"How can you be so sure?" Leo asked.
"Because he drowned," Sam said. "At least that's what you told me..."
Leo looked quickly at her from the corner of his eye. She had turned to face him so she could scrutinize his reaction. It had been a test, and he had failed miserably. He shook his head and inwardly chastised himself.
"What haven't you told me?" she asked in little more than a whisper. "How did Hunter really die?"
"He drowned, Sam. Just like I said."
"You're lying."
Leo shifted so that he faced her. She reminded him so much of her mother, but at the same time, her father's inquisitive spark shined behind her eyes like the lamp in a police interrogation room. And if she were anything like her old man, she wasn't going to let this drop without some small concession. At least for now.
"He did drown, Sam. Two medical examiners worked the autopsy, and I made sure I was standing right there to watch it. That's the God's honest truth. But you know as well as I do that Hunter was an excellent swimmer. You two grew up in jungles just like this one, swimming in rivers and lakes filled with any number of things that could probably have killed you on any given day. I just can't seem to swallow the idea of accidental drowning. Can you?"
Sam looked away and didn't answer. Perhaps she feared wounding an old man who had lost his only child, or maybe a part of her had suspected as much all along. He hadn't been forced to divulge the truth, but had given her something to think about until he eventually had to come clean about the stab wounds. She would hate him when that time came, but she probably already did anyway.
"Do you want to know what I think?" Sam finally asked after a long moment of silence.
Leo nodded. He could see the camera crew hovering on the far side of the campfire, presumably waiting for him to set down the hammer long enough for them to film it. While he admired their tenacity, and had brought them along specifically for this purpose, he had the urge to bludgeon them both with it.
"I don't think the natives intend to harm us," Sam said. "They've undoubtedly had ample opportunity to do so already. And Merritt said the man he saw had a bow and arrows. They could have easily picked us off from the cover of the trees a hundred times over, especially considering how accurate they would have to be in order to survive out here for so long." She paused. "I do, however, think that the man made sure he was seen. They've followed us this far without us noticing. They could have continued like that for a long time. He wanted Merritt to see him, to see his weapon. I believe it was a message of sorts."
"A message? What was he trying to purvey? That if we don't turn back they'll shoot us?"
"Perhaps, but they've already had infinite chances to do so already. If they wanted us dead, they never would have betrayed their presence."
Her theory made sense, yet it did little to calm the turmoil inside of him. True, any marksman of the caliber she suggested could easily have sniped them from a distance, invisible in the forest. The problem remained that these people had come in direct contact with his son, and now he was dead.
"Hey," Merritt called from the edge of the forest. He jogged over to where they sat. "Have either of you seen our guides? No one can remember seeing them since shortly after nightfall. And I can't find my backpack either."
VII
11:02 p.m.
They had slowly worked their way to the periphery of the camp, remaining just within earshot, where they had waited patiently until their chance had finally come. Something had distracted the group near the fire, drawing everyone's attention, even the men who scoured the wilderness with their automatic weapons. Santos had sensed that there would be no better opportunity, and they had sprinted away through the jungle until they had traveled far enough to safely return to the path.
Only the faintest hint of moonlight permeated the canopy, but it didn't matter. They ran as fast as their tired bodies would allow, tripping and falling, only to rise and run again. Their knees and elbows bled freely through abrasions thick with dirt, and their panting breaths were the only audible sounds over their slapping, barefooted tread.
Kemen cried out. He stumbled and collapsed yet again. Santos and Naldo slowed only long enough to drag him back to his feet and jerk him forward.
Santos knew that once the men discovered they were gone, the search would commence, but only for a short while, and the hunt would be contained to the immediate area surrounding the camp. No one would stray this far to the northeast for fear of giving up hard-earned ground or sacrificing sleep. He and his friends were in the clear now, but they weren't about to slow for anything in the world.
Damn the money. The half they'd received in advance was more than enough to cover the cost of their time and gas. Besides, Santos knew now that their fare would not be returning to Pomacochas to pay the balance. As long as he and his friends escaped with their lives, that would be more than compensation enough.
While he had forgotten the tales his grandmother had spun in his youth, they had returned in startling clarity upon first sight of the jaguar's savaged carcass. He had thought the old woman mad. Her stories of winged demons in the mountains of her ancestors had always seemed designed to scare him. Even then, though, he had understood that as ridiculous as they had sounded, she had believed them. And after witnessing the carnage in that field, now so did he. There wasn't a man or animal in the entire Andes range that could run down an adult jaguar, overcome it, and tear it to shreds. Perhaps he didn't subscribe to the legend of winged demons, but there was definitely something in the jungle that he didn't want to encounter, especially in the dark.
His companions had felt it too, and the agreement to abandon their party had been struck without reservation.
The youth tripped again. This time when he landed, the shoulder strap of his backpack ripped. Its weight slammed into the back of his head and hammered his face against the ground. Kemen moaned and tried to roll over, his pitiful cries muffled by the loam. Santos stopped to help him. It was then that he noticed how fancy the backpack was. Crouching in the forest, awash with darkness, and running in the lead with the boy at his heels, he hadn't even seen it.
Now they were in real trouble.
"What is wrong with you?" Santos asked in Spanish. He wanted to strike Kemen for his foolishness, but the urge was superseded by the need to keep moving. "You should not have taken this. Now they will definitely come after us."
"Mine was falling apart," Kemen sobbed. He rolled over and blood poured from his nostrils. His nose must have broken when his face struck the earth.
"We leave it," Santos said. "When they find it, they will call off the search."
He wrenched the functional strap off of the boy's shoulder, unfastened the top flap, and dumped the contents onto the ground. Kemen's threadbare canvas satchel was buried in a pile of clothes, notebooks, dehydrated rations, and foil-backed punch-cards of medications and water purification tablets. There was also a brand new digital camera. He held it up and shook his head. The desire to beat some sense into the youth with it was overwhelming.
"This? A camera? You risk our lives so you can steal a camera?"
Tears streamed from Kemen's eyes and he blubbered something unintelligible.
"We are wasting time," Naldo said. He had to double over to catch enough breath to continue. "The forest is still too quiet. We can not afford to delay here any longer."
Santos felt the man's trembling hand on his arm and realized the truth of his words. He dropped the camera onto the clothes, grabbed Kemen's pack, and threw it down onto the boy's chest.
"Get up. We must continue. With or without you."
He turned and sprinted after Naldo, who was already twenty paces ahead on the path, a silhouette against the shadows. Either Kemen followed them or they would leave him. The boy had jeopardized their flight for a stolen camera that would only bring a handful of nuevo sol. What in the name of God had he been---?
With a crash of breaking branches, a dark shape knifed across
the path ahead, and just like that, Naldo was gone.
A scream erupted from the trees off to the left, but only for a split-second before it was cut short. It trailed into a wet gurgle that was swallowed by thrashing sounds from the underbrush. The bushes shook violently.
Abruptly, the noises ceased and the branches shivered back into place.
"What was that?" Kemen cried from behind him.
Santos held up a palm to silence the boy, who only continued to sob. He could hear nothing else. The jungle was still, the night unfettered by even the soft whoosh of a breeze. He drew a deep breath and sifted through the myriad scents: soggy earth, rotting kapok fruits, palm buds and cacao pods, and something else...the almost metallic smell of raw meat, which grew stronger with each passing second.
"Santos..." Kemen whined.
A single crackle of dead leaves to his left and Santos threw himself into a jerunga shrub to his right. He crawled toward the trunk of a massive tree framed by wooden liana vines, slipped between them, and huddled against the base of the trunk.
"Santo---!"
Another crash from the brush, but this time there was no scream. The crunching sounds grew louder, building to a ferocious crescendo, before dying as quickly as they had begun.
Santos closed his hands over his mouth to mute the sounds of his breathing. It was a futile effort. The jungle was so silent that he could still clearly hear his frantic respirations. He pressed backward until the bark bit into the bare flesh on his back. His eyes darted from side to side. He could see only darkness beyond the wooden bars of his prison.
A hawk-like shriek pierced the night from the far side of the path. A heartbeat later it was answered by another, this time from the opposite direction.
He held his breath and waited.
The only sound was the rapid thud of his pulse in his temples.
Craning his ear toward the path, he listened for even the subtle crinkle of footsteps on wet leaves.
A faint breeze caressed his cheek, bringing with it the intensified scent of bloody flesh.
Santos turned toward the source.
He didn't even have time to scream.
VIII
11:33 p.m.
"You have to see this," McMasters said.
The words snapped Tasker from his slumber. He was instantly awake.
"What is it?" he asked, donning his camouflaged jacket and slipping out through the seam in the mosquito netting over his hammock.
McMasters had already climbed out of the tent and into a small gap they had created between their tents, over which a blind of leafy branches had been constructed. Tasker followed, and found the other four men bickering in whispers. They wouldn't have roused him if it hadn't been important.
Their muddy faces were stained by the weak blue glow of the beacon on the monitor of the tracking device. McMasters looked up at him as he sat, then passed him the handheld unit.
"At twenty-two twenty-three, the beacon began to move at a rate of somewhere in the neighborhood of five miles an hour."
"Why would they break camp in the middle of the night?" Tasker asked, thinking aloud.
"We're not sure, but here's the kicker. They weren't traveling deeper into the jungle. They were heading straight back toward us."
"What do you mean 'were'?"
"The beacon's movement subsided at exactly twenty-three fifteen," McMasters said. "And it hasn't moved since."
"Not at all?"
"No, sir."
"That doesn't make any sense." Tasker paused while he tried to work it out in his head. His men had surely been trying to do the same, and when they hadn't reached a consensus, the only alternative they had seen was to wake him. "What could have spurred flight in the middle of the night, and why would they have stopped so abruptly? They sacrificed nearly half a day's progress."
And then it hit him.
The sudden and rapid movement. The stasis of the beacon for almost an hour now.
"Saddle up men," he said. "We break camp in fifteen minutes. Full night vision. We're running hot."
There was a moment of hesitation.
"They've discovered the tracking device," Tasker snapped. He shot a glance at McMasters, who seethed under the accusation. "Once they found it, they relocated it as quickly as possible, hoping to throw us off their scent. They're probably already moving out while we're wasting our time sitting here debating it."
Tasker looked at each of his men in turn. McMasters, Telford, Reubens, and Jones: four identical dark-eyed, mud-crusted interchangeable grunts. How dare they not immediately respond to a direct order.
"Move!" he snapped. "Now!"
This time the men leapt up from where they sat. Within ten minutes, all supplies were packed and all gear stowed. They hit the path in double-time with the awkward lenses strapped tightly across their foreheads. The darkness brightened in subtle shades of green and gray. Snaking roots cast uneven shadows across the path, making the ground appear to rise and fall in waves. Severed vines dangled to either side from where they'd been hacked away during the previous day.
McMasters fell back from the lead when the trail widened and spoke softly so that only Tasker could hear.
"What are the rules of engagement?"
"You are not to directly engage the targets until I give the order. We need them to lead us to the prize first. For now, this is old fashioned recon. We wait and watch. And once they've led us to the treasure, we wipe them off the face of the planet."
McMasters gave a sharp nod and jogged back to the point.
Tasker was furious that their surveillance had been discovered. He had thought McMasters the most skilled of his men, but apparently he had been wrong. Their prey had found the tracking device within twenty-four hours of its placement, which was entirely unacceptable. Now, like rabbits, they were running. As always though, Tasker was prepared for this contingency. The night vision goggles would still allow them to track their quarry, and they would be able to do so under the cover of night. Everything would still go according to plan. All this setback had cost them was sleep. Still, they were better rested and in better shape than those they pursued, who had barely slept either of the past two nights, and had surely exhausted themselves creating this path that he and his men could now traverse at more than ten times the speed with which it had been forged. They would reach the location of the tracking device shortly after sunrise, and by the time the sun set again, they would be within striking distance.
Movement from his right caught his eye. For a fraction of a second he could have sworn he'd seen the blur of a running man off in the jungle. It must have only been an illusion created by the random alignment of branches and leaves. They were professional soldiers. They would have known if anyone had even tried to get within a hundred yards of them.
He returned his focus to the path ahead, and the fortune that awaited them.
Chapter Five
I
Andes Mountains, Peru
October 28th
7:19 a.m. PET
The backpack was crumpled in the middle of the path amid the mess of its dumped contents. Crimson dots spotlighted the jumble from the thin beams of the rising sun that managed to reach through the interwoven branches. The world around them hummed as though with an electrical current. Mosquitoes swarmed over the bushes to either side of the path in greater numbers than he had ever seen in one location in his life. They covered the leaves and filled the air in roiling clouds.
He knelt beside the overturned rucksack. His men surrounded him, automatic rifles pointed into the infested jungle at the four points of the compass. The tracking device was still in the bottom of the outer left pouch where McMasters had pinned it into the lining by the single metal prong. It showed no signs of tampering or manipulation. He moved on to the former contents of the bag, and sifted through long- and short-sleeved shirts, jeans, cargo pants, socks, boxers, and a host of other personal items: toothbrush and toothpaste, eye drops, a small medical kit, and presc
riptions for Ambien, BuSpar, and Xanax. The foil punch-cards intrigued him. A sleep aid, an anti-psychotic, and an anti-anxiety/anti-depressant. Whoever the bag belonged to appeared to be a real nut job. He turned over a windbreaker and a spider the size of his hand raised its forelegs at him.
"Christ." He drew his hunting knife and impaled the creature through the thorax, pinning it to the earth. While its legs squirmed and twitched, he evaluated the sections of soil beneath it and between the proliferation of roots and weeds. There. Two distinct sets of footprints, both bare. Interesting.
Tasker yanked the blade from the spider's back, wiped it on his fatigues, and shoved it back into its sheath. He stood again and surveyed the chaos as a whole. Several feet to the west of the path, the groundcover was flattened and uprooted. Beyond were more partial footprints, spaced far enough apart to confirm what they already knew. The men had been running. The one carrying the pack must have tripped and fallen, spilling everything out of his backpack. So why hadn't he repacked his belongings and continued onward? Even an expensive digital camera remained facedown in the dirt.
He turned his attention to the swirling masses of mosquitoes. Now he needed to determine what happened to the men whose footprints terminated right here.
The smell of violated flesh and spilled blood reminded him of the scent of the bodies he had pulled out of the rubble in the aftermath of a market bombing in Baghdad during Desert Storm. It was all around him, which made it impossible to pinpoint the source. Fortunately, he didn't have to look very far. He pushed through a spear-leafed bush tangled with vines that reached the ground from the branches of the ceiba tree above it, and immediately saw the remains through the swarming insects and the carpet of them on the ground. The bones were shattered and spread out over an area ten feet square. A disarticulated foot rested closest to him, skin black, capped with the severed tendons that attached to the stub of the ankle. There was a portion of a knee here, a section of spine there. A broken ribcage crawling with bloated black flies and mosquitoes alike. He skirted the carnage until he reached what was left of the cranium. The crown had been broken to leave just the bowl of the occipital portion of the skull, which was alive with bugs feeding on the residual vessels in the membranous lining. The upper row of teeth was still attached, minus the four in the very front. The conglomeration of bones that formed the bridge of the nose and the orbits was splintered and fragmented. Tatters of clothing were draped over the surrounding branches like garlands. He looked up to see flies fighting over the droplets of blood that had dried on the undersides of the broad leaves in the lower canopy.
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