Amazonia. Part 20

Camera checked her wrist compa.s.s. "Southwest. It's pointing the right way."

"But what about the numbers? Seventeen and five:"

The Ranger scrunched up her face. "Maybe a date, done the military way. The day, followed by the month:"

"That would make it May seventeenth? That's nearly three months ago:" Turning, Nate started to question her a.s.sessment, but Camera had a palm raised toward him. Her other hand pressed her radio earpiece more firmly in place.

She spoke into her radio. "Roger that. We're on our way."

Nate raised an inquiring eyebrow.

"Conger and Kostos," she said. "They've found bodies ahead."

Nate felt a sickening lurch in his belly.

"Come on," Camera said stiffly. "They want your opinion:"

Nodding, Nate continued up the trail. Behind him, as they marched, Private Camera reported their discovery to her captain.

As Nate hurried, he glanced down and realized he still held the bit of faded yellow material. He remembered Gerald Clark had stumbled out of the jungle barefoot, wearing only pants. Had the man used the sc.r.a.ps of his own shirt to flag these sites? Like a trail of bread crumbs back to wherever he had come from? Nate rubbed the bit of cloth between his fingers. After four years, here was the first tangible bit of proof that at least some of his father's team had survived. Up to this point, Nate had not entertained any hope that his father was still alive. In fact, he had refused even to contemplate that possi-bility, not after so long, not after coming to some semblance of peace with his father's death. The pain of losing his father a second time would be more than he could handle. Nate stared at the sc.r.a.p in his hand for a sec-ond longer, then stuffed it into a pocket.

As he trekked up the trail, he wondered if there were more such flags out there. Though he had no way of knowing, Nate knew one thing for certain. He would not stop looking, not until he discovered the truth of his father's fate.

Camera swore behind him.

Nathan glanced back. Camera had an arm over her nose and mouth. Only then did Nate notice the stench in the air. Rancid meat and offal.

"Over here!" a voice called out. It was Staff Sergeant Kostos. The older Ranger stood only ten yards farther down the trail. In full camouflage, he blended well with the dappled background.

Nate crossed to him and was immediately a.s.saulted by a horrible sight.

"Jesus Christ," Camera gasped behind him.

Corporal Conger, the young Texan, was farther down the trail, a handkerchief over his face, in the thick of the slaughterhouse. He waved off vul-tures with his M-16 as swarms of flies rose around him.

Bodies lay sprawled everywhere: on the trail, in the woods, some draped halfway in the stream. Men, women, children. All Indians from the look of them, but it was difficult to say for sure. Faces had been chewed away, limbs gnawed to bone, entrails ripped from bellies. The carrion feed-ers had made quick work of the bodies, leaving the rest to flies, other insects, and burrowing worms. Only the diminutive sizes of the corpses suggested they were Yanomamo, the missing villagers. And from the num-ber, probably theentire village.

Nathan closed his eyes. He pictured the villagers with whom he had worked in the past: little Tama, n.o.ble Takaho. With a sudden burst, he rushed off the trail and hunched over the stream. He breathed deeply, fightingin vain the rising gorge. With a sickening groan, his stomach spasmed. Bile splattered into the flowing water, swelled by the recent rains. Nate remained crouched, hands on his knees, breathing hard.

Kostos barked behind him. "We don't have all day, Rand. What do you think happened here? An attack by another tribe?"

Nate could not move, not trusting his stomach.

Private Camera joined him, placing a sympathetic hand on his shoul-der. "The sooner we get this done,"

she said softly, "the sooner we can leave:"

Nathan nodded, took a final deep breath, and forced himself to climb back within view of the slaughter.

He studied the area from a few steps away, then moved closer. "What do you think?" Camera asked.

Gulping back bile, Nate spoke quietly. "They must've fled during the night."

"Why do you say that?" Kostos asked.

Nate glanced to the sergeant, then nudged a stick near one of the corpses. "A torch. Burned to char at the end. The village took flight in full darkness:" He studied the bodies, recognizing a pattern to the carnage. He pointed an arm as he spoke. "When the attack came, the men tried to pro-tect the women and children. When they failed, the women were a second line of defense. They tried to run with the children:" Nate indicated a woman's corpse deeper in the woods. In her arms rested a dead child. He turned away.

"The attack came from across the stream," Nate continued. His hand shook as he pointed to the number of male bodies piled near or in the stream. "They must have been caught by surprise. Too late to put up an adequate defense."

"I don't care in what order they were killed," Kostos said. "Who the h.e.l.l killed them?"

"I don't know," Nate said. "None of the bodies are pierced by arrows or spears. But then again, the enemy might have collected their weapons after the attack-to conserve their a.r.s.enal and to leave no evidence behind. With the bodies so torn apart, it's impossible to tell which wounds are from weapons and which from the carrion feeders."

"So in other words, you have no d.a.m.n clue:" Kostos shook his head and swung around. From a few steps away, he spoke into his radio.

Nate wiped his damp forehead and shivered. What the h.e.l.lhad hap-pened here?

Finally, Kostos stepped forward, raising his voice. "New orders every-one. We're to collect a body for Dr. O'Brien to examine-one that's chewed up the least-and return it to the village. Any volunteers?"

No one answered, which earned a mean snicker from the sergeant. "Okay," Kostos said. "I didn't think so." He pointed to Private Camera. "Why don't you take our fragile little doctor back to camp? This is men's work:"

"Yes, sir." Camera waved Nate to the path, and together they continued down toward the village. Once out of earshot, Camera grumbled under her breath. "What an a.s.shole. . :"

Nate nodded, but truthfully, he was only too glad to leave the ma.s.sacre site. He couldn't care less what Sergeant Kostos might think. But he under-stood Camera's anger. Nate could only imagine the ha.s.sles the woman had to endure from the all-male force.

The remainder of the journey down the trail was made in silence. As they neared theshabano, voices could be heard. Nathan's pace quickened. It would be good to be among the living again. He hoped someone had thought to light a fire.

Circling around theshabano, Nathan approached Private Eddie Jones, who stood guard by the entrance. Beyond him, limned against the water, a pair of Rangers was posted by the river.

As he and Camera reached the roundhouse's door, Eddie Jones greeted them and blurted out the news."Hey, you guys ain't gonna f.u.c.kin' believe what we fished out of the jungle:'

"What?" Camera asked.

Jones thrust a thumb toward the door. "Go see for yourselves:"

Camera waved her rifle's barrel for Nate to go first.

Within theshabano, a small congregation was cl.u.s.tered in the round-house's open central yard. Manny stood somewhat to the side with Tor--tor. He lifted an arm when he spotted Nate, but there was no greeting smile.

The voices from the others were raised in argument.

"He's my prisoner!" Captain Waxman boomed. He stood with three Rangers, who all had their weapons on their shoulders pointing at some-one out of sight behind the group of civilians.

"At least remove the cuffs on his wrists," Kelly argued. "His ankles are still bound. He's just an old man."

"If you want cooperation," Kouwe added, "this is no way to go about it:"

"He'll answer our questions," Waxman said with clear menace.

Frank stepped in front of Waxman. "This is still my operation, Cap-tain. And I won't tolerate abuse of this prisoner:"

By now, Nate had crossed the yard and joined them. Anna Fong glanced to him, her eyes scared.

Richard Zane stood slightly to the side, a satisfied smirk on his face. He nodded to Nathan. "We caught him lurking in the jungle. Manny's big cat helped hunt him down. You should have heard him screaming when the jaguar had him pinned against a tree:"

Zane stepped aside, and Nate saw who had been captured. The small Indian lay in the dirt, his ankles and wrists bound in strips of thick plastic zip lies. His shoulder-length white hair clearly marked him as an elder. He sat before the others, mumbling under his breath. His eyes flicked between the rifles pointed at him and Tor-tor pacing nearby.

Nate listened to his muttered words.Yanomamo. He moved closer. It was a shamanic prayer, a warding against evil. Nate realized the prisoner must be a shaman.Was he from this village? A survivor of the slaughter?

The Indian's eyes suddenly flicked to Nate, his nostrils flaring. "Death clings to you," he warned, in his native dialect. "You know. You saw."

Nate realized the man must smell the stench of the ma.s.sacre on his clothes and skin. He knelt nearer and spoke in Yanomamo."Haya. Grand-father. Who are you? Are you from this village?"

He shook his head with a deep scowl. "This village is marked byshawari. Evil spirits. I came here to deliver myself to the Ban-ali. But I was too late:"

Around Nate, the arguing had stopped as they watched the exchange. Kelly whispered behind him."He's not spoken a word to anyone, not even Professor Kouwe:"

"Why do you seek the Blood Jaguars, the Ban-ali?"

"To save my own village. We did not heed their ways. We did not burn the body of thenabe, the white man marked as a slave of the Ban-ali. Now all our children sicken with evil magic:"

Nate suddenly understood. The white man marked by the Ban-ali had to be Gerald Clark. If so, that meant . . . "You're from Wauwai."

He nodded and spit into the dirt. "Curse that name. Curse the day we ever set foot in thatnabe village:"

Nate realized this was the shaman who had tried to heal the sick mis-sion children, then burned their village down in an attempt to protect the others. But by his own admission, the shaman must have failed.

The conta-gion was still spreading through the Yanomamo children.

"Why come here? How did you get here?"

"I followed thenabe's tracks to his canoe. I saw how it was painted. I know he came from this village, and I know the trails here. I came to seek the Ban-ali. To give myself to them. To beg them to lift their curse:'

Nate leaned back. The shaman, in his guilt, had come to sacrifice himself.

"But I was too late. I find only one woman still alive:" He glanced toward the site of the ma.s.sacre. "I give her water, and she tells me the tale of her village:'

Nate sat up straighter.

"What is he saying?" Captain Waxman asked.

Nate waved off his question. "What happened?"

"The white man was found by hunters three moons ago, sick and bony. They saw his markings. In terror, they imprisoned the man, fearing he would come to their village. They stripped him of all his belongings and tethered him in a cage, deep in the woods, intending to leave him for the Blood Jaguars to collect.

The hunters fed and cared for him, fearing to harm what belonged to the Ban-ali. But thenabe continued to sicken. Then, a moon later, one of the hunter's sons grew ill:'

Nate nodded. The contagious disease had spread.

"The shaman here declared them cursed and demanded the death of thenabe. They would burn his body to appease the wrath of the Ban-ali. But that morning when the hunters reached the cage, he was gone.

They thought the Ban-ali had claimed him and were relieved. Only later that day would they discover one of their canoes was missing. But by then it was too late:"

The Indian grew quiet. "Over the next days, the hunter's child died, and more in the village grew ill. Then a week ago, a woman returning from gathering bananas from the garden found a marking on the outer wall of theshabano. No one knew how it got there:" The Indian nodded to the southwest section of the roundhouse. "It is still there. The mark of the Ban-ali:" Nate stopped the story and turned to the others. He quickly recounted what the Indian shaman had told him. Their eyes grew wide with the telling. Afterward, Captain Waxman sent Jorgensen to check that section of the outer wall.

As they waited for him to return, Nate convinced Captain Waxman to slice the wrist bindings off the prisoner. He agreed, since the man was clearly cooperating. The shaman now sat in the dirt with a canteen in hand, sipping from it gratefully.

Kelly knelt beside Nathan. "His story makes a certain sense from a medical standpoint. The tribe, when they kept Clark isolated in the jungle, almost succeeded in quarantining him. But as Clark's disease progressed, either the man became more contagious . . . or perhaps the hunter, whose son got sick, had somehow contaminated himself. Either way, the disease leaped here:"

"And the tribe panicked:"

Behind them, Jorgensen ducked back into theshabano, his face grim. "The old guy's right. There's a scrawled drawing on the wall. Just like the tattoo on Agent Clark's body." His nose curled in distaste.

"But the d.a.m.n thing smells like it was drawn with pig s.h.i.t or something. Stinks something fierce."

Frank frowned and turned back to Nate. "See if you can find out what else the shaman knows:"

Nate nodded and turned back to the shaman. "After finding the symbol, what happened?"

The shaman scrunched up his face. "The tribe fled that same night . . . but . . . but something came for them:"

"What?"

The Indian frowned. "The woman who spoke to me was near to death. Her words began to wander.

Something about the river coming to eat them. They lied, but it followed them up the little stream and caught them:"

"What? What caught them? The Ban-ali?"

The shaman gulped from the canteen. "No, that's not what the woman said."

"Then what?"

The shaman stared Nate in the eye to show he spoke truthfully. "The jungle. She said the jungle rose out of the river and attacked them:"

Nathan frowned.

The shaman shrugged. "I know no more. The cursed woman died, and her spirit went to join her tribe.

The next day, this day, I hear you coming up the river. I go to see who you are:' He glanced over to Manny's jaguar. "But I am found. Death scent clings to me, like it does to you:"

Nathan sat back on his heels. He stared over at Manny. The biologist had Tor-tor on a leash, but the cat was clearly agitated, pacing around and around with his hackles raised. Spooked.

Kouwe finished translating for the others. "That's all he knows:" Waxman waved for Jorgensen to slice the shaman's ankle re-straints, too.

"What do you make of his story?" Kelly asked, still kneeling at his side.

"I don't know," he mumbled, picturing the spread of bodies up the trail. He had thought something had attacked from the stream's far side, but if the woman's story was true, the attack had come from the stream itself.