The jaguar dashed into the open, across the path of the gunmen.
One of them barked something in Spanish and pointed. Another grinned and lifted his weapon, eyeing down the barrel.
Manny raised his pistol. But before he could fire, Kostos rose up ahead of him, the M-16 at his shoulder, and popped off three shots, three squeezes of the trigger. Blam, blam, blam.
The trio fell backward, heads exploding like melons.
Manny froze, stunned.
"C'mon. We need to get back to the tree." Kostos scowled at the jungle. "Why the hell aren't the others responding?"
8:22 A.M.
Kouwe kept Anna behind him as he hid behind a bushy fern. Dakii, the tribal guide, crouched beside him. The four mercenaries stood only six yards away, unaware of the eyes watching them. Though Kouwe had heard the sergeant's order to regroup at the nightcap oak, with the marauders so near, he dared not signal his acknowledgment. They were pinned down. The group of mercenaries stood between them and the home tree. There was no way to get past them unseen.
Behind him, Dakii crouched as still as a stone, but the tension emanating from him was fierce. While hidden, he had watched more than a dozen of his tribesmen--men, women, children--mowed down by this group.
Further in the wood, explosions continued to boom. They heard screams and the crash of dwellings from the treetops. The marauders were tearing through the village. The only hope for Kouwe's party was to flee to some sheltered corner of the jungled plateau, hope to be overlooked.
One of the soldiers barked into a radio in Spanish. "Tango Team in position. Killzone fourteen secure."
Kouwe felt something brush his knee. He glanced over. Dakii motioned for him to remain in place. Kouwe nodded.
Dakii rolled from his side, moving swiftly and silently. Not a single twig was disturbed. Dakii was teshari-rin, one of the tribe's ghost scouts. Even without his paint, the tribesman blended into the deeper shadows. He raced from shelter to shelter, a dark blur. Kouwe knew he was witnessing a demonstration of the Yagga's enhancement of its wards. Dakii circled around the band, then even Kouwe lost track of him.
Anna grabbed his hand and squeezed. Have we just been abandoned? she seemed to silently ask.
Kouwe wondered, too, until he spotted Dakii. The tribesman crouched across the way. He was in direct sight of Kouwe and Anna, but still hidden from the four guards.
Dakii rolled to his back in the loam, aiming the small bow he had found high into the air. Kouwe followed where his arrow pointed. Then back down to the mercenaries.
He understood and motioned for Anna to be ready with her own weapon. She nodded, staring up, then back down, understanding.
Kouwe signaled Dakii.
The tribesman pulled taut his bowstring and let fly an arrow. A tiny twang was heard, as was the louder rip of arrow through leaf. The mercenaries all turned in Dakii's direction, weapons raised.
Kouwe ignored them, his gaze focused above. High in the branches was the ruin of a dwelling, but left intact among the branches was one of the little ingenious inventions of the Ban-ali, one of their makeshift elevators. Dakii's arrow sliced the support rope that held aloft a cradled counterweight, a large chunk of granite.
The boulder came crashing down, straight at the group of mercenaries.
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 breasts 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 fucking 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 w
ho 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.
What plan now, hero boy?
9:34 A.M.
Zane knelt on one knee, aiming out with his pistol. Tiring, he supported his weapon arm with his other. But he refused to let down his guard, not when victory was so close. He only had to hold out a little longer, then his role in this mission would be over.
One eye twitched to the nut full of the miraculous sap. It was a fortune worth billions. Though St. Savin Pharmaceuticals had made a sizable deposit in Zane's Swiss account to buy his cooperation, it was the promised bonus of a quarter percentage point of gross sales that had finally sold him on the betrayal. With the potential in the Yagga's sap, there was no limit to the wealth that could flow his way.
Zane licked his lips. His role here was almost at an end. Days ago, he had successfully slipped the computer virus into the team's communication equipment. Now all that remained was the final endgame.
Late last night, Favre had instructed Zane to obtain a sample of the sap and protect it with his life. "If those damn natives pull some jackass stunt," Louis had warned, "like setting fire to their precious tree to protect their secret, then you're our fail-safe."
Zane had, of course, agreed, but unknown to his murderous partner, Zane had his own backup plan in mind, too. Once secure here, Zane had poured a small sample of the sap from the nut, sealed it in a latex condom, tied it off, and swallowed it. An extra bit of insurance on his own part. Any betrayal and a competing pharmaceutical company, like Tellux, would find itself in possession of the miraculous substance instead of St. Savin.
Distant rifle shots sounded from the woods. He spotted flashes of muzzle fire. Favre's men were cinching the noose. It would not be long.
As if confirming this, a grenade exploded at the glade's fringe. A dwelling in one of the huge trees blew apart, casting leaf and branch high into the air. Zane smiled--then he heard a voice within the echo of the blast. It sounded close.
"Watch out! Grenade!"
Something hit the trunk of the tree just over his head and bounced into the flanking root. Grenade! his mind echoed.
With a cry of alarm, he dove away from the entrance and rolled deeper into the shaft, arms shielding his head. He waited several tense seconds, then several more. He panted, ragged from the near escape. The expected explosion never came. Cautiously uncovering his head, he clenched his teeth. Still no blast.
He sat up, crawled slowly back toward the entrance, and peeked around the corner, where he spotted the small coconut-shaped object resting in the dirt. It was just one of the immature nut pods from the damn tree! It must have fallen from an overhead branch.
"Goddamn it!" He felt foolish at his panic.
He straightened, raising his weapon, and stepped back to his guard position. Getting too damn jumpy...
A blur of motion.
Something solid struck his wrist. The pistol flew from his fingers as his wrist exploded with pain. He started to fall backward--then his arm was grabbed by someone stepping from the blind side of the entrance. He was yanked out of the entrance and thrown bodily forward.
His shoulder hit the dirt. He rolled and stared back around. What he saw was impossible. "Rand? How?"
Nathan Rand towered over him at the entrance to the tunnel, a long, thick section of branch in his hand, which he raised menacingly.
Zane crab-crawled backward.
"How?" Nate asked. "A little lesson from our Indian friends. The power of suggestion." Rand kicked the immature seed pod toward him. "Believe something strongly enough, and others will believe, too."
Zane scrambled to his feet.
Nate swung the branch like a bat, striking him on the shoulder and knocking him back down. "That was for the shaman you shot like a dog!" Nate lifted the branch again. "And this is for--"
Zane glanced over Nate's shoulder. "Kelly! Thank God!"
Nate turned half around.
Using the moment of distraction, Zane shot to his feet and darted away. He cleared the side root in three steps.
He heard the blistering protest behind him and smiled.
What a...
...fool! Tricked by his own damn ruse! No one stood at the tunnel entrance. Kelly was not there.
Nate watched Zane race around the thick buttress. "No, you don't, you bastard!" With club in hand, he gave chase.
Still ringing with anger, Nate flew around the tree and spotted Zane fleeing along the base of the trunk, toward a tangle of roots. The traitor could easily get lost among them and escape. Nate thought of going back for the abandoned pistol, but he didn't have the time. He dared not lose sight of the bastard.
Ahead, Zane ducked under an arched root and wriggled through agilely. He was one wiry son of a bitch. In this race, Zane's smaller frame and lighter build were advantageous.
Realizing they were matched now fist to fist, Nathan tossed aside his club and pursued Zane. They fought through the snarl, crawling, climbing, leaping, squirming their way through the tangled maze. Zane was making headway on him.
Then the roots opened. They both stumbled onto some path amid the mess. Zane ran, pounding down the trail. Nate swore and went after him.
Ahead, water glistened. As they raced along the snaking trail, Nate saw the path ended at a wide pool, blocking the way. A dead end.
Nate smiled. End of the line, Zane!
As they neared the pool, his quarry also realized he had run himself into a blind alley and slowed--but instead of a groan of defeat, Nate heard a snarl of glee.
Zane leaped to the side, diving for the ground.
Nate closed the distance.
Zane swung to face him, a gun in hand. A 9mm Beretta.
It took Nate a startled moment to fathom this miracle. Then he saw his own shotgun, hanging by its shoulder strap from a rootlet a few steps to his right. The pistol was Kelly's! One of the weapons Zane had made them toss out of the treetop.
Nate groaned. The gods were not smiling on him. He took a step toward his shotgun, but Zane clucked his tongue.
"Move another inch, and you get a third eye!"
9:46 A.M.
Kouwe herded Anna ahead of him. Th
e crack of rifle fire was closing all around them. Dakii led the way, expressionless, in scout mode. He wound with calm assurance through his village forest, guiding them back toward the nightcap oak. They needed to rendezvous with the Rangers. Put together some semblance of a plan.
Kouwe had been able to contact Sergeant Kostos over the radio and inform him of their status. He had also learned that Olin, left up in the dwelling, had been able to report in, too. The Russian was keeping himself well hidden in the tree. But so far no word had come from Nate's party. He prayed they were okay.
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