by Alex Archer
“I’m telling you it was a setup,” Marcos said again. “No question about it. The hat was the lure to catch our attention, and the bag was the bait to make us go after it!”
Annja really couldn’t fault his logic. If the backpack had still been full of whatever gear it had originally contained she might have disagreed, but the presence of the stones made the placement of the bag deliberate.
Someone had wanted them to see it. Someone had wanted them to investigate it.
Someone had wanted them to run afoul of the quicksand pit.
Annja had a hunch she’d just seen one of those responsible; she suspected that there were more.
She told the others about the man she’d seen watching her while she’d been tending to her muddy clothes and of how she’d tried to chase him down. Though they hadn’t been more than a hundred feet away from one another at any point, the thickness of the jungle foliage had kept the others from getting a glimpse of Annja’s mysterious watcher or even knowing that something was happening with her. It was a sobering reminder that they were generally safer if they stayed together in a group.
Marcos was far from pleased. “I knew it!” he said, smashing one big fist into his other hand to emphasize his statement. “Which way did he go? We’ve got to hunt this guy down.”
“No, we don’t,” Claire said, and the sharp, command-oriented nature of her tone surprised Annja. She wouldn’t have thought Claire was capable of it and she was even more surprised when the other woman went on.
“Our priority is to find Knowles,” Claire said. “Anything beyond that is secondary.”
Find Knowles?
That seemed an odd way for Claire to refer to her husband, but Annja put it off as stress and didn’t dwell on it. Besides, Claire was right; finding Dr. Knowles and his missing team was their most important goal right now.
“I agree with Claire,” Annja said to Marcos. “It makes no sense to go charging off into the jungle searching for a guy we barely caught a glimpse of. Better to continue with our plan, but keep your eyes open as we go.”
“This guy tried to kill us and you just want to let him go?”
Annja shook her head. “We don’t know that,” she insisted. “Hugo wasn’t in any danger of dying, not with the rest of us here. He may have simply been lured into the quicksand in an effort to scare us off, get us to leave. And we’re not letting whoever it was go. We don’t have any idea where he is or how to find him, so what’s the point of wasting time trying to do so when we have other priorities?”
“Because they’re dangerous,” Marcos insisted. “Think about it. First, contact with Knowles and his group is lost. Then the crew of the Sea Dancer goes missing without a trace. It seems pretty obvious to me that we’re next.”
But Annja disagreed; she didn’t think it was obvious at all. “We don’t know what happened to Knowles or to the crew of the Dancer. More likely than not they’re two separate, isolated events that just seem connected to each other because of their proximity. We can’t really be certain until we find the doctor and his team.”
“I still don’t like it,” Marcos said, but he left it at that and didn’t argue any further.
“So now what?” Hugo asked.
Claire said, “According to what Richard told me on the phone, he and his team made camp their first night about a half hour north of our present position, close to a small waterfall. No reason we shouldn’t, as well.”
Doing so had a couple of key advantages, Annja knew. First and foremost, it would allow her and Hugo to wash the rest of the quicksand from their bodies and clothes, which they would both be thankful for. Second, it would give everyone some much-needed rest before pushing on the next morning to the former expedition’s last known position.
And it would give me time to check our tail, see if there was anyone hanging about who shouldn’t be.
Annja could live with that.
They gathered their gear and resumed their march, heading inland, deeper into the jungle. This time Marcos took point and Annja didn’t bother to question his doing so. If it made him feel better being out in front, so be it. She settled into position at the rear of their little formation, happy enough to keep an eye on the trail behind them.
Roughly forty minutes later they emerged from the tree line to find themselves standing on the rocky edge of a large pool of water. On the other side was a sheer cliff face rising up a hundred feet or more, and it was from the center of this edifice that the waterfall Claire had mentioned earlier spouted. Its waters poured over the drop in a thrumming roar and filled the pool in front of them, before racing away down the length of a fast-running river to the east. Two dozen yards away, on a bend in the river, was a stony beach that would serve as their camp for the night.
It had been a long day and all of them were tired from their exertions, so they quickly hiked around the pool and crossed to the other side of the stream to set up camp along the beach. A broken tent spike and a discarded length of rope told them that they weren’t the first to camp here, validating Claire’s report that her husband’s team had done the same before them.
They built a fire pit by bringing some large rocks together in a circle and then set up the tents around the pit, one at each cardinal point of the compass so that all of their doors were facing inward toward the fire.
By the time they finished, the sun had dropped below the tree line, leaving them in heavy shadow. It wouldn’t be too long before it was fully dark. Before that happened, Annja wanted to take advantage of the nearby pool and waterfall to wash off the rest of the detritus left over from the quicksand.
Hugo joined her and the two of them took turns standing guard for each other as they washed the grit and grime from their bodies as well as their clothing and boots. When they were done they carried their wet gear back to the fire and laid it out near the flames to get them to dry.
Dinner was a rehydrated stew that Marcos whipped up and Annja had to admit it was pretty decent fare. For camp food, that is. Knowing she needed to replenish the energy she’d burned fighting the pirates and rescuing Hugo, Annja even helped herself to seconds.
The bath had given Annja some time to think about the events thus far. She had originally been under the impression that Dr. Knowles’s team had suffered some kind of accident—perhaps a tunnel collapse had buried most of the team members alive or a freak storm had knocked out their communications gear, cutting them off from the mainland—but as her own team encountered increasingly targeted acts of disruption, she was beginning to rethink that hypothesis. When viewed in a different light, all of the strange encounters they’d endured to date had been attempts to keep them from investigating the island or, once there, to keep Annja and her companions from pushing onward.
The pirate attack might have been chance, but then again it might have been deliberately planned to keep them from ever reaching Cocos Island.
The crew of the Sea Dancer might have gone off of their own accord or they may have been abducted and their boat deliberately seeded in the Pride’s path to serve as a warning to Annja and her team.
Even the stunt with the baseball cap and backpack had seemed more of a warning to Annja than any serious attempt to cause them harm.
That led her to believe that whoever was on the island with them was more interested in getting them to turn away and go back to Costa Rica than in hurting them or worse.
After all, why resort to violence, and the mess it brought with it, if you could scare your rivals into turning away of their own accord?
Rivals. That’s it!
They were facing a rival group of treasure hunters; she was suddenly convinced of it. And not just any group of rivals but one that was not afraid to push the envelope a little in trying to get first Knowles’s, and now Annja’s, team from heading deeper into the jungle after the treasure.
In fact, it wouldn’t surprise her to discover that one or more of Knowles’s own crew had gone rogue and tried to claim the treasure as their own. They would h
ave known that Richard’s wife would come looking for him and would have only needed to plant a watcher in Puntarenas to keep an eye out for her arrival. Once Claire had come up on their radar, so to speak, they could have easily staged any of the incidents to date.
The only thing that seemed out of place was the recurring use of the Incan death-god motif. Unlike the Greek or Egyptian pantheons, in which gods like Zeus, Aphrodite, Set and Anubis were household names, very few people were familiar with the deities and demigods of the Incans. Even fewer people would know that the grinning, horn-headed god named Supay, the same one they’d encountered twice today, was the Incan version of the devil and was therefore an excellent choice to symbolize the potential danger they were getting into if they continued pushing onward with the expedition.
She pondered that for a few minutes longer and that was all it took for her to come up with a solution. It was a given in archaeological circles that one cannot truly come to know a native culture without studying that culture’s religious beliefs. Since Knowles was an expert on South American cultures, it stood to reason that he would have people working for him that were not only familiar with the Incan civilization but also with its pantheon of gods.
To someone like that, Supay was not only an excellent choice, but an inside joke, as well.
Annja wasn’t yet ready to share her conclusions with the others, but by the time she called it a night and slipped into her tent to get some sleep, she was feeling confident that she had most of the bigger picture all worked out.
Tomorrow she could put her theory to the test.
19
Annja awoke to a woman’s scream.
She threw on her clothes, jammed her feet into her hiking boots and rushed out of the tent to find Hugo trying to console a rather hysterical Claire. The two of them separated as Annja ran over, giving her a chance to see what was behind them, and the sight brought her up short.
The early-morning sun illuminated the symbol that had been painted across the front of Claire’s tent with a red substance that looked to be blood. The image was rough, the blood or paint or whatever it was having dripped downward after it had been applied, but it didn’t take too much effort to recognize it as a crude drawing of a leering face.
A face with a wide mouth and sharply pointed teeth and horns.
The hair on the back of her neck stood on end and she understood why Claire was so distraught. Whoever had put the symbol there had been less than two feet from where Claire had been sleeping blissfully unaware that danger lurked so close. The realization that the group had quite literally been at their mercy imparted an even greater malevolence to the image.
Some instinct, some long-buried sixth sense, caused Annja to turn and look at the front of her own tent.
A similar image stared evilly back at her.
“It’s on mine, as well,” Hugo said, and a glance in that direction showed Annja that he was correct.
The implications were staggering.
Turning back to face Hugo, Annja asked, “Is she hurt?”
Hugo opened his mouth to reply but to Annja’s surprise it was Claire who answered.
“I’m all right,” she said. “Just a bit of a shock.”
From her tone Annja could tell that Claire was irritated with her own loss of control, and that was a good sign. She’d be steadier the next time they encountered something unexpected.
And there would be a next time, Annja knew. It was becoming increasingly obvious that someone didn’t want them here, and whoever they were, they weren’t afraid to show it.
“Where’s Marcos?”
The implication of Hugo’s question was realized when Annja felt the cold hand of dread squeeze her spine. Marcos’s tent stood next to hers, and as she spun around to face it, she saw that the flaps were closed and free of any markings.
The absence of the image that marred all their other tents only deepened her concern.
She stepped over to the entrance to his tent and saw that the flaps were unzipped. She pulled the right one aside and stuck her head inside to take a look.
The tent was empty.
Annja supposed he might have gotten up early and gone for a walk, maybe try to hunt down something fresh for breakfast, but then she spied that his boots still stood next to each other at the end of his sleeping bag, ready to be pulled on when he awakened that morning.
Who goes for a walk in the jungle in bare feet?
She turned to find the others had joined her and were now looking inside, as well.
Upon seeing the empty tent, Hugo cursed vehemently.
“I knew it!” he said.
“Do you think they have him?”
Annja could only shrug; she didn’t even know who “they” were and she said as much.
She stepped away from the tent, into the center of the camp, and turned in a slow circle, surveying the jungle surrounding them. She was looking for some hint, some clue, as to what they were dealing with.
She couldn’t imagine one man overpowering Marcos, never mind doing it so quietly that none of them had been disturbed from their sleep. There had to have been at least two, maybe more. With that many people involved, chances were good that they’d left some evidence of their passing behind them, especially if they were dragging an unconscious Marcos between them, but there was nothing. No marks in the dirt. No broken or even bent branches or foliage.
It was just like the afternoon before.
Whoever these people were, they moved like ghosts.
Annja shook off the thought and addressed the others. “Marcos is pretty heavy, so maybe they didn’t take him far. He might still be right here somewhere, just out of sight of the camp. Why don’t the two of you search in that direction,” she said, pointing upstream past the waterfall, “and I’ll head this way. If you don’t find any sign of him within fifteen minutes, turn back and regroup here.”
“We’d better find him,” Hugo said, “or somebody’s going to pay.”
He grabbed the rifle from his tent, and he and Claire headed toward the waterfall and the pool at its base, calling Marcos’s name as they went.
Annja waited until they were out of sight and then called her sword to hand and headed off in the other direction. Splitting up at a time like this was a calculated risk; if there was someone out there, still watching them, Annja had just made herself a convenient target. On the other hand, they could cover much more territory if they split up and she, at least, was used to dealing with confrontations with those who had less than her best interests at heart. Putting Hugo and Claire together was a natural combination and created the best set of circumstances that they could hope for in a time like this.
She could hear Hugo’s voice carrying on the light breeze, calling for Marcos, but Annja didn’t do the same. For one, she didn’t want Claire or Hugo to confuse her cries for those of Marcos looking for help, and two, she didn’t want to give whoever might be out there any notice that she was on her way.
Whoever they were, they’d messed with her and those under her charge one too many times. Now it was time for payback.
In the end, it was Annja who found him.
She was moving through the trees, looking for signs that someone had come through this way before her, when she heard the snarl of a large cat.
Jaguar, she thought.
She was about to head in the other direction, intentionally avoiding a confrontation with the local wildlife, when the thought reared up in the forefront of her brain.
Jaguar!
The cat’s hunting cry came again and she took off at a run in the direction she thought it had come from, leading with her sword arm as she went.
Seconds later she came upon a small grove of ceiba trees, each one easily eight to twelve feet in diameter, with large, coiling roots that rose in hoops and swirls like the back of a sea serpent.
Annja’s gaze was drawn to the base of one tree in particular, where, pacing back and forth in front of the trunk and looking upwar
d, was one of the largest jaguars she’d ever seen.
The cat hadn’t seen her yet, so she followed the direction of its gaze with her own, curious what it found so interesting. She gasped when she saw what it was looking at.
Marcos had been strung up against the trunk of the tree several feet in the air, his arms and legs spread-eagled and he was lashed to the tree with ropes made from vines. His head lolled against his chin, unmoving, his eyes were closed and his entire form was so covered in blood that Annja thought he’d been skinned alive when she first laid eyes upon him. She wondered why he hadn’t cried out until she saw the gag that had been stuffed in his mouth and tied around at the back of his head to keep it in place.
To Annja, Marcos looked dead.
To the cat, however, he probably looked like an easy dinner, especially with all that blood, and the beast was none too happy about Annja’s sudden appearance. It snarled a warning, a keening scream that sent the jungle around them into silence as the other creatures recognized the cry of the predator on the hunt.
Annja was tempted to scream right back at it, but she settled for bringing her sword around in the ready stance and grinning at the feisty feline.
In response, the cat lowered its front half to the ground, its face mere inches above the earth, its eyes locked on hers as its tail twitched back and forth.
“Here, kitty, kitty,” Annja taunted, and the fire of battle rose in her heart as the cat charged at the sound of her voice.
20
The jaguar was a beautiful specimen, about one hundred and fifty kilograms of rippling golden-brown muscle covered with a pattern of black rosettes that undulated as it ran. It had yellow eyes and a dark tail that lashed back and forth in anger.
She hated to kill such a glorious creature but she didn’t see how she was going to be able to chase it off. It saw her as the interloper in its meal; perhaps even the meal itself now, and it was going to fight to protect the same.
The cat bounded toward her on large padded feet that allowed it to move almost soundlessly, and Annja knew that if she caught a swipe of one of those massive paws across just about anywhere, she was in a host of trouble.
