by Mark Alpert
And then, at 7:00 A.M., he was awakened by the sound of an aircraft. He rushed out of the trailer and saw a Gulfstream G280 high overhead. The jet slowly circled the airstrip, as if its pilot were studying the ground and deciding whether it was safe to land. Anyone with eyes could see that the strip was occupied by Riflemen—several dozen Harley-Davidsons were parked in the field beside the runway—so Sullivan fully expected the plane to go away. But instead the Gulfstream descended.
His men gathered along the runway and surrounded the jet as soon as it came to a stop. The pilot shut down the engines, and a few seconds later the door to the cabin opened. The first to step out of the plane was Grace Fury, first cousin to Elizabeth. She was a deputy to the Chief Elder and the most fecund woman in the whole family. Over the past five hundred years she’d borne seventeen daughters, nine of whom were still alive. She’d also given birth to nineteen sons, all deceased except for the latest one, Archibald, Sullivan’s unfortunate spy. Grace wore a black, long-sleeved, ankle-length dress, a style she’d adopted back in the sixteenth century. Sullivan hated her almost as much as he hated his mother.
Right behind Grace was Claudia, also a cousin to Elizabeth, who formerly ran the geothermal plant that Archibald had sabotaged. She was accompanied by her son Gower, who wore a bandage on his shoulder and an angry scowl on his face. Bringing up the rear were the Gulfstream’s pilot and copilot, both of whom happened to be granddaughters of Grace. No one in the group seemed frightened or nervous, even though Sullivan’s men pointed a dozen rifles at them. On the contrary, they seemed defiant and determined. They were full of grim purpose.
Grace Fury crossed the runway and approached Sullivan. His men stopped her and checked her for weapons, patting down the slim body beneath the black dress. She endured the inspection, silent and unsmiling. Once his men gave the all clear, Sullivan stepped toward her. He could barely contain his curiosity. What the hell was she doing here?
Grinning, he bowed before her in an elaborate, mocking fashion. “Greetings, milady! Thou art more lovely than a summer’s day, and more temperate. Thou art the very embodiment of temperance.”
Her upper lip twitched, but other than that she didn’t respond to his taunts.
“I’m delighted you came to visit,” he continued. “May I ask how your son Archibald is faring? I do hope your sisters don’t punish him too severely. He’s a good lad at heart.”
“Archibald is dead.” Grace’s voice was low and hoarse. “While riding in our truck convoy yesterday he grabbed a pistol from one of the guardsmen and shot himself.”
Sullivan gave her a look of exaggerated sympathy. “Oh, this must be a terrible blow for you, milady. And I suppose it’s my fault, is it not? I feel just awful about this.”
“Cordelia is dead too. And so are Margaret and Lily. And Lily’s paramour as well. You have much to celebrate.”
He did indeed. He felt a surge of joy in his chest. “Were they all in the Gulfstream that went down in Colombia? I suppose you received their distress signals before the jet crashed?”
“Aye, and we heard the calls for help radioed by our friend Kuikuro. Did you know that your Colombian allies slaughtered him and everyone else in his village?”
Sullivan shrugged. “What can I say? We’re paying the guerillas well, so they’re eager to please.”
Grace’s lip twitched again. She was trying hard to conceal her emotions, but her contempt was too strong. “Let me explain our reasons for coming here. The Chief Elder has chosen new leaders for our family to replace the ones you murdered. Claudia and I are now members of the council.”
“Congratulations, milady. I’m sure this is a dream come true for you. But where is my mother? Why isn’t she here as well?”
“We’ve been ordered to take you to her. In this Gulfstream.”
Sullivan looked askance. “Do you take me for a fool? I’m not going anywhere without my Riflemen.”
“You can bring as many of your men as will fit on the plane.”
“But Mother will have a larger number of fighters at her side. I believe I’ve killed most of your guardsmen, but surely a few dozen have survived.”
“We’ve chosen a meeting place that will be to your advantage. If you’re still worried that we’re planning to trick you, you can keep me here as a hostage, and Claudia, too. That will guarantee your safety. Elizabeth wouldn’t forfeit our lives just to eliminate a scoundrel such as you.”
It was intriguing, Sullivan had to admit. But he remained suspicious. “And what’s the purpose of this meeting, pray tell?”
Grace’s throat bobbed. She was swallowing hard, tamping down her disdain. “Elizabeth wants an end to this war. She has a proposal for you.”
THIRTY
It was only much later—after they’d clambered out of the wreckage of the Gulfstream and waded through miles of waist-deep swamp and found a hiding place at the foot of an enormous kapok tree—that John understood how he and Ariel had survived. She explained the reasons in a sober voice as they huddled on the ground between the kapok’s giant roots, which stretched from the trunk in five-foot-high tentacles that hid them from view. They’d slept for a few hours in the shelter of this massive root system, and now Ariel reached into her backpack and pulled out a handful of the military-style rations she’d salvaged from the duffel bags in the Gulfstream. The rations looked like granola bars, each wrapped in clear plastic.
“The first reason is that we had an excellent pilot. Veronica did a good job of controlling our descent.” Ariel examined the ration, trying to see what was inside the wrapper. The sun had come up half an hour ago, and early-morning light filtered into the rain forest. “A damn good job, considering what she had to work with. That jet had a hundred bullet holes in it.”
John nodded. “I’m still amazed she got it off the ground.”
“She did everything right. If she’d had a few more seconds, we would’ve made it to the river. We would’ve cleared the trees and made a soft landing in the water.” Ariel shook her head. “That’s what hurts so much. She came so damn close.”
Fixing her eyes on the ration, Ariel started to unwrap it, but after a couple of seconds she stopped and stared at the ground. John guessed she was remembering what they’d seen after the crash, after they’d crawled out of the Gulfstream’s severed tail, which had broken off from the rest of the aircraft and wedged into the mud and black water of the swamp. All around them, smaller pieces of the jet were scattered across the jungle. Torn sections of the wings hung in the tree branches. One of the engines poked out of the fetid water, its upper section still burning. And there were body parts too. Margaret and her daughters had been crushed and mangled.
“But why did we survive and the others—”
“The tail’s the safest part of any aircraft. It stayed in one piece while the rest of the fuselage broke apart. The duffel bags also helped, by cushioning the impact. And the rest of it was luck, just pure dumb luck. Without it, we’d be dead, too.”
She shook her head again, slow and mournful. John was a bit surprised by the depth of her grief. He knew Ariel hadn’t liked her Aunt Margaret very much. In fact, the two women had seemed to despise each other. But now that Margaret was dead, Ariel seemed almost as distraught as she’d been after the death of Cordelia, the aunt she’d loved. John wondered if the extreme longevity of the Fury women intensified their bonds. Maybe Ariel’s feelings for her aunts were so powerful because they’d lived together for so long.
She finally took a deep breath and looked up. She stared at the ration in her hand, as if trying to remember what she was going to do with it. Then she gave it to John. “Here, try this one. I think it’s peanut butter.”
He took a bite. It was brown and starchy and tasted more like licorice than peanut butter, but he ate it anyway. He was too hungry to be choosy. “So who attacked us last night? It wasn’t Sullivan’s men, was it?”
“No, they were FARC guerillas. But it wasn’t a coincidence that they showed up a
t the airstrip just as we landed. They must be working for Sullivan. He must’ve paid them to ambush us. He knew we were heading for the new refuge on the Yarí River, and he didn’t want us to get there.”
“Do you think the guerillas will come looking for us? Now that it’s morning, they’ll probably investigate the crash site.”
Ariel shrugged. “It all depends on how competent they are. If they have good tracking skills, they might be able to tell that we left the site. We probably broke a few branches when we waded through the swamp, and a good tracker could follow the trail.” She examined another ration, holding it up to the light. “But if these guerillas aren’t native to the area, they won’t go very deep into the jungle. It’s a dangerous place if you don’t know what you’re doing.”
“Yeah, I already figured that out.” He held up his arms, which were dotted with insect bites. “When we were going through the swamp last night I heard something splashing in the water. Something big and heavy.”
“I heard it, too.” She unwrapped her ration and started eating. “It was either an anaconda or a caiman.”
“Caiman? That’s like a crocodile, right?”
“They rarely attack people, but when they do it’s usually fatal. They’re fast and big, up to twenty feet long.” She took a bite out of the starchy brown bar in her hand. At the same time, she turned her other hand in a circle, pointing at the kapok tree and the area around it. “That’s why we didn’t stop last night until we found some high ground. I wanted to get away from the caimans and piranhas.”
John raised his head and peered over the kapok’s massive roots. The tree dominated a smallish hill that rose above the jungle’s floodwaters. They stood on an island in the rain forest, a patch of dry land surrounded by swamp. They’d have to return to the black water if they wanted to go anywhere. “So what’s our next step? If Sullivan knows about the refuge, it doesn’t make sense to go there, does it?”
“No, I’m sure the guerillas are already at the bend in the Yarí. Sullivan probably told them to slaughter any Furies who arrive.”
“Maybe we should head in the opposite direction then? Go up the river instead of down?”
“That would be the smartest move if we only had ourselves to worry about. But I’m concerned about my cousins in the Caño Dorado expedition. Mother ordered them to go to the refuge as quickly as possible. Although she probably realizes by now that Sullivan’s allies shot down our plane, she may not be able to send a warning to Mariela. The expedition is traveling through an area that has no radio towers.”
He knew Ariel well enough to guess what she was planning. “And you think we should try to warn them? Convince the expedition to turn around before they run into the guerillas?”
She nodded. “I think we can intercept them, but it won’t be easy. We’re ten miles upstream from the refuge, and Caño Dorado is still hundreds of miles downstream. If the guerillas are lying in wait at the bend in the river, we’ll have to maneuver around them somehow.” She turned toward the rising sun. Somewhere in that direction, behind the thick green curtains of foliage, was the Yarí. “What we really need is a canoe. A dugout canoe, the kind the Amazon tribesmen use. Then we could slip past Sullivan’s allies by navigating the channels that run parallel to the river.”
John frowned. He didn’t like this plan. He understood that Ariel was trying to protect her cousins, but he wished that just this once she’d think about her own safety. “I don’t know. It sounds kind of dicey.”
“We’re not completely defenseless, you know.” She picked up her carbine and pointed at John’s. They’d carried the rifles all the way from the crash site, holding them above the floodwaters as they’d waded through the swamp. “And I know the rain forest pretty well, maybe better than the guerillas do.”
He didn’t know what to say. If he argued that they shouldn’t risk it, she might accuse him of cowardice. And, in a way, she’d be right. He was afraid of losing her. He didn’t want to risk Ariel’s life to save someone else’s. “Two carbines won’t make much of a difference. If the guerillas spot us, we’re dead. End of story.”
“But if Mariela and the—”
“Look, I don’t care about Mariela. I care about you.”
Ariel put down her rifle and looked at him. Her expression wasn’t angry or accusatory. On the contrary, she seemed choked up, overcome by emotion. She bit her lower lip and leaned toward him. “Okay, I understand,” she whispered. “You’re worried about me. You don’t want me to get hurt.”
“I’m just wondering if it’s worth—”
“Oh, John, I wish we didn’t have to do this. I wish we could disappear, just you and me.”
She grasped his hand, and he choked up, too. The sadness in her voice was palpable. Ariel was resigned to her fate. She would never abandon her family, no matter how much she wanted to. Even in the face of certain doom, she’d stand by them. But John took some consolation in the fact that Ariel wished things could be different. She knew how strongly he felt about her, and she returned those feelings. If she weren’t so damn loyal to her family, they could’ve been happy.
They sat there for a long while, holding hands and not talking. Then Ariel let go of him and reached into her backpack again. “I thought of something that might help us. Before we go wading through a swamp full of caimans, I might be able to draw the animals away from us.” She pulled out the medicine case holding the syringe and the nine vials of Fountain protein. “But I haven’t tested the idea yet.”
John felt uneasy. “Wait a second. You want to inject me again?”
“No, no, this is a different kind of test.” She opened the case and removed one of the vials of yellowish fluid from its slot in the foam padding. Then she rose to her feet and surveyed the area around the kapok tree. “Okay, the coast is clear. Come on, this way.”
He stood up and followed Ariel as she left their hiding place at the foot of the kapok. They walked down the smallish hill, weaving between the trees that crowded the slope and being careful not to disturb the ant nests that clung to the lowest branches. In a couple of minutes they reached the waterline where the swamp lapped the hillside. Trees poked out of the floodwaters here, their trunks rising to great heights and their branches fanning out overhead to form the jungle canopy. Thousands of leaves floated on the water, which was the color of strong tea. John couldn’t see anything below the surface.
Ariel halted at the water’s edge. Then she pulled the stopper from the vial she was holding. “Remember I told you, back in Haven, that we modified the Fountain protein so it could enter cells by passing through their membranes? Well, that means the protein can also pass through other thin membranes, such as the skin of fish and other aquatic animals. If you added the concentrated fluid to a warm pool or pond, the protein molecules would diffuse through the water and seep into the animals’ bodies.”
“You mean you wouldn’t have to inject it into their bloodstreams?”
“No, the protein would go directly to their cells. And that would make Fountain’s effects more intense and immediate.”
Holding her arm over the swamp, Ariel tilted the vial and poured its contents into the black water. The protein formed a bright yellow blot on the surface that quickly faded as it spread outward and downward. She watched the stuff disperse into the floodwaters for about twenty seconds. Then she took several steps backward, moving up the slope. “Step away from the water, John. I don’t know exactly what will happen now, but I have a hypothesis.”
“Really? What—”
It was like an explosion. Dozens of creatures started thrashing in the swamp, spraying water and mud in every direction. As John leaped up the slope he saw a fantastically long snake raise its head to the surface and open its mouth wide. It was an anaconda, thick and black, and it was in distress. Several piranhas had sunk their teeth into the snake’s skin and now they hung like medals on its coiling body. The anaconda writhed in the water, shaking off the clinging fish, but more of them attacked
the snake, tearing into its flesh. Then an even larger reptile shot out of the water, a shiny black caiman with greenish eyes and a corrugated hide. The caiman opened its enormous jaw and snapped it shut on the snake’s coils, biting the anaconda in two. Its death throes made the water boil, and the piranhas razored into its remains. Meanwhile, the caiman swam to the water’s edge, clacking its jaw and hunting for its next victim.
John sprinted farther up the hill. Ariel ran beside him, looking over her shoulder at the feeding frenzy she’d triggered. They didn’t stop until they stood fifty feet up the slope, safely out of range of the maddened animals. John’s heart hammered against his sternum. “Jesus!” he gasped. “What the hell happened?”
“My hypothesis was correct.” Ariel’s voice was calm and clinical. “Fountain has similar effects on a broad range of species. The protein stimulates the animals’ metabolism and alters their behavior.”
“You mean it drives them crazy.” Panting, John pointed at the roiling floodwaters below. “So how is this going to make it easier for us to wade across the swamp? You just made it a hundred times more dangerous.”
Ariel shook her head. “The protein’s effects should fade after a few minutes. It hits the animals fast, but it leaves their bodies fast, too.”
“But now there’s a huge dead snake in the water, and who knows how many piranhas feeding on it. Every predator in the whole damn rain forest is going to swim over here.”
“That’s what I’m counting on. We’re not going to wade through this part of the swamp, John. We’re going in the opposite direction.” She pointed at the slope on the other side of the kapok tree. “The water over there will be empty of predators, because they’re all going to come here.”