Serpent (NUMA Files 1)

"I have an idea," Morales said. Trout followed him past the lab , building to another simple but. "This is the professor's garage. Look. His vehicle is gone."

"Those would have been the tracks we saw on the way in. What does he drive?"

"A big car," Morales said. "Like a Jeep, only like this." He held his hands wide.

"A HumVee?"

"Si," he said with a bright smile. "HumVee. Like the U.S. military uses." .

So it was likely they went somewhere in the Hummer. But where?

"Maybe there's a note in the lab," Trout said.

The cinderblock building was pleasantly cooler than outside even without the airconditioning on. The door was unlocked and they easily gained entrance. Trout took in the hightech equipment and shook his head in wonder much as his wife had done the day before. Morales stood nearby at respectful attention, almost as if he were afraid of being caught in forbidden precincts. Except for the general clutter, noting appeared to have been disturbed.

Paul went over to the sink. There were two glasses in the drying rack.

"Looks they they could have had a drink."

Morales checked to waste basket and found two cans of Seven-Up. Further reconstructing events, Trout surmised that Gamay had been waiting for to professor at to highway, they came in here, drank some soda, then took off. He checked to refrigerator and found to two dead partridges. The binds had yet to be cleaned and gutted. Chi must have planned to return in a short time from wherever he went.

"Is there a village nearby where they could have gone?" Trout asked.

"There is a town, si, but the people there would have seen Dr. Chi in his big blue car. Nada."

Trout examined to maps on to wall. One appeared to be missing. He went over to the table and began looking at the papers on top. It took only a moment to find the map and match the pinholes to those on to wall. Chi could have taken this down to show Gamay. On the other hand, it may have been on the table for weeks. He showed to map to Morales.

"Do you know where this is?"

The police sergeant examined to map and said, "Down south more into Campeche. About a hundred miles. Maybe more."

"What's out there?"

"Nothing. Woods. It's outside to biosphere reserve. No one goes there."

Trout tapped the map. Somebody went there. My guess is it's Dr. Chi. The chopper can get us there in an hour or less."

"I'm sorry, senor. By the time we walk back to the helicopter it will be dark."

Morales was right. They were lucky to find their way out of the woods. By the time they returned to the chopper it was pitch black. Trout hated the thought of Gamay having to spend another night wherever she was. As' the helicopter lifted above the trees he tried to console himself with other possibilities. That Chi and Gamay had fetched up somewhere. Maybe they were sitting down to a quiet dinner. Less appealing scenarios intruded. An accident. That didn't figure. Gamay was simply not accident-prone. She was too savvy, too sure-footed.

Trout knew tat even to most sure-footed person makes a mistake at least once in his or her life. He hoped it wasn't Gamay's turn.

25 SERGEANT MORALES FOUND TROUT A room in a small hotel near the airport. Trout lay on his bed for hours staring at the ceiling fan, wondering what Gamay was doing, before he finally slipped into a few fitful hours of sleep. He awoke at twilight and took a shower that was all the more refreshing because there was no hot water. He was pacing the tarmac when the pilot and sergeant arrived as the sky turned peach pink in the east.

The chopper followed Chi's map in a straight line at its maximum cruising speed, flying at an altit

ude of fifteen hundred feet. The forest stretched out below like a rough napped green carpet. Arriving at the area indicated on Chi's map, the pilot slowed the aircraft and dropped it almost to treetop level. The JetRanger admirably fulfilled the purpose of its original design as an army observation helicopter. Trout, who was sitting in the front, noticed a textural difference in the greenery and asked the pilot to circle. Morales picked out the barely distinct edges of the rectangular plain. After a couple more passes for the pilot to acquaint himself with the lay of the land, the JetRanger landed at rough center.

It took Paul less than thirty seconds to decide he didn't like this godforsaken place. Not one damned bit! It went beyond the remoteness and the weird mounds and the darkness of the encroaching forest even in daylight. Something sinister lurked here. As a boy he used to feel the same prickly scalp uneasiness when he walked past the deserted house of a sailor who ate his crewmates while becalmed in the Sargasso Sea.

Maybe Gamay had never been here, he thought, looking around at the desolate spot. All he had was Dr. Chi's map and the supposition that this was their destination. He could be spinning his wheels while Gamay desperately needed his help elsewhere. No. He clenched his jaw. This was definitely the place. He could feel it in his bones the way his fisherman father sensed a storm brewing.

The police officer suggested that they fan out in three directions, keeping each other in view as much as possible, walk to the edge of the woods, then return to the chopper. A half hour later they straggled back. Morales was about to speak but paused as his eversearching policeman's eye. picked out evidence of an earlier visit.

Squatting for a better look, Morales said, "See where the grass is broken. Here, and here again." He angled his head. "There, when the light is just right, footprints."

Thinking he would never want Morales on his trail, Trout followed the sergeant's example and saw the faint shadows that had caught the police officer's attention. The sergeant instructed the pilot to stay with the helicopter and got no argument. The early morning sun was already hinting at the blast furnace it would be in the hours to come. They set out with Morales taking the lead and had gone only a short distance when they saw a mound that had been cleared so the stone blocks on one side were visible.