Amazonia. Part 24

"They're out there," Nate said. "They're just not in a frenzy any longer."

"Or maybe now that the fires have died down, they fled back to the main river channel;" Jorgensen offered hopefully.

Waxman frowned. "I don't think we should count-"

A sharp cry interrupted the captain. Off to the left, a body slid down the slick, muddy slope. It was a Ranger. Eddie Jones. His limbs flailed as he tried to break his fall. "f.u.c.k!" he screamed in frustration. He tried to grasp a bush, but its roots ripped out of the thin soil. Then he hit a b.u.mp in the slope, and wentcartwheeling, his weapon flying from his fingers, and landed in the stream.

A pair of Rangers-Warczak and Graves-ran to his aid.

He popped out, coughing water and choking. "G.o.dd.a.m.n it!" He clam-bered to the stream's edge. "f.u.c.k this jungle!" As he straightened his hel-met, more colorful obscenities flowed. He climbed out of the stream.

"Smooth, Jones . . . very smooth," Warczak said, running his flashlight up and down the man's soaked form. "I'd give you a perfect ten in the jun-gle slalom:"

"Cram it up your a.s.s," Jones said, bending to finger a rope of sticky algae from his pant leg. "Ugh:"

Corporal Graves was the first to spot it: something moving atop the other man's pack. "Jones. . ."

Still half crouched, the man glanced up. "What?"

The creature leaped, latching onto the soft flesh under Jones's jaw. He jerked. "What the h.e.l.l!" He tore the creature from his neck, blood spurting. "Ahhhhh . . ."

The small stream suddenly frothed and burst forth with another dozen of the creatures. They leaped at the man, attacking his legs. Jones fell backward, his face twisted in agony. He hit the stream with a loud splash.

"Jones!" Warczak stepped nearer.

Another of the creatures leaped from the water and plopped in the wet mud at the corporal's feet, gill flaps vibrating. Warczak scrambled back-ward, as did Graves.

In the shallow stream, Jones writhed. It was as if he had been thrown in boiling water. His body jerked and spasmed.

"Get back!" Waxman yelled. "Everyone uphill!"

Warczak and Graves were already running. From the stream, more of the creatures leaped and bounded in pursuit.

The group tossed caution aside and scrambled up the slope, some half crawling on hands and knees.

Kelly's legs suddenly went out from under her. Her muddy hand slipped out of her brother's grip. She began a deadly slide.

"Kelly!" Frank called out.

But Nate was a couple yards behind her. He caught her one-handed by the waist, falling on top of her, holding his shotgun in his other arm. Manny came to their aid, hauling both back to their feet. Tor-tor paced anxiously back and forth behind him.

The Brazilian waved the jaguar ahead. "Move your furry a.s.s:"

By now, the three were the last of the group. Frank waited a few yards up. Only Private Camera was still with them. She stood and sprayed a jet of fire behind them, her flamethrower roaring dully. "Let's pick up the pace;" she said tensely, backing up the slope, herding them upward.

"Thanks," Kelly said, her eyes swiveling to encompa.s.s the entire group.

Frank met them and took his sister in hand. "Don't do that again:"

"I'm not planning on it:"

Nate kept a watch behind them. He met Camera's gaze. He saw the fear in her eyes. This momentary distraction was all it took. One of the crea-tures sprang at the Ranger from the surrounding underbrush. It had slipped past her firewall.

Camera fell backward, fire spitting into the sky.

The creature had latched onto her belt, but squirmed for a meatier purchase.

Before anyone else could react, a sharp crack split the night. The crea-ture was flung away, the two halves of its body sailing high. Both Camera and Nate turned to see Manny snapping his short bullwhip back into ready position.

"Are you just gonna sit there gawking?" Manny asked.

Camera scrambled up with Nate's help. The group sped up the hill. At last they reached the summit.

Nate hoped putting the rise between them and the amphibious creatures would be enough.

He found the others gathered on top.

"We should keep moving," Nate said. "Keep as much land between us and them as possible:"

"That's a good theory," Kouwe said. "But putting it into practice is another thing altogether:" The shaman pointed down the knoll's far side.

Nathan stared. From this height, the stream below shone silver in the moonlight. Groaning, he realized it was the same stream they had been avoiding all along. Nate turned in a slow circle, recognizing their predica-ment. They had made a fatal error.

The small waterway they had crossed a few minutes ago was not a feeder draining into the larger stream, but actually apart of the same stream.

"We're on an island," Kelly said with dismay.

Nate stared upstream and saw that the flowof the waterway split and ran around both sidesof the knoll.

Once past the hill, it joined to become a single stream again. The party indeed stood on an island, in the middleof the deadly stream, water all around.

Nate felt sick. "We're trapped."

2:12 A.M. WEST WING OF THE INSTAR INSt.i.tUTE LANGLEY VIRGINIA.

Lauren O'Brien sat at the small table in the communal galley, hunched over a cupof coffee. At this late hour, she had the place to herself. All the other quarantined MEDEA members were either asleep in their makeshift bedrooms or working in the main labs.

Even Marshall had retired to their room with Jessie hours ago. He had an early morning conference call with the CDC, two Cabinet heads, and the directorof the CIA. He had eloquently described the meeting as "a pre-emptive strike before the political s.h.i.tstorm hits the fan:" Such were the waysof government.

Rather than attacking the problem aggressively, everyone was still pointing fingers and running for cover.

Marshall's goal tomorrow was to shake things up. A decisive planof action was needed. So far, the fifteen outbreak zones were being managed fifteen different ways. It was chaos.

Sighing, Lauren stared at the reamsof papers and printouts spread atop her table. Her team was still struggling with one simple question.What was causing the disease?

Testing and research were ongoing in labs across the country-from the CDC in Atlanta all the way to the Salk facility in San Diego. But the Instar Inst.i.tute had become scientific ground zero for the disease.

Lauren pushed away a report from a Dr. Shelby on utilizing monkey kidney cells as a culture medium.

He had failed.Negative response. Up to this point, the contagious agent continued to thwart all means of identifi-cation: aerobic and anaerobic cultures, fungal a.s.says, electron microscopy, dot hybridization, polymerase chain reaction. As of today, no progress had been made. Each study ended with similar tags: negative response, zero growth, indeterminate a.n.a.lysis. All fancy ways of saying failure.

Her beeper, resting beside her now-cold cup of coffee, began to buzz and dance across the Formica countertop. She s.n.a.t.c.hed it before it fell off the table.

"Who the heck is paging me at this hour?" she mumbled, glancing at the beeper's screen. The Caller ID feature listed the number asLarge Scale Biological Labs. She didn't know the facility, but the area code placed it somewhere in northern California. The call was probably just some tech-nician requesting their fax number or submission protocol. Still . . .

Lauren stood, pocketed her beeper, and headed over to the phone on the wall. As she picked up the receiver, she heard a door open behind her. Over her shoulder, she was surprised to see Jessie standing in her pajamas, rubbing at her eyes blearily.

"Grandma. . :"

Lauren replaced the receiver and crossed to the child. "Honey, what are you doing up? You should be in bed:"

"I couldn't find you:"

She knelt before the girl. "What's wrong? Did you have another scary dream?" The first few nights here,Jessie had awoken with nightmares, trig-gered by the quarantine and the strange environment. But the child had seemed to adjust rapidly, making friends with several of the other kids.

"My tummy hurts," she said, her eyes sheening with threatening tears.

"Oh, honey, that's what you get for eating ice cream so late:" Lauren reached out and pulled the girl into a hug. "Why don't I get you a gla.s.s of water, and we'll get you tucked back into-"

Lauren's voice died as she realized how warm the child was. She reached a palm to Jessie's forehead.

"Oh, G.o.d," she mumbled under her breath.

The child was burning up.

2:31 A.M.

AMAZON JUNGLE.

Louis stood by his tent as Jacques strode up from the river. His lieutenant carried something wrapped in a sodden blanket under his arms. Whatever it was, it appeared no larger than a watermelon.

"Doctor;" the Maroon tribesman said stiffly.

"Jacques, what did you discover?" He had sent the man and two others to investigate the explosion that had occurred just after midnight. The noise had woken his own camp mere minutes after they had settled in for the night. Earlier, at sunset, Louis's had learned of the discovery of the Indianshabano and the fate of the villagers. Then hours later the ex-plosion . . .

What was going on over there?

"Sir, the village has been incinerated . . . as has much of the surround-ing forest. We could not get too close due to the remaining fires. Maybe by morning.

"And the other team?"

Jacques glanced to his toes. "Gone, sir. I dropped Malachim and Toady ash.o.r.e to scout after them:"

Louis clenched a fist and cursed his overconfidence. After the success-ful abduction of one of their soldiers, he had grown complacent with his prey. But now this! One of his team's trackers must have been spotted. Now that the fox had been alerted to the hounds, Louis's mission was far morecomplicated. "Gather the other men. If the Rangers are running from us, we don't want them to get too far away."

"Yes, sir. But, Doctor, I'm not sure the others are fleeing from us:"

"What makes you think that?"

"As we paddled up to the fire zone, we saw a body float out from a side stream."

"A body?" Louis feared it was his mole, dispatched and sent downriver as a message.

Jacques unrolled the sodden blanket in his arms and dropped its con-tent to the leafed floor of the jungle. It was a human head. "We found it floating near the remains."

Frowning, Louis knelt and examined the head, what little there was of it. The face had been all but chewed away, but from the shaved scalp, it was clearly one of the Rangers.

"The body was the same," Jacques said, "gnawed to the bone:"

Louis glanced up. "What happened to him?"

"Piranhas, I'd say, from the bite wounds:"

"Are you sure?"

"Pretty d.a.m.n sure:" Jacques fingered the scarred half of his nose, reminding Louis that, as a boy, his lieutenant had had intimate experience with the voracious river predators.

"Did they feed on him after he was dead?"

Jacques shrugged. "If he wasn't, I pity the poor b.a.s.t.a.r.d."

Louis climbed to his feet. He stared out toward the river. "What the h.e.l.l is happening out there?"

CHAPTER TEN.

Escape.