Suddenly, Steven held up his fist, indicating to stop. Mark froze in his tracks as the two men behind him did the same. Steven scanned the jungle around them. He turned the volume up on the little device he was holding.
Mark saw nothing. The jungle seemed to move on its own, as it always had.
Steven’s gaze stopped just off to their right, facing a thicket of trees. Mark intently watched the area as well. He tried it with the night vision goggles then shone his flashlight over the area with the goggles still on but saw nothing. He turned the flashlight off.
“How big did you say these snakes are supposed to be?” Mark whispered.
“I don’t know. Big enough to take down a man, that’s for sure.”
They waited at least two or three minutes before Steven relaxed and said, “Okay, let’s keep moving.”
Mark’s senses were more aware as the men trekked through the jungle again. Fear, or at least anxiety, had now taken hold, and he had to recognize it. Though he had never really been afraid of the jungle, other than the insects, since he’d moved here, he understood why many of the locals had told him the jungle was a sinister place where demons lived.
They looped around the camp for several hours until Steven said it was time to stop and hydrate. They ate jerky and drank water out of canteens. Qasim and Kapoor didn’t speak. Mark asked them a few questions, but they just gave one-word answers and kept their eyes away, a signal in their culture that they didn’t wish to speak to the person talking to them.
Steven was busy on a GPS then his satellite phone, which was getting little service. The voices that came through broke off frequently, and static obscured them.
“We’re going to be at this for twelve hours?” Mark said.
“Just nine more to go, brother.”
“Steven, I can’t walk for twelve hours a day. That’s too much. Especially in the dark.”
“Who said anything about walking? We do three on foot and then post. Every team has a place they’re posted, and this is ours. We’ll be here the rest of the night.”
“And the snakes are just supposed to come to us?”
“With a little help.” Steven motioned to Qasim.
Qasim reaching into the pack lying next to him. He opened the inside pocket and pulled out a trash bag about a third full. Laying the trash bag on the ground, he pulled out the carcass of what looked like a rat the size of a French bulldog.
“What the hell is that?” Mark said.
“Capybara,” Steven said as he walked over and lifted the rodent. “Anaconda’s favorite meal. Imported fresh from South America.”
Steven took some rope and metal hooks out of his pack. He thrust the hooks through the flesh of the rodent then attached them to one end of the rope. He flung the rope over a branch and tied down the other end, leaving the rodent hanging from the tree upside down. He took out a large hunting knife strapped to his hip and slit the already dead animal’s throat. Slowly, blood trickled down onto the jungle floor.
Steven settled back down next to his rifle and said, “Well, I guess we just wait now.”
26
The camp was buzzing with activity as some of the field workers were returning. Riki hadn’t actually seen any of the oil fields out here, and she wished someone would take her out. The idea of oil fields on an island was counter-intuitive, though possible. It must be, otherwise they wouldn’t spend all this money.
She walked through the camp and received many stares from the workers. As far as she had seen, she was the only female in the entire camp. She thought maybe in the administrative branch there’d be some, but there weren’t. No managers, no secretaries, no IT, no women. The only conclusion she could draw was that they had purposely excluded women.
The electric lamps illuminated every row of tents, but they only went so far. Past a certain point was just darkness, though not empty. She felt eyes on her. She decided it wasn’t a good idea to walk around without protection and made up her mind to ask Steven for a pistol when he got back to camp.
The one thought that kept coming to her, though, more than the need for a weapon, was whether Mark was all right. He had kind eyes, no deception in them. And the way he did his best to hide his attraction to her was adorable. The men in Los Angeles were forward and blunt. Relationships for her age group, mid- to late twenties, seemed built around love of alcohol and partying rather than love and respect for the other person. She made up her mind long ago that she would rather be alone than in a relationship based on that, but the prospect of living in paradise with Mark gave her butterflies. Considering they hadn’t even gone on one date yet, it became idle conjecture. She’d been on plenty of dates with men she thought she would get along with, only to find something deeply flawed about them.
She hurried to the administration tent, sticking close to the center of the path and away from the tent entrances. The plethora of languages spoken by the men she passed was astounding. She considered herself a polyglot but couldn’t even identify some of the regional dialects.
The administration tent was a building, not a tent. She’d seen that the first time they brought her here. It indicated VN intended to be in the jungle for quite some time. She stepped inside, glancing around once to make sure no one was watching her. How odd that they would leave this place without anyone to guard it, she thought. From a plastic board on one wall, sets of keys hung on hooks. Probably to equipment and cases with sensitive materials inside.
The two computers in the back were on, and she cautiously stepped over to them. She scanned for cameras but didn’t see any. The chair creaked as she sat and queued up the computer. She didn’t recognize the brand, and was trying to find a logo when she realized it was a VN computer, probably custom made.
The server was connected, and she quickly scanned the names of the people to whom the computer was linked. She took out her phone and opened a note-taking app. She began typing in the names. A couple names were familiar as bigwigs with VN, but some weren’t familiar at all. And one name completely surprised her: Thad Nelson. One of the United States senators from Alaska.
“Excuse me,” a male voice said behind her.
She spun around, knowing she had shown too much surprise, though she tried to cover it with a wide smile. “Hi,” she said shyly.
“Who the hell are you?”
“I’m Riki Howard, with the L.A. Times. I was hired to document this expedition.”
“What expedition?” The man stood rigidly with his hands behind his back and his chest puffed up. A military man if ever there was one.
“The one to kill the snakes.”
The man didn’t speak for a moment. “Oh. Well, you can’t be in here.”
“Sorry. Steven said I could kind of wander around.”
“Anywhere but here.”
She nodded and stood up, slipping her phone back into her pocket while she grinned at the man. “Sorry, was just seeing if I could check my email on here.”
Riki brushed past him and glanced over her shoulder once while at the entrance to the tent. He was still staring at her, and she smiled again and walked out, her heart pounding. Outside, she turned in an arbitrary direction, acting as though she knew where she was going, and took out her phone. She looked at the names again. Background searches would have to be done on each, but the senator was the most fascinating. Why would a senator need constant access to an oil company drilling for oil on some remote island?
As she looped around to her own tent, she decided she had to find out. But before she could enter her tent, she saw a group of four men about three tents away. They were all facing her as they smoked. They neither smiled nor said hello, just stared.
Riki thought she might not wait for Steven and see if she could find a gun right away.
27
Mark took off his boots and socks to let his feet air out a bit. Walking for three hours didn’t seem like it would be that exhausting, but he felt like he’d just run a marathon. And the humidity and heat was
unrelenting. In the deserts of California, where he and his ex had spent some time camping, the temperatures at night dropped to forty or fifty degrees and rose back up in the midday to over a hundred. In this jungle, that wasn’t the case. Apparently, the heat never let up.
He looked back to the giant rat, or whatever the hell Steven had said it was, hanging from the tree. All the blood had seeped out through the slice in its throat, but nothing other than a jaguar or leopard had come by for a look. They heard its growl, and Steven lifted his rifle, scanning around the rodent. “Can’t have someone steal our snake snack, now can we?”
Mark would’ve stopped him. The big cats were endangered and protected on the island. And aside from that, they were damned beautiful. He wouldn’t let one end up as some ornament on Steven’s wall.
Mark checked the clock on his phone: 5:34 a.m. He stretched his back, put his socks and boots on again, and stood up to get some blood in his legs. Their shift ended at nine, so that left three and a half hours. He could do three and a half hours.
“You all right?” Steven said, lying on his pack.
“Fine.”
“Not a jungle person, are you?”
“How could you tell?’
“’Cause you got this, like, scrunched-up look to your face all the time. Like you’re smelling something bad.”
Mark placed both hands on his lower back and pushed, arching his back to stretch it. “Why am I here, Steven? Really. No company bullshit. You don’t need me.”
“Oh, on the contrary, I do need you. More than you know.”
“Then why don’t—”
“Shh.”
This time, Mark heard it, too. A slight crunching of foliage, as though something heavy were traveling through the bush then stopping as soon as it made noise. They both turned their heads in the direction it came from. Mark wished they had a fire, but Steven said it would drive snakes away. At least, Millard had told him that was possible. Though again, he said the science on snake likes and dislikes wasn’t a hundred percent certain.
Qasim and Kapoor had been dozing, but they were fully awake and alert now. One of them pulled down his rifle and slowly rose to his feet. The other one’s eyes were wide, as though he were listening with them instead of his ears.
“Qasim,” Steven whispered, “you and Kapoor flank it. Me and Mark are gonna come up from behind.”
Qasim nodded and disappeared. Steven slid on his goggles, and Mark did the same. The jungle lit up around him, and he let his eyes adjust before moving. He picked up his rifle and followed Steven, who was working his way through the brush.
They pushed their way through the thick shrubbery, making far more noise than Mark would’ve liked, then circled around behind the clearing they’d been sitting on. Steven was in a high crouch, but Mark just walked. He hadn’t exactly done this before and didn’t quite know how to act. The last thing he wanted was to crouch, trip on a vine, and accidentally shoot his team leader. He had a feeling he wouldn’t get his paycheck then.
They stopped momentarily and listened. Mark thought they were listening to Qasim and Kapoor, but something else suddenly popped out to him: the jungle was quiet. All the hoots of the monkeys, the squall of the birds, the cheeps of the insects, all silenced. A cold feeling, like ice water poured down his spine, flowed down Mark’s back.
Steven held up his hand and motioned with two fingers to keep moving. Mark crouched lower.
The canopy was thin overhead, and with the goggles on, the glare from the moon was nearly blinding. The goggles worked by enhancing the little light there was, but the moonlight here, without any light pollution, was as bright as a light bulb. Mark wouldn’t be taking the goggles off, though. He just squinted as best as he could and tried not to look directly up at the sky.
Soon, they were near the hanging rodent. Steven flipped off the safety on his rifle, and Mark followed suit. He swallowed. His mouth was dry, and the only thing he could hear was his pulse pounding in his ears. They were nearly behind the rodent now.
Just as Steven parted the brush to step behind the rodent, a scream echoed through the air then loud pops of gunfire. Steven jumped out of the brush. Mark froze. Only through sheer force of will, he lunged forward with his rifle held out in front of him.
Qasim was firing at something in the bush. Steven joined him; Mark lifted the rifle and pulled the trigger. The kickback was something he wasn’t expecting, and the rifle nearly flew out of his hands. He stabilized it and continued to fire. The rounds were tearing through trees and brush, vines splintering off and flopping to the ground. Mark didn’t know what he was firing at, but he didn’t stop. Not until Steven had stopped first and shouted at Qasim to cease firing.
Qasim was breathing heavily, his eyes wide as golf balls.
“What was it, what’d you see?” Steven said.
“I don’t know. It’s in there,” he said in his accented English.
Steven held the rifle in front of him and cautiously walked toward the brush they’d been firing into. He moved the vegetation aside with the barrel of the rifle and looked in. Steven stepped to the side and spread apart the brush. The body of a big cat—a leopard, Mark guessed—lay on its side. He stepped closer. Clutching the rodent between its jaws, the cat was motionless, not breathing. So many bullet holes filled it that Mark could see its internal organs.
“Well, hot damn,” Steven bellowed. “Good shootin’, Qasim.”
Qasim didn’t change expression, still sucking in breath as if he’d taken a run around a track. Mark lowered his rifle then slung it over his shoulder. He looked around.
“Where’s Kapoor?”
Qasim’s smile faded. He looked around as well. Steven’s face lost its smile, and he scanned the surrounding jungle.
The cold feeling on Mark’s spine was back.
They had split up and searched for over an hour. There was no sign of Kapoor until Steven found his pack. The pack had been lying on the trail not far from where they had hung the rodent. Blood spattered the back.
They searched until the sun was up. Mark’s feet and back ached. The pack was weighing him down, and he felt every ounce of its weight against him.
The three men met up near a small clearing. Steven tilted up the hat he was wearing and wiped his brow with the back of his hand. He looked around the surrounding jungle. “He’s gone.”
“Qasim, what did you see?” Mark said.
The man shook his head. “I saw the leopard. I started shooting. Kapoor was behind me.”
“You didn’t see anything else?”
He shook his head again, staring blankly at the ground with a devastated expression on his face.
“Kapoor was his cousin,” Steven said.
“I’m sorry,” Mark said. “If he’s out here, we’ll find him.”
“No, he is not here. He is dead.”
No one spoke a moment then Steven said, “Let’s cut out early tonight.”
Mark had expected Steven to be distraught at another disappearance, but he seemed downright shaken up. Maybe because it was so close to home. That could’ve been any one of them. As they hiked back to camp, none of them spoke.
Once in Tent City, Mark didn’t ask what to do next or where to go. He just walked to his tent, dropped his pack, kicked off his boots, and collapsed onto the cot. Workers coming and going and the day hunting party trading shifts with the night caused commotion outside, but Mark’s exhaustion was so deep he didn’t care about any of it. He closed his eyes and drifted off to a dreamless sleep.
28
Groggy and weak, Mark awoke sometime around midday. Sweat had soaked his shirt right through to the cot. He swung his legs over and sat still a moment, orienting himself. Then last night came to him. He ambled out of the tent, squinting from the bright sun overhead. The camp was busy, but no one seemed to pay him much attention. He went to the latrines then to the mess hall. His stomach growled, as he hadn’t eaten in somewhere around fifteen hours.
The mess hall w
as always open, it seemed, but if someone missed the designated times, they apparently had to eat leftovers. Mark found some soggy sandwiches bloated with mayonnaise and grabbed a ham and cheddar with a bag of chips. He grabbed bottled water from an icebox, chugged it completely, and got another one before sitting down by himself.
He ate in silence, watching the other workers coming and going. Some were jovial, but most were despondent. Looking like they were digging their own graves, he thought. And suddenly, he didn’t want to be here anymore. No amount of money was worth disappearing because of whatever the hell made Kapoor disappear.
It wasn’t just snakes. Quicksand, venomous spiders, leopards, poisonous plants, any number of things that filled the jungles could’ve killed Kapoor. Whatever it was, it wasn’t Mark’s problem. This was a waste. He would inform Steven today that he was leaving.
“Hey.”
Riki was coming toward him. She grinned and sat down across from him. Despite the heat, she still looked lovely, her cheeks flushed red and her hair held up in a bun.
“Thought I’d find you here,” she said. “How was it?”
“One of our men disappeared not ten feet from us.”
“Disappeared? What do you mean?”
“I mean disappeared. We found his pack and it had blood on it. He was gone. I’m guessing he didn’t hightail it back here, either.”
She swallowed. “Was it…”
“I don’t know what the hell it was.” He looked around. “I’m getting outta here, Riki. This isn’t worth it. We need to leave, both of us. We don’t belong here.”
She shook her head. “I can’t do that.”
“Why not?”
“Something’s going on here, Mark. Something deeper than searching for oil and disappearing workers.” She leaned close. “Remember those open IMs I found? There’s one linked to a senator from Alaska. Why would they possibly need that?”
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