"I've been thinking about the man in the jungle," she said. "I would guess he's a member of some offshoot of the Chachapoya tribe. The shape of his eyes was almost Caucasian, and he was significantly taller than most indigenous Peruvians. Those were the trademarks of the Chachapoya people. Some historical accounts even referred to them as 'white.' Or I could totally be off-base. Without being able to see his clothes or the structure of his facial bones---or anything for that matter---I can only speculate. But here's what I know. We can't be very far from the rest of his tribe. They must have a village within walking distance, and I'd be surprised if it's more than a day or two out."
"It could be in any number of directions," Colton said. "We could be heading in the complete opposite direction."
"Which would make the village somewhere near the mouth of the river where we camped last night. That's always a possibility, but I'm not inclined to think so. Granted, very few people travel that river. I just don't see any indigenous tribe staying so close to civilization. To remain autonomous, they would need a less accessible region, and one not visible from the air. That means they're ensconced in either a heavily-forested section of the jungle, or like their ancestors, they've built their village on the steep face of a tree-covered mountain. I favor the latter."
"Then it could be anywhere," Leo said. "Hell, with as thick as this jungle is, we could be walking past it right now for all we know."
"True," Sam said. "All I'm saying is that we need to be prepared for the possibility that we might stumble right into it, or come close enough that we could invite aggression."
"Or we could be walking away from it, and soon enough our company will grow weary of watching us do nothing and return to report back to their elders or whatever," Colton said.
"You could be absolutely right. I still think we should have a plan in place should we encounter the village, though. They may not ordinarily be hostile, but a bunch of strangers---especially white strangers---wandering into their midst could startle them to action."
"Who's to say they wouldn't welcome us with open arms?"
"Is that a chance you're willing to take?" Sam asked, looking first at Leo, then at Colton, emphasizing the question with her raised eyebrows.
"We're prepared for anything that comes our way," Colton said.
"We'd better be," Sam said. She glanced back over her shoulder into the dark jungle. "Can't you feel it? Something's wrong. The rainforest is too still, too quiet. There's something out there. Something's going to happen and all of the animals know better than to be around when it does."
IV
10:07 p.m.
The sun had nearly set by the time they reached a suitable spot to pitch camp, although under the nearly impenetrable canopy, darkness had settled over them long before. Had there been enough light to continue stumbling through the snarls of shrubbery and vines, even at a snail's pace, they would have gladly done so. An uneasy pall had descended over the lot of them. They could all feel it. Merritt was out of his element here, but even he had quickly recognized it, and once he had, the feeling became impossible to shake. The entire tropical rainforest had grown silent. No longer did strikingly-colored birds dart from tree to tree. No monkeys cavorted in the upper reaches of the branches. Even the occasional white-tailed deer failed to bound across their path. Eyelash vipers still dangled like vines from above them, and tegus and whiptails still popped up from time to time, though in nowhere near the same numbers. Only the mosquitoes and flies appeared unfazed, their ranks swelling with each passing mile.
Merritt was not one to be swayed by superstition, despite the genuine fear he could see in the eyes of their guides, but he trusted his instincts. And right now they were telling him that something definitely was not right.
They had found another light gap, though this one was only a fraction of the size of the last. The tree that created it must have fallen quite some time ago. The saplings were already taller than he was. Soon enough, they would close off the welcome view of the waxing moon and constellations. There was a small section where the trees had been hacked away to make room for a campfire. The trunk of a ceiba tree had been carved with Hunter's initials and the date that Leo had last spoken to him, which meant that they were only a few days away from their ultimate destination.
Merritt wondered if Gearhardt's son had felt a similar preternatural disquiet when he camped here.
Gearhardt and Colton sat apart from the others, conspiring in whispers. They scrutinized their maps, compared their current position to the GPS data on the handheld unit, and plotted the course ahead. Their four associates patrolled the overgrown perimeter, no longer maintaining the charade of being simply the hired excavation help. They didn't carry their weapons out in the open, but neither did they allow their hands to stray far from their holsters. He had seen one of the automatic pistols they carried. They weren't the kind one could pick up at a sporting goods store. SIG Sauer only dealt such heavy artillery to law enforcement agencies and the military. Considering he was armed with nothing more threatening than a Swiss Army knife, he drew a measure of comfort from the fact that someone had his back, even if he didn't trust them in the slightest. There was definitely more to the situation than any of them was willing to admit. Merritt sensed there were ulterior motives in play here. He had a pretty good grasp on the force driving Leo, but what was in it for Colton and his men beyond a simple paycheck? There had to be something else up there in those peaks, more than just the missing members of Hunter's party. What had that expedition originally been dispatched to find?
The wind shifted directions and assaulted him with smoke from the fire. He coughed and scooted down the fallen log toward the fresh air. Twenty-four hours ago, he would have reveled in the smoke, regardless of how badly it burned in his chest, but now that he had smeared Sam's concoction over every uncovered inch of his skin, he no longer had anything to fear from the mosquitoes. He smelled like he'd rolled in his grandmother's herb garden and the tackiness on his flesh took some getting used to, yet it was a small price to pay for a respite from the pain.
The birdman sat beside him, twirling a feather by the quill. All of his concentration was focused on the feather and his lips moved along with his unvoiced thoughts. His brow furrowed and he gnawed unconsciously on the inside of his lower lip. The campfire reflected from his glasses.
"Aren't you going to name the species for me?" Merritt asked.
Galen obviously didn't pick up on the sarcasm.
"I wish I could," he whispered, still turning it over and over as though the answer could be ascertained from motion.
"I was beginning to think you knew everything there was to know about every bird in the rainforest."
"No chance of that. I could probably identify just about every genera, and half of the thousands of species. Except this one. And raptors are my specialty."
"What makes this one so unique then?" Merrit asked. Not that he was genuinely intrigued, but he figured the opportunity to razz the birdman might momentarily amuse him.
"Everything about it. The background color, the strange iridescence. Even the calamus has an unusual tapered shape. There are no downy barbs, and one would expect to see a small amount of skin surrounding the proximal umbilicus where the feather plugs into the wing, but in this case, there isn't any."
"All feathers look alike to me. Some are obviously longer and more colorful than others. I don't understand why you're beating yourself up over this. It's just a feather after all."
"Just a feather? I found this near the remains of the jaguar. It's from the exact same species as the feathers that were in Hunter Gearhardt's possession when he died. This bird had been standing precisely where I stood, and I'm still no closer to identifying it than I was when we left."
"I'm sure you'll get it," Merritt said. He rose and clapped the man on the shoulder. The pudgy little guy was getting himself way too worked up. It was starting to make Merritt uncomfortable.
He walked away from the
fire and toward his tent. The exhaustion set in with a dull ache that he could feel all the way into his bones. Perhaps it was time to call it a day. He'd just slip off behind a tree, drain his bladder, and pass out for a few hours until they roused him before sunrise to put him to work again.
On the other side of a tree with roots that formed a skeletal teepee around the trunk, he unzipped and sighed. Fluid trickled through the leaves. He leaned his head back and looked up toward the night sky. A single star twinkled through a tiny gap between the rustling branches. Something skittered over his right shoe. He flinched and hosed down his left shin in his hurry to flick it away.
"Son of a---" he started, but his words died when he caught a hint of movement through the trees.
He could clearly see the silhouette of a man against the foliage.
Merritt held perfectly still while he weighed his options. If the man had wanted to kill him, he'd be dead already. So what did that mean? He slowly zipped up his pants and continued to face straight ahead while he monitored the shadow from the corner of his eye. Was it the same native Jay had captured on film earlier? If so, and they had nothing to fear from this silent watcher, then perhaps the time had come to make contact.
Cautiously, he turned until he faced the man, raised his hand in greeting, and took a step toward the silhouette.
The man retreated deeper into the darkness. Merritt caught the faint reflection of firelight from the whites of two narrowed eyes.
"I'm not going to hurt you," Merritt said. He walked forward, both hands where they could be easily seen.
Another step and he was nearly close enough to reach out and grab the man, who shrunk back into a cluster of shrubs. The outline of a bow protruded from behind the man's right shoulder like the broken wing of an angel. He could barely discern the feathered ends of the arrows in the quiver over the opposite shoulder.
In one swift motion, the native sprinted toward the jungle to Merritt's right.
Instinctively, Merritt lunged for the man, but only managed to grab a handful of wool from his skirt.
A rustle of leaves and a few soft footsteps on the detritus, and the native was gone, a ghost vanishing into the ether.
No, definitely not a ghost.
Merritt brushed the wiry wool from his right palm and walked toward the clump of saplings through which the man had disappeared. His left foot kicked something on the ground. With one final glance at the jungle, he stooped, picked up the object, and headed back toward the campfire.
As he neared, he studied what appeared to be a leather satchel cinched closed by a drawstring. He opened it and fished around in the contents until his fingers settled over something hard and metallic.
He stepped from the forest into the firelight and held up what looked like a miniature pickaxe. One end was sharp, the other blunted.
A rock hammer.
He caught Leo's stare from where the older man sat on a log by the flames in time to see the expression of pain wash over his face.
V
10:32 p.m.
Colton turned the satchel over and over in his lap. It was the dried stomach of some large animal, easily identifiable by the telltale horn shape and the coarse rugae lining the inside. He couldn't bear to look at Leo, who stared helplessly between the small hammer and the shadowed wilderness, where the hired crew tromped through the underbrush in search of tracks they would never find. Dahlia and Jay followed them in hopes of capturing the native on film, which saved him the trouble of having to run them off for attempting to memorialize Leo's suffering. There were probably consolatory words that should be said, but he didn't know any of them. Instead, he scrutinized the remaining contents of the native's bag. There were several arrowheads, dried lengths of jerked meat, and two irregular clumps of what he had at first erroneously believed to be clods of mud. He broke one open and inspected it more closely. At the center of the sphere was a small chunk of something metallic. It was an amalgam of some sort, part reddish and flaking, the remainder a smoky gray. The outer portion that had been packed around the odd core was composed of clay that had been mixed with metal shavings. He brought it closer to the fire. The flecks glinted of silver and copper.
"Well, what do you know?" he said out loud.
"What is it?" Galen asked from behind him. Colton didn't realize he had drawn an audience.
"See this outer layer? Those metal shavings are copper and magnesium." He pinched off some of the clay and carefully set it on one of the branches in the fire. After a moment, a fierce greenish-white glare enveloped the clay like a birthing star. It faded quickly to nothing again. "And this chunk of metal in the center? The red portion is iron oxide, more commonly known as rust. The grayish part is aluminum. Together they form an incendiary compound called thermite." He crumbled off a section and threw it into the flames.
"Nothing happened," Galen said after a long moment.
"Right. That's because the temperature required for the auto-ignition of thermite is higher than the fire can generate alone. But throw in the magnesium as a fuse..."
He wadded up the ball again and dropped it into the fire.
It smoked and smoldered before the magnesium flare blazed again. A heartbeat later, the thermite ignited with a brilliant expulsion of light and heat. The logs in the campfire incinerated and the blinding glow eclipsed the flames.
Galen stumbled backward and fell onto his rear end with a gasp.
Colton chuckled and moved away from the fire. His shins already ached from the searing heat.
Powdered rust and aluminum combined to form a flash powder that burned extremely hot and fast. He had never experimented with them in this rock-like form. Was it created through come sort of metallic precipitation process?
"You could have at least warned me," Galen said. He picked himself up and dusted off his backside.
Colton smirked.
The thermite continued to burn.
They were dealing with some very smart natives. And while that in itself didn't trouble him, something else did. Why in the world did an aboriginal tribe in the middle of nowhere need incendiary devices?
VI
10:44 p.m.
Once the intense heat and flames had diminished enough to comfortably approach, Leo had taken a seat on the fallen trunk by the fire. He clung to the rock hammer as though his life depended on it. Whatever semblance of control he had once maintained over his emotions was now gone. Tears rolled down his cheeks and his hands trembled, yet he refused to allow this development to break him. Instead, he poured all of his sorrow and pain into a burbling cauldron of rage. He squeezed the miniature hammer so hard his knuckles cracked. He had finally discovered what happened to his son. Rather than this newfound knowledge allowing for even a small measure of closure, it widened the chasm that had been torn inside of him.
"Are you one hundred percent sure it's Hunter's?" Colton asked. The tone of his voice expressed not doubt, but the solemn need for confirmation. They both knew the ramifications of such verification.
"Estwing Supreme Light Weight Rock Pick. Customized leather grip. I bought him an entire set as a graduation gift when he finished his doctorate," Leo said. "I even had them engraved with his initials."
He tilted the sharp hammer so that Colton could see the HSG in flowery script.
Colton rose without another word and struck off away from the camp toward where his men combed the surrounding area. Flashlights strobed between trees and diffused into the impregnable snarls of shrubs and vines as they searched for the painted native.
They were never going to find him. Not until he wanted to be found.
The man knew this jungle far better than any of them and had spent his entire life avoiding detection. At the same time, Leo was certain that he wouldn't run either. He was a specter capable of hiding in their midst, and he was still somewhere out there.
Watching.
His thoughts returned to his son. What happened during Hunter's final days before his body was dumped in the
river?
He had to piece together that seventy-two hour span, during which Hunter had obviously reached his quarry, as evidenced by the placers in his rucksack.
And it all started with this hammer.
During his last satellite communication, Hunter had made no mention of natives, nor had he so much as hinted that he suspected his party was being followed, which meant that the natives had shown themselves for the first time after that fateful call and before the next was scheduled the following evening. That left a twenty-four-hour window of opportunity for ambush, and another forty-eight that would prove to be the final two days of his son's life. The only variable he could rule out with any sort of certainty was that Hunter's terminal wounds had not been inflicted by arrows based on the ME's assessment that the object with which he'd been stabbed had been hooked.
He heard one of the men holler to the others from somewhere out of sight, but when no further shouting or gunfire ensued, he returned his gaze to the orphaned rock pick.
"They didn't kill him," Sam said. Leo hadn't heard her approach. She stood to the side of the fire with an empathetic expression on her drawn face, and gestured to the trunk beside him. "Do you mind?"
Leo shook his head and she eased onto the log beside him. Had she been anyone else, he would have told her to leave him alone, but she was his link to the past, and in many ways an extension of the memories of his son. He cherished the years he had spent in pursuit of fortune and adventure with this grown woman's deceased father, the best friend he had ever had. He missed the challenge, the camaraderie, the feeling of belonging to a family. Ever since his wife left him and his son went off to college, he had felt an emptiness that couldn't be filled, only ignored by throwing himself into the conquest of the business world. And now, here he was again, no wife, no son, sitting with the adult version of the pigtailed child from a better time, who undoubtedly despised him nearly as much as he despised himself.
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