by Nate Granzow
She wasn't an especially vain person, but beyond the fear and pain she'd faced with her initial cancer diagnosis, the loss of such physical representation of her femininity had been surprisingly difficult to cope with. When given the choice to have her breasts removed, Denver had determined in short order to proceed. Her chances of survival would go up dramatically with such a procedure, and she was nothing if not a pragmatist.
But she hadn't expected that every time she looked in the mirror, she would be reminded of what the cancer had taken from her. And of course, there was no promise that even such a radical procedure would spare her from an eventual recurrence.
She would get that plant no matter the cost; regardless of how many lives she might need to sacrifice to retrieve it. This was about so much more than a few lost lives in the here and now. A panacea of this caliber would save entire generations. And if she had to live with the blood of those few people on her hands to save those millions, so be it. This was her duty, and it would be her legacy long after she was gone.
TWELVE
Darkness fell quickly upon the encampment. The fire burning in the middle of the camp crackled and smoked, casting shadows on exhausted faces and making the underbrush perform an ethereal dance.
Christian and Henri worked together to activate a chemical heater from a military-surplus MRE while Olivia sorted through her personal bag. She'd been in such a hurry to pack that she'd overlooked a few things she'd left inside from her last trip.
One of them was a wrinkled photograph of her and Terry together. It had been one of her favorite photos from their marriage, the two of them smiling authentically, holding one another close like a normal, happily married couple would. It'd been a short-lived sensation.
Running her finger idly along its worn edge, she gently set the photo on her bag and began untying her boots. She nearly jumped when Austin asked, "Boyfriend?" He stood behind her, just outside the firelight, the cherry glow of his cigarette bouncing as he spoke.
Tugging her muddy hiking boots from her feet, she replied, "Husband, actually."
"Not big on wearing rings, then?" The pilot asked, stepping closer and motioning toward her bare hand.
"We're separating."
"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to pry."
"It's okay," she groaned as she slipped her sock from her foot and gently massaged the chafed skin that had bubbled into a painful blister. "It feels as though lately, I need to hear myself say it in order to believe it."
He nodded toward her leg. "That looks like it hurts."
"I'm fine," she dismissed.
Kneeling beside her, Austin reached for her foot.
"I said I'm fine," she repeated, but she didn't pull away when he touched her skin.
Examining the wound, the pilot said, "We should clean this up, or you won't be able to travel tomorrow. Even a scratch like this can become infected quickly out here. The last thing you want is to develop sepsis miles from the nearest medical facility. I warned you about those boots, didn't I?"
"Yeah, yeah, you told me so."
"I'm not trying to rub it in," he said, dragging his backpack toward him and, reaching inside, withdrawing a small tin container. Prying it open, he pulled out a medicine dropper and a crusty tube of antibiotic ointment. Sliding his knife from his pocket, Austin asked, "You and your husband been together long?"
"Five years."
The Brit opened his canteen and poured fresh water over Olivia's wound. Withdrawing his lighter from his jacket pocket, he flicked his wrist, rolling the device's striker against his pant leg, and moved the flame along the tip of his knife's blade.
"That must be hard," he said.
"Less than you think. What are you doing with that?" she asked, gesturing toward the knife.
"I'm sterilizing it. Why?"
"That's the same question I had for you. Why?"
"I'm not going to hurt you. I'm just going to lance it," he said, his cigarette bouncing in the corner of his mouth.
"That sounds like it'll hurt," she said bitterly.
"Don't be a baby about it. It'll just be a pinprick." Rolling his hand in a "continue on" motion, he said, "You were saying about your husband…."
Olivia sighed, still watching the knife suspiciously, before continuing, "We've been apart for most of our marriage. He's an undersea explorer, one of those treasure hunter types who travels the world in search of shipwrecked gold, but calls himself an archeologist at parties," she said. "Funny that, for as much time as he's spent looking, he hasn't found anything more than a few worthless trinkets."
She coughed and covered her eyes as a soft breeze swept the fire's smoke across her face.
The pilot nodded knowingly as he held her ankle firmly and carefully aimed the point of his knife into the blistered skin. She looked away, and then felt a stinging poke followed by a relief of pressure.
"How about you, Mr. Stewart? Have you been married?"
"You can call me Austin, Doctor," he said as he cleaned the wound, rubbed a dollop of antibiotic ointment on it, and covered it all with liquid bandage from the dropper.
"Fair enough. You can call me Olivia."
The pilot exhaled deeply, the cigarette smoke blending with that from the fire. "Well, Olivia, to answer your question, I've never been married. Most women I've known have gone on to find partners with regular jobs, benefits, cars, retirement funds, vacation homes, the lot. I've never been able to offer anyone any of that." Unfurling a clean sock she'd laid out for such a purpose, Austin slid the fabric gently over her toes and up her ankle, careful to avoid the abrasion.
"It sounds like they have the wrong idea of what love is," Olivia said, watching him. She felt surprisingly comfortable letting the pilot touch her.
"Yeah. Maybe," he replied coldly, stubbing his cigarette out in the dirt and standing up. "Or maybe they're on to something."
Olivia looked away, suddenly feeling ashamed for opening up to the pilot and for her doe-eyed response about his lovers not knowing what love was. She cursed under her breath as he turned toward the others. This was not the new Olivia she'd promised herself she would become.
Nearby, the tribesmen shuffled and spoke quietly in their native tongue, standing apart from the group as they ate handfuls of suri—palm weevil larvae.
"What are they saying?" Christian asked their translator. "They're acting weird. And what are they eating? Bugs?"
"They are uneasy," Bisari said, lying down with his head against his pack and his feet crossed before the fire.
"I would be, too, if my diet was made up of things that spent their lives crawling in the dirt."
Bisari ignored the young man's insult. "They are afraid that hekura spirits are pursuing us. And yes," he said, accepting a grub from one of the natives’ outstretched hands, "they are bugs. Very tasty and nutritious."
"What are hekura? I'm not familiar with that word." Henri asked, crossing his legs and holding his palms toward the fire.
Speaking to the tribesmen for a moment, the translator nodded and said, "The hekura are the spirits of tribal ancestors. They can be summoned by the tribe's shaman and asked to cure the sick or to destroy the souls of enemies. They usually embody the form of animals."
One of the tribesmen suddenly interjected, gesturing animatedly, his eyes wide and his stare intense. Bisari listened to the outburst carefully before relating what the man had said.
"He says that the spirits here are not those of his tribe. He says that these are the hekura of the white man."
THIRTEEN
As the fire burned down to pulsing embers, everyone in the camp having retired for the night hours before, Austin slid from his hammock and moved to his copilot’s hammock. Jeremy was already awake, and following the Brit's lead, they carefully moved away from the camp under the cover of screeching birds and the ambient drone of insects.
"You have the GPS?"
"Yeah. Alvarez said he'd meet us about a mile west of here."
"Let's move quickly.
We don't need the others finding out about this—if Senske hears about the shipment, we'll not only be out of a job, we'll be up on charges," Austin whispered as he slapped a mosquito on his neck.
"I hear that."
Together, the two men dashed through the jungle, pushing away tree branches and vines as they ran. Finding a snake-like crevice in the earth, carved away by heavy rains and low enough to undercut the thick nests of brush, they made better time, increasing their pace.
Austin felt a growing sense of trepidation the farther they got from their camp. He didn’t like keeping secrets, and he especially hated the idea of leaving the group without explanation, headed for a clandestine deal with a disreputable man prone to violence. But the repercussions of not meeting with Alvarez would be much worse.
After half an hour, they slowed as they approached a distant fire casting flickering outlines of tents and lean-tos against the surrounding trees.
"¿Quién es?" a voice from the bushes challenged.
"Stewart and Barreto. We're here to speak to Alvarez," Austin said, trying to sound gruff and uncaring. He was breathing heavily, sweat trickling down his neck and beneath his shirt, tickling him as it slipped down his ribcage.
Two men, armed with H&K G3 rifles, stepped out from behind the trees and motioned for them to follow.
Marched into a crowded encampment, the pilots were met by the rancid odor of seared meat.
"What the hell is that smell?" Jeremy asked, grimacing as he waved a hand under his nose.
Austin gritted his teeth. He knew what the smell was. Death.
"Gringo! You showed up, and you brought your little friend, too. Good. I was concerned that I would be forced to come find you, which, as you can imagine, had me deeply troubled," Raul Alvarez said, rising from his chair, pinching his nose, and snorting. Stepping into the firelight, the swarthy Colombian drug lord grinned, one of his front teeth capped in gold, and slicked back his hair.
Out of the corner of his eye, Austin noticed Jeremy's surprised reaction to the drug lord. His friend had never seen Alvarez before, and the man's abnormal appearance was jarring. Jeremy had heard Austin mention the Columbian's obsession with Synthol injections—a mix of Sesame oil, Lidocaine, and alcohol used by bodybuilders to enhance the size of underdeveloped muscle. But Jeremy couldn't have imagined to what extent such addictive use had deformed the man. Alvarez's upper arms and pectorals, as large as his head, appeared bloated and swollen the way an infected pustule on the verge of rupturing would. But the rest of his body remained proportional to a man of his size—a bizarre disparity.
As another reflection of Alvarez's preoccupation with aggrandizing his self-image by superficial means, an enormous revolver hung from a holster spanning his entire chest.
"I was forced to occupy my time with some idle fun while I waited for you." Alvarez nodded toward the space above the fire.
The pilots suddenly realized a man—one of the local tribesmen, by the look of him—had been suspended by parachute cord from trees on both sides of the small clearing. Though it was dark, they could see that he'd been badly burned, his legs charred and covered in carbon. His head hung limply against his chest; he was either dead or unconscious.
Austin silently prayed it was the former, and that his death had come quickly, though he suspected that hadn't been the case. Though pompous, Alvarez had only gotten to where he was by developing a frightening reputation as a sadistic brute. He regularly reminded both his enemies and his allies of that fact.
"So, let's talk about my shipment. I entrusted you with transporting my goods, and you didn't deliver," Alvarez said, stuffing a finger in one nostril and clearing the other with a sickening exhale. Wiping his finger on his pants, he continued, "You were responsible for 200 kilos of my finest stuff. That amounts to about four million American dollars. A lot of product, and you destroyed it. Most men who would have done such a thing to me would not be so brave or so stupid to stay in the country, let alone come seek me out."
"I lost two of my men and my airplane in that crash, Alvarez. I’m not chuffed with the situation, either. And if I'm not mistaken, it was gunfire from your friends in the FARC that caused us to crash."
"They probably thought your plane was one of those anti-coca sprayers," the Colombian said, shrugging. "They were only defending their interests."
"Pretty hard to confuse a cargo plane for a crop duster," Jeremy muttered under his breath.
Alvarez stared wrathfully at the Brazilian, the drug lord nodding slowly as he ran his tongue across his lips.
"How you crashed your plane is not my concern, Mr. British. Now, you and I have worked together for a couple years, and you've done an acceptable job in making deliveries so far. This last disappointment," he paused and grimaced, clearly fighting to sequester a boiling rage. "Would ordinarily be met with swift punishment. But I'm in a good mood today. I've had a little time to think about your fuck-up, and I've decided to give you a chance to pay me back for the full cost of the shipment—plus interest for the inconvenience, of course—before I’m forced to take more drastic steps. You know what I mean by drastic steps, right?"
Austin cleared his throat, trying hard not to look at the wilted body of the tribesman. "We appreciate your patience, Mr. Alvarez. When we get this new plant back to headquarters, we'll have enough to put a nice down payment on the lost shipment, and we'll be able to continue moving your product."
"Wait, new plant? What kind of new plant?" the drug lord asked, his curiosity piqued. Austin tried to think of a way to backtrack. He should never have brought it up in Alvarez's presence.
Jeremy mumbled nervously, "It's a big deal, apparently. The company thinks it'll cure cancer or something."
Austin cast his partner an angry glance that silenced him. Revealing so much detail about their work was bad practice—especially when the man they were telling was an opportunistic Colombian crime boss.
Alvarez shrugged. "So you’ll have my money, hmmm?" Nodding thoughtfully, he ripped open the Velcro fastener holding his revolver in place and slid the mighty handgun out. Angling it toward the firelight until the stainless-steel finish glimmered, he said, "Yeah, money goes a long way, doesn't it? You see this? It’s a five-hundred caliber Smith and Wesson. That's pretty fucking big, you know? Biggest handgun in the world. I know, because that's what I asked for. And expensive?" He nodded and clicked his tongue. "Very expensive. Took my guy three months to find one and get it shipped down from the United States. And the ammunition for it is really fucking expensive, too. But some things are about more than money. Like trust. Loyalty. Honor."
The pilots watched his movements nervously as the Colombian deliberately aimed the revolver at the hanging tribesman. Alvarez's outstretched arm—artificially inflated but still void of much muscle—wavered as he tried to support the heavy weapon. The burned native suddenly moaned, masking the click of the revolver's hammer as Alvarez thumbed it back.
An earsplitting concussion shook the camp, the jungle coming alive with squawks and the rustle of evacuating reptiles as orange sparks flew from the weapon's barrel.
The force of the round punching through the injured tribesman set his corpse swinging gently.
Recovering from a stumble brought on by the stout recoil of the weapon, Alvarez aimed it at Austin and whispered, "Mr. British, do not disappoint me again."
FOURTEEN
Christian had begun the night on his back, sleeping bag open. Sweat rolled down his bare chest, keeping him awake despite his physical exhaustion. As much as he wanted to turn and look at Olivia—even more beautiful as she slept—he forced himself to stay still, staring at the tent ceiling as a light rain rustled through the branches above and dripped slowly onto the tent's apex, cascading down the sides.
He felt out of his depth. He wasn't a scientist. Two semesters of biology classes he'd slept through had only helped him to muddle his way through day-to-day tasks at Hygeia, and having grown up amidst pavement and skyscrapers, he couldn't have bee
n more out of place in the Amazon. The poisonous plants, mud, and animal life saturating the jungle daunted him. So why had he volunteered to come?
Olivia.
He wanted so badly for her to see him as more than merely her assistant. And it would be only weeks before he'd return to California, recommencing school. He'd never see her again, and that thought made him ache. There was a chance, however small, that he could make his feelings known for her before he left, and they could be together. He'd already seen a glimmer, the subtlest looks of attraction from his supervisor, and now that her husband was out of the picture and they were in the jungle together, he was in a perfect position to nurture that attraction.
Daring a glance at her lithe form, her full breasts rising and falling with each slow breath, he felt the tempo of his heartbeat increase. Something tickled his wrist. At first excited by the thought that Olivia might have moved in her sleep and was now touching him, he quickly grew suspicious and looked down.
A six-inch-long brown spider tapped one of its furry legs against the top of his hand. With a scream unbecoming of a man his age, he rolled into the side of the tent.
Olivia and Henri shot awake.
"What? What's wrong, Christian?" Olivia asked, her eyes puffy with sleep.
"Giant fucking spider," he said, stabbing the air with his pointer finger and pulling his feet closer to his body.
Looking down groggily, Olivia discovered the creature.
"Oh, it's a Goliath birdeater. Big, but harmless." Unzipping the tent flap and shooing the large arachnid out, she continued, "When they get scared, they release a mucous that's really irritating to the skin. Best not to touch them. They sometimes hitchhike along with samples that come in. Nothing to worry about, really." She smiled reassuringly at Christian before collecting her hair in a bun behind her head and lying back down.
Henri, still half asleep, continued sitting upright, fidgeting with his eyeglasses.
