The Codex

by Douglas Preston

  Don Alfonso looked at Tom. “You and I will build a hut.”

  An hour later, night had fallen. They were sitting around the fire, eating the last of a stew made from a large rodent Sally had shot. A small thatched hut sat nearby, and Don Alfonso sat in front of a pile of palm leaves, stripping them and weaving them into hammocks. He had been silent except for giving terse orders.

  “Who were those soldiers?” Tom asked Don Alfonso.

  Don Alfonso busied himself over the hammocks. “Those were the soldiers who came upriver with your other brother Philip.”

  “Philip would never permit an attack on us,” said Vernon.

  “No,” said Tom. He felt his heart sink. There must have been a mutiny on Philip’s expedition, or something else had happened. At any rate, Philip must be in grave danger—if not already dead. The unknown enemy, therefore, had to be Hauser. He was the one who had killed the two policemen in Santa Fe, who had arranged for their capture in Brus, who was behind this most recent attack on them.

  “The question,” Sally said, “is whether we go on or go back.”

  Tom nodded.

  “It’d be suicide to go on,” Vernon said. “We’ve got nothing—no food, no clothes, no tents, sleeping bags, or food.”

  “Philip’s up ahead,” said Tom. “And he’s in trouble. It’s pretty obvious that Hauser’s the one behind the killing of the two policemen in Santa Fe.

  There was a silence. “Maybe we should go back, resupply, and return. We won’t be able to help him like this, Tom.”

  Tom glanced at Don Alfonso, plaiting deftly. He sensed from the studiously neutral expression on the old man’s face that he had an opinion. He always looked that way when he was about to disagree. “Don Alfonso?”

  “Yes?”

  “Do you have an opinion?”

  Don Alfonso laid the hammock down and rubbed his hands together. He looked Tom in the eye. “I do not have an opinion. I have instead a statement of fact.”

  “Which is?”

  “Behind us is a deadly swamp in which the water is lowering every day. We have no dugout. It will take a week at least to make another. But we cannot stay in one place for a week, because the soldiers will find us, and the manufacture of a dugout creates clouds of smoke, which will be a signpost for all to see. So we must keep moving, on foot, through the jungle, toward the Sierra Azul. To go back is to die. That is my statement of fact.”

  34

  Marcus Hauser sat on a log by the fire, Churchill in his mouth, field-stripping the Steyr AUG. The weapon didn’t need it, but for Hauser it was a repetitive physical process that was almost a form of meditation. The rifle was mostly made of finely machined plastic, which Hauser liked. He retracted the cocking slide knob, grasped the barrel grip and, using his left thumb, pressed the barrel locking latch down. Then he rotated the barrel clockwise and pulled it forward. It came free with a satisfying smoothness.

  From time to time he glanced into the forest where Philip was chained up, but there wasn’t a sound. He had heard a jaguar roaring earlier in the day, a roar of frustration and hunger, and he didn’t want his prisoner getting eaten, at least not before he had figured out where old Max had gone. He heaped some more wood on the fire to beat back the darkness and the prowling jaguar. To his right, the Macaturi River slid past the camp, making soft splashing and gurgling noises as it eddied and flowed. It was a beautiful night for a change, the velvety sky dusted with stars, which were reflected as faint dancing lights in the surface of the river. It was close to two o’clock in the morning, but Hauser was one of those fortunates who needed only four hours of sleep a night.

  He chucked another log on the fire to increase the light and slid the bolt assembly out of the receiver. His hand lightly caressed the smooth pieces of plastic and metal—one warm, the other cold—and he savored the scent of gun oil and the clicks of the well-machined parts as they disengaged. A few more well-practiced moves and the rifle lay in front of him, stripped to its six basic parts. He hefted each piece, examining it, cleaning it, running his hands over it—and began putting them back together. He worked slowly, dreamily even: no boot-camp haste here.

  He heard a faint sound: the whine of the returning boats. He paused, listening carefully. The operation had concluded, and the men were back right on time. Hauser was pleased. Not even a half-assed group of Honduran soldiers could have screwed up such a straightforward op.

  Or could they? He saw, materializing out of the dark body of the river, the dugout, but with three instead of five soldiers in it. The boat docked at the large boulder that served as a landing stage. Two men hopped out, firelit forms moving against the darkness, and helped a third man out. He walked stiffly, and Hauser heard a groan of pain. Three men—and he had sent out five.

  He refitted the butt plate, slid the bolt assembly back in, and reset the housing latch to the left, working by feel, his eyes fixed on the figures moving toward the fire. The men approached diffidently, nervously, one soldier supporting his wounded colleague. A three-foot-long arrow had passed through his thigh, the feathered end sticking out the back, the barbed metal point out the front. The pantleg had been torn and was stiff with dried blood.

  The men paused, saying nothing, looking mostly at the ground, shuffling their feet in shame. Hauser waited. The enormity of his mistake—in trusting these men to perform the simplest of ops—was now obvious. He went back to reassembling his gun, rotating the barrel back into place and then reseating the magazine, sliding it into the stock with a click. Then he waited, weapon laid across his knees, an icy feeling in his heart.

  The silence was excruciating. One of them would have to speak.

  “Jefe—” the lieutenant began.

  He waited for the excuses.

  “We killed two of them, jefe, and burned their boats and supplies. Their bodies are in the canoe.”

  Hauser said, after a pause, “Which two?”

  There was a nervous pause. “The two Tawahka Indians.”

  Hauser remained silent. This was a disaster.

  “The old man with them saw the trap before we could open fire,” the teniente went on. “They turned around. We chased them downstream, but they managed to land and escape into the jungle. We burned their boats and supplies. Then, as we pursued them into the jungle, we were ambushed by one of the Tawahka. He had a bow and arrow, so much the worse for us. We couldn’t locate him until he got two of us and wounded the third, and then we killed him. You know how these jungle Indians are, jefe, silent as jaguars ...”

  His voice trailed off miserably. He shifted nervously, and the man with the arrow through his thigh let escape an involuntary groan.

  “So you see, jefe, we killed two and drove the others into the jungle with no supplies, no food, nothing, where they will surely die—”

  Hauser rose. “Excuse me, Teniente, this man needs immediate attention.”

  “Si, señor.”

  With the rifle in one hand, Hauser rose and put his free arm around the wounded man, easing him off the soldier who had been supporting him. He leaned over and said gently, “Come with me. Let me take care of you.”

  The teniente waited by the fire, his face sagging.

  Hauser supported the man and led him away from the fire. The man groaned, limping. His skin was hot and dry; he had a fever.

  “Easy,” said Hauser. “We’ll just take you over here and fix you up.” He led the man about fifty yards into the darkness beyond the camp-fire and eased him down on a log. The man staggered, groaned, but with Hauser’s help was able to sit on the log. Hauser removed the man’s machete.

  “Señor, before you cut out the arrow, give me whiskey.” The man whimpered, terrified of pain.

  “This won’t take but a second.” He gave the man a gentle pat on the shoulder. “We’ll have you fixed up in no time. I promise you, the operation will be painless.”

  “No, señor, please, whiskey first ...”

  Hauser bent over the arrow with the machete. The m
an stiffened, gritting his teeth, staring at the machete in terror and noticing nothing else. Meanwhile, Hauser raised the muzzle of the Steyr AUG to within an inch of the back of the man’s head. He eased the trigger back to full auto fire and squeezed off a short burst. The fire struck the man obliquely, the force of it throwing him backward off the log where he landed, sprawled head down, unmoving. All was then silent.

  Hauser returned to camp, washed his hands, and reseated himself by the fire. He picked up the half-smoked Churchill and relit it with a burning twig. The two soldiers were not looking at him, but some of the others, hearing the noise, had come out of their tents. They had their guns and were looking around, confused and alarmed.

  “It is nothing,” said Hauser, waving them away. “The man needed surgery. It was short, painless, and successful.”

  Hauser removed the cigar, knocked back a slug from his hip flask, and reinserted the wet tip of the cigar between his lips, drawing the smoke in. He felt only partly refreshed. It wasn’t the first time he had made the mistake of entrusting a simple task to these Honduran soldiers only to see it fail. Unfortunately, there was only one of him and he couldn’t do everything. It was always the same problem—always.

  Hauser turned and smiled at the teniente. “I’m a very good surgeon, Teniente, should you ever have need of it.”

  35

  They spent the following day in camp. Don Alfonso cut a gigantic stack of palm fronds and sat cross-legged next to them for most of the day, pulling them into fibrous strips and weaving palm-leaf backpacks and more hammocks. Sally hunted and brought back a small antelope, which Tom dressed and smoked over the fire. Vernon collected fruits and manioc root. By the end of the day they had a small supply of food for their journey.

  They inventoried their supplies. Between them they had several boxes of waterproof matches, a box of ammunition with thirty rounds, Tom’s daypack containing a tiny Svea backpacking stove set with an aluminum pots-and-pans set, two bottles of white gas, and a squeeze bottle of insect repellent. Vernon had escaped with a pair of binoculars around his neck. Don Alfonso had a pocketful of candy bars, three pipes, two packs of pipe tobacco, a small whetstone, and a roll of fishing line with hooks, all of which had been in his greasy leather bag, which he had snatched from the burning dugout. They all had their machetes, which they had been carrying tucked in their belts at the time of the attack.

  The next morning they set off. Tom cleared the trail wielding a freshly sharpened machete, while Don Alfonso went behind, murmuring which way he was to go. After a few miles of bushwhacking they came out on what appeared to be an old animal trail running through a cool forest of smooth-barked trees. The light was dim, and there was almost no undergrowth. A hush lay over the forest. It was like walking through the columned interior of a vast green cathedral.

  In the early afternoon the trail reached the base of a mountain range. The terrain pitched up from the forest floor, becoming a tangled slope of moss-covered boulders. The trail went almost straight up. Don Alfonso mounted it at astonishing speed, and Tom and the others struggled to follow, surprised at the old man’s vigor. As they gained altitude the air became fresher. The stately trees of the jungle gave way to their dwarfish, twisted cousins of the mountains, their branches hung with moss. In the late afternoon they came out on a flat ridge, which ended in an outcropping of leaf-shaped rocks. For the first time they had a view back across the jungle they had just traversed.

  Tom wiped his brow. The mountain fell away from them in one fantastic emerald declivity, plunging three thousand feet down to the green ocean of life below. Massive cumulus clouds moved above their heads.

  “I had no idea we were so high,” said Sally.

  “Thanks to the Holy Mother we have journeyed far,” said Don Alfonso, his voice subdued, setting down his palm-leaf backpack. “This is a good place to camp.” He seated himself on a log, lit his pipe, and began to give orders.

  “Sally, you and Tom go hunting. Vernon, first you will build the fire, and then you will build the hut. I will rest.”

  He leaned back, puffing lazily, his eyes half closed.

  Sally slung the gun over her shoulder, and they set off, following what appeared to be an animal trail. “I haven’t had a chance to thank you for shooting at those soldiers,” he said. “You probably saved our lives. You’ve really got guts.”

  “You’re like Don Alfonso—you seem surprised a woman might be handy with a rifle.”

  “I was talking about your presence of mind, not your shooting—but yes, I have to admit, I am surprised.”

  “Allow me to inform you that it’s now the twenty-first century, and women are doing surprising things.”

  Tom shook his head. “Is everyone in New Haven so prickly?”

  She turned a cool pair of green eyes on him. “Shall we get on with the hunting? Your chatter is scaring the game.”

  Tom suppressed a further comment and instead watched her slim body moving through the jungle. No, she was nothing like Sarah. Blunt, prickly, outspoken. Sarah was smooth; she never said what she really thought, never told the truth, was pleasant even to people she couldn’t stand. For her, it was always so much more fun to deceive.

  They went on, their footsteps silent in the wet, springy leaves. The forest was cool and deep. Through gaps in the trees, Tom could see the Macaturi River glinting in scimitarlike curves through the rainforest far below.

  A cough sounded from the forested slopes above them. It sounded like a human cough, only deeper, throatier.

  “That,” said Sally, “sounds feline.”

  “Feline, as in jaguar?”

  “Yes.”

  They moved side by side through the foliage, palming the leaves and ferns out of the way. The mountain slopes were curiously silent. Even the birds had stopped chittering. A lizard skittered up a trunk.

  “It feels strange up here,” said Tom. “Unreal.”

  “It’s a cloudforest,” said Sally. “A high-altitude rainforest.” She moved ahead, the rifle at the ready. Tom fell behind her.

  There was another cough: deep and booming. It was now the only sound in a forest that had become unnaturally silent.

  “That sounded closer,” said Tom.

  “Jaguars are a lot more frightened of us than we are of them,” said Sally.

  They clambered across a slope covered with giant fallen boulders, squeezing through moss-covered faces of rock, and came out facing a thick stand of bamboo. Sally moved around it. Clouds were already pressing down on them, and tendrils of mist drifted through the trees. The air smelled like wet moss. The view below them had vanished into whiteness.

  Sally paused, raised the gun, waited.

  “What is it?” Tom whispered.

  “Up ahead.”

  They crept forward. In front of them was a second cluster of giant mossy boulders, rolled and piled together, forming a honeycomb of dark holes and crawlspaces.

  Tom stood behind Sally, waiting. The mists were rolling in fast, reducing the trees to silhouettes. The fog sucked the fantastical green from the landscape, turning it a dull bluish gray.

  “There’s something moving in those rocks.” she whispered.

  They waited, crouching. Tom could feel the mists collecting around him, soaking into his clothes.

  After ten long minutes, a head appeared at a rock opening with two bright black eyes, and an animal that looked like a giant guinea pig came sniffing out.

  The shot rang out instantly, and the animal squiffed loudly and rolled belly up.

  Sally rose, unable to suppress a grin.

  “Nice shooting,” Tom said.

  “Thanks.”

  Tom unsheathed his machete and went to examine the animal.

  “I’ll go on ahead.”

  Tom nodded and turned over the animal with his shoe. It was some kind of large rodent, with yellow incisors, round and fat and heavily furred. He slid out his machete, not at all looking forward to his job. He sliced it open, scraped and pulled o
ut the guts and internal organs, cut off the paws and head, and skinned it. There was a strong smell of blood. As hungry as he was he began to lose his appetite. He wasn’t squeamish—as a vet he’d seen plenty of blood—but he didn’t like being part of the killing as opposed to the healing.

  He heard another sound, this time a very low growl. He paused, listening. It was followed by a dainty series of coughs. It was hard to tell where they were coming from—somewhere upslope, in the rocks above them. He sought out Sally with his eyes and located her about twenty yards away, below the rockslide, a slender silhouette moving silently in the mist. She faded from view.

  He quartered the animal and wrapped it up in palm leaves. It was depressing how little meat there actually was. It seemed hardly worth it. Maybe, he thought, Sally would bring down something bigger, like a deer.

  As he finished wrapping the meat he heard another sound, a soft and gentle purr, so close that he flinched. He waited, listening, his whole body tense. Suddenly a bloodcurdling scream split the forest, trailing off into a hungry growl. He jumped up, machete in his hand, trying to identify where it came from, but the tree branches and rocks were all bare. The jaguar was well hidden.

  Tom looked downslope to where Sally had vanished into the mists. He didn’t like the fact that the jaguar hadn’t gone away after the rifle shot. Picking up his machete, he left the chopped-up rodent and headed toward where Sally had disappeared.

  “Sally?”

  The jaguar screamed again, and this time it seemed to be right above him. He instinctively dropped to his knees, machete drawn, but all he could see were moss-draped rocks and disembodied tree trunks.

  “Sally!” he called out more loudly. “Are you all right?”

  Silence.

  He began to run down the slope, his heart in a panic. “Sally!”

  A faint voice answered, “I’m down here.”