The Great Thirst Boxed Set

by Mary C. Findley

  “I agree,” Cindee said. Naddy and Sophie appeared, hastily put together, and tried communicating also. The others stepped aside while keeping an eye on the proceedings.

  I advise caution also,” David said. “Cindee thought they were timid, but look at them. They are showing extraordinary patience. It’s almost as if they do understand what’s being said, but they are choosing to feign ignorance.”

  “Clearly they want us to go somewhere with them,” Naddy called out. “You see how they point into the forest. I cannot imagine why they would come here with no means of communication.”

  “Dr. Ramin, I think it’s unwise to go anywhere with these people,” Drew Summers said. “They are hiding something.”

  “Hiding what?” Sophie asked. “Perhaps they just don’t know if they can trust us. Perhaps they want us to show we trust them. Eva said yesterday that we must show them respect. Perhaps this is how.”

  “Cindee, go get the Rover,” Drew said. “We’ll get a squad together and follow in a couple of jeeps. David, get the chopper and be our eyes in the sky. If they want you folks to follow them so badly, they’d better be willing to entertain a crowd. Tell the cyborg to ride shotgun with David.”

  “Jiggly could drive the Rover,” David said. “I thought Cindee could get some more flight time.”

  “Yeah, you’d like that,” Drew said with a smile. “The first genuine emotion I saw in those people was when they saw Jiggly’s arm. Taking him with you accomplishes two things – if they’re sincere and harmless, we’ll keep Robocop from scaring them any worse. If they’re deceiving us, he can be our ace in the hole if they really need scaring.”

  “You know I ain’t really no cyborg or Robocop, right?” Jiggle asked, arriving as Drew gave this speech. “I’m still working on picking up the salt shaker. Cindee can beat me at arm wrestling.”

  Cindee grinned and flexed a bicep.

  “Understood,” Drew said. “But sometimes the appearance of a threat is enough to deter the bad guys. Move, people. Let’s not keep the tour guides waiting.”

  The natives took off at a quick trot as soon as the vehicles did, but they followed a wide, open path through the trees and the vehicles kept pace easily.

  “I am so glad these people did not just run off,” Sophie said over the noise and bumping of the Rover.

  “Yes. I wonder what they have to show us,” Naddy said.

  “It’s so exciting,” Talia said. “We are going to learn something important today. I can feel it.”

  They traveled for two hours and the natives running along in front of the vehicles didn’t even seem to be tiring. Sophie had tried to call some of their contacts as soon as they were a safe distance from camp.

  “They say they didn’t send anyone,” she reported, worry in her voice. “And when I described them, they said neither the clothing nor their ornaments or tattoos sounded familiar. Maybe we should turn back.”

  “The way things pass along by word of mouth here, perhaps these people just haven’t heard about today’s arrangements,” Naddy argued. “Remember that they operate on a ‘need to know’ basis. They are just as concerned about safety as we are.”

  “Still wish we had some idea where we were going,” Cindee said.

  “Dr. Ramin, are you sure it’s a good idea to proceed?” Drew asked over the radio lying on the back seat. “This is pretty far from the camp and the trees are getting thicker. The vehicles won’t be able to go much farther into that underbrush I see ahead. David also reports it’s getting harder to keep us in sight.”

  “They’re turning,” Talia called out. “Into that lighter, more open area. Oh, look at that waterfall. It’s gorgeous! It must be a hundred feet tall.”

  “Look at them!” Keith exclaimed. “They’re running right into it. Must be something hidden behind it, like Zorro’s cave or something.”

  The natives splashed around the edge of a pool and vanished into the waterfall stream.

  “Cindee!” David’s voice screamed over the radio. “Stop! Stop the Rover now! Drew! Everybody! Camouflage netting! There’s no ground there! It’s all water! Repeat! They’ve camoed the pool, or a river, and it’s a dropoff!”

  The front wheels of the Rover dropped suddenly as Cindee jammed on the brakes. She had already been slowing to park by the pool but the whole vehicle lurched forward and the back end tilted into the air. Drew and his men bailed out of the Jeeps and tried to wrestle it back to the ground by brute force.

  Before anyone could react, Cindee pitched over the steering wheel, her seat belt flapping loose. The hinged front window slammed down flat. Keith snapped his seatbelt loose and vaulted forward from the back seat, pushing past Talia, who had been sitting next to Cindee. He grabbed Cindee by her shirt as she clawed for a hold on the hood or any part of the Rover. Keith wrapped his free arm into the steering wheel.

  Cindee hadn’t made a sound, but her enormous eyes stared into Keith’s as Talia crept alongside Keith onto the hood and grabbed both of Cindee’s hands.

  “Don’t let go, Baby,” Talia whispered. “And it’s okay to scream if you want to.”

  Cindee shook her head. “Tired of being teased about being ‘the screamer,’” she whispered.

  “What’s holding you in?” Keith asked Talia.

  “My paracord and grappling hook. I tied it around the rollbar, and to my ankle over my boot top,” Talia replied.

  “Too much weight on the front end,” groaned Drew Summers from the back of the Rover. “We can’t get it to come down.”

  “Ain’t like any of us about to move,” Keith replied.

  “Keith, I’ve got her. Go back so they can bring it down and get us out,” Talia begged.

  “No way. You go back.”

  “Talia’s not heavy enough to make a difference,” Drew said. “Keith, we need you to pull back.”

  “Talia, I can’t …” Keith whispered.

  “I love you. You have to go. I can’t hold on forever,” Talia replied.

  Keith slowly released Cindee and started to inch backward. As he did, he chanced a look down. The camouflage material had a huge hole torn in it. Keith saw a river cutting a rocky gorge less than ten feet deep. The water foamed around jagged spars and he could see dark recesses. But as the Rover started to tip backward he saw a yellowish shape move and heard a sound … a snarl. A large spotted cat prowled right beneath Cindee’s feet. It made an experimental jump and missed.

  “Nooo!” Cindee flailed.

  Talia tried to pull her up onto the hood but the jaguar sprang up and grabbed her by a leg. The Rover banged hard back to earth and Talia lost her grip, unable to bear the additional weight and the jolting. Cindee fell with the jaguar still hanging on. They landed hard on a ledge but the animal recovered and lunged on top of Cindee, who seemed to be stunned.

  Keith grabbed Talia and yanked her back into the passenger seat on top of him. For the first time they became aware of the helicopter dropping down over them. They saw Jiggly in the harness, already winching downward. The throb of the engine and rotors drowned out whatever sounds Cindee and the jaguar might have made.

  “”You all have to stay in the Rover until we can get it back on solid ground,” Drew said in a very level tone. “My guys are getting ropes out, both to tow the Rover back and to go after Cindee. We’re working as fast as we can.”

  “Can’t you shoot that thing?” Keith demanded. Talia sobbed against his chest. He didn’t dare lean over to look down again. Men clustered around them, attaching hooks and cables to the Rover. Others set up climbing gear and staked ropes into the ground at the edge of the rocky precipice.

  “No clear shot. Sorry. Paul here’s a former sniper. He will take it out if he can. But it looks like our cyborg will get there first.”

  Jiggly sank into the hole in the camouflage netting out of sight. Keith could see David struggling to hold the helicopter steady. He couldn’t imagine what David must be feeling but it must have been similar to that moment when Talia sailed
off the side of the step well in Gondrani. The Rover started to inch backward as men went over the edge, guns in their free hands.

  “Okay, everybody can get out now,” Drew reported after the Rover was level again. Keith, Talia, Sophie, and Naddy bailed out in a hurry and ran to the edge as several shots rang out. They looked down as the cable from the helicopter slowly began to winch upward, Cindee hanging limp in it. Men came scrambling back up the rock wall.

  Keith helped the two who arrived at the top first as the helicopter maneuvered her over to where they could reach her, and they unbuckled the harness and laid her on the grass. Her blood-smeared pale green hair covered most of her face. What Keith could see made him turn away and throw up. He looked down into the crevice and saw Jiggly crouching over the dead jaguar. His mechanical hand seemed to be gripping the big cat by the back of the neck.

  “The only thing I could think of was to grab it by the neck,” Jiggly said, looking sheepishly up at Keith. “I was spinning around because it was thrashing, but I just got the hand to grip as tight as it could. It worked, I guess. Seems like I paralyzed it, or whatever. Plus as soon as it dropped Cindee the guys could shoot it. Anyway, the hand won’t release. Is Cindee okay? Please say she’s okay.”

  The helicopter set down in the field beyond the other vehicles. David lunged out and fell on his knees beside Cindee. He sobbed without trying to stifle it as Talia and Sophie moved her hair aside, trying to apply disinfectant and bandages. Talia administered a shot of painkiller and Cindee jerked and coughed.

  “Don’t look at me,” Cindee whimpered as she saw David. “It got hold of my head. It wouldn’t let go. It started dragging me into that black hole. It wouldn’t let go.”

  “Let the pain medicine work,” Talia said to David.

  He looked lost for a minute, then took Cindee’s hand, which was one of the few undamaged parts of her, between the fall and the mauling. “Does this hurt, my Luna?” he asked.

  “No,” she whispered.

  He slipped his pinky finger around hers. “How about that?”

  “Feels good,” Cindee said drowsily.

  “You Americans have a saying – a pinky promise,” David said. “This is my promise. I don’t care what you look like. I will always love you.”

  Men approached with a stretcher. “We’ll have to get her out in the Rover,” Drew said. “We do have a doctor back at the camp. That’s the closest place to go.”

  “No. The copter. It will be much faster.” David stood up.

  “You’re not fit to fly,” Drew said.

  David wiped his face with a rough swipe. “Never fitter,” he said. “Get her in.” They hurried to the copter and a moment later it took off with Cindee, David, Sophie, and a guard aboard.

  “You all right down there, Cyborg?” Keith called out to Jiggly.

  “Yeah. Sure. Somebody’s coming back down here with something big and sharp, pretty soon, right?” Jiggly called back. “And Cindee’s gonna be okay, right? C’mon, please, somebody tell me something!”

  “Yes, Jiggly, I think she’ll be okay,” Talia replied. “Keith’s dad was right. You did go Terminator. You’re a hero.”

  Chapter Seventy-one – The Traitor

  The doctor at the base camp got Cindee stabilized and David flew them both to a hospital in Veracruz. Jiggly had gotten his hand freed from the dead jaguar and, when they got back to camp, he brought out the joystick controller he had shown them before the surgery.

  “The doc said this will still work as an override or reset or something if I can’t get the hand to respond,” he said. “I need some help hooking it up, though.”

  Keith took on that task and soon Jiggly had his hand working again. Talia gave him a kiss.

  “You must have been terrified when you were going down into that cavern,” she said. “How did David talk you into doing it?”

  “I had to talk him into it,” Jiggly insisted. “You should have heard the list of rules. Don’t touch the ground. Don’t get out of his line of sight. Don’t poke the mean kitty … Yeah. I couldn’t believe I could grab it like that. Cindee didn’t look so good. Are you sure she’s going to be okay?”

  “There’s always the chance of complications, but we just have to pray,” Keith said. “So we got hooked bigtime, and reeled in like fish. How did those guys know where to find us, to lead us into that trap?”

  “Drew is giving everyone the third degree,” Talia replied. “Our turns will be coming before long.”

  “Maybe somebody from the food fest last night gave us away,” Jiggly said. “That was a bunch of people.”

  “The people who met us at the airport said they knew everyone who came last night by sight,” Eva said, joining them. She still walked stiffly, but she carried a basket with sandwiches and made them take some. “You were all so brave. So brave, when everything went wrong. I froze just hearing about it.”

  “Brave or crazy,” Keith said.

  Talia burst into tears. “I let her fall!” she said. “I should have tied the paracord onto her, and she would be okay now.”

  “Oh, sweetie, no,” Eva said. “You did a wonderful thing, just trying. Are you okay? They said you were on the hood when the Rover came down. You’re not hurt? Are you sure? Is the baby all right?”

  Keith pulled Talia into his arms. “It was not your fault. And, yeah, when the doctor gets back, we need to have him check you out, and the baby.”

  “I think I’m all right,” Talia said. “We do have to figure out how those people knew we were here and found it so easy to trick us. Drew wants us to move the camp. He and Amu and Zanamu are making plans for that right now.”

  “Maybe we should set a trap for them,” Eva said angrily, “and make them pay for what they did.”

  “Drew wants to catch whoever gave away our location,” Talia said. “But, you know, maybe catching those people is a good idea. They could be made to tell us who put them up to this.”

  “How could we catch them?” Keith asked. “They disappeared into that waterfall, and besides, who knows what other traps they might have left in case we go looking for them. That’s probably just what they want, for us to go poking around back there. Maybe there are more jaguars. Jiggly might not be able to fix his cyborg arm next time.”

  Naddy, Sophie, and Drew Summers approached. “Time to break camp,” Drew announced. “This location is compromised, obviously. I wish I knew how it happened.”

  “You were so careful,” Eva said. “I hope you don’t blame yourself.”

  “Well, my job is to prevent incidents like what happened today,” Drew replied. “I just got a lecture about it last night, in fact,” he added, with a half-smile at Keith.

  “We should have listened to you,” Naddy said. “We should not have followed those people, or at least let them set the pace and take us so far without further knowledge.”

  “Someone sawed most of the way through the driver seatbelt in the Rover,” a man reported as he jogged by with a load of equipment toward the truck that pulled up at the edge of the camp. “We definitely found cut marks. The passenger side belt had some marks too, but it looks like the person got interrupted.”

  “Who would do such a thing?” Sophie gasped. “That explains why Cindee fell out. Monstrous!”

  “It also tells us there was a traitor right here in the camp,” Drew said. He clapped his hands. “Come on, people. We need to break camp and get out of here. And I want everybody watching everybody else. Tell me about anything suspicious. Anything. Move, move, move!”

  Keith and Talia added their tent and other belongings to the pile in the back of the truck. Drew Summers himself got behind the wheel of the Rover, which had somehow gotten the sabotaged seatbelts replaced in the short time they had been back at camp. Keith sat beside him and Talia, Sophie, and Naddy climbed into the back.

  “Where’s Eva?” Sophia asked. “I haven’t seen her since we separated to tear down.”

  “Not sure,” Drew replied, looking back at
the forming convoy behind them. “We did a check a few minutes ago and everyone was present. She must be in one of the jeeps. The guys are doing a final sweep of the area to make sure it’s safe to proceed.”

  “Oh, all the hardtops and doors are on,” Talia said.

  “Right. We’re not taking any chances,” Drew said. “Any more jaguars show up, they’ll have to get through steel-reinforcing. All these vehicles are like tanks when fully equipped.”

  A man on a motorcycle pulled up alongside the Rover. “We found no watchers or evidence of pursuit, Boss,” he reported. “You are green to proceed.”

  “Go down the line and tell me which jeep Eva Sanchez got into, please,” Drew said to him. “Just give me some button bursts – number of the jeep in the line.”

  “Will do,” the man replied, and roared off.

  “I wish you’d consider my request that you cut the expedition short, Drs. Ramin,” Drew said. He made some hand signals out the window. Hands waved back down the line and he started the Rover.

  “We have only begun to examine the pyramid throne of Araña,” Naddy replied. “Talia is right. This could be vital protection. What happened to Cindee is evidence of how much we need eyes to search for the enemy. It could also shorten our search for the tablet cache.”

  “Okay,” Drew said. “I chose a new base camp site, and, as far as I know, nobody else knows it but me. I even used a paper map. Those GPS-happy guys had better not get lost.”

  They drove about half an hour. Keith said, “I didn’t hear any – what did you call them? – button bursts. Nobody let you know which jeep Eva was in.”

  “You’re right.” Drew stopped the Rover and grabbed his radio. “Roll call,” he said. “Static bursts for your number in line, then one word. Yes or no, whether Apple Lady is on board. Everybody in line better answer pronto.”

  Sophie mouthed “Apple Lady?”