They weren't anymore, and as Schaefer sat at his chosen table, he wondered whether Dutch had had anything to do with this inexplicable bout of reasonableness, or whether it had just been one small part of the general political shifts of the last decade.
"Otra cerveza, senor?" the bartender asked.
"Si," Schaefer replied, looking up. "And don't spit in it this time."
He had no idea whether the bartender understood the English; around here Spanish was usually a second or third language, after the local Indio dialect and maybe Maya, and English was a long shot at best.
He noticed a shadow on the screen and turned to face the door.
A man in green fatigues, tire-tread sandals, and a wide-brimmed green hat stepped in-tall, by local standards, and bearded. He stood for a moment, letting his eyes adjust, while the bartender delivered Schaefer's beer.
Schaefer paid for the bottle without ever letting his attention leave the newcomer, and left the beer sitting untouched on the table.
The man in fatigues had no visible weapons any where, but that looked somehow unnatural-he was plainly a man who ought to be armed.
He spotted Schaefer quickly enough; there weren't many men in the place, and of those few there was only one of Schaefer's size and with his blond hair. Even in the dimness Schaefer was very obviously a norteamericano.
The stranger crossed the room to Schaefer's table and looked down at him.
"I understand that you are looking for a guide," he said in clear but accented English.
"Word travels fast," Schaefer replied, finally picking up the beer and taking a swig. "Sit down."
The man sat.
"I'm told you're a policeman from New York," he said after a moment. "That you have many enemies among the La Costa, the Medellin, the Cali."
"You have a problem with that?" Schaefer asked.
"No," the guide said with a toothy smile. "It just means I charge more."
Schaefer shrugged. "It shouldn't matter anyway. I'm not interested in drugs this time; I'm looking for some norteamericanos who disappeared over the border eight years back."
"Eight years?" the guide asked.
Schaefer nodded. "That's right."
"Eight years is a long time senor."
Schaefer shrugged. "I've been busy. Didn't get around to it until now"
"These men-they were all men? No women?"
"The norteamericanos, si, all men. Six of them." Dutch's squad had been six men.
And five of them had died somewhere in this goddamn steam bath.
"The way you say that," the guide asked, "were there others? You say you are looking for these six.
"There may have been others, but that's who I'm looking for," Schaefer agreed. "Them, and something else, something that comes with the heat."
The guide considered him thoughtfully.
"And what would this be, that comes with the heat?" the guide asked. "A man?"
"I don't know," Schaefer said. "That's what I want to find out."
"Ah," the guide said, smiling. "I see. You're mad, Mr. New York policeman. Which means I charge even more."
Schaefer smiled back.
"I think we're gonna get along fine," he said.
* * *
17
It took another day in Riosucio to put everything together.
Schaefer had thought he had all the supplies he needed, but the guide had other ideas. He found two mules and stocked up on rope, blankets, camping gear, and arcane herbal remedies, as well as more mundane concerns such as food and fresh water and a few boxes he didn't bother to open for his unappreciative gringo employer.
No weapons were visible anywhere in the guide's acquisitions, though, not even a knife. Schaefer noticed that and asked about it.
The guide shrugged. "You have already done that, senor. I will trust you to have what we need."
Later, as they were climbing the ridge, the mules zigzagging back and forth up the slope, the guide told Schaefer that he used to do recon work for the U.S. military. Schaefer didn't argue with that or ask for proof-but he didn't necessarily believe it, either.
The guide might trust Schaefer as far as the armaments went, but Schaefer didn't trust the guide, about weapons or previous recon work or anything else.
But, then, Schaefer didn't trust much of anyone, and nobody at all in that particular hellhole.
"What you're looking for, these six men who came here eight years ago," the guide had said, "I think for that, you want to head up to Mangabe."
Schaefer decided not to ask what gave him that idea. He just shrugged and followed.
They camped in the jungle, on the south side of the ridge, each night a little higher than the night before.
Early on the third day after leaving Riosucio the guide announced that they were crossing the border; Schaefer took his word for it. One stretch of hilly jungle looked like another, as far as he was concerned, and crossing the border didn't make . the air any cooler, the humidity any less, the undergrowth any easier to get through.
The only difference Schaefer could see was that the ground was now mostly sloping downward, rather than up. They'd crossed the top of the ridge, as well.
Half a day later the two men and their pack mules arrived at a spot in the jungle where the guide stopped, smiling, and waited expectantly.
He didn't say anything, just waited, and it took Schaefer a moment to realize that he was supposed to be seeing something, that something here made this particular place different from the rest of the country.
He looked, but at first he saw only more of the damned jungle; then he made out the straight lines in the greenery ahead, the colors that weren't quite right, and put it all together.
This was what the guide wanted to show him, what the guide had been aiming for. Schaefer was looking at the remains of a camp of some kind.
He grunted, to let the guide know that he had eventually figured it out. Then he dismounted and walked cautiously forward.
It had been a good-sized encampment once. There had been several buildings, walls of bamboo or corrugated tin over wood frame, roofs of thatch-the traditional Central American palapa design.
Here some of the floors had been stone and concrete, though, and that was not anything any of the ordinary villagers around here would bother with.
Eight years of neglect and tropically enthusiastic plant growth had reduced the pavements to mere fragments, of course, as well as ruining just about everything else. Two buildings, off to one side, were still standing, overgrown with greenery; the others were mostly green mounds of wreckage, full of rustling birds and squeaking rodents and an occasional snake that fled when Schaefer came near.
As he poked around in the ruins, Schaefer found a rusted blackened metal object he eventually identified as the burned-out remains of a helicopter. Other, smaller objects might have been a flatbed truck and a generator, and elsewhere there were fragments of steel drums, pieces of ammo boxes, sections of stone flooring, some of it burned, all of it encrusted with moss and vines.
There were no bodies, but after eight years there wouldn't be.
The guide said something about guerrillas and rebels; Schaefer didn't bother to listen to that. It was clear enough, even now.
This had been a staging area of some sort, and someone had come calling with some heavy-duty shit. Brass shell casings, turned to green and black corruption by the jungle, were strewn everywhere; Schaefer could see blast patterns in the debris and rapid-fire trails in the burned-out and rusted remains of vehicles and machinery.
Schaefer had a pretty good idea who it was who'd dropped in. It smelled like one of his brother's operations-messy, but thorough.
He wondered why. Dutch had been in the rescue business, not search-and-destroy; had there been hostages here?
There could have been, certainly.
So if Dutch had gone in after hostages, had he gotten them out?
Did it matter?
How did this relate to the th
ing Schaefer had fought in New York, the thing that had slaughtered Lamb and his men and butchered everyone in the police firing range? Dutch wouldn't have lost all his men in an operation like this, an ordinary hostage recovery-that sort of stunt had been his bread and butter.
Had that monster been one of the camp's defenders? Or might it have been sent to retrieve the hostages after Dutch rescued them?
Schaefer frowned, then returned to his mule. There wasn't anything here that was going to help him; he could spend weeks digging through the rubbish, and he doubted he'd find a clue if he tried it.
"There are no winners in a place like this," the guide said sententiously. "Only the jungle."
"Shut up," Schaefer told him as he swung himself awkwardly into the saddle. He wasn't in the mood to hear bad movie dialogue. If the guide thought that sort of crap was going to impress anyone, he'd picked the wrong employer.
"Which way?" he asked when he had his mount under control again.
"How am I to say, senor?" the guide asked.
Schaefer turned in the saddle and glared at him.
The guide's smile vanished.
"Ah . . . perhaps this way," he said, pointing.
Schaefer nodded and followed as the guide rode on.
A mile or two past the camp they headed north-east, down a narrow valley it didn't look like the best route to Schaefer, but the guide led the way, and Schaefer didn't argue.
The jungle looked different here-thicker, and somehow almost alien. Schaefer could see it in the trees, the plants, everything.
And it was hotter than ever.
On the fourth day after leaving Riosucio they crossed a small river, then picked their way down the side of a cliff into a broader valley where a good-sized river flowed. Here the jungle was even stranger. Schaefer looked around warily, trying to decide whether the strangeness had anything unnatural about it.
"Do you feel it?" the guide asked, noticing Schaefer's discomfort. "You said you were looking for a thing that comes in the heat?"
It was hot enough, certainly.
"This is where the natives say the sun appeared at midnight once, on a very hot night eight years ago," the guide said with a sweeping gesture.
Schaefer didn't answer; he was staring ahead.
There was a break in the jungle, a hole where golden sunlight poured in.
There was more than that, Schaefer saw as his mule emerged into the light.
There was a crater.
Most of it was green, of course-nothing could hold the jungle back for long. At the bottom lay a pool of mud and water, but ferns and creepers covered the bowl, the trees around the rim were already well over Schaefer's head.
It was still plain that sometime not all that very long ago, something had cut a hole in the jungle a quarter mile across, had blasted away everything.
Any normal explosion big enough to do that should have taken truckloads of explosives, and there should be visible wreckage, even now, and there wasn't.
"My God," Schaefer said, staring, "what the hell happened here?"
He sat and looked at the devastation for a moment longer, then demanded, "And what the hell did that bastard do to my brother?"
He wondered whether he was looking at Dutch's grave.
Probably not, since he knew Dutch had gotten out of here alive once, but had he come back? Had he died here?
If not Dutch, had his men died here? Billy, and Hawkins, and Blain, and the rest?
And he also wondered what a Geiger counter would register here. That crater looked big enough to have been made by a small nuke.
Who would be throwing that kind of ordnance around?
He spent the remainder of the afternoon crisscrossing that crater, looking for some sign of what had happened, something that might tell him what he was up against.
He didn't find it. There were no fragments, no scraps of wreckage, nothing he could find to indicate what had made that hole.
At last he slogged back up out of the mud and asked the guide, "Now what?"
The guide shrugged. "I do not- know," he said. "The trail ends here."
Schaefer knew that for bullshit; the guide hadn't been following any trail. He had known where to go. Schaefer supposed the destroyed rebel base and this crater were famous; all the locals would have heard of them, would know they dated back to eight years ago. This would be the natural place to lead someone who came looking for men who had vanished eight years ago.
But that seemed to be all this man knew, or at least all he would admit to.
It looked as if it might be another dead end-but Schaefer wasn't in any hurry to give up.
"We camp here," he said.
The guide shrugged.
That night Schaefer sat up late by the fire, thinking-thinking, and remembering.
He remembered that Dutch had talked about the thing as a hunter.
He remembered how, as kids, he and Dutch would hunt in the woods behind their father's cabin. They hadn't looked on it as a sport, exactly-it was a challenge, being on their own, testing themselves against nature.
One year, on the opening day of deer season, the two of them had come across a bunch of local boys shooting up the woods. The lot of them had been drinking since daybreak, from the look of it, and they had this weird look in their eyes.
Schaefer had figured they were all trying to impress each other with how wild and tough they were.
Then Schaefer saw what they were shooting at. They'd cornered a buck and took turns pumping slugs into it, watching it bleed in the cool October air.
Schaefer'd been disgusted by it, by the unnecessary sloppy viciousness of it, the waste and the pain, but then he'd realized that those boys weren't really all that different from Dutch and himself. They were out there, pitting themselves against nature by killing deer.
The only difference was that those boys needed to be wired up, needed to drive themselves into a killing frenzy, needed to see the blood. They had to make it into a perverse sort of fun, or they couldn't do it at all.
Schaefer had thought that over carefully. He'd thought it over, and he'd decided that there was a world of difference between killing because you have to, to do whatever it is you're out to do, and killing because it's fun.
Schaefer had decided he didn't want to kill for fun, and after that day he never had.
But that didn't mean he hadn't killed.
He was staring into the dying embers of the fire, thinking about that, when the thing in his neck suddenly jabbed at him-not digging into the artery, but doing something, something that hurt.
Even distracted by the pain, he knew what that had to mean. He hadn't felt anything like it before, but he'd have to be an idiot not to understand.
The thing that had marked him was getting his attention, letting him know it hadn't forgotten him.
And it wouldn't bother doing that if it was still back in New York; it must have followed him.
"Son of a bitch," he growled, clenching his fists in pain. "He's here!"
He looked around, scanning the jungle.
He didn't see it anywhere.
He knew it was out there, though. Maybe he wasn't going to find any clues to the thing's origins here, maybe the crater wouldn't tell him anything, but he'd have a chance to tackle it again.
And if he could kill it, who would care where it had come from?
* * *
18
The guide watched with interest as Schaefer unpacked and checked out some of the little presents he'd gotten from his pal in the DEA. He'd built the fire back up enough that both men could see what Schaefer was doing.
"That is a very big rifle," the guide remarked at one point as Schaefer assembled the contents of a steel suitcase.
Schaefer hefted the weapon in question. "This?" he said. "This isn't a rifle. It's a shotgun-full auto. Six rounds a second. You hear it popping, you get the hell out of here, comprende?"
"Comprendo," the guide replied.
That shotgun was
the centerpiece of Schaefer's armament, but he also had a more ordinary automatic rifle slung on his back, and grenades and knives on his belt. He wanted to be ready when he met that big ugly sucker.
The twanging sensation in his neck was getting stronger; Schaefer assumed that meant the thing was getting closer, and he tried to hurry. He didn't want to be standing there chatting with the guide when it came for him; he didn't want the mules to get caught in the cross fire.
He didn't want to screw up by rushing, either; he checked each weapon carefully but quickly. He had to work by firelight, which didn't help any
There were flashlights and a lamp in the packs of supplies, but Schaefer had no intention of using them. That would make him a bit too visible.
When his preparations were complete, he told the guide, "Stay here." Then, with the auto shotgun held at ready, he charged off into the jungle, choosing his direction more or less at random, more concerned with getting away from the mules and finding someplace with cover so the bastard couldn't just pick him off from a distance like some stupid two-point buck hanging around a clearing, than with getting to any particular destination.
The throbbing lessened slightly as he moved into the blackness of the surrounding jungle, and Schaefer began to weave back and forth, moving slowly and as silently as he could in the tropical darkness, trying to figure out from the sensation just where his enemy was, and which way it was moving.
It wasn't hard to estimate; when he moved toward it, the gadget hurt more, and when he moved away, it hurt less. Simple enough. Before he'd covered half a mile, he thought he knew where the creature was.
It had caught him by surprise, back there in New York, but this time he was ready; this time he knew what he was up against-oh, maybe not what the thing was, or where it came from, or what it was doing here, but he knew roughly how big and how strong and how fast it was.
Bigger and stronger and faster than he was, Schaefer knew that, but somehow he didn't care; he was sure he could handle it anyway.
Watt-Evans, Lawrence - Predator 01 Page 11
