone else in the back — double time. And, Uncle, I’m not sure our Paraguayan captain is fully on board with our little vacation. Keep him honest, will you?’
Sam chuckled. ‘No problem. I’ll tell him my best jokes…and use satellite positioning to check his route. We’ll stay on track, I guarantee it.’
He started to turn away then stopped. ‘Gauntlets?’
Alex shook his head. ‘Not till we’re in deep jungle. Carry on.’
‘You got it.’ Sam walked off towards the team, leaving Alex still staring at the horizon.
* * *
Alex doze
d in the cooled rear cabin of the Humvee, trying to unwind the coils of impatience that threatened to overwhelm him. However, rest was not coming easily to him; strange images formed in his head, and phantoms whirled and screamed through his subconscious. Some he might have recognised from previous missions, but others made him shift uneasily in his seat. Anyone watching him would have wondered at the way his brow creased, and his eyes moved rapidly behind their lids.
He saw a landscape, its plains dominated by dark and greasy looking protuberances that lifted and swelled like trunks of limbless trees. They were alive, but were not familiar.
There was a sound — a calling that grew louder. The lumpy mass opened hundreds of eyes, and saw him. The calling became screams.
He opened his eyes with a start, and shook his head to clear it. He noticed Franks looking at him and she raised her eyebrows. He nodded to her once, then turned away to check his watch and scan the jungle.
* * *
The vehicle, packed with the HAWCs, the scientists and their equipment, sped along the partially sealed road, only slowing when it had to leap across loosely packed gravel and swerve around water-filled craters. Alex noticed Garmadia never let the speed drop below seventy miles per hour.
The sparse bush and patchy grassland from the higher altitude gradually grew and thickened to become a wall of green either side of the road, sometimes up to a hundred feet high. In a few areas it was hard to determine individual trees as thick vines sewed them together in a mosaic of different hues.
Garmadia changed gears and accelerated across yet another wooden bridge in need of repair. Some of the short spans crossed shallow gorges that made Alex think of surface wounds slashed into the body of the jungle; others dropped hundreds of feet to streams of milky green water. Alex watched rotting fragments of timber fall away as they roared over the bridge and wondered how many more crossings it could take before a vehicle ended up tumbling into the green abyss.
Ramshackle shelters began to appear in clearings along the road. Small bands of stocky, brown people gathered inside and around them, talking and smoking long-stemmed pipes. With their coloured shawls and small round hats woven with bright feathers, they reminded Alex of flocks of exotic birds settled to feed.
Garmadia slowed the Humvee as they passed the shelters and most of the locals waved. Few smiled, however, and Alex wondered briefly what their relationship with the local military was like.
Several miles back, he had ordered Garmadia to turn off the air conditioning so there would be less of a temperature differential when it came time to leave the truck. The open windows let in the sounds and smells of the jungle, and, as they shot past another campsite, the delicious fragrance of roasting chicken.
‘I’m hungry,’ said Franks, leaning a little further out the window.
Michael Vargis rolled his eyes at her. He turned to wave to some small children who’d backed up when the vehicle approached. As he put his elbow on the window edge, the Humvee hit a large hole and his teeth came down on his bottom lip, cutting it slightly. ‘Ow.’ He placed his fingers against his lip and brought them away with a smudge of red.
Franks took his hand. ‘I know; it’s tough out in the field, honey. But don’t worry, Mommy can put a bunny plaster and a kiss on that for you later.’
She smacked her lips together in a mock kiss and Michael pulled his hand away from her. Even Alex had to turn away to stifle a laugh.
After another hour, the breeze coming into the truck cabin was thick with the smell of damp vegetation and decay. Garmadia pulled off the road and onto a small hump of dry ground, killing the engine and leaping from the driver’s door almost in one smooth motion. He stretched his back.
‘This is as far as we can go by road. Now we enter the deep jungle. But first we find a guide — or, rather, they find us.’
The HAWCs stepped from the vehicle. Alex looked across to Sam, who gave him a small nod. Good, Alex thought; Garmadia had taken them in the right direction. He had no real reason to think the Paraguayan officer wished them ill, but he didn’t think the man would be all that unhappy if the HAWCs ended up lost in the jungle.
‘Let’s unload and take a few minutes to orientate ourselves,’ Alex told his team.
He looked at the emerald barrier in front of them. He could sense the crowded life force emanating from the dense, crazy tangle. The noise was amazingly loud: it seemed that everything that could buzz, thrum, croak or screech was trying hard to outdo its neighbour. His senses were almost overwhelmed by the crushing waves of movement and sound. He took a deep breath, exhaled, and ran his hand up through his damp hair. It was only about a hundred degrees, but it was impossible to cool down in the high humidity. The heat stayed with you, on you, all over you. It blanketed, suffocated and drained you.
He turned back to the team. ‘Any more questions about lack of heat and humidity, Franks?’
‘This’ll do just fine, boss. I’ll cool down in the hotel pool later,’ Franks said as she pulled her webbing pack onto her back and threw her XM29 over her shoulder. She methodically patted each of her pockets and belt pouches, and opened and closed holsters, checking on the clasps and the smoothness of the draw.
Alex smiled as he watched her professional movements. He liked Casey Franks. She made him laugh with her evil sense of humour, but also instilled confidence in her teammates with her I’ve-always-got-your-back attitude. Her only problem was she liked to fight way too much. The scar on her face was the result of a brawl in a bikers’ bar when she ended up on the receiving end of a broken bottle. Alex had heard that she’d left plenty of broken bodies behind before her face was finally opened up. Franks needed to learn when to stand and fight and when to walk away — and Alex wasn’t at all sure he was the right person to give that lecture.
She had cut the toughened suit sleeves from her jungle camouflage and he could see the muscles bulging in her arms as she worked smoothly through her tasks. Her five foot eight inch body carried a lot of coiled muscle power — Casey Franks was no lady and she’d be the first to tell you that. She finally pulled her plated gloves back on and punched one hand into the other to test the fit and knuckle impact. Satisfied, she headed over to Sam and Mak, laughing as she greeted them with a joke.
‘Ahhh, here we go…’
Alex turned at the sound of Garmadia’s voice and saw a small Indian boy standing just behind the first wall of trees. The kid looked about six or seven years old, and had skinny brown legs that poked out from oversized shorts. His feet were bare and muddy, and his small chest was covered by a huge T-shirt that just retained a faded image of Superman’s ‘S’ shield.
The Paraguayan soldier crouched down, took a small silver coin from his pocket, flipped it in the air, and then held it out to the boy. Tentatively, the kid stepped forward. He looked from the coin to Garmadia, then up at Alex and the HAWCs. Eventually his desire for the money outweighed his fear and he darted forward. Instead of releasing the coin, Garmadia held on to it and spoke to him calmly. When he had the boy’s full attention, he pointed to the jungle, then to the HAWCs. Alex heard the word norteamericanos several times. The boy looked at the HAWCs again with his eyebrows raised, nodded enthusiastically and said a few words back to the Paraguayan captain.
Garmadia nodded and released the coin, and the boy darted back towards the tree line. Halfway there, he looked back at the group and yelled, ‘Norteamericano,’ then pointed at his chest. When he had their attention, he looked at the HAWC soldiers in their striped battle fatigues, smiled and held his thumb up. ‘Superman, Batman, excelente!’
Garmadia chuckled. ‘To most of the children here, in the cities or the forests, North America is the country where the superheroes live.’ He dusted his hands together and stood up. ‘All right, now we wait. Either he will bring us back a guide…or not.’
Franks yelled to the kid as he sprinted into the jungle: ‘Up, up and away!’
He turned one last time to smile then slipped deeper into the green.
‘Good enough.’ Alex turned to his team. ‘Okay, people, let’s assist Dr Vargis with her equipment.’
Michael Vargis had removed all of the medical boxes and packs from the truck and stacked them on the grass. Most were small compact field-equipment cases holding computers, microscopes, centrifuges, and several portable batteries in case there was no generator out in the field. There was also a single, reinforced brushed metal case. Alex picked it up and the tips of his fingers tingled. Strange, I can sense radiation, he thought.
‘What’s in here, Dr Vargis?’
‘Michael can carry that, Captain Hunter,’ Maria Vargis replied. ‘It contains micro field X-ray equipment, which is pretty delicate, so please be careful when you’re putting it back down.’ She turned away, indicating the conversation was ended.
Alex knew she was lying, but he could wait to find out why. Instead, he lifted the box that contained the battery packs. It was heavy and he knew that carrying its weight for over twenty-four hours would just about kill anyone else. He thought of some of the miniaturised technology he’d worked with in the HAWC labs — weapons and comm device power packs that contained ten times more power at about a hundredth the size. Guess there’s more money in war than in medicine, he thought as he strapped the heavy box to his back.
Twenty minutes later, the boy emerged from the jungle with another slightly older youth, who, judging by his facial features, was probably related to him. The younger boy walked up to Garmadia. ‘Él es mi hermano Saqueo,’ he said, then indicated himself with his thumb. ‘Yo soy Chaco.’
