The Amazon Code

by Nick Thacker

  “It’s the mercenaries!” she yelled.

  Ben replied, still at her side. “They’re in the jungle, staying hidden! We need to get out from the middle of the atrium.”

  Julie nodded, but didn’t move. She wasn’t about to risk her life any more than it already was and call attention to herself. She hoped Ben would change his mind, and they could just lie here until it was over.

  He’s right, she thought. You need to move.

  She felt a tugging on her arm, and she looked up to see Ben standing above her.

  “Julie,” he shouted. “Come on!”

  She reluctantly pushed off from the moss-covered forest floor and broke into a run. The others were doing the same, Reggie nearing the edge of the trees with Archie and Amanda close behind him. Carlo and Paulinho had disappeared into the trees already, and she could see the plants moving and shifting in front of her, marking their location as they stumbled through them, fighting against the thick bundle of branches and leaves.

  Spears were thrown, and two of them landed near Julie as they rushed into the relative protection of the jungle. She hoped they were aimed at the mercenaries instead of their group, but she wasn’t about to stop and find out. Her heart was nearly beating out of her chest, the muscles in her legs and thighs working overtime to carry her forward and out of the attack.

  The screams from the warriors, either in preparation for an attack or a reaction to one, almost drowned out the volume of the rainforest, but she could still hear the whooping sounds of monkeys, high above, watching the exchange between the three different groups of humans and shouting their appeal. Gunshots rang out from seemingly every direction, and Julie wondered how many mercenaries there were hiding in the forest, and, more importantly, if they were running directly toward any of them.

  Just before Reggie stepped into the cover of the brush, it shook again, and Julie expected to see Carlo or Paulinho step out from behind it. Instead, a man appeared, dressed in the same garb as the rest of the group of natives.

  Another tribesman. He snuck up behind us.

  The man lifted a club-like length of wood and swung it out and across Reggie’s face.

  Julie gasped as Reggie went down.

  She didn’t have time to gawk, feeling Ben tugging at her sleeve. He pulled her to the left, sidestepping the scene in front of her. As they jumped over a fallen tree poking out at the edge of the clearing and entered the jungle, Julie tried to glance to her right to see if the man who had hit Reggie had seen them.

  Someone else stood in front of them now.

  Rhett.

  Ben surged forward, and Julie watched as he focused all of his strength into the attack. Rhett seemed to barely register the two people running toward him before Ben hit him. The two toppled over, rolling over the jungle floor. They came to a stop with Rhett’s back against a large rock, and Ben’s knees pushing into his chest.

  “Ben,” Julie yelled. “What are you going to —“

  Ben began punching the younger man. She had never seen him react with such violence, but she stood back and watched it happen. He alternated hands, each blow landing somewhere on Rhett’s face. Julie could hear Ben’s grunting and heavy breathing, as well as the small groaning sounds from the kid below him.

  “I’m going to make you pay for everything you’ve done,” Ben said between breaths. He did not allow himself longer than a moment for rest, quickly resuming his assault on the young man’s head.

  Rhett, trying to breathe through a blood-filled mouth, couldn’t respond.

  43

  “YOU TRICKED US,” BEN SAID. “You made us believe you were —“ Ben stopped, unable to continue without taking a breath. He wanted to kill the kid, to put a bullet in his head and end his life. It was a more difficult decision to refrain from that action than to carry it out, but Ben was unarmed.

  He also wanted answers.

  Ignoring the sounds of the battle between the natives and the mercenaries, he pulled Rhett up and toward him and spoke again, his voice shaking out from behind a tightly clenched jaw. “Why? What’s in it for you?”

  Rhett’s upturned lip and flaring nostrils told Ben he wasn’t going to get an answer easily.

  “You’re going to talk, you little sack of —“

  “You already know the answer.” Rhett’s voice was strained, gurgling from a mouthful of blood and saliva. He spat to the side, wincing.

  Ben cocked his head sideways. “What? What are you talking about?”

  “I just told you,” Rhett said. “You want to know who’s after you, right?”

  Ben still held Rhett’s collar, but he loosened his grip slightly.

  “I recognized you at the cabin. They told me to wait for you there, to make sure it was you.”

  Back at the cabin. He was waiting for us. For me. Ben wanted to start hitting him again, harder, until he was too exhausted to move, but he also needed to hear what the kid had to say. “How did you recognize me? Why do you know me?”

  “The Company,” Rhett said. He spat again, this time getting the mixture only partially out of his mouth. “They sent the picture of you and Julie. You’re who they want eliminated, after they get the doctor lady.” He paused. “They have no use for the others , but since they’re with you…”

  Ben didn’t know what to say. There was no chance Rhett was lying, but Ben still didn’t understand who he was. He had many questions for the kid, but he knew he wouldn’t get the chance to ask them.

  “You messed it up for them back at Yellowstone. It was a sideshow, really, so it didn’t really matter. But they don’t take too kindly to people trying to derail their plans.”

  “Yeah?” Ben said. “And what are those plans?”

  Rhett struggled to laugh, but it came out as a strained cough. “Right. If you think I’d tell you even if I knew…”

  “What’s in it for you, then?”

  “What’s in it for you?” Rhett spat back.

  Ben threw Rhett’s head back, smacking it into the rock he was still hovering over, and the quick blow stunned the young man. He blinked a few times, spat again, and looked back up at Ben.

  “You’re not going to win,” he said. “You’ve got stamina, I’ll give you that. But you’re not going to win.”

  Ben tried a new tactic. “What are we trying to win?”

  “Again, if I knew, I wouldn’t tell you. You have to know that, right?”

  Ben looked around for some leverage, finding it in a fist-sized stone. He snatched it off the ground and carried it back over to where Rhett lay, bleeding, on the moss-carpeted floor. Lifting it above his head, he aimed for the bridge of Rhett’s nose.

  “You’re going to bash my head in with a rock?” Rhett asked.

  “You got a better idea?” Ben said. “Give me a reason not to.”

  Again Rhett sneered back up at Ben.

  “That’s what I thought. I ain’t going to make this hurt much — I’m not into that crap. But it’ll be final. Got anything you want to tell me before —“

  Ben felt someone pulling at his wrist, and he whirled around, bringing his free hand up to protect himself.

  “Ben, Ben!” Archie said. “Stop — it’s me.”

  Ben relaxed slightly, but jerked his wrist out of Archie’s grip.

  “Sorry,” Archie said. “I did not mean to startle you.” He motioned behind Ben at Rhett. “We need him. Alive.”

  Ben raised an eyebrow. “For what?”

  Archie flicked his eyes to the left, then to the right. Paulinho was suddenly in view, standing just behind another tree. He was holding Reggie, only now coming to, struggling with the weight of the soldier and his own wound. Carlo was behind Archie, somewhat camouflaged in the shadows of the jungle. Ben realized he had been completely unaware of his surroundings for the past few minutes. The fighting and gunfire had ceased, replaced once again by the sounds of the jungle.

  As he looked around him at his tattered and beaten group, panic set in.

  “Wh
— where are the girls?”

  44

  REGGIE OPENED HIS EYES, AND all the pain came rushing back in.

  In all his years, Reggie had never felt so out of his element. He had taken hundreds of survivalists, amateur explorers, and corporate executives out on wilderness expeditions, and he had brought every single one of them home, safe and sound. Before his life became serving a never-ending stream of hipster adventurers, he had spent his career in the Army, making a name for himself as a sniper. On deployments, he was surrounded and supported by a cast of well-trained soldiers, like himself, and on most missions he had nothing to fear but not making it back to base in time for a hot meal.

  But out here, this particular time, things were different. Reggie was leading a ragtag group of people who were trying to find something that may not even exist. He’d talked them into it, and for that he felt partly responsible. But it had been their choice to come out here, to link up with this mission and take it on.

  They were being chased by a group of trained killers who wanted to take Amanda Meron with them and exterminate the rest of his group, and now they were under attack from a group of tribal warriors as well.

  Reggie rubbed his head as he tried to clear his vision once more. He was standing, but not on his own feet — at least he couldn’t feel them currently. He blinked a few more times, and the memory of what had happened came rushing back.

  He’d gone down after being struck by a club, from a native that was hiding behind a bush. He’d nearly tripped over a thick strangle of dry vines anyway, and hadn’t been focusing on the man’s location when he was ambushed.

  He rubbed the spot where the man’s club had landed, just above the temple on the left side of his head. Could have been a lot worse. Not feeling blood, he quickly assessed the area around the bruise and diagnosed it as a close call.

  After the initial encounter, Reggie had assumed they’d made it out safely, somehow scaring the group away with Paulinho’s odd tattoo. But then the guns started firing, and the all-out brawl began. He saw the leader of the group, a younger man close to Ben’s age with dark, deep-set eyes, staring back at him from the cover of a tree on the other side of the clearing, and they’d locked eyes for a moment. Those eyes were familiar to him — the eyes of someone who was trained to kill. They were steady and unmoving, but they weren’t simply evil. They had a sinister darkness to them, but they were framed by a slightly frowning expression, one Reggie recognized immediately as the expression of a man who was calculating the odds, choosing a course of action, and trying to accomplish his goal with the smallest loss to his team.

  Reggie only saw the man for a moment, but it was enough. He’d even raised his pistol and aimed, but didn’t have a clear enough shot. He didn’t want to hit any of the natives, as he wasn’t sure if they were being watched by any others that might be spying nearby. Even if there was another tribe — one in conflict with the one they’d come across — the tribes would likely communicate what they had found here.

  And word traveled surprisingly fast in the jungle. The natives, to the outside observer, were generally considered quite primitive, but Reggie knew there was a fine balance of power between the jungle itself and its inhabitants, and many of the oldest tribes scattered throughout the immense land area were finely attuned to its whisperings. Societies that had existed for thousands of years may not have changed much technologically, but it was unwise to assume that they were also primitive when it came to communication.

  Reggie had read about a tribe that sent out two runners whenever it needed to deliver messages to its constituents, in case one or the other got held up. They would travel opposite routes, ending up at the destination at generally the same time, then deliver the news and return.

  If his group had somehow caused the native tribe that was about to kill them to feel uneasy, he wanted to keep that impression as long as possible, to prevent any other tribes or roaming bands of hunters from interfering with their plans. He didn’t want to initiate a war with the indigenous peoples of the Amazon any more than he wanted to fight off the mercenaries.

  So he chose the other option — run. He’d turned and run straight into the club of a native warrior, and blacked out. Likely scaring the man off, the native hadn’t stayed around long enough to kill him, and for that he was thankful.

  He pushed down with his feet, happy to find that they worked properly and he could now stand on his own. He patted Paulinho’s shoulder, no doubt still feeling a bit of pain himself, and looked at Ben and Archie.

  “What happened?” He saw the bloodied face of the kid, Rhett, and almost didn’t recognize him.

  “Found him in the woods,” Ben said.

  “Well, it’s obvious you questioned him,” Reggie said. “Hopefully you found something out?” He walked closer to Ben. “Christ, Ben, you look like you’ve had better days too.”

  Ben’s jaw clenched and unclenched, and Reggie didn’t need to look down to see that Ben’s fists were making the same motion. Archie was looking at the ground.

  “What’s going on?”

  “The girls,” Ben said. “They took them.”

  45

  “CAN WE GO ON WITHOUT them?” Archie asked.

  Ben felt anger flash again, but he held back.

  “I’m sorry,” Archie said, noticing the fire in Ben’s eyes. “I didn’t mean it that way, I just thought that with fewer people, we could possibly get to the end of our line, then —“

  “We’re not moving forward without them,” Ben said.

  “I second that,” Paulinho added.

  Archie looked from Ben and Paulinho to Reggie. Reggie was leaning against the thin branch of a tree that poked out from the ground, seemingly not attached to any sort of trunk at all. It twisted around a few times, like a snake, then fell back to the ground about twenty feet away, where it ended in a mess of leaves and vines. The remaining members of the group were passing a water bottle around, each taking a quick sip before passing it along.

  “They’re right,” Reggie said. “There’s no point in getting there before them if they still have Amanda and Julie. That’s the goal now — getting them back.”

  Ben nodded at Reggie.

  “But,” Reggie continued, “they know that we’re going to be looking for them, and they know the longer we’re out here running in circles, the better chance we have that we’ll just die of natural causes.”

  “What are you saying?” Ben wasn’t sure where Reggie was going with this line of reasoning.

  “I’m saying that while our top priority is of course to get the girls, it still might be in our best interest to find whatever it is we’re looking for.”

  “How do you figure that?” Archie asked.

  Ben looked at Reggie to explain. Reggie nodded, took a breath and a sip of water, and stepped to the center of the group of men. “Easy,” he said. “They have Amanda — and Julie — now they just need to find the ultimate prize they’re after, then kill us. They’re going to be following the same line we’ve been traveling, because by now they’ve figured out the general direction by following us. Amanda and Julie won’t want to help them, but they eventually will if they’re forced.”

  Ben clenched his fists. “Which is exactly why we need to find them before they’re ‘forced.’”

  Reggie shook his head. “No. If we can get to the end of the line first, we can gain a bargaining chip.”

  “Something they want for something we want,” Archie said.

  “Right. And Ben, you’re not out here to explore and dig for artifacts. You want to find the company that’s behind all of this.”

  Ben nodded, slowly. He’s right, but I hate it. He wanted to act, not continue forward and just hope they’d run into the other group eventually. But it makes the most sense.

  “Ben,” Reggie said. Ben looked up and saw that Reggie and the others were all staring at him. Reggie had the beginnings of a smirk on his face, but there was a softness behind it, in his eyes. “We’re
going to find them, Ben, but we have to push forward.”

  Ben took a deep breath of hot, humid jungle air. He could taste the rainforest in it, and he was quickly growing to hate it. “I know.”

  “Good deal,” Reggie said. He turned to address the others. “We have to move quickly. Amanda was the only one of us they needed, since she’s the one with the information to connect the dots between what she knows and what we were all looking for. They’re going to have the same information we do, for the most part, so it’s only a matter of time before they piece things together for themselves. Our best chance is to get there first, then figure out the next piece of the puzzle.”

  Reggie smiled, his full-on characteristic grin returning, and he stepped up to Rhett and pulled the young man to his feet. He reached for one of the packs and withdrew a section of rope and began binding the kid’s hands behind his back. “Hope you’re up for a walk, kid.”

  Ben wasn’t able to outwardly match the man’s seemingly lackadaisical attitude, but he now understood that the expression was worn not as a reflection of what was churning inside, but as a contradiction. It was a forced appearance, to put his team at ease, and to ensure he remained cool and collected in the face of mounting odds against them.

  Ben had come to appreciate, respect, and even look up to the man. Reggie was like no one else he’d ever met, with the possible exception of his own father. Ben’s father had always been good-natured, cordial, and yet always ready for action, tense with anticipation. He was the strongest man Ben had ever known, and the sudden memory of him brought on a feeling Ben hadn’t experienced in a long time.

  ACT 3

  “…And, as his strength

  Failed him at length,

  He met a pilgrim shadow—

  ‘Shadow,’ said he,

  ‘Where can it be—

  This land of Eldorado?’…”

  — Edgar Allan Poe

  46

  THE ROPES BINDING JULIE’S WRISTS were starting to cut her. She’d struggled against them for an hour as they walked, but the thick cords of climbing rope didn’t budge. Amanda walked by her side, her hands bound as well. She looked disheveled, her ponytail long since disbanded and her short, blond strands of sweat-soaked hair sticking to her forehead and around her ears. She was sobbing gently, only her slight sniffing giving her away.