Amazonia

One was smashed under its weight, his face crushed as he glanced up a moment too late.

Kouwe and Anna were already on their feet. From such close range, they emptied their pistols at the remaining trio, striking chests, arms, and bellies. The group fell. Dakii rushed out, an obsidian dagger in his hand. He ran at the mercenaries and slit the throats of any who still moved. It was quick and bloody work.

With a hand, Kouwe steadied Anna, who had paled at the display. “We have to get back to the others.”

9:05 A.M.

From the height of the chasm, Louis had a wide view of the isolated valley. A pair of binoculars hung around his neck, forgotten. Across the jungle, smoke rose from countless fires and signal flares. In just over an hour, his team had encircled the village and was now closing slowly toward the center, toward his goal and prize.

Brail, who had been assigned as his new lieutenant after Jacques disappeared, spoke near his feet. The tracker knelt over a map, marking off small X’s as his units reported in. “The net’s secure, Herr Doktor. Nothing left now but mopping up.”

Louis could tell the man was anxious to bag his own limit here.

“And the Rangers? The Americans?”

“Herded toward the center, just as you ordered.”

“Excellent.” Louis nodded to his mistress at his side. Tshui was naked, armed only with a little blowgun. Between her br**sts rested the shrunken head of Corporal DeMartini, hung around Tshui’s neck by the man’s own dog tags.

“Then it’s time we joined the party.” He lifted his twin pair of snub-nosed mini-Uzis. They felt powerful in his hands. “It’s high time I made the acquaintance of Nathan Rand.”

9:12 A.M.

“You watch over your brother and the shaman,” Nathan said, sensing time was running out. “I’m going after Zane.”

“You don’t have a weapon.” Kelly knelt beside the shaman. With Nathan’s help, the two had wrangled the tribesman into a hammock. Kelly had shot him full of morphine, quieting his pained thrashing. A belly wound was one of the most agonizing. With no better solution, she was now slathering the entry and exit wounds with Yagga sap. “What are you going to do if you catch him?”

Nate felt a fire in his own belly, just as agonizing as a bullet wound. “First he betrayed my father, now he betrayed us.” His voice choked with anger. He wanted only one thing from the man. Vengeance.

Frank spoke from his hammock. “What are you going to do?”

Nathan shook his head. “I have to try.”

He headed toward the exit. Distantly the explosions had died down, but gunfire spat sporadically. The fewer the shots, the more obvious it became that the village was being wiped out. Nate knew they would fare no better, not unless something was done. But what?

Stalking down the passage, at first cautiously, then faster and faster, around and around, Nate was reminded of the serpentine pattern of the Ban-ali symbol, winding in a spiral. Could this passage be what the symbol represented, or was it what Kelly had conjectured earlier, a crude representation of the twisted protein model, the mutagenic prion? If it represented the Yagga’s tunnel, what did the helixes at each end of the spiral mean? Did one depict the healing ward? And if so, what did the other represent? And the blue hand-print? Nate recalled the painted handprints decorating the entrance to the passage and shook his head. What did it all mean?

He ran around a corner and stumbled over a dead Indian lying in the tunnel. Nate fell to his hands, skidding on his knees. Once stopped, he rolled around and saw the bullet hole in the man’s chest and a second in the back of his head.

Nate looked down and saw another body, just its legs, around the next curve. Another Indian.

Zane.

Nate scrambled to his feet, his blood on fire. The man was picking off the unarmed stragglers here, healers and aides to the shaman, brutally clearing a bloody path to the tunnel’s end. The f**king coward.

Nate shoved down the tunnel, counting off the openings on his left. When he reached the last one, he ducked out of the passage and through a small, empty dwelling. He found himself on a branch at least five feet thick. Before continuing, he needed some idea of what was happening below. Smoke billowed and wafted through the open glade.

In the clearing around the tree, a few Indians retreated toward the Yagga.

By now, an ominous quiet had settled over the village.

Nate edged along the branch, but he couldn’t get a good look across the glade toward the nightcap oak and his team’s temporary homestead. The branch pointed the wrong way. He couldn’t even spy the entrance to the Yagga. Damn it.

Pistol fire sounded from below. Zane! A scream erupted from the field on the tree’s far side. The coward must be hiding down at the tunnel’s end, killing any Indians who neared. Nate knew the bastard had enough ammo to hold them off for a while.

The Indians in direct sight below fled toward the cover of the thicker wood.

Nate stared across the glade. There was no sign of his friends.

As Nate sidled along the thick limb, his toe nudged a rope coiled atop the branch. He looked closer. Not rope, he realized, but one of the vine ladders.

“A fire escape,” he mumbled. An idea flashed into his mind—a plan forming.

Before he lost his nerve, he shoved the piled vine over the edge.

The ladder unrolled with a whispery sound until it snapped to its full length, only three feet from the ground. It was a long climb, but if Zane was down there, perhaps Nate could sneak up on him.

With no more plan than that, Nate mounted the ladder and began a hurried climb earthward. He raced down the rungs. If his group and the remaining Indians could fall back here, they might have a more defensible position. But before that could happen, Zane had to be eliminated.

Nate reached the end of the ladder and hopped off.

Tall roots rose all around him, and it took Nate a moment to orient himself. The stream was behind and off to the left. That meant he was at about the four o’clock position from the tunnel entrance. He began to wind counterclockwise around the trunk.

Three o’clock…two o’clock…

Somewhere off in the forest, a spatter of automatic gunfire erupted. Another grenade exploded. Clearly the fighting had not entirely ceased in some parts of the village.

Using the cover of the noise, Nate crawled and edged his way around the tree’s base. At last, he spotted one of the tall buttress roots that flanked the entrance. One o’clock.

Nate leaned against the trunk. Zane was beyond the obstruction…but how to proceed from here was the tricky part. Another pistol shot rang out from Zane’s bunker. Nate frowned down at his empty hands.