Amazonia

Jacques replaced the radio.

Once again, the hunt was on.

He turned to his other men to report the good news—but there was no one behind him. He instantly crouched and hissed their names. “Manuel! Roberto!”

No answer.

The night remained dark around him, the woods even darker. He slipped his night-vision diving mask back over his face. The woods shone brighter, but the dense vegetation made visibility poor. He backed away, his bare feet striking water.

Jacques stopped, frozen between the terrors of what lay behind him and in front of him.

Through his night-vision mask, he spotted movement. For the barest flicker of a heartbeat, it looked like the shadows had formed the figure of a man, staring back at him, no more than ten yards away. Jacques blinked, and the figure was gone. But now all the jungle shadows flowed and slid like living things toward him.

He stumbled backward into the waters, one hand scrambling to shove in his regulator mouthpiece.

One of the shadows broke out of the jungle fringe, outlined against the muddy bank. Huge, monstrous…

Jacques screamed, but his regulator was in the way. Nothing more than a wet gurgle sounded. More of the dark shadows flowed out of the woods toward him. An old Maroon tribal prayer rose to his lips. He scrambled backward.

Behind his fear of dark waters and piranhas was a more basic terror: of being eaten alive.

He dove backward, twisting around to get away.

But the shadows were faster.

11:51 P.M.

With a flashlight duct-taped to his shotgun, Nate followed near the rear of the group. The only ones behind him were Private Carrera and Sergeant Kostos. Everyone had lights, spearing the darkness in all directions. Despite the night, they moved quickly, trying to put as much distance as possible between them and whoever had set the rafts on fire.

The plan, according to Captain Waxman, was to seek a more defensible position. With the swamp on one side of them, the jungle on the other, it was not a secure spot to wait for whatever attack the fires would draw down upon them. And none of their group was delusional enough to think another attack wouldn’t come.

Always planning one step ahead, the Rangers had a fallback position already picked out. Corporal Warczak had reported spotting caves in the cliffs a short way up the chasm. That was their goal.

Shelter and a defensible position.

Nate followed the others. Carrera marched at his side. In her arms was a strange shovel-nosed weapon. It looked like a Dustbuster vacuum attached to a rifle stock. She held it out toward the black jungle.

“What is that?” he asked.

She kept her attention on the jungle. “With all we lost in the swamp, we’re short on M-16s.” She hefted the strange weapon. “It’s called a Bailey. Prototype weapon for jungle warfare.” She thumbed a switch and a targeting laser pierced the darkness. She glanced over her shoulder to her superior. “Demonstration?”

Staff Sergeant Kostos, armed with his own M-16, grunted. “Testing weapon fire!” he barked forward to alert the others.

Carrera lifted her weapon, pivoting it for a target. She centered the red laser on the bole of a sapling about twenty yards away. “Shine your flashlight here.”

Nate nodded and swung his flashlight up. Other eyes turned their way.

Carrera steadied her weapon and squeezed the trigger. There was no blast, only a high-pitched whistle. Nate caught a flash of silver, followed by a ringing crack. The sapling toppled backward, its trunk sliced cleanly through. Beyond it, a thick-boled silk cotton tree shook with the impact of something slamming into its trunk. Nate’s flashlight focused on the distant tree. A bit of silver was embedded deep in the trunk.

Carrera nodded toward her target. “Three-inch razor disks, like Japanese throwing stars. Perfect for jungle combat. Set to automatic fire, it can mow down all the loose vegetation around you.”

“And anything else in its path,” Kostos added, waving the group onward.

Nate eyed the weapon with respect.

The group continued up the jungle-choked ravine, led by Corporal Warczak and Captain Waxman. They were roughly paralleling the small stream that drained down the chasm, but they kept a respectable distance from the water, just in case. After a half hour of trekking, Warczak led them off to the south, heading for the red cliffs.

So far, there appeared to be no evidence of pursuit, but Nate’s ears remained alert for any warning, his eyes raking the shadowy jungle. At last the canopy began to thin enough to see stars and the bright glow of the moon. Ahead the world ended at a wall of red rock, aproned by loose shale and crumbled boulders.

At the top of the sloped escarpment, the cliff face was pocked with multiple caves and shadowed cracks.

“Hang back,” Captain Waxman hissed, keeping them all hidden in the thicker underbrush that fringed the lower cliffs. He signaled for Warczak to forge ahead.

The corporal flicked off his flashlight, slipped on a pair of night-vision goggles, and ducked into the shadows with his weapon, vanishing almost instantly.

Nate crouched. Flanking him, the two Rangers took firm stances, watching their rear. Nate kept his shotgun ready. Most of the others were also armed. Olin, Zane, Frank, even Kelly had pistols, while Manny bore a Beretta in one hand and his whip in the other. Tor-tor had his own built-in weapons: claws and fangs. Only Professor Kouwe and Anna Fong remained unarmed.

The professor crept backward to Nate’s side. “I don’t like this,” Kouwe said.

“The caves?”

“No…the situation.”

“What do you mean?”

Kouwe glanced back down toward the swamp. Distantly the two rafts still burned brightly. “I smelled kerosene from those flames.”

“So? It could be copal oil. That stuff smells like kerosene and that’s abundant around here.”

Kouwe rubbed his chin. “I don’t know. The fire that drew the locusts was artfully crafted into the Ban-ali symbol. This was sloppy.”

“But we were on guard. The Indians had to move fast. It was probably the best they could manage.”

Kouwe glanced to Nate. “It wasn’t Indians.”

“Then who else?”

“Whoever’s been tracking us all along.” Kouwe leaned in and whispered in an urgent hiss. “Whoever set the flaming locust symbol crept up on our camp in broad daylight. They left no trace of their passage into or out of the area. Not a single broken twig. They were damned skilled. I doubt I could’ve done it.”

Nate began to get the gist of Kouwe’s concerns. “And the ones who have been dogging our trail were sloppy.”