by Nick Thacker
“Where are we going?” Julie asked.
Ben looked up and into her eyes. Her anger had melted away into fear, and she seemed as though she had completely forgotten her and Ben’s earlier feud. He knew her well, however. As soon as they were safely back on land, Julie would continue with her cold shoulder and silent treatment.
“We need to get to land, obviously,” Ben said. “But there’s no way will be able to break into the forest without cutting through the trees on both sides of us. We’ll have to start swimming upstream and hope we find some sort of opening.”
“Swim?”
Ben looked over at Paulinho and realized the man was still injured, and probably still in severe pain. “Will you be okay?”
“I should be,” Paulinho said. “I’m not worried about my injuries, it’s…” he looked at Archie, then back at Ben. Ben was confused, not understanding what was going on. He raised his eyebrows, waiting for an explanation.
Archie leaned in close to Ben, bringing his voice down so only he could hear it. “We are not on the main river anymore, where all the boat traffic is most of the time,” Archie said. “Paulinho’s right to be worried. There are almost as many predators in the water as there are on land.”
Almost as many predators in the water? Ben tried to read the man’s pained expression. He’s concerned now? After trying to convince me that the jungle was only dangerous if you were careless?
“What other choice do we have?” Ben asked, matching the tone and level of Archie’s voice. Julie and Amanda stepped closer to them and took over the lashing together of the floats as the Ben and Archie discussed the situation .
“None, really,” Archie said. He looked at the group then back at Ben. “But we are not trained for this; none of us are divers or even very competent swimmers, I’m sure. If we get into trouble…”
“We’re already in trouble,” Ben said. “Look around. We’re on a sinking boat in the middle of an offshoot of the Amazon River. No one is going to come save us; no one will even know how to find us.” Except the group of mercenaries who are already on our tail. “We need to hurry, no matter what we do.”
Archie nodded quickly, then turned and hurriedly helped the women finish lashing the floats together. Ben saw the top of Reggie’s head appear on the stairs, and walked over to help him with two of the backpacks. One of them was soaking wet, one was dry, and one was missing altogether.
“I don’t think there’s anything that would’ve been damaged by the water,” Reggie said. “But the river ate one of the packs, the one with the map and my rifle. We still have the hammocks and three tents, but keep close to that pistol, Ben, it’s all we’ve got now. You guys ready to go?”
“Think so,” Ben said. He slung the two packs over his shoulders and walked back toward the makeshift raft that had been built on the deck. The top level was now at the waterline, the back end rapidly sinking deeper into the river.
“Let’s get on with it, then,” Reggie said. “I would guess this section of river is deep enough to swallow two of these boats stacked on top of each other, so we are not going to get lucky waiting around up here.”
Ben tossed the backpacks on the flotation materials, and he and the others hauled the floating island toward the edge of the boat and lifted it up and over the side. It made a gentle splash as it hit the water, and Ben held the rope to prevent it from drifting away.
Captain Garcia appeared on the stairs, his eyes wide and frantic. He ran up to Ben and Reggie and started babbling in Spanish. The only words Ben could pick out were agua and depredadores. Water and predators .
“Whoa, there, Cap’n,” Reggie said. “Slow down, take a breather.”
The captain shook his head, then walked up to Archie and continued rattling off Spanish Ben couldn’t understand. Archie focused on the captain’s words, the water creeping even closer to their feet.
Archie listened, then stopped for a moment, as if listening now to the sounds of the forest instead of Garcia’s. He held a finger to his lips, quietly motioning for the others to join in.
“Quinones,” Reggie said. “We don’t have time for birdwatching. We need —“
“Shh,” Archie said, silencing Reggie. “Just listen.”
Given no other choice, Ben focused on the sounds of the rainforest around him. What are we listening for? All he could hear were the chirping of birds, buzzing of insects, and every now and then a holler from a monkey deep inside the safety of the trees. The same sounds we’ve been hearing for days. Aside from the odd stretch of silence just before the engine had exploded, the sound of the jungle had been almost deafening. To Ben, the sounds became a homogenized blur, unable to be separated out into its individual components.
And then, somewhere in the distance, he heard it.
A low, growling roar.
Chapter 31
The roar sounded like someone trying to pull-start a lawnmower, only the sound was choppier, spaced out.
The sound stopped and the jungle noises returned to fill the empty space. A moment later there was another noise, identical to the first, only from a different direction upriver.
“Anyone want to explain what that noise is?” Amanda said.
You had to ask, Ben thought.
“Melanosuchus niger,” Archie whispered. Ben looked over at the man, seeing the older gentleman with his eyes closed, listening again for the sounds.
“Black Caiman,” Reggie said, either interpreting the Latin explanation or jumping in with his own. “It’s the apex predator around here, and the larger ones can take down anything in the basin.”
“Caiman? Like a crocodile? ” Julie said.
“One and the same, ma’am,” Reggie said. “Closer in structure to an alligator, though.”
Julie sighed and crossed her arms. “I don’t really care what it’s like ,” she said. “I am not getting into the water with those things out there.”
Reggie glanced back at Ben, who just shrugged. “Hate to break it to you, but we need to get to land. And the only way to get to land is by getting in the water.”
“I’m with her,” Amanda said. “Unless you can tell me you’ve got a way to keep them at bay.”
Reggie pulled his pistol out of a pack and held it up. “I don’t, but this is a start. It probably won’t do much, but I’d rather have it along than not.”
The water was up to Ben’s ankles now, and the boat was sinking even more quickly. He felt the water creeping up to his calves and knew they didn’t have much longer to decide their course of action. He walked forward, physically standing in-between Reggie and the girls.
“This sucks,” he said. “I’ll be the first to admit it. But we literally have no other choice. We’re sinking, and in 10 minutes this boat is going to be at the bottom of the Amazon River. If we get started now, we can stick close to the shore and get to land the first time anyone spots an opening on that side. Jules, I’ll be right next to you.”
Julie was staring at Ben, but he felt like she was looking right through him. She wasn’t crying, but her eyes were glistening with wetness, and he could see her breathing increase in speed as she took in all of the new information. If she felt anything like the way Ben felt at this moment, he knew she was terrified.
He also knew she agreed with him — they had no other choice.
“What about Rhett?” Paulinho asked. “Did anybody see him down there?”
Reggie shook his head. “No, but you’re welcome to stay back and wait for him if you’d like.”
Ben flashed Reggie a glance, but Reggie shook his head once more, this time making sure only Ben could see the motion.
He’s suspicious of the kid, too, Ben thought.
“We can’t just leave him down there,” Archie said. “What if — “
“What if what ?” Reggie said. “Listen up, everyone. There is not a ’ no man left behind’ policy here. There can’t be, much as I wish there was. The lower two decks are completely underwater, so there’s no way he�
�s still down there, alive.” Reggie paused, then looked around. “As hard as it is to admit it, you all know the truth: he’s either not down there at all, or something happened to him when the boat blew up. Besides, I checked all of the rooms when I went down to grab the packs.”
“What about the bridge?”
“If he was in the bridge, he would use the staircase to come up here,” Reggie said.
Amanda stepped forward, getting right into Reggie’s face. “What if he’s hurt? Injured again? He —“
“He’s not on the boat anymore,” Ben said.
All eyes turned to Ben. Reggie seemed to be pleading with him silently, asking him not to reveal what he knew. Ben considered waiting, but they would all have to find out sooner or later.
“I think Rhett did it,” he said. “We made a mistake bringing him along, but it wasn’t anyone’s fault. He tricked us.”
Ben waited for the looks of shock and awe to register, wear off, then return to normal. As each person considered what he had said, he continued. “We can’t worry about that now, even if I’m wrong. All I know is I saw someone jump off the boat and swim to shore, right before the engine exploded. We need to get to a safer place as soon as possible, then we can discuss what to do about Rhett.”
And if it wasn’t Rhett who’d sabotaged them, it will be too late for him. Ben pushed the thought out of his mind. There was nothing he could do for the kid now.
“Are you saying our boat was sabotaged?”Archie asked. He turned to the captain and relayed the message to him in broken Spanish and Portuguese.
“Without a doubt,” Reggie said. “That engine was detonated by explosives. I don’t know what kind, or how, exactly, but that’s why we’re here now. We’ll figure out who it was later, but for now, we need to get off this boat.”
“I’ll take point,” Reggie said. Without waiting for anyone to argue, Reggie dove off the angled deck railing and into the water. After three seconds, he surfaced into a perfect freestyle swim.
Carlo jumped in after Reggie, and though he was much more out of shape than the soldier, Ben had to admit he was an able-bodied swimmer.
Amanda grabbed Paulinho’s arm as the captain shook his head, made a sign of the cross on his forehead, shoulders, and chest, and jumped into the water, feet-first. Ben could see Amanda’s white-knuckled grip on Paulinho’s arm, but the man and woman walked steadfastly to the edge, sat on the rail and swung their feet over, then plopped themselves into the river.
Ben knelt down to tie the rope to his ankle, and Archie made sure their makeshift raft was still floating, intact. Julie came down to Ben’s level and leaned in close to his face.
“We’re not really going to do this, are we?” Julie asked. Ben didn’t answer. It was a rhetorical question, and besides — what could he have said?
She waited for Ben to finish, then followed him to the edge of the boat. “Ben, wait.”
Ben turned and looked at her. He was struck by how beautiful she looked, the moonlight glancing off her face and hair perfectly, allowing shadows to fall and soften her appearance even more. She was scared, but all Ben saw right now was the woman he had fallen in love with months earlier.
“We’re going to be okay, right?”
Ben wasn’t sure what to say. He knew she was asking about their current situation, about jumping into the Amazon River in the middle of the night, but he couldn’t help but think of their argument. He also didn’t want to lie to her .
He nodded, then reached out and grabbed her hand.
She pressed into him and kissed him hard on the lips, and he pulled her close to him as he leaned forward and pulled them both off the railing and into the water.
Chapter 32
Hearing the sounds of the caimans far off in the distance didn’t help Julie’s terror.
Now, however, she was literally swimming toward them, in a river that was pitch-black and full of all kinds of things she didn’t want to think about, trying to stay in front of a group of people who wanted to kill them all.
She focused on her breathing, and on Ben’s large form swimming next to her in the river. She had never been a competitive swimmer, though she had taken classes as a kid and swam through high school regularly. It had been a while since she had been in a pool, and aside from a few excursions to a lake house with friends, she had never swum in a natural body of water before.
There was something downright unnerving about swimming in water you couldn’t see through, a fact that would not leave Julie’s mind. She wondered if she would feel any attack from below coming, or if it would sneak up on her completely. She wondered if a caiman was large enough to swallow her whole, so she wouldn’t have to think about the alternative.
She also thought about their attackers — they had seemed so hell-bent on shooting them or blowing them up back in Manaus. Why were they allowing them to escape farther upriver? Were they working with Rhett? And if so, why hadn’t they attacked them tonight, and instead decided to sabotage their boat and force their hand?
That was it.
She understood their maneuvering. She knew now what they were intending to do.
They still need us to lead them , she thought. They need us to show them the way . The attacks back at Manaus and tonight were meant to keep us focused on finding the answer, to push us forward.
She also knew that collateral damage would be perfectly acceptable out here. They needed Dr. Meron, not the rest of the group. Amanda was crucial, but she wouldn’t travel alone, not out here. Amanda needed the rest of them, and their attackers needed Amanda.
But picking them off one by one was a terrific strategy — one that would keep them focused, running in the right direction, and scared enough to not deviate from the plan. Once they turned off of the main river channel, into a much smaller and narrower feeder river, their attackers could no longer follow them by boat without being seen. The mercenaries had sabotaged their boat in order to force the group to continue on land. Anyone injured or killed in the explosion would be considered icing on the cake.
But what was next? What happens after we reach land?
The water was warm, but Julie shuddered. She could feel the underwater currents and chop left by those swimming in front of her, and every tiny motion the river made gave her the feeling she was about to be attacked by some horrible, deadly monster.
But the attack never came. They swam in silence for fifteen minutes, even stopping to rest halfway through. They stayed together as a group, Reggie doing a great job keeping the pace slow enough for the others. When he stopped for the second time, Julie swam closer to the group, forming a tight circle of people in the water.
“There’s a path between the trees right over there,” Reggie said, pointing to the blackness of the forest. Julie had no idea what the man had seen, but she trusted his authority. “Let’s get to the path, but keep moving once you’re on land. We don’t want to be in the way of a jaguar coming down for a late-night sip of water.”
Why does he have to keep bringing up new creatures that want to kill us? The thought of a jaguar didn’t scare Julie nearly as much, but the more she thought about it, the more she realized it was even more of a threat to them than some of the other animals that had been mentioned.
Nods all around, Reggie continued toward the bank. He lifted himself off the ground and out of the water, and allowed himself to drip off at the edge of the forest for a few seconds. He stomped forward into the jungle as the others followed closely behind, then turned to wait for them. Julie felt the soft riverbed beneath the water rising to meet her feet, so she rushed forward, all too excited to get out of the water. She struggled against an underwater branch that seemed intent on tripping her, then felt her other foot squish beneath the surface into a mud-filled hole.
Disgusting .
She had never considered the idea that she might one day be traveling on the Amazon River, so she especially hadn’t considered how difficult it might be to actually walk in it. The mud, sticks,
and debris that floated and settled below the waterline was like an invisible army, working hard to prevent her forward motion.
Holding me here, trying to trap me.
The thoughts rushed into her brain, causing her anxiety of being attacked by some unknown and unseen predator to only grow with every passing second. She looked up, trying to find someone to help her.
Where is Ben?
She realized how dark it was. The night had descended on the forest and seemed to grow thicker down here, closer to the water and surrounded by the thick, unforgiving jungle. She tried to control her breathing — she hadn’t hyperventilated since she’d had asthma as a kid, but she thought she could feel the surge of constricting pressure beginning to seize her lungs.
Ben!
She wasn’t sure if she yelled it or just thought it, but Ben was at her side, somehow arriving silently and suddenly.
“Jules, you okay?” he asked.
She nodded, looking up him. The moonlight found a perch between two branches far above them, graciously casting a deep, whitish glow over everything, providing their party with much-needed light. Ben grabbed her elbow and allowed her to lean on it as she freed her feet from the stick and mud hole.
As she stood up and lifted her torso out of the water, she watched Captain Garcia trudging forward through the water, about fifteen feet in front of her. He and Carlo had reached the tiny beach at about the same time, but Carlo was already joining Reggie on shore, their captain hanging back to help the others out of the water.
Captain Garcia turned now and helped Archie out of the river, then Amanda.
“Come on,” Ben said, whispering. “We’re almost at the edge. Let’s get out and —“
Julie was focusing on the shoreline, staring straight ahead, so she missed the attack that happened just out of her peripheral vision.
It wasn’t much of an attack, however. She heard a small splash, like the sound of a rock being dropped into a pond, then a larger thud, then Reggie yelling something incoherent. Her eyes involuntarily darted to the left, attracted by the noise. The moonlight made the scene difficult to interpret, so she simply stared for a moment.
