by Nick Thacker
Rhett, trying to breathe through a blood-filled mouth, couldn’t respond.
Chapter 40
“You tricked us,” Ben said. “You made us believe you were —“ Ben stopped, unable to continue without taking a breath. He wanted to kill the kid, to put a bullet in his head and end his life. It was a more difficult decision to refrain from that action than to carry it out, but Ben was unarmed.
He also wanted answers.
Ignoring the sounds of the battle between the natives and the mercenaries, he pulled Rhett up and toward him and spoke again, his voice shaking out from behind a tightly clenched jaw. “Why? What’s in it for you?”
Rhett’s upturned lip and flaring nostrils told Ben he wasn’t going to get an answer easily.
“You’re going to talk, you little sack of —“
“You already know the answer.” Rhett’s voice was strained, gurgling from a mouthful of blood and saliva. He spat to the side, wincing.
Ben cocked his head sideways. “What? What are you talking about?”
“I just told you,” Rhett said. “You want to know who’s after you, right?”
Ben still held Rhett’s collar, but he loosened his grip slightly .
“I recognized you at the cabin. They told me to wait for you there, to make sure it was you.”
Back at the cabin. He was waiting for us. For me. Ben wanted to start hitting him again, harder, until he was too exhausted to move, but he also needed to hear what the kid had to say. “How did you recognize me? Why do you know me?”
“The Company,” Rhett said. He spat again, this time getting the mixture only partially out of his mouth. “They sent the picture of you and Julie. You’re who they want eliminated, after they get the doctor lady.” He paused. “They have no use for the others , but since they’re with you…”
Ben didn’t know what to say. There was no chance Rhett was lying, but Ben still didn’t understand who he was. He had many questions for the kid, but he knew he wouldn’t get the chance to ask them.
“You messed it up for them back at Yellowstone. It was a sideshow, really, so it didn’t really matter. But they don’t take too kindly to people trying to derail their plans.”
“Yeah?” Ben said. “And what are those plans?”
Rhett struggled to laugh, but it came out as a strained cough. “Right. If you think I’d tell you even if I knew…”
“What’s in it for you, then?”
“What’s in it for you ?” Rhett spat back.
Ben threw Rhett’s head back, smacking it into the rock he was still hovering over, and the quick blow stunned the young man. He blinked a few times, spat again, and looked back up at Ben.
“You’re not going to win,” he said. “You’ve got stamina, I’ll give you that. But you’re not going to win.”
Ben tried a new tactic. “What are we trying to win?”
“Again, if I knew, I wouldn’t tell you. You have to know that, right?”
Ben looked around for some leverage, finding it in a fist-sized stone. He snatched it off the ground and carried it back over to where Rhett lay, bleeding, on the moss-carpeted floor. Lifting it above his head, he aimed for the bridge of Rhett’s nose.
“You’re going to bash my head in with a rock?” Rhett asked.
“You got a better idea?” Ben said. “Give me a reason not to.”
Again Rhett sneered back up at Ben.
“That’s what I thought. I ain’t going to make this hurt much — I’m not into that crap. But it’ll be final. Got anything you want to tell me before —“
Ben felt someone pulling at his wrist, and he whirled around, bringing his free hand up to protect himself.
“Ben, Ben!” Archie said. “Stop — it’s me.”
Ben relaxed slightly, but jerked his wrist out of Archie’s grip.
“Sorry,” Archie said. “I did not mean to startle you.” He motioned behind Ben at Rhett. “We need him. Alive.”
Ben raised an eyebrow. “For what?”
Archie flicked his eyes to the left, then to the right. Paulinho was suddenly in view, standing just behind another tree. He was holding Reggie, only now coming to, struggling with the weight of the soldier and his own wound. Carlo was behind Archie, somewhat camouflaged in the shadows of the jungle. Ben realized he had been completely unaware of his surroundings for the past few minutes. The fighting and gunfire had ceased, replaced once again by the sounds of the jungle.
As he looked around him at his tattered and beaten group, panic set in.
“Wh — where are the girls?”
Chapter 41
Reggie opened his eyes, and all the pain came rushing back in.
In all his years, Reggie had never felt so out of his element. He had taken hundreds of survivalists, amateur explorers, and corporate executives out on wilderness expeditions, and he had brought every single one of them home, safe and sound. Before his life became serving a never-ending stream of hipster adventurers, he had spent his career in the Army, making a name for himself as a sniper. On deployments, he was surrounded and supported by a cast of well-trained soldiers, like himself, and on most missions he had nothing to fear but not making it back to base in time for a hot meal.
But out here, this particular time, things were different. Reggie was leading a ragtag group of people who were trying to find something that may not even exist. He’d talked them into it, and for that he felt partly responsible. But it had been their choice to come out here, to link up with this mission and take it on.
They were being chased by a group of trained killers who wanted to take Amanda Meron with them and exterminate the rest of his group, and now they were under attack from a group of tribal warriors as well.
Reggie rubbed his head as he tried to clear his vision once more. He was standing, but not on his own feet — at least he couldn’t feel them currently. He blinked a few more times, and the memory of what had happened came rushing back .
He’d gone down after being struck by a club, from a native that was hiding behind a bush. He’d nearly tripped over a thick strangle of dry vines anyway, and hadn’t been focusing on the man’s location when he was ambushed.
He rubbed the spot where the man’s club had landed, just above the temple on the left side of his head. Could have been a lot worse . Not feeling blood, he quickly assessed the area around the bruise and diagnosed it as a close call.
After the initial encounter, Reggie had assumed they’d made it out safely, somehow scaring the group away with Paulinho’s odd tattoo. But then the guns started firing, and the all-out brawl began. He saw the leader of the group, a younger man close to Ben’s age with dark, deep-set eyes, staring back at him from the cover of a tree on the other side of the clearing, and they’d locked eyes for a moment. Those eyes were familiar to him — the eyes of someone who was trained to kill. They were steady and unmoving, but they weren’t simply evil . They had a sinister darkness to them, but they were framed by a slightly frowning expression, one Reggie recognized immediately as the expression of a man who was calculating the odds, choosing a course of action, and trying to accomplish his goal with the smallest loss to his team.
Reggie only saw the man for a moment, but it was enough. He’d even raised his pistol and aimed, but didn’t have a clear enough shot. He didn’t want to hit any of the natives, as he wasn’t sure if they were being watched by any others that might be spying nearby. Even if there was another tribe — one in conflict with the one they’d come across — the tribes would likely communicate what they had found here.
And word traveled surprisingly fast in the jungle. The natives, to the outside observer, were generally considered quite primitive, but Reggie knew there was a fine balance of power between the jungle itself and its inhabitants, and many of the oldest tribes scattered throughout the immense land area were finely attuned to its whisperings. Societies that had existed for thousands of years may not have changed much technologically, but it was unwise to assume that they
were also primitive when it came to communication.
Reggie had read about a tribe that sent out two runners whenever it needed to deliver messages to its constituents, in case one or the other got held up. They would travel opposite routes, ending up at the destination at generally the same time, then deliver the news and return.
If his group had somehow caused the native tribe that was about to kill them to feel uneasy, he wanted to keep that impression as long as possible, to prevent any other tribes or roaming bands of hunters from interfering with their plans. He didn’t want to initiate a war with the indigenous peoples of the Amazon any more than he wanted to fight off the mercenaries.
So he chose the other option — run. He’d turned and run straight into the club of a native warrior, and blacked out. Likely scaring the man off, the native hadn’t stayed around long enough to kill him, and for that he was thankful.
He pushed down with his feet, happy to find that they worked properly and he could now stand on his own. He patted Paulinho’s shoulder, no doubt still feeling a bit of pain himself, and looked at Ben and Archie.
“What happened?” He saw the bloodied face of the kid, Rhett, and almost didn’t recognize him.
“Found him in the woods,” Ben said.
“Well, it’s obvious you questioned him,” Reggie said. “Hopefully you found something out?” He walked closer to Ben. “Christ, Ben, you look like you’ve had better days too.”
Ben’s jaw clenched and unclenched, and Reggie didn’t need to look down to see that Ben’s fists were making the same motion. Archie was looking at the ground.
“What’s going on?”
“The girls,” Ben said. “They took them.”
Chapter 42
“Can we go on without them?” Archie asked.
Ben felt anger flash again, but he held back.
“I’m sorry,” Archie said, noticing the fire in Ben’s eyes. “I didn’t mean it that way, I just thought that with fewer people, we could possibly get to the end of our line, then —“
“We’re not moving forward without them,” Ben said.
“I second that,” Paulinho added.
Archie looked from Ben and Paulinho to Reggie. Reggie was leaning against the thin branch of a tree that poked out from the ground, seemingly not attached to any sort of trunk at all. It twisted around a few times, like a snake, then fell back to the ground about twenty feet away, where it ended in a mess of leaves and vines. The remaining members of the group were passing a water bottle around, each taking a quick sip before passing it along.
“They’re right,” Reggie said. “There’s no point in getting there before them if they still have Amanda and Julie. That’s the goal now — getting them back.”
Ben nodded at Reggie.
“But,” Reggie continued, “they know that we’re going to be looking for them, and they know the longer we’re out here running in circles, the better chance we have that we’ll just die of natural causes.”
“What are you saying?” Ben wasn’t sure where Reggie was going with this line of reasoning.
“I’m saying that while our top priority is of course to get the girls, it still might be in our best interest to find whatever it is we’re looking for.”
“How do you figure that?” Archie asked.
Ben looked at Reggie to explain. Reggie nodded, took a breath and a sip of water, and stepped to the center of the group of men. “Easy,” he said. “They have Amanda — and Julie — now they just need to find the ultimate prize they’re after, then kill us. They’re going to be following the same line we’ve been traveling, because by now they’ve figured out the general direction by following us. Amanda and Julie won’t want to help them, but they eventually will if they’re forced.”
Ben clenched his fists. “Which is exactly why we need to find them before they’re ‘forced.’”
Reggie shook his head. “No. If we can get to the end of the line first, we can gain a bargaining chip.”
“Something they want for something we want,” Archie said.
“Right. And Ben, you’re not out here to explore and dig for artifacts. You want to find the company that’s behind all of this.”
Ben nodded, slowly. He’s right, but I hate it. He wanted to act , not continue forward and just hope they’d run into the other group eventually. But it makes the most sense.
“Ben,” Reggie said. Ben looked up and saw that Reggie and the others were all staring at him. Reggie had the beginnings of a smirk on his face, but there was a softness behind it, in his eyes. “We’re going to find them, Ben, but we have to push forward.”
Ben took a deep breath of hot, humid jungle air. He could taste the rainforest in it, and he was quickly growing to hate it. “I know.”
“Good deal,” Reggie said. He turned to address the others. “We have to move quickly. Amanda was the only one of us they needed, since she’s the one with the information to connect the dots between what she knows and what we were all looking for. They’re going to have the same information we do, for the most part, so it’s only a matter of time before they piece things together for themselves. Our best chance is to get there first, then figure out the next piece of the puzzle.”
Reggie smiled, his full-on characteristic grin returning, and he stepped up to Rhett and pulled the young man to his feet. He reached for one of the packs and withdrew a section of rope and began binding the kid’s hands behind his back. “Hope you’re up for a walk, kid.”
Ben wasn’t able to outwardly match the man’s seemingly lackadaisical attitude, but he now understood that the expression was worn not as a reflection of what was churning inside, but as a contradiction. It was a forced appearance, to put his team at ease, and to ensure he remained cool and collected in the face of mounting odds against them.
Ben had come to appreciate, respect, and even look up to the man. Reggie was like no one else he’d ever met, with the possible exception of his own father. Ben’s father had always been good-natured, cordial, and yet always ready for action, tense with anticipation. He was the strongest man Ben had ever known, and the sudden memory of him brought on a feeling Ben hadn’t experienced in a long time.
Part III
“…And, as his strength
Failed him at length,
He met a pilgrim shadow—
‘Shadow,’ said he,
‘Where can it be—
This land of Eldorado?’…”
— Edgar Allen Poe
Chapter 43
The ropes binding Julie’s wrists were starting to cut her. She’d struggled against them for an hour as they walked, but the thick cords of climbing rope didn’t budge. Amanda walked by her side, her hands bound as well. She looked disheveled, her ponytail long since disbanded and her short, blond strands of sweat-soaked hair sticking to her forehead and around her ears. She was sobbing gently, only her slight sniffing giving her away.
Julie wanted to reach over and put her arm around her, but she knew she wouldn’t be able to provide any consolation. She felt as bad as Amanda, and only out of sheer terror was she able to refrain from breaking down into tears as well.
The mercenaries had taken Amanda first, back in the clearing during the fight. Julie had followed Ben into the jungle and waited, shocked, as Ben took out his anger on Rhett. The kid had been a devious backstabber, but Julie was still surprised at Ben’s reaction. She’d meant to stop him, to walk over and grab his outstretched hand before he could strike again, but the mercenary grabbed her and stuffed his large, sweaty hand over her mouth.
She couldn’t scream. She couldn’t even bite the man. He’d worked his other arm behind her elbows, effectively locking her in place in front of him as he quietly stepped backwards and into the thicker part of the jungle. Within seconds they were completely hidden from view .
Julie remembered the feeling well — it was an emotion of utter desperation, one she had never felt so strongly in her life. She watched as Ben disappeared, sti
ll beating Rhett. She could hardly breathe, either from the man’s hand blocking her mouth and nose or from her own hyperventilating.
When the mercenary felt satisfied with their distance from Ben, he lifted her completely off the ground, swung her around, then set her down and pushed her through the remaining thicket and out into the open atrium. The ruins of the small hospital complex were still smoking to her left, but they didn’t stop there. The man behind her pushed her all the way through the clearing, lifting her off the ground once more as he hustled to the opposite side of the atrium. When they reached the trees he pushed her another ten steps and into a smaller clearing.
She found herself in the middle of a group of men, all dressed in similar black shirts and pants, and all wielding assault rifles.
They bound her wrists, saying nothing to her, and blocked her mouth with a thick, moist bandana. She gagged, trying to breathe through the piece of fabric, but gave up and decided to force her breathing through her nose instead. After they’d finished with her, another rope was looped around her bound wrists and tied to a carabiner, which the man who’d taken her had clipped to his belt.
I’m on a leash, she thought.
Only then did she see Amanda, staring at her with huge, terrified eyes, also bound and gagged. She was clipped to another soldier, and without a word to either of them the soldiers started walking.
They had been walking for over an hour, the daylight of the morning trickling through the jungle canopy, when they finally stopped.
Julie was exhausted, but she didn’t sit down. The man at the head of the line of soldiers turned and spoke to the two men directly behind them, and they broke off in a jog and ran ahead. The rest of the men spread out around the girls, forming a wall of mercenaries around Julie and Amanda. Julie counted ten men, not including the leader and the two that had run off .
