THE EXTRACTOR

by J. T. Brannan

  And then he saw them, half-hidden in the foliage.

  Men, by the side of the river, semi-naked, spears held high, eyes threatening as they observed him silently drifting down the waterway.

  Out of the frying pan, he sighed to himself internally, and into the fire . . .

  Chapter Seven

  Lee walked down a narrow trail through the forest, clothes and shoes soaking wet, all of his weapons and equipment lost; ahead and behind him were three tribesmen, all armed with short, javelin-type spears. From their appearance – tall and lean, teeth gleaming in the weak forest light – Lee could only surmise that he had found the tribe he’d been looking for. Or, rather, they’d found him. The only question now – other than if they were marching him somewhere just to execute him in a more dramatic or ceremonial location – was whether the research group had also found them.

  He hoped he would soon find out.

  The tribesmen – who he’d at first expected to throw their spears at him, a sitting duck in the water – had thrown vines in for him, and helped to pull him out. They’d not spoken to him, perhaps realizing he wouldn’t understand them, and they had merely encouraged Lee to fall into step with them through only the very feintest of gestures with their sharply-tipped spears.

  Back in the water, Lee had considered swimming to the other bank, but he thought they would only follow him, and be angry when they caught him. He’d also thought about going on the attack when they pulled him out, but his hand was stayed for two reasons – one, that they’d just helped him; and two, that he needed them. If they were who he thought they were, then he wanted to go wherever they were taking him, as the people he was searching for might – just might – also be there, and he couldn’t pass up the opportunity to find out.

  Lee couldn’t believe how densely packed the trees were in this particular area, and understood why these people had managed to remain hidden for so long. For oil prospectors and loggers, the area was – for the time being, at least – too remote to make profitable, too difficult to explore properly. And for the gangs looking for drug-running routes, or locations to set up hidden labs, there was a fine line between a location which was hidden, and one which was all-but-inaccessible.

  Lee wondered where they were going, and how long it would take to get there; what light there was, was starting to fade, and he knew dusk would be upon them soon. Due to the canopy, days inside the rainforest could be surprisingly short, with darkness falling regularly by four o’clock.

  They came to a stop only a few moments later, and for the first time, Lee could hear the familiar sound of voices – adults chatting, children crying and laughing, the noises distant and faint but definitely recognizable. They were too distant to make out words, but there seemed to be a mix of dialects and speech patterns – one definitely indigenous, tribal and barely recognizable, the other much more familiar.

  It was the strident, confident and entirely familiar tones of Americans.

  Yes, he thought, listening harder, and with growing excitement, it has to be!

  But where were they? He couldn’t see anything through the tightly-packed trees, couldn’t make out anywhere that might be a camp or village. And yet the sounds were growing louder, the voices clearer, and they seemed to be coming now from all around him.

  Where were they?

  And then Lee sensed sudden movement above him, and he pivoted clear as a vine dropped into the space next to him, others dropping nearby, in close proximity. The nearest tribesmen looked at Lee with what appeared to be a smile, as if to congratulate him for avoiding the vine, and then pointed upward.

  Lee followed the finger, and traced the exceptionally long vines as they wound their way upward into the treetops, where he could also see . . .

  Damn.

  Huts. There were damned huts up there, in the trees, and Lee suddenly understood another reason why this tribe was all but unknown.

  The sound of American voices filled him with hope, that the people he had traveled so far to rescue were still alive, against all the odds.

  Subconsciously, he touched the watch that Darrow had given him, wondering if he was going to get a chance to give it to Lisa Garfield, as a symbol of love, of hope, of emotions and feelings that were so desperately needed in the world.

  The three men in front of him tucked their spears away into the belt-type garments they wore from shoulder to hip, which strapped the weapons to their backs, leaving their hands free to climb, and Lee watched as they started to pull themselves up the surrounding trees, planting their feet against the trunks and walking as they went hand-over-hand on the vines.

  The man who was still stood next to him gestured upward again, and Lee knew that was his instruction to follow the others. And so he took hold of the vine that had almost hit him – presumably thrown down by the villagers above – and started to climb.

  Although he knew he should be nervous – he had no idea what was waiting for him up there – the fact was, he couldn’t wait to find out.

  When Lee got to the top, arms and shoulders aching from the climb, he took in the surroundings as quickly as he could, all too aware of the failing light. The area was a treetop village, huts linked by walkways suspended beneath the canopy, maybe seventy or eighty feet above the forest floor. It was an incredible sight, and even if he was killed now, he was glad to have seen it.

  Not that he had any intention of letting them kill him, of course; if they tried, they’d soon regret it, even outnumbered as he was. But even though the men kept their spears on him, he didn’t get the impression that they were desperate for a confrontation; rather, it was for self-defense, and they were taking precautions with him until they could establish who he was, and what his intentions were.

  It was hard to make out who was who, people spread out throughout the treetops in individual huts, some large, some small, all obviously serving some sort of purpose for the community. Although he couldn’t immediately see each structure, he imagined there must be residential huts, places for cooking, perhaps even some sort of areas that served ceremonial purposes.

  The other men came up behind him then, and – the six-man escort once again complete – they gestured with their spears, and continued the march.

  Lee walked across the platform they’d climbed onto – obviously the main way in and out of the camp – and across a narrow and precarious-looking bridge to the next tree along, which housed a hut that Lee soon realized was a security center, almost like a border post.

  Two hard-eyed, angry-looking men regarded him coolly, looking him up and down, before speaking to the escorts. One of the men responded, and a brief, violent discussion ensued that Lee couldn’t understand a word of. But eventually, one of the security men turned and left the hut out of the opposite side, venturing deeper into the elevated village.

  Lee waited with the others in silence, wondering if the man had gone to get a more senior tribal member, maybe even the chief himself, if this group had one. Hell, they might have a working parliamentary democracy for all he knew.

  Five minutes later, the man returned, and it wasn’t with the chief; instead, the person he had with him was white, American, female, and well-known to Lee from the file Dunford had provided.

  It was Gale Rhodes, team leader of the expedition, and Lee’s heart soared when he saw her, final confirmation that he was in the right place, that the team – or part of it at least – was still alive.

  Part Three

  Chapter One

  “Gale,” Lee said as he saw her approach, “thank heavens you’re alive.”

  “American?” she asked, eyes opening wide.

  Lee nodded, and she burst forward, hugging him tight, despite his bedraggled appearance. He hugged her back, or tried to, at least; but at a nod of the security guards, two of the spearman moved forward and separated them.

  “I’ve been sent by the university,” Lee said, before he could be silenced. “To get you.”

  Gale looked at him doubtfully
, eyes roving up and down. “You?” she said, and Lee didn’t take offence. He realized how it looked. “Just you?”

  Lee shrugged. “University budgets are tight these days, I guess.”

  Gale laughed, and the sound was pleasant; but the guards started barking at her, and she soon stopped.

  “They want to know why you’re here,” she said.

  “You understand them?” Lee asked. He knew from her file that – in addition to her medical qualifications – she was a formidable linguist who had already spent some time with the indigenous tribes of Brazil, one of the reasons that she had been selected as team leader.

  “A little,” she said. “What I’ve managed to pick up since we’ve been here, however many days that is. It has some similarities to a couple of other so-called ‘uncontacted’ tribes in the area, but it’s fairly unique, actually.”

  “Ten days,” Lee said.

  “What’s ten days?” Gale asked.

  “Since your last contact. Ten days.”

  “Hm. Seems a lot longer, somehow. It –”

  There were more barks from the guards, and Gale spoke back to them in the same fashion.

  “Don’t worry about them,” she said. “Their bark is worse than their bite. Although . . .”

  “What? Is everyone on the team still okay?”

  “My team is,” Gale said. “A couple of them are injured, another one ill with dysentery, but still alive.”

  “The guides?”

  “They’re gone,” Gale said. “They left when we met the tribe, thought it was bad luck to stay. They’re walking, they’re probably not even home yet.”

  “They know where this place is?” Lee asked.

  Gale shook her head. “They got us as far as the river, then left,” she said. “That was enough for them.”

  “The hunters?” Lee asked next.

  Gale shrugged. “Well, I know I said their bark is worse than their bite, but . . . well, they do have tempers. But then again, when they met us on the river, the hunters did what their instincts told the, I suppose.”

  “They went for their guns?”

  Gale nodded. “And they both ended up with several spears sticking out of them. The rest of us were pretty compliant after that.”

  “I bet.”

  There were more questions from the guards, and Gale responded. The conversation – strained due to the lack of a common language – lasted quite some time, but eventually Gale turned back to him.

  “I told him who you were, that you’ve been sent to take us back. But they’re a suspicious lot, as you can tell, so a higher authority needs to get involved.”

  “I’m going to meet the chief?” Lee asked with a smile.

  “Yes,” Gale confirmed with a smile of her own, “you’re going to meet the chief.”

  The chief’s hut was indeed the nicest – and largest – that he’d seen, and the man even had a throne of sorts, a small hammock-seat made of interwoven vines.

  The man was about forty, and in rude good health. He had no adornments that marked him out as chief, but everyone was clearly subservient to him, respecting whatever authority he wielded.

  “He welcomes you to his village,” Gale said, after a barked greeting from the chief.

  “Please tell him that it’s an honor to be here,” Lee said, and listened as Gale translated for him.

  The chief spoke again. “He asks, if you’re here to rescue us, how do you intend to get us back home?” Her eyes twinkled. “And I must admit, I was kind of curious about that myself.”

  “Helicopter,” Lee said, hoping that it was true.

  “How will it find us?” Gale asked, once again translating for the chief.

  “He knows what a helicopter is?” Lee asked.

  “We’ve had some cultural exchanges,” Gale answered. “He gets the basic idea, anyway.”

  “Well,” Lee said, answering the chief’s question, “we’ve got a plane sweeping the area twice a day. Now that I’ve lost my communications, I’m going to signal it with smoke, and then they’ll drop us a radio or sat-phone to our location. We’ll then make a call, and wait for extraction.”

  She translated for the chief, seeming to struggle with most of the words and having to resort to hand gestures for some of them. “Where will it land?” Gale asked next, a question of her own, the chief not having spoken.

  “We might have to get winched up,” Cole admitted. “Landing pads are in short supply around here, unfortunately.”

  “Tell me about it,” Gale said with a smile.

  The chief spoke again. “He says you are welcome to leave at any time, as are we. He only asks that we make the signal from outside the boundaries of the river, on the far side and well away from this location.”

  “Tell him that this will be no problem.”

  Gale translated, and the chief smiled, clapped his hands, and spoke again. “He also says that there is nothing more to be done tonight, as the sun will be down soon and we can’t go anywhere, and so he asks you to stay as his guest, and eat with us.”

  “Please tell him that he is very kind, and it would be my honor to accept.”

  After a day like this, Lee told himself, some food and rest would be very welcome.

  Chapter Two

  “Where are the other two?” Lee asked as he sat cross-legged on a large platform that seemed to function as a communal dining facility. There was a fire in the middle, and Lee sat with Gale and another three members of the research team, with other members of the tribe stretched around the platform in a large circle, the chief sitting between them.

  “Lisa has dysentery,” Gale said, “and Jake’s looking after her. He’s one of the injured ones, he’s got a broken ankle and he’s finding it pretty hard to get around.”

  Lee nodded his head, hand going reflexively to the watch when he heard Lisa’s name. He knew he would have to go and see her after dinner, tell her that Sylvia hadn’t forgotten her.

  “How’s she doing?” Lee asked, concerned that she would struggle with the extraction, if it involved being winched up into a helicopter. It had already been decided with the chief that he would be taken at first light to a safe location where they would help him signal Silva. Lee assumed that – if Phoenix and Marcus were on top of things – he’d already have the sat-phone or radio with him, and it would be dropped immediately. With the help of the locals, he would find the drop-site, radio or call through to Phoenix, and arrange the chopper extraction for that same day, if possible.

  “Getting better,” Gale said.

  “Good. How about Jake? Do you think he’s gonna be able to make it to the chopper?”

  Gale shrugged. “He’s going to need some help.”

  Lee nodded. “You said you had two injured. Who’s the other one?”

  “Eva,” Gale said, motioning past the flames of the roaring fire at a woman sitting on the other side. “Ligaments in her knee. She’s getting around on a makeshift crutch, but again, she’s going to need help.”

  “Okay,” Lee said, gesturing at the tribe members sat around the open dining area. “We might be able to get some of these guys to help us. If not, we’ll have to do it ourselves.”

  Gale nodded. “We can do that,” she confirmed.

  Lee was presented with a plate made of thick leaves, a mixture of fruit and fresh fish on it, presumably caught from the nearby river by the guys with the spears. He smiled and gratefully accepted it, picking up the food with his fingers and tucking in, the villagers looking on in approval.

  “It’s good,” Lee told Gale in between mouthfuls.

  “We can’t complain,” Gale said. “They’ve been good hosts. Well, since they killed those two guys, anyway.”

  “So, what happened, anyway? Where’s your equipment, your radios?”

  Gale received her own leaf-plate and took a mouthful of fish before answering. “The tribespeople destroyed it,” she said. “The fact was, they didn’t trust it. They found us in a boat on the river – the g
uides had packed inflatable canoes, which we carried through the forest – and the two guys from Manaus went crazy, grabbed their guns and started shooting. The tribesmen scattered, then came back and counter-attacked with arrows and spears.”

  “Yeah,” said another of the group, who Lee recognized as Stephen Roberts from the file photographs, “we thought we’d had it, man, we really did. We were terrified.”

  “Probably the worst few minutes of my life,” Eva added. “In fact, not just ‘probably’. Definitely.”

  “It’s lucky they were such good shots,” Gale said. “They killed the hunters, and then -maybe seeing we didn’t have weapons – they left us alive.”

  “But that first hour, we were all convinced we were going to be killed,” commented the last member of the research team by the fire, Greg Karlson, “just the same as the hunters, spears and arrows sticking out all over us like pincushions.”

  “There was a lot of shouting,” Gale remembered, “and they broke and smashed everything we had with us – radios, phones, supplies, medical kits, research equipment, computers, GPS, everything.”

  “I remember thinking,” Karlson said, “that they might as well have killed us. I mean, without comms back to the outside world, how they hell were we ever going to get back? How the hell was anyone ever going to find us?”

  “How did you find us?” Eva asked.

  “Luck,” Lee had to admit. “A bit of planning, but a lot of luck.”

  “But there’s just one of you,” Roberts observed, “and you’ve got no equipment or supplies either. I mean, what’s the plan?”

  Lee outlined it for them, and they all sat in silence for a few moments as they considered it.

  “Well, hell,” said Karlson eventually. “It’s better than nothing, right?”

  Everyone laughed, nodding in agreement. “Yeah,” Gale agreed, “it’s definitely better than nothing. Although a part of me wishes we could stay longer.”