Amazonia

“I’ll see if Frank can be moved.”

“We leave no one behind,” Kostos said.

Nate nodded, glad to hear it. He crossed to the others. “How’s Frank doing?” he asked Kouwe.

“He’s lost a lot of blood. Once he’s stable, Kelly wants to transfuse him.”

Nate sighed. “We may have to move him.”

“What?” Kelly asked, tying off a suture. “He can’t be moved!” Panic, exhaustion, and disbelief hardened her words.

Nate crouched as Kelly and Kouwe began bandaging the second stump. Frank moaned softly as his leg was jarred.

As they worked, Nate explained what had happened at the cave’s entrance. “We’ve been contacted by the Ban-ali. Perhaps invited to continue on to their village. I suspect the invitation is a one-time offer.”

Kouwe nodded. “We must’ve passed some last challenge, survived some gauntlet,” the professor said, parroting Nate’s early assessment. “Now we’ve earned the right to move onward by proving ourselves worthy.”

“But Frank…?” Kelly said.

“I can rig up a stretcher out of bamboo and palm fronds,” Kouwe said softly, touching Kelly’s hand. “Knowing these tribesmen, if we don’t move him, he’ll be killed. We’ll all be killed.”

Nate watched the woman’s face tighten with fear. Her eyes glazed. First her daughter, now her brother.

Nate sank down beside her and put his arm around her. “I’ll make sure he gets where we’re going safely. Once there, Olin can get the radio up and running.” Nate glanced to the Russian.

Olin nodded his head vigorously. “I know I can at least get the GPS working properly to send out a decent signal.”

“And once that’s done, help will arrive. They’ll airlift your brother out. He’ll make it. We all will.”

Kelly leaned into him, softening against him. “Do you promise?” she said, her voice soft with tears.

He tightened his embrace. “Of course I do.” But as Nate stared at the pale face of her brother, with blood slowly seeping through the man’s new bandages, he prayed it was a promise he could keep.

Kelly shifted in his hold, and her voice was stronger when she spoke. “Then let’s go.”

He helped her to her feet.

They quickly began arranging for their departure. Kostos and Manny crossed to the jungle and gathered material to construct the makeshift stretcher, while Kelly and Kouwe stabilized Frank as well as they could. Soon they were ready to head out again into the night.

Nate met Carrera at the cave entrance.

“Our visitor’s still out there,” she said.

In the distance, the lone shadowy figure stood.

Kostos raised his voice, returning to make sure everything was in order. “Keep together! Keep alert!”

Nate and Carrera separated. The group filed out between them with the sergeant in the lead. Near the end of the line, Manny and Olin carried the stretcher, the patient lashed to the bamboo for extra security. The men in the party would take turns hauling Frank.

As the stretcher passed, Kelly followed last. Then Nate and Carrera moved in step behind her.

Just past the entrance, the toe to Nate’s boot knocked an object from the shale, something dusty and discarded. Nate bent to pick it up and inspected it.

They couldn’t leave this behind.

He knocked off the dirt and stepped forward. He slipped in front of Manny, wiped the last bit of dust from the brim of Frank’s Red Sox cap, and placed it back on the stricken man’s head.

As Nate turned to return to his place in line, he found Kelly’s eyes on his, tears glistening. She offered him a shadow of a sad smile. He nodded, accepting her silent gratitude.

Nate took his position beside Carrera. He studied the dark jungle and the solitary figure in the distance.

Where did the path lead from here?

Fourteen

Habitation

AUGUST 16, 4:13 A.M.

AMAZON JUNGLE

Louis floated in his canoe, awaiting news from his trackers. Dawn was still hours away. Stars shone in the clear sky, but the moon had set, casting the swamp into deep shadows. Through night-vision scopes, Louis watched for any sign of his men.

Nothing.

He grimaced. As he waited in the canoe, he felt his plan crumbling around him. What was going on out there? His ruse to get the Ranger team fleeing had been successful. But what now?

At midnight, Louis’s team had crossed the swamp in their canoes, hauled overland from the river. As the group neared the far shore, flares had blossomed into the sky farther up the chasm, near the southern cliffs. Shots were fired, echoing down to the swamp.

Using binoculars, Louis had watched a shadowy firefight. The Ranger team was again clearly under attack. But from his vantage, Louis could not see who or what was attacking them. His attempts to contact Jacques’s recon team had failed. His lieutenant had gone mysteriously silent.

Needing information, Louis had sent a small team ashore, his best trackers, outfitted with night-vision and infrared equipment, to investigate what was happening. He and the others remained a safe distance offshore in the canoes and waited.

Two hours had passed, and so far, there was no word, not even a radio message from the trackers. Sharing his canoe were three men and his mistress. They all watched the far shore with binoculars.

Tshui was the first to spot a man slip from the jungle. She pointed, making a small sound of warning.

Louis swung his glasses. It was the leader of the tracking team. He waved for them to cross to shore. “At last,” Louis mumbled, lowering his scopes.

The convoy of canoes swept to the boggy banks. Louis was one of the first on shore. He silently signaled his men to set up a defensive perimeter, then crossed to the lead tracker.

The dark-haired man, a German mercenary named Brail, nodded in greeting. He was short, no taller than five feet, painted in camouflage and clad in black clothes.

“What did you find?” Louis asked him.

The man spoke with a thick German accent. “Jaguars, a pack of fifteen or so.”

Louis nodded, not surprised. Across the swamp, they had heard the strange growls and cries.

“But these were no ordinary jaguars,” Brail continued. “More like monsters. Three times normal size. There’s a body I can show you.”

“Go on,” Louis said, waving this away for now. “What happened to the others?”

Brail continued his report, describing how the trackers had been forced to move with care so as not to be spotted. The rest of his four-man team were positioned in trees up the chasm. “The pack is leaving, heading deeper into the canyon. They appear to be herding the remaining members of the enemy team ahead of them.”