by Alex Archer
"Great," Dan said. Annja was pleased to see that, like her and Lidia, he was keeping low. She tried not to think just how little protection the shack would give them against a random burst of gunfire. "If a fire starts – "
"Not much danger of that," Lidia said. "It rains so much, the wood is constantly soaked." Even as she said it the flames were dying down. Whether the shooter or any of his buddies had been killed or injured by the blast, Annja couldn't tell. She couldn't hear anybody screaming, anyway.
"We need to move," Annja said.
"Which direction?" Dan asked.
Another merc whipped around a corner on the far side of the street from the smoldering wreck of a shack to fire a grenade launcher up the street. The RPG man had already ducked into cover. Three grenades boomed off in the street and inside one of the huts. The blasts caused little visible damage as the gaps in the walls allowed a lot of the blast pressure to escape.
"Left," Annja said. "The ones in gray seem to put out a way bigger volume of fire."
Dan grinned. "I like the way you think."
To Annja's surprise they got past the firefight without great difficulty. The worst part was crossing the relatively wide road where the shoot-out was actually taking place. Lidia insisted on crossing no more than thirty yards behind the rearmost of the mercenaries they could detect. Yet despite what the movies showed, Annja knew from firsthand experience – both dealing out gunfire and receiving it – that bullets don't evaporate harmlessly into thin air if they miss. Indeed, modern high-velocity rifle rounds don't reliably stop even when they hit their targets.
Annja doubted anyone would pay them any mind. The two groups were too intent on killing each other, and not being killed by each other. But there was a rhythm to a firefight, Annja knew from experience. Lidia and Dan both seemed equally aware, probably for the same reason, she figured.
After observing for a while they were able to anticipate the lulls. They made their move at an opportune moment. They found themselves in surroundings that managed to be even less appealing than the quarter-mile or more of hell they'd crossed to get there.
Where earlier they had seen few people except for armed gangs of one sort or another, now they caught flashes of furtive movement inside shadowed shacks, gleams of sunlight on eyeballs peering through windows or less formal gaps in rude walls. Now and again a man or even a woman, usually lean and scarred as an old wolf, stood glaring at them openly from a doorway.
"What's with this action?" Dan asked. Following Lidia's example, he and Annja walked upright down the middle of the streets and alleys. Annja felt the constant pressure of eyeballs – there was clearly no point in stealth any longer. "Don't these people have jobs to go to?"
"Not anymore," Lidia said. "They have found they cannot escape outside the walls, between the selva and the Indians. But this part of the camp they can escape to. The guards do not come farther than those we just came past."
"Why doesn't the whole slave-labor population just flood right into here, then?" Dan asked.
"Because even the slaves enjoy some measure of security. They are fed, if badly. Here there is no support, no security, but what one can grab for oneself. Or one's comrades."
"But you seem pretty familiar with this part of the camp," Annja said, "and pretty unafraid." Indeed, the gaunt doctor seemed to be walking more erect than at any time since she had crept apologetically into the commissary in what seemed like a whole earlier incarnation.
Lidia smiled again. "I live here. I told you, I provide valuable services to the community, which everyone recognizes. These people protect me precisely because they are so desperate. And here at least I am safe from rape by the guards."
Annja shuddered. No matter how horrible life in this hole seems, she thought, I just keep finding out it's actually worse.
"So even in the Citadel – " Dan began.
"Please," said Lidia without looking at him. Annja waved a pipe-down hand at him. He actually looked sheepish for a moment.
****
The man they sought had obviously been dying for a long time. And he'd been dying hard.
Looking at him lying on a pile of rags with a skinny woman kneeling by his side and mopping his face with water from an old paint can with the label long gone, Annja guessed they had arrived just in time.
A peculiarly horrific, sweetish smell came from him. It seemed concentrated on a bandage, which must have been white at one point, and was now pretty thoroughly blackened, wound about his narrow middle.
"Gangrene?" Dan asked, sniffing and then wincing. "I thought you could only get that on an arm or a leg."
Lidia shook her head. "Anywhere in the body where blood supply is cut off," she said, "the tissue dies and becomes gangrenous. It is far advanced in his bowels. He suffered multiple gunshot wounds. It is a wonder he has hung on so long."
"Was he shot here? In the camp?" Dan asked.
"I do not know. He simply appeared here, two weeks ago, already wounded. He had bandaged himself after a fashion," the doctor replied.
"Appeared here?" Dan echoed. "You mean, in the camp?"
Lidia nodded.
"But how can somebody get into a place like this? And why?"
She shrugged. "There are ways. The walls are meant to keep men in not out – and even then, there are always ways for those willing to take risks. And there are those for whom the forest and the poisonous snakes and even the Indians are no barrier.
"As to why, the good God might know. But he has clearly turned his face away from the camp. If you ask him, I promise he will not answer. No matter how loudly you scream and plead."
Annja looked to the woman at the dying man's side. She was emaciated, as well as of slight stature. Annja could not tell how old she was – she might have been a prematurely aged teenager or a middle-aged woman.
"Please," Annja said in Portuguese.
The woman never glanced her way.
"If she understands Portuguese," Lidia said, "or English or Spanish, she never shows a sign. I believe she is Indian, but even that is a guess. She appeared two days after he did."
"What's he doing here?" Annja said. "Other than the obvious."
"You mean dying? Why do you fear to say the word? Believe me, he knows," Lidia said.
"I'm sorry," Annja whispered.
"He waits," Lidia said. "That much I know. He has said as much."
"What else has he said?" Dan asked.
Lidia frowned. She shook her head sharply. "Strange things," she said. "Impossible things. He is delirious. He cannot separate legend from fact."
Annja knelt on the other side of him from his faithful attendant. The stench of his decay was like a blow. The crouching woman shot her a hot-eyed look, but something in Annja's manner seemed to reassure her. She went back to her monotonous task of giving the man what tiny comfort was available. Annja wondered what he was to her, and she to him. Lover? Daughter? Comrade in arms? She doubted she would ever know.
Leaning close to his ear, she said, "Promessa."
With startling speed, his hand flashed out and caught her by the right wrist. She managed to quell the urge to flinch away.
"I did wrong," the man said with enormous effort. "I hope that I have paid enough. And I must have, for now you have come to take me home to the quilombo of dreams!"
He turned his ghastly face to her and smiled. His teeth seemed to swim in blood. Through it they looked shockingly white.
"What do you remember?" she asked, hating herself.
The tortured brow furrowed, causing the sweat to eat new runnels through the grime that caked his face despite the silent woman's constant attention. "I was not – not supposed to remember. Yet now the memories come back to me. Sweet, so sweet."
"Now is when you are supposed to remember," she said. She was improvising. It was a desperate game – if he spotted any inconsistency, any falsehood, he would shut up and no influence she could bring to bear on him would restart the flow of information she so desperate
ly needed.
But hope betrayed him, as hope so often does. He wanted to believe. So whatever might have rung false about Annja or her words – he did not hear them. Hope of redemption, of homecoming, was all that remained to him.
"You must know the way," she said.
He smiled. "Yes. And the outside people can never find it." Again he smiled a terrible smile.
"Only by proving that you know," Annja said, "can you earn what you desire."
She felt Lidia's gaze boring between her shoulder blades like laser beams. Well, Annja thought, the cause is greater than you know. Greater than we dare tell you.
"I will try," the man said. The strength with which he clung to her wrist was astounding. Either he had been inhumanly strong in full health, or his will was simply that strong. "I see the tree."
"The tree," Annja said. She heard Dan's sharp exhalation at her side. A tree? That's what we have to go on. Among all the billions of trees in the Amazon?
The dying man nodded. His eyes gleamed. They looked past Annja, seeing the glories of the City of Promise. "The tree with nine trunks. On the right bank. That marks the border. The city lies mere leagues beyond."
He sat up and looked at her. She realized for the first time his eyes were bright blue.
"Do I pass the test? I want so much to come home. Can I – ?"
The staring blue eyes rolled back in his skull. He melted onto the stained, sodden pile of rags. The woman slowly raised her head. The look she gave Annja was pure hate.
"You filthy beast!" a female voice cried in Portuguese from behind. "What have you done to him?"
Chapter 22
The voice did not belong to Dr. Lidia do Carvalho. Annja knew at once who it must be.
The real Promessans had come to collect their own. Or to still his tongue. In either case they were too late.
For anything but vengeance.
Annja spun away from the corpse, straightening to confront the woman who had spoken. She was a tall, lean, young African-looking woman with a dark green band around bushy hair, a loose olive-drab blouse worn tails out over khaki shorts and athletic shoes. Her eyes blazed with outrage.
Annja realized it was the woman she had pursued from the murdered Mafalda's shop in Belém.
"Go," Annja said to Lidia from the corner of her mouth. Without looking up, the doctor grabbed the squatting woman by the arm. The woman resisted. With surprising strength Lidia hauled her to her feet, away from the corpse of the man she had tended so lovingly and out into the merciless sunlight. The little doctor lived in a state of pure terror and seemed all but totally beaten down by life. Yet she kept on, kept doing what she could. For that Annja admired her.
"Don't cause problems for her," Annja told the Promessan woman when the other two had gone. "She had no choice."
"There is always a choice," the woman all but spit. "Why did you kill him?"
"What, are you mad because we beat you to it?" Dan asked.
"We didn't kill him," Annja said.
"What did he say to you?" she asked.
Frantically Annja weighed their options. If the newcomer really was Promessan, Annja doubted that either she or Dan had any prospect of talking their way past her. And although she was wiry, it was the wiriness of strength, not privation, meaning she wasn't of the colony.
"Enough," Annja finally said. "You won't be able to selfishly hoard your secrets away from the world for very much longer."
"So you are just another colonialist, Annja Creed, come to steal what we have made by our own sweat and suffering. Come to enslave us again!"
Annja frowned. How does she know my name?
Dan's hand dipped under the loose tails of his shirt. It came out holding the same handgun he'd used in the warehouse in Manaus.
"They're surrounding the hootch!" he shouted as he raised the handgun to point at the tall newcomer.
With startling speed she crescent kicked the pistol. She failed to knock the weapon from his hand but did kick it aside. It went off with a noise that seemed to billow the torn cloth hangings that served as part of the shack's walls.
She spun rapidly into a back kick that caught the young activist in the stomach and knocked him crashing out into daylight. Other figures moved outside. Even in a glimpse Annja could see they lacked the scarecrow gauntness and feral furtiveness that characterized colony inhabitants, even the armed gang members.
Shots went off outside. But Annja snapped her attention back to the tall woman as the most immediate threat. Reaching behind her shoulder, the woman produced a machete and swung it at Annja's head.
Off balance and with no time to concentrate the sword into being, Annja fell over to her right. She landed hard on her right hip. The floor was packed earth topped by a layer of unidentifiable muck.
The Promessan rushed at her, raising the machete for a killing downstroke. Just as simply Annja fired out with both feet, kicking her attacker in both shins and knocking her legs right out from under her.
Annja rolled to her right as the woman sprawled across the corpse. Immediately Annja reversed, rolling back to use her right hand wrapped over her left fist to piledrive her left elbow into her opponent's kidney. The woman screamed in pain and arched her back as if being electrocuted. The machete flew from her hand.
Annja sprang to her feet. Motion blurred in the extreme right corner of her peripheral vision. She ducked left and spun away. The motion took her farther from the doorway to outside. An interior wall, augmented like the exterior walls with random sheets of drab cloth, partitioned the shack into at least two rooms. From a dark doorway in the wall something long and mottled and as thick as Annja's thigh appeared.
It crashed against the outer wall. Annja straightened to find herself confronting a giant anaconda. She knew anacondas were contenders for largest snakes in the world. But its sheer size was almost as great a shock as the fact it had appeared from nowhere.
The snake reared up to fully her height and turned to gaze at her with large golden eyes. It sent a chill down her spine.
The serpent opened its mouth wide. It was pink and edged with an alarming array of back-curving teeth. It struck right for Annja's face.
She dived to her right, back toward the dead body and the writhing woman. She put a shoulder down and rolled as the anaconda struck the wall. Planks cracked loudly.
Annja came to her feet. The woman suddenly rolled and tried to grab her legs. Annja kicked her hard in the face, felt as much as heard her jaw break.
The sword filled Annja's hand. The anaconda coiled by the wall, preparing for another strike. It seemed to recognize the sword as a threat. With a speed that belied its bulk it turned to its right and slithered out through a low gap in the wall. Momentarily transfixed by the creature's length, Annja leaped forward to slash belatedly at its tail. She missed. Her blade bit deep into the mud-scummed earth floor.
She heard noises behind her. She ripped the sword loose and turned in time to smash a machete blade descending toward her head with a clumsy forehand stroke. She put her shoulder down and slammed it into her attacker's chest. He was so surprised that Annja virtually clotheslined him, despite hitting him so close to his center of gravity. His legs ran out from under him and he fell with a squelch in the mud.
Outside she heard shots. Several from close by she guessed were Dan's. Other guns were clearly firing, too. What's going on? she wondered.
As she was distracted a second man swung a machete diagonally at her. She barely managed to block it with the flat of her blade.
The man looked European, possibly even American. He was taller than Annja, with rippling spare muscles in arms left bare by a tan shirt with the arms torn off, a stubble of dark blond beard, glaring green eyes. Those eyes widened in surprise.
Nobody expects a broadsword, she thought. She took advantage of his lapse to get her right knee up to her chest. She pushed hard with the sole of her shoe against his sternum, throwing him back.
The sound of the thin scum of mud su
cking at a shoe brought her around fast. The first man, whose machete she had smashed, was trying to plant a combat knife between her shoulder blades. She ran him through the heart with her sword. He gasped and goggled at her as life fled him. She tore the blade free and turned to meet the attack she knew was coming.
The blond man cried out hoarsely as he saw his comrade die. Annja's blow slashed his descending forearm and connected with his chest. He fell, pumping blood into the muck.
More men crowded in through the hut's entrance. They held weapons of various sorts. She turned and hacked at the planks of the wall and snapped a way clear into the unforgiving light of day.
Not four yards away she saw Dan crouched behind a line of big red plastic drums. He was jamming a fresh magazine into his gun. Two bodies lay in the street. A wide, grooved trail with hints of red led to the mouth of an alley across the road, suggesting someone may have been hit and dragged to cover.
"Get down!" Dan whispered. As he glanced toward her she made the sword disappear. She dived toward the barrels.
A boom buffeted her ears. Something clattered above her as she tucked and rolled and came up next to Dan, trying not to be aware of the hideous stinking muck that smeared her from knees to hair. Glancing up, she saw a pattern of small holes in the planking. She knew instantly it was buckshot.
"The Promessans are using shotguns?" she asked.
Dan leaned around the side of the barrel barrier and fired twice at a target Annja couldn't see. "I don't think so."
"I thought the camp guards didn't come here."
"I don't think it's them, either. This looks more like gangs, converging to defend their turf."
Annja was looking back toward the hole she'd made in the wall. She was surprised the Promessans hadn't come boiling right out after her. Perhaps they were tending to their fallen comrades inside. Just as likely they were none too eager to blunder after somebody who'd single-handedly put three of them down, two probably for good.