Chapter 4

 

Peter shook his head as the two men in the other boat went after each other.

“What do you mean you’re a better driver?” Linc said.

“Look,” Gator said, “while you were going to your fancy art school, I was in Iraq earning the right to complain that I was over there in the first place. And while I was there, I drove just about every kind of vehicle you can imagine. If it has a motor, I’ve been in it. About the only thing I couldn’t pilot is a helicopter.”

“Funny thing,” Linc said. “I got my pilot’s license when I was seventeen. Spent two summers shuttling people back and forth between Seattle and the San Juan Islands. And I did that without ever leaving the country.”

Gator glared at Linc and pulled his paddle out of the water. 

“Ladies, please!” Peter said. “We’ll be home in another week, and you never have to see each other again if you don’t want to. But could you please just clamp it for a minute?”

“Yeah, sure,” Linc said.

Gator grunted.

The jungle moved slowly past. Peter and his team, along with everyone’s gear, drifted down the river in three canoes. They’d left the Indians to go back to their villages. Now it was mid-morning and the mosquitoes were out in force.

Peter reclined in the bow of the small boat with his pack under his knees. Bogart sat in the rear of the canoe, using a paddle to keep them oriented in the current. Though they had to travel as lightly as possible, Peter had allowed each member of his team to bring along one “luxury” item, so long as it was small. Linc had insisted on his harmonica. Bogart and Gator had brought iPods, which figured. And now Peter was enjoying his: a worn-out paperback copy of Jack London’s The Call of the Wild.

He drew from his pack a plastic bag of cigarettes he’d bartered from the Indians. He lit one up and leaned back in the canoe. His gun pressed into his back, so he reached behind him and adjusted it. Took a puff and eased back again. Jack London’s words echoed in his mind as he read: Each day mankind and the claims of mankind slipped farther from him.

“You know those thing are going to kill you before you’re sixty,” Linc said. He was paddling the canoe with their video gear. Gator and the Peruvian brothers were in the third canoe, which trailed behind a bit.

Peter smiled but didn’t look up from his book. “Good, because I’m not planning on living that long.”

“You’re as crazy as you ever were, Pete.”

Peter shook his head, lost in the words on the page.

Deep in the forest a call was sounding, and as often as he heard this call, mysteriously thrilling and luring, he felt compelled to turn his back upon the fire and the beaten earth around it, and to plunge into the forest, and on and on, he knew not where or why; nor did he wonder where or why, the call sounding imperiously, deep in the forest.

Peter’s mind flashed back to the jaguar. Or, rather, to the way he’d felt when he realized it was a jaguar. Was it . . . disappointment? That’s what it had felt like. Relief, but a sad relief. Like maybe he’d hoped it would be more.

He shook his head and kept reading.

 

*          *          *

 

Three hours later Peter looked up from his book. The scenery hadn’t changed much. He set his book down and glanced at the other boats.

Gator’s canoe was ahead of them now. Skins was asleep, but Afanzo was hunched over and moaning softly. Not good. Bogart had the paddle resting on his knees. He appeared lost in thought. Linc’s canoe was behind Peter’s. Just the red bandana atop Linc’s head showed above the crates in the canoe. They moved silently through the water. No one had spoken in several hours. Peter figured everyone had needed to unwind after the action the night before.

He heard an odd sound, like an exotic birdcall. Then a few notes from “Mr. Tambourine Man” sailed across the river. Peter sat up high enough to see over the crates in the canoe behind them. There was Linc with his harmonica at his lips.

“Are you kidding me?” Gator moaned. “Not again.”

Linc stopped. “Hey, you’re a whiz kid; you oughta appreciate this thing.”

“I played football at LSU, not the violin at Julliard,” Gator said.

Linc looked over at Peter. “You’re the scientist. Music and math are connected, right?”

Peter nodded and marked his page with his thumb. “Music is essentially auditory math. Both systems use a sequence of units, patterns that are predictable. Like math, we know when it doesn’t add up. That’s why dissonant music is so grating.”

“At least that explains his playing,” Gator said, looking at Linc.

Peter smiled and sat up in the boat to look downriver. Skins had said the river took a few twists and turns but ultimately ended up in a town called Iquitos, where there was a clinic. From there, Skins thought they could get a plane to Cusco. Peter was hoping to be back in the States within twenty-four hours.

Gator and Linc called a truce, and Linc picked up his song where he’d left off. Gator paddled his canoe closer to Peter’s. Afanzo’s moaning had subsided for the moment.

“The kid’s not looking too good,” Gator said. “Hope this river’s got a turbo, you know?”

Peter nodded. “Not much we can do for him even if we stopped.”

“You ready to go home, Boss?” Gator said.

Peter set down his book. “Are you kidding? And leave this place?”

“Yeah, right,” Gator said. “I’ll bet ole Truman is goin’ nuts with you away.”

Peter grinned. “Nah, he’s having the time of his life. Mom spoils that dog rotten when I’m gone. He’ll be fat and happy, that’s for darn sure.”

Linc started to play U2’s “Where the Streets Have No Name.” It actually sounded pretty good.

Gator dipped his paddle in the water and edged his boat closer to Peter’s. “You know your mom’s going to kill you when she finds out you were almost eaten by an overgrown alley cat.”

“Yeah, well, she’s not going to find out,” Peter said. “And you’re not going to tell her.”

“It’ll cost you,” Gator said, smoothing his bald head. “I couldn’t believe you did that. You’re nuts, you know that? I’m glad Bogart had your back. Even if you did cry like a little girl.”

“Yeah, right.”

His team laughed. In Gator’s canoe, Skins awakened but simply turned his head and went back to sleep. Linc launched into a new song, and the jungle continued to slide by.

Ten minutes later the harmonica music stopped.

“Hey,” Peter said, “what happened to the serenade?”

“Someone’s got to get some work done around here,” Linc said, digging into his backpack.

Peter couldn’t help but smile as he looked at Linc. The harmonica hung by a cord around his neck. He wore a tight gray concert T-shirt from some obscure band. His unkempt hair was secured under the red bandana as usual, and he wore a pair of big aviator sunglasses. Peter shook his head. The guy hadn’t changed at all since high school.

A moment later, Linc was perched in the boat with his eyes glued to the team’s only connection with the outside world, a Thuraya satellite phone. The best that money could buy, according to Linc. Peter saw a familiar gleam in Linc’s eyes. The man loved his toys.

“Did you ever get that thing to work?” Peter asked him. “I sure couldn’t.”

“Of course I did,” Linc said. “I just ordered a pizza to be delivered to our hotel tonight. Then I checked my e-mail and found out that the Rockies are in the World Series again.”

“You had me ’til the Rockies,” Peter said. “Anyway, it was dead as a doornail yesterday.”

“Well, it’s working now.”

Peter smiled. “How’d you do it?”

Linc had an obnoxious grin on is face. “I’m just that good, Pete. It’s magic.”

“What about it, Bogart?” Peter said, ignoring Linc. “How about I pilot this thing awhile?”

Bogart immediately dug the paddle into the water, sending the canoe into a tight turn. “Thought you’d never ask.”

Peter gripped the side of the boat. “Whoa. Careful there, Pocahontas.” He lifted his voice. “Hold up, guys: we’re going to spin this thing around, so I’m driving.”

Bogart paddled fiercely for ten seconds and got the canoe turned around. Then he handed the dripping paddle across to Peter, who fine-tuned their position in the current. Bogart had his earbuds in and his iPod on and was settled back against his pack and almost instantly asleep. Peter shook his head and smiled.

He maneuvered the canoe through the winding river. He and the others were able to keep the boats moving, even in still water and through tangled, submerged trees. The jungle embraced the boats on either side as they moved. Green ferns and low-lying plants pushed out from the trees and over the water. Hundreds of varieties of trees shot up on both sides. All around, the jungle hissed, croaked, moaned, and chirped.

Above them, howler monkeys jumped from tree to tree. Birds took flight back and forth across the river. Peter noticed a few black caimans in the shallows trying to catch the sun’s rays. A giant sloth hung from a branch like a still-frame image. They traveled like this, talking and resting, as the river churned quietly benieth them.

What was that? Something in the trees caught Peter’s eyes, just out of sight. He turned and scanned the woods. His hand moved instinctively to the pistol at his side. He tensed. Maybe an animal, maybe a shadow. Maybe one of those caimans—jungle crocs that could tear a man in half. Or maybe it was nothing.

The jungle in front of him was dark and haunting. Farther in, beyond the river and trees, lay a vast, untamed wilderness. But as the waning sun shrouded its leaves and stalks, the jungle was becoming a blur of gray and green.

Peter wasn’t going to repeat last night’s episode. He was smarter than that. But still.

He kept his eye on the trees. Something was there. He was sure of it.

 

*          *          *

 

Raul moved along the river’s edge with easy strides, each step quiet and determined. To either side rose giant jupati trees, carpeted in moss. Snarling liana vines crisscrossed between the trees.

He stopped briefly to scan the boats passing down the darkening Amazon: three canoes, six men, at least two gringos, lots of luggage. He sniffed. Tourists. He turned away and resumed his hunt.

Raul wore a specially designed one-piece suit that blended perfectly with the trees and earth around him. His head was covered in the same fabric, his face hidden behind camouflaged goggles. The jungle temperature was pushing ninety-eight degrees and the humidity was almost 100 percent, but he was perfectly comfortable inside the high-tech suit. His backpack, including a laptop computer and an assortment ,of armory weighed less than ten pounds. His assault rifle had been specially modified and equipped for this mission.

Four others moved quietly in his shadow. They ran without stopping for three hours, at one point going overland to join another branch of the Amazon.

The radio clicked in his ear. “Have you reached her yet?”

Raul touched his ear. “Not yet, Dr. Khang.”

“She must not make outside contact.”

He frowned. “I understand. It will be handled.”

“You must hurry. She may be too far ahead of you.”

He didn’t bother to answer. He heard the distant rumble of the Rio Negro and knew he was close. As he ran, he recalculated the distance in his head and relaxed. If nothing else, Eden had taught him patience. “GPS topo.”

An image popped up on his goggles, a three-dimensional view from above of where he was.

“Zoom out.”

The view widened to show a larger area. He panned the image into the jungle and noticed another figure. The person was moving quickly through the trees, nearly as fast as he was.

The girl.

His pulse quickened. The sound of the river grew louder, rising in intensity next to him. He concentrated on the muscles in his legs and willed them to move faster. Time was running out.

He rounded a fallen log, and the lone figure came into view fifty feet ahead of him, crashing through the branches. Did she know they were behind her? Raul saw on his overhead map that the forest stopped ahead of the target and opened into a clearing. Strange. He hadn’t seen that on the maps.

Then he realized what it was. It wasn’t a clearing at all. The river ahead of him fell over the edge of the jungle floor and cascaded into the valley below.

It was a waterfall.

Either the girl didn’t know she was coming to a cliff or she was planning to learn how to fly. Either way, the chase was about to end.

He raised his weapon, aimed at the girl’s back, and fired twice.

The figure stumbled and plunged over the cliff.

Raul and his men trotted to the edge of the cliff and looked down. Over three hundred feet to the bottom. Mist and spray covered the surface of the water. Below, swift water churned over jagged rocks. There was no way she could survive.

But Khang wouldn’t be satisfied with less than a body on his desk. So Raul sighed and began looking for a way to climb down.

He had to be sure.