Amazonia: a novel

by James Rollins

  She glanced to her brother, suddenly glad he was here.

  A call rang out from far ahead. One of the Rangers. “We’ve reached the river!”

  As the team continued along, paralleling the river, Nathan found himself lagging behind the others. To his right, glimpses of the river peeked from the tangle of vegetation that bordered the small brown tributary. They had been following it now for almost four hours. Nathan estimated they had traveled about twelve miles. The going was slow while one of the Rangers, a corporal named Nolan Warczak, a skilled tracker, kept them on the proper trail.

  An Indian guide could have moved with more assurance and set a faster pace. But after reaching the tributary, the small Yanomamo tribesman from Wauwai had refused to go any farther. He had pointed to clear footprints in the loam that led deeper into the forest, following the watercourse.

  “You go,” he had mumbled in stilted Portuguese. “I stay here with Padre Batista.”

  So they had set off, determined to cover as much distance as possible before nightfall. But Corporal Warczak was a cautious tracker, proceeding at a snail’s pace. This left much time for Nathan to review his heated outburst with Richard Zane. It had taken him this long to cool off and consider the man’s words. Maybe he had been narrow-minded and had not considered all the factors involved.

  Off to his left, the crackle of dead twigs announced Manny’s approach. He and Tor-tor had kept a bit of distance between themselves and the rest. When the large cat was nearby the Rangers were edgy, fingering their M-16s. The only one of the unit who showed curiosity about the jaguar was Corporal Dennis Jorgensen. He accompanied Manny now, asking questions about the cat.

  “So how much does he eat in a day?” The tall corporal took off his slouch hat and swiped the sweat from his brow. He had shockingly white hair and pale blue eyes, clearly of some Nordic descent.

  Manny patted the cat. “Somewhere around ten pounds of meat, but he’s been living a pretty sedentary life with me. Out in the wild, you almost have to double that amount.”

  “And how are you going to keep feeding him out here?”

  Manny nodded to Nathan as he joined him. “He’ll have to hunt. It was the reason I brought him along.”

  “And if he fails?”

  Manny glanced to the soldiers behind them. “There’s always other sources of meat.”

  Jorgensen’s face paled a bit, then realized Manny was joking and nudged him with an elbow. “Very funny.” He fell back to join the others in his unit.

  Manny turned his attention to Nate. “So how’re you holding up? I heard about that row with Zane.”

  “I’m fine,” he said with a long sigh. Tor-tor nudged his leg with a furry muzzle, and Nate scratched the jaguar behind the ear. “Just feeling damn foolish.”

  “Nothing to feel foolish about. I trust that guy about as far as it would take Tor-tor to run his sorry ass down. Which, believe me, wouldn’t be far.” He pointed a hand forward. “Did you see that dandy outfit he’s wearing? Has he ever been in the real jungle?”

  Nate smiled, cheered by his friend.

  “Now that Dr. Fong. She looks damn fine in her outfit.” Manny glanced to him with one eyebrow raised. “I wouldn’t kick her out of my hammock for eating crackers. And Kelly O’Brien—”

  A commotion ahead interrupted Manny. Voices were raised, and the group was stopped, gathered near a bend in the river. Manny and Nate hurried forward.

  As Nate stepped into the throng, he found Anna Fong and Professor Kouwe bent near a dugout canoe that had been pulled fully onto the bank and clumsily covered with palm fronds.

  “The trail led here,” Kelly said.

  Nathan glanced at her. The doctor’s face, covered in a sheen of sweat, was almost aglow. Her hair had been pulled back with a rolled green handkerchief that served as a headband.

  Professor Kouwe stood with a palm frond in his hand. “These were torn from a mwapu palm.” He flipped to show the ragged end of the branch. “Not cut, torn.”

  Kelly nodded. “Agent Clark had no knives with him when he was found.”

  Professor Kouwe ran a finger along the dried and yellowing tips of the fronds. “And from the rate of decay, this was torn from the living plant around two weeks ago.”

  Frank bent closer. “Around the time when Gerald Clark stumbled into the village.”

  “Exactly.”

  Kelly’s voice grew excited. “Then there’s no doubt he must have used this boat to get here.”

  Nathan stared out at the small river. Both banks were thick with dense walls of vegetation: vines, palms, bushes, mosses, stranglers, and ferns. The river itself was about thirty feet across, a featureless silty brown flow. Near the shores, the waters were clear enough to see the muddy, rocky riverbed, but within a few feet visibility vanished.

  Anything could be lurking under the water: snakes, caimans, piranhas. There were even catfish so large that they were known to bite the feet off unsuspecting swimmers.

  Captain Waxman shoved forward. “So where do we go from here? We can airlift boats to our position, but then what?”

  Anna Fong raised a hand. “I think I might be able to answer that.” She shoved off more of the palm fronds. Her small fingers ran along the inside of the canoe. “From the pattern in which this canoe was chopped, and from the painted red edges, this had to come from a Yanomamo tribe. They’re the only ones who construct canoes in such a manner.”

  Nate knelt down and ran his own hands along the interior of the canoe. “She’s right. Gerald Clark must have obtained or perhaps stolen this canoe from the tribe. If we travel upriver, we can ask any of the Yanomamo Indians if they’ve seen a white man pass through or if any of their canoes have gone missing.” He turned to Frank and Kelly. “From there, we can begin tracking again.”

  Frank nodded and turned to Captain Waxman. “You mentioned boats.”

  He nodded sharply. “I’ll radio in our position and have the Hueys airlift in the pontoons. It’ll eat up the remaining daylight, so we might as well set up an early camp for today.”

  With a plan in place, everyone began to busy themselves setting up their homestead a short distance from the river. A fire was started. Kouwe collected a few hog-plums and sawari nuts from the nearby forest, while Manny, after sending Tor-tor into the jungle to hunt, used a pole and net to catch a few jungle trout.

  Within the course of the next hour, the roar of helicopters rattled the forest, causing birds and monkeys to screech and holler, flitting and leaping through the canopy. Three large crates were lowered into the water and pulled to shore by ropes. Packed inside were self-inflating pontoons with small outboard motors, what the Rangers called “rubber raiders.” By the time the sun had begun to set, the three black boats were tethered to shore-side trees, ready for tomorrow’s travel.

  As the Rangers worked, Nathan had set up his own hammock and was now skillfully stretching his mosquito netting around it. He saw Kelly having trouble and went to her aid.

  “You want to make sure the netting is spread so that none of it touches the hammock, or the night feeders will attack you right through the fabric.”

  “I can manage,” she said, but her brow was furrowed in frustration.

  “Let me show you.” He used small stones and bits of forest flotsam to pin her netting away from her hammock, creating a silky canopy around her bed.

  Off to the side, Frank was fighting his own netting. “I don’t know why we can’t just use sleeping bags. They were fine whenever I went camping.”

  “This is the jungle,” Nate answered. “If you sleep on the ground, you’ll find all sorts of nasty creatures sharing your bed by morning. Snakes, lizards, scorpions, spiders. But be my guest.”

  Frank grumbled but continued to wrestle with his own bed site. “Fine, I’ll sleep in the damn hammock. But what’s so important about the netting anyway? We’ve been plagued by mosquitoes all day.”

  “At night, they’re a thousand times worse. And if the bugs don’t bleed you
dry, the vampire bats will.”

  “Vampire bats?” Kelly asked.

  “They’re all over the place here. At night, you want to be careful even sneaking off to the latrine. They’ll attack anything warm-blooded.”

  Kelly’s eyes grew wide.

  “You’re vaccinated against rabies, right?” he asked.

  She nodded slowly.

  “Good.”

  She glanced over the bed he had helped make, then turned to him, her face only inches from his as he straightened from his crouch. “Thanks.”

  Nathan was again struck by her eyes, an emerald green with a hint of gold. “Y…You’re welcome.” He turned to the fire and saw that others were gathering for an early evening meal. “Let’s see what’s for dinner.”

  Around the campfire, the flames were not the only thing heating up. Nathan found Manny and Richard Zane in midargument.

  “How could you possibly be against placing constraints on the logging industry?” Manny said, stirring his filleted fish in the frying pan. “Commercial logging is the single largest destroyer of rain forests worldwide. Here in the Amazon we’re losing one acre of forest every second.”

  Richard Zane sat on a log, no longer wearing his khaki jacket. His sleeves were rolled up, seemingly ready to fight. “Those statistics are greatly exaggerated by environmentalists. They’re based on bad science and generated more by a desire to scare than to educate. More realistic evidence from satellite photography shows that ninety percent of the Brazilian rain forest is still intact.”

  Manny was near to blustering now. “Even if the rate of deforestation is exaggerated as you claim, whatever is lost is lost forever. We’re losing over a hundred species of plants and animals every single day. Lost forever.”

  “So you say,” Richard Zane said calmly. “The idea that a cleared rain forest can’t grow back is an outdated myth. After eight years of commercial logging in the rain forests of Indonesia, the rate of recovery of both native plants and animals far exceeded expectations. And here in your own forests, the same is true. In 1982, miners cleared a large tract of forest in western Brazil. Fifteen years later, scientists returned to find that the rejuvenated forest is virtually indistinguishable from the surrounding forest. Such cases suggest that sustainable logging is possible, and that man and nature can coexist here.”

  Nate found himself drawn into the discussion. How can the jackass actually advocate rain forest destruction? “What about peasants burning forestland for grazing and agriculture? I suppose you support that, too.”

  “Of course,” Zane said. “In the forests of western America, we think it’s healthy for fires to burn periodically through a mature forest. It shakes things up. Why is it any different here? When dominant species are removed by either logging or burning, it allows for the growth of what are termed ‘suppressed species,’ the smaller shrubs and plants. And it is in fact these very plants that are of the most medicinal value. So why not allow a little burning and logging? It’s good for all concerned.”

  Kelly spoke into the stunned silence. “But you’re ignoring the global implications. Like the greenhouse effect. Aren’t the rain forests the proverbial ‘lungs of the planet,’ a major source of oxygen?”

  “‘Proverbial’ is the key word, I’m afraid,” Zane said sadly. “Newest research from weather satellites shows that the forests contribute little if any to the world’s oxygen supply. It’s a closed system. While the greenery of the canopy produces abundant oxygen, the supply is totally consumed by the fire of decomposition below, resulting in no net oxygen production. Again, the only real areas of positive production are in those regions of secondary forest growth, where new young trees are producing abundant oxygen. So in fact, controlled deforestation is beneficial to the world’s atmosphere.”

  Nathan listened, balanced between disbelief and anger. “And what of those who live in the forest? In the past five hundred years, the number of indigenous tribes has dwindled from over ten million to under two hundred thousand. I suppose that’s good, too.”

  Richard Zane shook his head. “Of course not. That’s the true tragedy here. When a medicine man dies without passing on his experience, then the world loses great volumes of irreplaceable knowledge. It’s one of the reasons I kept pushing for funds to finance your own research among the fading tribes. It’s invaluable work.”

  Nathan narrowed his eyes with suspicion. “But the forest and its people are intertwined. Even if what you say is true, deforestation does destroy some species. You can’t argue against that.”

  “Sure, but the green movement exaggerates the true number lost.”

  “Still, even a single species can be significant. Such as the Madagascan periwinkle.”

  Zane’s face reddened. “Well, that surely is a rare exception. You can hardly think that such a discovery is common.”

  “The Madagascan periwinkle?” Kelly asked, confusion in her eyes.

  “The rosy periwinkle of Madagascar is the source of two potent anticancer drugs—vinblastine and vincristine.”

  Kelly’s brows rose with recognition. “Used in the treatment of Hodgkin’s disease, lymphomas, and many childhood cancers.”

  Nate nodded. “These drugs save thousands of children every year. But the plant that generated this life-saving drug is now extinct in Madagascar. What if these properties of the rosy periwinkle hadn’t been discovered in time? How many children would have needlessly died?”

  “Like I said, the periwinkle is a rare finding.”

  “And how would you know? With all your talk of statistics and satellite photography, it comes down to one fact. Every plant has the potential to cure. Each species is invaluable. Who knows what drug could be lost through unchecked deforestation? What rare plant could hold the cure to AIDS? To diabetes? To the thousands of cancers that plague mankind?”

  “Or perhaps even to cause limbs to regenerate?” Kelly added pointedly.

  Richard Zane frowned and stared into the flames. “Who can say?”

  “My point exactly,” Nate finished.

  Frank stepped up to the flames, seemingly oblivious to the heated debate that had been waged over the campfire. “You’re burning the fish,” the tall man said, pointing to the black smoke rising from the forgotten frying pan.

  Manny chuckled and pulled the pan off the fire. “Thank goodness for the practical Mr. O’Brien, or we’d be eating dry rations tonight.”

  Frank nudged Kelly. “Olin almost has the satellite feed hooked to the laptop.” He checked his watch. “We should be able to connect stateside in another hour.”

  “Good.” Kelly glanced over to where Olin Pasternak was busy around a compact satellite dish and computer equipment. “Perhaps we’ll have some answers from the autopsy on Gerald Clark’s body. Something that will help.”

  Nate listened. Maybe it was because he was staring into the flames, but he had a strange foreboding that maybe they all should have heeded the Yanomamo shaman and burned the man’s body. As Richard Zane had said just a moment ago, the Indians were wiser than anyone in the ways and dark paths of the jungle. Na boesi, ingi sabe ala sani. In the jungle, the Indian knows everything.

  He glanced to the darkening forest as the sun sank away.

  Here, with the jungle awakening in a chorus of echoing hoots and lonely calls, the myths of the deep forest gained substance and form. Anything could be possible in the lost tracts of the jungle.

  Even the curse of the Ban-ali.

  Stem Cell Research

  AUGUST 7, 5:32 P.M.

  INSTAR INSTITUTE, LANGLEY, VIRGINIA

  Lauren O’Brien sat hunched over her microscope when the call came from the morgue. “Damn it,” she mumbled at the interruption. She straightened, slipped her reading glasses from her forehead to the bridge of her nose, and hit the speaker phone.

  “Histology here,” she said.

  “Dr. O’Brien, I think you should come down and see this.” The voice belonged to Stanley Hibbert, the forensic pathologist from
Johns Hopkins and a fellow member of MEDEA. He had been called in to consult on the post mortem of Gerald Clark.

  “I’m somewhat busy with the tissue samples. I’ve just started reviewing them.”

  “And was I right about the oral lesions?”

  Lauren sighed. “Your assessment was correct. Squamous cell carcinoma. From the high degree of mitosis and loss of differentiation, I’d grade it a type one malignancy. One of the worst I’ve ever seen.”

  “So the victim’s tongue had not been cut out. It had rotted away from the cancer.”