“Easy peasy,” Mike said. “Go down sideways. It’s not as steep as it looks.” He turned and started down, bracing his boots on the large roots and rocks that jutted from the cliff.
“Just stay away from the water and mud,” Mike called. “There’s patches of slime, too. Avoid them.” He was already a quarter of the way down when Katie followed him. Ginny made Siobhan go next so she could watch her, ignoring Richard’s second nuclear glance of the day.
“Oh come on,” she told him. “You played on the jungle gym, didn’t you?”
She knew he wouldn’t say, “That was years ago.” Grimly, he grabbed a vine and rappelled down to a shale ledge—not the best thing to entrust with a full 180 pounds of bearded scientist.
The ledge gave way with a sickening pop and crumble. Richard slid down the rest of the escarpment on his rear. Fortunately, he was able to dig his heels into several patches of mud and slime on the way down. Right before the ground, his right foot caught a wide root, which naturally let him tumble to that side, take the ground with his knee and shoulder, and roll to a halt.
Neither he nor anyone else cried out. That’s the thing about a climbing fall. The climber doesn’t have time to do anything except fall. The companions get to watch, and are usually still processing what is happening by the time the fallen climber hits the ground.
Richard was getting to his feet when Ginny screamed his name. Her heart wasn’t even pounding. It felt like it had simply stopped. A rush of air filled her ears and she climbed down mindlessly, not caring if she fell.
She ran to Richard, who stood, mud and slime-covered, rubbing his shoulder. “Oh my God,” she said, wiping mud from his beard. “You could have—”
“It’ll take more than that to kill me,” he said. His teeth flashed, even whiter now that his face was a mask of mud and moss.
Mike stood with his arms crossed, a smug smile on his thin face. “I told you to avoid the mud,” he said.
“It likes me,” Richard said. “There was an irresistible attraction between us.”
Ginny’s heart jumped. She could have leapt on Richard in the ravine and taken him on one of the picnic tables. There was nothing Mike could say; she noticed that had wiped the smugness off his face.
“Omigod,” came Siobhan’s voice. “Come look at this!”
Ginny tore her eyes from muddy Richard and followed the voice. Siobhan was by one of the picnic tables, leaning over. Ginny glimpsed some dark forms beside the table.
“What’s wrong with them?” Siobhan asked. “They’re like—zombies or something.”
As the group approached, Siobhan’s meaning became clear. Three howlers sat like little men beside the picnic table. And that was it. They sat in a row, their arms folded across their chests. Their eyes were blank and lifeless.
“Are they dead?” Katie asked.
Siobhan shook her head. “I don’t think so. But I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“I haven’t either,” Mike said, kneeling behind the three primates.
There was no way three normal wild howlers would have let any human that close. These three sat with no awareness of the team at all.
“They’re drugged,” Richard said.
“Perhaps,” Ginny said. “These don’t look like they’re from our group.”
One had a white patch on the chest—there was no chimp in the main observation group like that. The second one was quite old, with rheumy, yellowed eyes that signified age in humans and monkeys alike. The third was a female and looked to be pregnant.
“I swear they look like that cartoon—See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil. Remember?” Mike said.
Ginny nodded, slowly approaching the pregnant-appearing howler. At about 30 pounds, the animal was completely non-threatening while sitting with its arms folded, a blank expression in its round, dark eyes.
“Don’t touch her,” Siobhan cautioned.
Ginny gave her a sharp look. She would not have considered touching the animal. “She’s breathing very slowly,” Ginny said. “Only 10 breaths a minute—it should be at least 25.”
“Are they sedated?” Richard asked.
“They seem to be, but look at the way they’re sitting,” Ginny said. “Like they’re waiting for something.”
“Look over here,” Katie said. She gestured toward a stack of Styrofoam crates near the camp’s four expensive, “glamping” tents, which featured a few Adirondack-style plastic lounge chairs.
“Lunch for the greedy tourists,” Mike said.
“Maybe they’re getting their cut fruit from Brus Laguna,” Richard said. “That’s quite a trip, but those crates would keep it fresh.”
Katie opened one of the top crates. “They’re greedy, all right,” she said. “But this isn’t mango or papaya. Or hot dogs.” She lifted a heavy jade idol from the crate. It was perhaps twelve inches high, with a heavy square base, carved from a single piece of jade. Even from several yards away, Ginny identified the toothy grimace of Hun-Batz, the howler monkey god.
Soon they were all crowded around the crates, opening them feverishly. In another crate was a stunning jade funeral mask, and in another, carefully-wrapped gold jewelry, including a pin depicting a shamaness, a pendant of the moon goddess, and an amazing brooch in the form of a slender, curved lizard.
“I don’t think this is a tourist camp,” Richard said.
“Ya think?” Mike said.
“Maybe we should go,” Katie said. “I’m not sure they’ll be happy when they get back from—”
The sound of a semi-automatic pistol’s slide being racked is not particularly loud, but it was still loud enough to get the researchers’ attention. Ginny turned to see her fellow travelers from the Brus Laguna flight, flanked by a couple of bald, beefy six-footers in their mid-30s, the sort who respond to online ads for “discreet action opportunities in diverse foreign locations.”
It was the woman, Terri, who held the gun.
“Well, you really got into some dino doo this time, Ellie Sattler,” said the husband, Bob, who wore jungle fatigues as if he had been born in them and whose face had morphed from corn-fed country club upper-Midwest to hardened adventurer. Ginny had never seen eyes colder or meaner on a human being.
“You know what they say about curiosity and the cat,” the woman said. Suddenly her cheerful, upper Midwest accent seemed as ominous as her partner’s icy eyes. Ginny doubted they were remotely married. They looked like a pair of business partners now.
Richard stepped in front of Ginny and the others. “What do you people think you’re doing here?” he asked. He gestured at the Styrofoam crates and then toward the three howlers, who still sat in their bizarre arrangement, showing no awareness of the new arrivals and atmosphere of impending violence.
“You’re supposed to be a smart man, Dr. Weyland,” said Terri in her cheerful tone. “You tell me what we’re doing. I’ve got a couple of minutes.”
The ominous nature of that comment hung in the thick, humid air. Ginny felt a trickle of sweat slither down her back. It was obvious from the expressions on Bob and Terri’s faces and the grim masks of the two mercenaries that they were all going to be killed.
“You’re drugging these animals,” Richard said, gesturing toward the howlers. “That’s unconscionable. And,” he continued. “Stealing precious artifacts that belong to the Honduran people.”
Terri nodded. “Those howlers aren’t drugged,” she said. “It’s quite a different process.”
“I see,” Richard said. “Neurotransmitters? Some type of radio waves?”
“A little of both, along with some gene splicing,” Terri said. “These aren’t precisely howlers any more. Considering your specialty, it’s likely you wouldn’t understand, Dr. Weyland.”
Richard crossed his arms. “Try me,” he said.
They knew Richard’s name. They probably knew exactly who everyone on the team was. If possible, the cold block of ice in Ginny’s chest got even larger and colder at this realiz
ation. She grabbed Richard’s shoulder. “Richard,” she whispered fiercely. “Don’t. They’re going to kill us unless we—”
“You’ve altered these animals’ genetic structure?” His tone was outraged.
Again, Terri nodded. “These three are useful to the overall project,” she said, looking in the direction of the three seated howlers. “We have additional animals that are out doing their jobs right now.”
“Why?” Ginny asked. “Why would you do this to animals?”
Terri burst out laughing. “Ah, the trouble with academics,” she said. “You not only can’t escape the box your mind is in, you can’t even imagine how small the box really is.”
Bob put his arm around Terri’s shoulder. “She’s quite the brilliant scientist,” he said. “Good thing I’m the one with the business head on his shoulders.” His expression, which had previously been one of cold, calculating murder, had become somewhat rakish and amused. Ginny was not fooled.
“It’s just too bad, Ellie Sattler,” he said. “It gets lonely out here in the jungle with a chubby, disinterested middle-aged woman and two sides of beef. I wouldn’t have minded checking out that tight little ass of yours.”
Richard bristled, and Ginny sensed Mike’s anger rising as well. The tall young man stepped forward. As Richard was “protecting” Ginny, so had Mike stepped in front of Katie and Siobhan. Ginny wanted to leap at the bastard and claw his eyes out, but she’d already spotted the M-4 carbines that the two “sides of beef” were carrying, plus Terri’s Glock. She had no doubt Bob had some even worse weapon close at hand. Perhaps, given his obvious bad nature, he preferred a knife.
“I’m sure Horst and Gerhard wouldn’t mind a chance at the other two young ladies,” Terri said in a matter-of-fact tone. One of the two mercenaries grunted and grinned, while the other remained impassive.
“So just what the fuck do you people think you are?” Mike snapped. “We’re an official U.S. study team. If anything happens to us, this place will be crawling with military in no time flat.”
Terri nodded. “I have no doubt,” she said. “In a way, it already is.” She turned to look at “Horst” and “Gerhard,” who both grinned. Them? Military? Not American, surely.
“We’ll be out of here in less than four hours,” Bob said. “So the left hand can wash the right until it’s raw. There’ll be a terrible incident for State to deal with. Scientific team studying peaceful howler monkeys, slaughtered brutally by Moskitia insurgents. Such a tragedy and so awkward with our good Honduran friends.”
At this, Horst and Gerhard laughed. “I get the little blonde,” one of them said.
“You bastard!” Katie cried.
“Fair enough,” said the other in a thick Austrian accent. “I’m taking it the boss wants the tall glass of water.”
Ginny reviewed her past few days. Only a week earlier, she’d been comfortably ensconced in graduate housing in Ames, Iowa with Torvald. She had a bright career ahead of her. She remembered Torvald’s admonition. No one cares about howler monkeys in Honduras.
No one cares about howler monkey researchers in Honduras.
She imagined the standard Central American sendoff: a bullet to the back of the head. Bob didn’t look like he could reliably get it up, but unbidden, the sort of things a man like that might do when incapable of garden variety rape flooded her mind. Her stomach churned. She felt her hands shake. Her palms grew slick with sweat.
“I’ll kill you!” Richard cried. Ginny grasped at him and got only a small handful of his muddy shirt. He leapt at Bob, and Ginny watched as the more vocal of the two mercenaries raised his M-4 and almost lazily applied the butt of it to Richard’s temple. Richard crumpled like a puppet whose strings had been cut.
“Oh dear,” Terri said. “I don’t want to see anything unpleasant.”
“I was going to make him watch,” Bob said in a tone so awful Ginny had no words for it. She felt Mike’s coiled desperation though she could barely see him, as he was standing behind her and slightly to her right. She watched Mike out of the corner of her eye. She’d help him if she could. Anything would be better than waiting for these monsters to do what they were going to do.
“Bob,” Terri said. “You don’t have to behave like an animal. We could just shoot them up with the Fentanyl and bury them somewhere.”
“You are a big, fat wet blanket,” Bob said.
Mike was so fast that Ginny’s conscious mind barely registered his leap forward. “Get her!” he roared. He went straight for Bob, tackling him while the two mercenaries seemed to move as if they were encased in thick gelatin.
Ginny launched herself at Terri, forcing herself to ignore the gun. The weapon discharged as Ginny hit the other woman in the chest and knocked her off her feet. Ginny hadn’t fought anyone since the fourth grade, and had never been one of those to take self-defense classes. She was running on instinct. She wouldn’t have known if she had been shot or not, there was so much adrenaline in her body.
Terri grunted as Ginny threw her full weight on her, and screamed when she got a handful of her straw-like blonde hair and tugged viciously. Dimly, Ginny registered that Mike had rushed the mercenary who was closest to him, and had him in a half choke-hold. The big man went down hard; it didn’t look like it was going well for Mike, but the M-4 was in the dirt, and Terri had also lost control of her weapon. That left the other mercenary—and Bob—but Ginny had no idea what had happened to them. Her sole focus was digging her thumbs into the older woman’s eye sockets. She had her knee in the woman’s stomach and put as much weight on her as possible. This caused Terri to screech again.
Then she heard a strong, firm voice. “Let her go or I cut his throat.”
Blood rushing in her ears, Ginny was almost unable to stop.
“I said, let her go!” It was Bob, who knelt behind a semi-conscious Richard, one arm around his chest, pinning his arms tight, and the other hand holding a long serrated tactical knife to his neck.
It was one of the hardest things Ginny had ever done to release Terri, the mad Minnesotan scientist—or whatever she was. The second mercenary had been beset by both Katie and Siobhan. He shook them off as if they were irritating small poodles and pointed his M-4 at them. The other mercenary managed to get his leg around Mike’s waist and looked as though he might snap his neck.
Bob’s eyes glittered. This was murderous bloodlust, she realized. The man was a cold-blooded killer. He was infinitely more frightening than the two mercenaries.
“You hurt me!” said Terri in a tone of utter astonishment.
“You were going to kill me,” Ginny said.
“You shouldn’t take that personally,” said the other woman.
Then, improbably, the reedy foliage around the camp came alive. First one small, dark man stepped into the clearing, and then another. Another followed him, until there were perhaps two dozen lean, hard-faced dark men with AK-47s surrounding the encampment. They had to be Moskitia guerrilla fighters, Ginny realized. They’d been attracted by the sounds coming from the camp.
Then a series of squat, dark forms emerged between the men, hooting and growling. Howlers—at least two dozen. Ginny thought she recognized Kobe Bryant and some of the others from their group.
Ginny felt no sense of surprise when Antonio stepped forward, armed with an AK-47 and a cold, disdainful scowl.
“So,” he said. “What shall we do with all of you?”
“Antonio!” she cried.
“Miss Baumann,” he said. “You should step away from that woman now.”
Ginny followed the instruction. Looking terminally enraged, the mercenary who was holding Mike released him, while the other one laid his M-4 slowly on the ground and raised his hands, an expression somewhere between boredom and fury twisting his brutal features.
Bob merely moved the knife closer to Richard’s neck and slowly drew a line of blood on the muddy bearded skin.
Ginny stepped forward, but Antonio raised his hand to stay her.
>
“I will shoot you,” he said to the man from Minnesota.
Bob considered the statement. There was nothing in Antonio’s expression or manner to suggest that anything different would happen, no matter what he did to Richard or not. Ginny saw his calculation clearly. He withdrew his knife from Richard’s neck and pushed him away. Then he backed off, reluctantly dropping the knife.
Antonio nodded in approval, then he gestured to the Moskitia men, indicating they should gather up the Styrofoam crates and replace the scattered artifacts. The howler monkeys joined in, retrieving artifacts and handing them to the Moskitia fighters as tenderly as Kobe Bryant the howler had offered fruit and grooming to his smaller mate.
Ginny watched, astonished. It was as if the howlers were extra troops that didn’t speak or carry weapons.
“I’ll have your balls for this, Alvarez,” snarled Bob. Terri, holding a hank of her hair with a two-inch piece of bloody pink scalp attached, had begun to cry.
Siobhan and Katie were tending to Mike. His arm was broken.
Ginny bit her lip and ran to Richard, kneeling beside him and cradling his head against her chest. She saw Antonio’s expression soften.
“This?” she asked, gesturing at the Moskitia soldiers and the howlers. “How?”
“You can somewhat blame this woman,” said Antonio, glaring at Terri, who had become a bawling child, her face a mask of tears and redness. “These are not ordinary howler monkeys, as you can see. She won’t tell you, but the group of howler monkeys you have been studying were her first experimental subjects. These,” he said disdainfully, pointing at the three still-motionless howlers beside the picnic table, “are the current subjects, or some of them. The rest are out stealing artifacts from the ruins to fund this insane experiment.”
“Who—why?” Ginny asked.
“Who do you think?” Antonio asked. “Ask yourself what your government is willing to do for treasure. To kill.”
Richard began to mutter, then his eyes fluttered open. He took in the scene silently, then said, “Thank you,” to Antonio, and to Ginny, he added, “I told you he worked for the government.”
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