She glanced at the Indio boy. “Great, I’m putting my life in the hands of a teenage boy who can’t even read a map, cannot speak much English, and who is most probably friends with all the drug kingpins in the area.”
She smiled feebly and spread her arms out. “You are right, Dr. Feelgood, what do I have to be worried about?”
Mason laughed again and put his hand on her shoulder. He was momentarily surprised at how right it felt to touch her and how good it made him feel. “Come on, let’s get packed . . . but keep it light. Remember we’re gonna be slogging through five days of jungle heat and humidity, not to mention the many small mountains we may have to climb, and those AR-15s are not exactly lightweight.”
She shook her head as they walked toward the lab. “Man, you sure know how to show a girl a good time, Mason. First a worldwide plague, then a five-day jaunt through jungles filled with drug lords and wild animals looking to eat us, and all while trying to keep up with a teenage Tarzan of the Jungle.”
“And don’t forget,” he added with a sly smile, “after we’re done in the village, we get to walk back through the jungle for five more days.”
She glanced sideways at him. “I think your momma misnamed you. Shoulda called you Simon Legree or Marquis de Sade.”
* * *
After they were packed and ready to leave the camp, Shirley Cole walked over to Guatemotzi and turned him around and began to fiddle with the snaps on the small backpack Mason had provided for him. “Here you go, Guatemotzi,” she said, “I’m putting a couple of extra Hershey’s bars and even a chocolate chip muffin from Shirley into your pack in case you get hungry on the trip.”
The boy grinned, understanding most of what she’d said, especially the part about the Hershey’s bars.
Suzanne walked up and patted Guatemotzi on the back, and then she looked over his shoulder and said to Mason, “I still think I should come with you, in case you need help with the samples or the blood drawing.”
He shrugged his shoulders. “I think you’ll be much more valuable here, Suzanne. After all, this may all be a wild goose chase and the Battleship is going to need your advice on measures that can be taken to slow or stop the spread of the plague until a vaccine or cure can be found.”
“Okay, okay, I know when I’m licked,” she said, smiling sadly. “But you guys be careful,” she added, looking into Mason’s eyes. “I’d hate to never see you again.”
“Not to worry,” he said, hoisting his pack on his shoulders. “I’m like a bad penny . . . I just keep on turning up.”
“Until you do, we’ll keep on working on that nasty little bug and see if we can’t find a combination of antibiotics that will kill the little fuckers,” Shirley said, surprising everyone with the profanity. “Hopefully in time to save Dr. Matos’s life.”
None of them had ever heard her say anything much harsher than dadgummit. It was a measure of just how worried each of them was about the slim possibility of stopping the plague before it depopulated most of the civilized world.
Mason gave her a hug and said he knew she’d find a way to kill the bug, and then he followed Guatemotzi and Lauren into the brush.
* * *
A half-hour later, Bear felt the sat-phone in his jacket pocket vibrate. He was riding copilot to Jinx, who was the team’s designated pilot for touchy low-altitude flying, though all members could fly the plane in an emergency.
Bear pushed a button on the side of the phone and put it to his ear. “Yeah?”
“The Indio boy and Mason and the woman from the college just headed into the jungle toward the boy’s village,” a static-filled voice said. “They are heading south-southwest from the dig site, and I managed to plant a GPS signaler on the boy. It will signal on four hundred and forty megahertz and you should be able to pick it up within about two to three miles, depending on the terrain.”
“Thanks, Janus.”
“Bear?”
“Yeah?”
“Try to get the boy and the samples without killing Mason, okay? I don’t give a shit one way or another about the woman, but I’d like Mason to make it through this if it’s possible.”
Bear’s gunmetal gray eyes widened. He’d never heard Janus be sentimental about anyone before. “I’ll see what I can do,” he said, without promising anything. After all, the boss had as much as ordered him to kill Janus, too, which kinda pissed him off since the spy had always been straight with him and his men.
He clicked off the phone and put it back in his pocket.
“What was that about?” Jinx asked, glancing sideways at him in the darkening gloom of the late afternoon.
“Nothing,” Bear grunted irritably, looking out the airplane’s windows and wondering for the first time if he was on the right side. He and his team had intercepted plenty of possible germ warfare agents before in the years they’d been working for Blackman, but this time it was different. Half the fucking world was dying and their orders were to take a possible cure and hand it over to the megalomaniac who employed them and hope he did the right thing with it.
He and his team had killed many times in the past, and their victims probably numbered in the dozens if not hundreds, but never before had the stakes been in the hundreds of millions, and Bear found himself in strange territory. He was suddenly thinking about things like morality and if being responsible for the deaths of hundreds of millions of innocents would wither his soul beyond redemption. Not that he necessarily believed in a soul, but still . . .
He shook his head and sighed deeply. He’d always been a man of action and was unused to indecision. Indecision and hesitation could get a man in his line of work killed faster than a speeding bullet.
He glanced over his shoulder into the rear seats of the plane and saw his men with their heads back against the seats dozing, and he envied them their lack of imagination.
They had no thought for the millions of people who may die in agony because of their actions. To them, this job was just another paycheck and another chance to kick some ass and take some names.
He turned back around and stared out the window at the dying embers of the sun off to their right and wondered what his final decision would be and whether he would ever be the same after this mission was over.
Hell, after this job maybe it was time to stake out a place on the beach in the Caymans and drown his memories in liquor and babes.
Chapter 25
At first, Lauren thought the trip through the jungle wasn’t so bad. Guatemotzi was in the lead with her behind him and Mason bringing up the rear.
The old growth forest trees were pretty well spaced out and the underbrush was manageable. The trees even provided shade, which kept the tropical heat at a bearable level, though the almost one hundred percent humidity made breathing feel like sucking air through a wet woolen blanket.
After a while, as the land became hillier and the mild breeze died down, Lauren knew it was time for a break.
“Hey, Guatemotzi, how about we stop for a water break?”
The young Indio smiled back over his shoulder at her. The little shit wasn’t even breathing hard and was barely sweating, she noticed.
“I’ll second that,” Mason called in a somewhat breathless voice from a few paces back.
As Lauren and Mason dropped their packs and he unslung the Armalite rifle from over his shoulder, Guatemotzi ambled a few feet off the animal trail they were following and fished around in a dry bush until he found a relatively straight branch and then he broke it off and returned to the group.
He slipped his pack off and sat on a large boulder and pulled a small pocketknife from his pack and began to whittle on the branch, making it into a small arrow for his tiny bow.
Between sips from her canteen, Lauren said, “I recognize that knife. It belonged to Professor Adams.”
Guatemotzi grinned and nodded. “Sí. The professor gave me this very fine knife for helping him around the camp.” After a moment his smile faded and he lowered his eyes.
“He said my name was a very fine name but was too long for everyday use, so he used to call me ‘Motzi.’”
He raised his eyes to stare at Lauren. “When the other young ones began to get the bleeding sickness, he told me to run into the jungle and to not come back or I would die, too.”
“But you didn’t run . . . you stayed,” Lauren said.
“Sí. The old one was very good to Guatemotzi. I stayed and tried to make him better by giving him some of the plants that the curandera in our village uses to cure outsiders who come there and get the bleeding sickness.”
“Do you know of these plants?” Mason asked.
Guatemotzi shrugged. “Some of them only. They made the old one a little better, but soon he got sick again and finally he died.”
Tears formed in his eyes. “I should have listened better to the old woman when she showed me what to pick and the old one would still be alive.”
Lauren glanced at Mason. “That must be why Charles was the last one to die, even though the others were younger and stronger.”
He nodded. “Of course. The herbs Guatemotzi gave him must have slowed the progression of the disease significantly, but they weren’t strong enough for a complete cure.”
“Do you have any of those plants with you now?” Lauren asked.
“Sí.” He reached into his pack and pulled out a small deerskin pouch and removed five shriveled plants, two of them with flowers still attached. He handed them to Lauren, who passed them to Mason.
Mason quickly took the sat-phone off his belt and dialed Joel’s number at the camp.
When he answered, Mason said, “Joel, find Suzanne and put her on the phone, quickly.”
While he waited, he asked Guatemotzi, “How do you give these to a person with the sickness?”
Guatemotzi pulled a small round rock and a slightly larger flat rock from his pouch. He made a grinding motion using the round rock against the flat rock. “After this, put in hot water and make him drink it, once in morning and once at night.”
Mason nodded, and then he turned back to the phone. “Suzanne, the boy has told us about some of the plants the curandera uses to cure the illness. He only knows a few, not enough to cure the plague but enough to slow the progression of the disease significantly.”
He described the five plants Guatemotzi had given him, and then he said, “I’ll text you pictures of the plants from the sat-phone. As soon as you can, have the team spread out and try to locate as much of these as you can, then grind up one of each into a fine powder, mix them with hot water, and give the tea to Dr. Matos twice a day, approximately every twelve hours.”
He listened to the phone for a moment, and then he spoke. “I know it’s dangerous and unscientific, but from what I saw the last time I looked in on Matos, he doesn’t have much to lose, and if we can slow the progression of the disease it may give the antibiotics time to cure the disease.”
He listened again. “I know it’s a long shot, but I vote we give it a try. If it works, you can go to work trying to identify the alkaloids in each plant that are the active ingredients and we’ll have gone a long way to gaining control of the bug.”
After another moment of listening, he said, “Okay, I’ll get back in touch when we’ve reached the village and gotten a description of the other plants and herbs the curandera uses. I’ll give those to you by sat-phone and you can be working on those until we get back to camp with the blood and tissue specimens from the immune villagers.”
He turned off the sat-phone and put it back on his belt. Handing the plants back to the boy, he said, “Thank you, Motzi. You may have helped save a man’s life with these plants.”
“De nada, Señor Mason.” His eyes shined with pride.
Lauren pointed at the small arrow the boy was shaping. “Motzi, that arrow doesn’t look strong enough to do much damage to an animal. It looks much too small and flimsy.”
Guatemotzi’s eyes wrinkled at the word flimsy, but he said, “Is not size of arrow, but what on it that make animal go to sleep.”
He again reached into his deerskin pouch and pulled out a large green leaf rolled into a tube. He unrolled the leaf and inside it was a bright orange tree frog’s body.
He smiled and pointed at the two rocks and said, “Like with plant, after use rocks, put in water and put on tip of arrow. When dry, arrow will make animal go to sleep if I aim good.”
“Those frogs must have a form of curare in their skin toxins,” Mason said.
“I noticed some pictographs of such frogs carved into the walls of Montezuma’s tomb when Dr. Matos and I went in there,” Lauren said. “They must have been recipes for the poison the Indians left for the gods to use when they came for Emperor Montezuma.”
Mason nodded and glanced at the sky. “Well, we’re burning daylight so we better get a move on or we’ll never get to Motzi’s village.”
As they were gathering their packs and things together, a small plane flew overhead, its wheels almost touching the tops of the trees.
“Jesus!” Mason said, involuntarily ducking at the closeness of the sound. “He can’t be more than a hundred feet off the ground.”
“I thought all planes were grounded because of the plague,” Lauren said.
Mason shrugged. “I did, too.”
He slung the AR-15 and his pack over his shoulder and said, “Come on, time to hit the trail.”
* * *
As their plane flew over Mason’s group, Bear saw the light on his GPS locator go from red to green and a set of coordinates flashed on the screen.
“Got ’em,” he said, calling out the coordinates to one of his men who was looking at a map.
“They’re on a course of south by southwest from the camp,” he said.
“Good,” Bear said. “Let’s land at the field Janus told us about before it gets too dark, and we’ll head in the same direction on foot. We should be able to catch up with them by morning, assuming they stop to sleep.”
“And if they don’t?” the man with the map said.
Bear shrugged. “Then we’ll catch them by noon anyway. If you guys can’t move through the jungle faster than two academics and a small boy, then I’m paying you way too much.”
The map man smiled evilly, the scar on his black cheek turning white and making the corner of his mouth turn down. “Oh, we’ll catch them, you can count on that, boss.”
Bear grinned back. “Jinx, head for the landing site Janus gave us and hurry it up.”
“You got it, boss man,” Jinx replied, putting the small plane in a steep bank and pulling up to gain some altitude so he could find the field in the dense jungle all around them.
One of the others asked, “We gonna take them as soon as we catch up with them, Bear?”
“No, we’ve got to let them lead us to the village they’re heading for, and we’ve got to let them take their blood samples and all that crap before we take them down.”
He hesitated, “Unless you jokers want to draw a bunch of blood samples from the Indian villagers?”
The black man with the scar on his face pulled out a wicked-looking KA-BAR knife and held it up. “Naw, this is what I use to draw blood, boss. Ain’t never had much use for needles and syringes.”
“Good, then we’ll get within range of the GPS locator Janus planted on the Indian and then we’ll just quietly follow them until they get us what we need.” Bear grinned, but the smile didn’t seem to reach his eyes, “And then I’ll turn you loose on them to do what you do best.”
Chapter 26
Jinx looked over at Bear in the copilot’s seat. “Hey boss, we’re coming up on the GPS coordinates Janus gave us for the landing field in the jungle. Tell the guys in back to keep a sharp lookout, would’ya?”
Bear turned in his seat and pointed two fingers at his eyes and then at the windows. His men understood the signal and all turned to stare out of the windows at the dense carpet of jungle below.
After a few moments, Blade raised a fist and then po
inted out of the window next to his seat on the right side of the plane.
Bear glanced out of his window and saw a ribbon of dirt extending in a straight line in the greenery below.
He tapped Jinx on the shoulder and pointed to the right.
Jinx glanced that way, nodded once, and then began to spiral the plane in a slow turn to the right.
Five minutes later they were bouncing along a rutted, rough patch of dirt that was more road than landing field.
“Goddamn!” one of the men in the back shouted. “Take it easy, Jinx, I just had a filling replaced and you’re about to jar it loose.”
Jinx laughed, his head bobbing back and forth with the roughness of the landing. “Roger that, Psycho!” he called, and then he leaned toward Bear and spoke in a low voice. “Can you imagine wasting good silver fillings in teeth like Psycho’s?”
Bear smirked, looking over his shoulder to make sure Psycho didn’t hear the exchange. Even Bear was a little spooked by Psycho and didn’t want to test who would come out alive if they ever had a serious disagreement.
Finally, the plane slowed and came to a halt fifty yards from the end of the runway.
“Turn it around and have it ready for a quick takeoff,” Bear ordered. “We may be in a hurry when we come back.”
“Ten-four, boss,” Jinx replied, gunning the engine and turning the plane in a tight circle until it was pointed back the way it’d come.
“Load up your packs and check your weapons,” Bear said to the men in the rear of the plane. “We’re gonna be on the trail in ten minutes, and throw that camo-net over the plane. No need to leave it out here in the open to be seen and stolen by the first narco-trafficker that passes by.”
As he finished speaking, his sat-phone buzzed and he saw that he was receiving an email. He keyed it in and saw an announcement from his old gunnery sergeant in the Marines. The email said that his ex–commanding officer, Johnny Walker, had recently died and gave directions about the whereabouts and timing of the funeral.
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