by David Dun
The bullets seemed to have stopped.
Sam could stay under for more than four minutes, which seemed phenomenal to his friends until he told them of deep divers who could stay down seven minutes. Reaching out, he felt for the branches and allowed himself to rise slowly over them. It used up precious time and air. Pulling himself across the tops, he found open water when he felt nearly out of air. He did a smooth breaststroke with a frog kick. A slow burn had developed in his chest and he could feel the weakness beginning in his body. He began to count strokes as a means of forcing himself onward. He would do ten strokes, and when he got to ten, he was determined to do five more. The burning was now strong and the desire for a breath was all-consuming. Five strokes extra had pain in his mind and body. Three more strokes. With his fingers he felt the bottom rising. His consciousness blurred. He was near the river's edge. He turned downstream. Just three more strokes. His mind seemed to be floating and he knew he was about to go lights out. Gently he rose.
He suspected the shooter would have lowered his gun after about three minutes and that he would then stare into the darkness. Ripples and sound betrayed a swimmer at night. Sam rolled and came up gently on his back. He denied himself a massive inhalation, forcing himself to be quiet. Few things took so much will.
The cacophony of an awakened jungle greeted his ears and he was grateful for something to cover the sound of his breaths.
When his lungs had stopped burning and his body had partially recovered he went under again. This time he swam downriver, figuring to put distance between himself and Gaudet before he crossed and began stalking the man. Somebody was going to die if Sam had his way. It would either be him or Gaudet, except he knew that Gaudet did not think that way. The moment Gaudet felt a shift in the odds he would flee. Gaudet preferred to kill from a distance, then disappear. Reading about it in the paper was good enough.
Above, the sky was black. There was almost no light. Trees overshadowing the river were barely visible where the tops framed the sky. There was no sound but the night time symphony of a startled rain forest. No shots. He was back on the far side of the river and downstream. After several breaths he was able to slow the gasping. Quietly he moved into the shallows so that his feet rested on the bottom. If he stood, there might be enough of him to see or hear. With an automatic rifle Gaudet wouldn't need to be very accurate.
Fortunately, combat wasn't Gaudet's forte. If it were, Sam knew that while he had been swimming, his pursuer, Gaudet, would have been charging him, getting as close as possible. Three more kicks downriver were uneventful; at the end of the third, Sam surfaced. It was even blacker than before. The cauliflower border of the trees against the sky was no longer visible. The forest had quieted slightly but was still like a concert hall compared to the night sounds of northern California wilderness where Sam had first learned from Grandfather the art of listening.
Trying to scan the opposite bank, he used peripheral vision, but the shadows were so deep, there was no form— only void. He was barely around one bend and it would not be safe to cross. The shooter could have moved downriver. Instead of crossing, Sam eased toward the bank and crawled on his belly into deep brush, hoping he wouldn't run into a fer-de-lance, the most poisonous snake in the Amazon. Once in the jungle, he went away from the river a hundred yards or so, turned on his flashlight, and walked downriver for twenty minutes, where he made a quiet, uneventful crossing.
Going as fast as he could, he went back into the jungle, then turned upstream until he figured he was near the point of the ambush. Without a GPS or access to Big Eye, he couldn't be sure that he was even traveling in the right direction. He attempted a ninety-degree turn in his general course of travel and immediately noticed a flash from a man-made light. It was only for an instant. He crept toward the river with his light turned off. Nearly an hour had passed. Feeling for every step, he could see nothing. As he walked, he made some slight noise and wondered if it would be enough to draw fire. The constant risk of instant death taxed him. Sweat poured down him as if he were running a race. His body was constantly trying to ready itself for a fight, but there was no fight. There was only the black, the jungle, and the next step. Near the river the bank would be steep; he began to feel for the drop. Overhead, monkeys were making chirps that sounded almost birdlike.
A donkey bird awoke and let the world know its displeasure. After walking many more minutes than Sam would have thought necessary, he was able to discern what he thought was an opening. Maybe the river. Feeling ahead with his foot, he at last perceived a drop-off. He had no idea how close he was to the ambush point. No doubt the shooter had moved, and Sam had glimpsed his light. Perhaps he was there, perhaps he was hundreds of yards off. He needed some bait. If he didn't find the man soon, he would attempt to continue on toward the Tapiche.
Sam hoped that the man was not within easy earshot. Working quickly, he stacked a row of palm fronds near the river. The row was a little over six feet in length. Then he leaped into the water, splashed, called for help in an agonized voice, jumped back onto the bank, and covered his face and hands in mud. Next he lay under the leaves, not quite able to bury himself but getting himself largely covered. Then he waited.
For several minutes there was nothing. Lying quietly his wet clothes and the mud cooled him. The temperature had fallen to perhaps 70 degrees Fahrenheit. There was a breeze and he could sense the weather changing. An extravagant display of lightning lit the river and made the trees stark against the sky. It would rain, and when it did, all sound would wash away with it. The rules of the hunt were changing with the weather.
He began turning his head and even his body, trying to watch 360 degrees in the occasional flashes of lightning. It was as if a mad photographer were running about the jungle with a flashbulb, disrupting the simple passion to kill. The lightning was a complication. With rain, noise would be almost a nonfactor. Eyes would become everything.
Something moved—a branch. It was maybe ten feet distant. Perhaps a monkey, a bird, or a snake. Perhaps a man. It moved again very slightly. Sam waited, content with his camouflage. When next the jungle lit the river, it became a luminescent trough into which the sky poured the light. He saw a man. The splash and the desperate calling had drawn the hunter to the hunted.
Sam was in his element. Some part of him, a major part, was a hunter. If possible, he would use his hands to subdue Gaudet, but not for any noble reason. He simply was more valuable alive than dead.
His quarry was moving very slowly and held a gun as if ready to use it. Huge bolts of lightning etched the black in all directions, even the canopy was lit by the power of the massive electrical strokes across the sky.
Sam watched the man take a step and then search the night. After what seemed like minutes, the man was within ten feet, his light playing through the myriad vertical roots. But his hunter was thinking of a standing man and not a muddy clump of sodden leaves. Sam considered trying to jump him. Too far. Too much noise. Sam pointed his .45 at his target's midriff, tempted to pull the trigger and end it all. There were pros and cons, but the biggest con was that he couldn't be sure it was Gaudet. Living with a cold-blooded killing was not acceptable when an alternative existed. So he waited.
The man took another step. With the next step the man would pass him by. Sam pointed carefully at the now-invisible shadow and waited for the next flash of lightning.
"Drop the gun," he screamed as lightning surged in a series of pulses that lit the jungle.
The man started firing above Sam, bullets chopping the foliage and spewing indifferent death. Sam put a single bullet in the shooter's shoulder, dropping him, then rolled and charged, knocking the automatic away. Sitting on the man with one knee on the good shoulder and one knee on the mangled side, he caused the man excruciating pain to the point he was screaming with near incoherence. He released the pressure.
"Tell me about your leader. Girard? Gaudet?" This was not Gaudet. Gaudet would have fled by now, and this man seemed taller tha
n their best descriptions indicated.
"Girard. No Gaudet," he said in broken English.
'Tell me about him."
"Six eyes. Nervous like a cat."
"Did he watch you do the women in the little village?"
"He watched. But the others did the women. Not me."
"Is he in this jungle?"
"Yes."
Suddenly something gripped Sam's chest.
"Where did he go?"
"I don't know."
Sam prayed that Yodo was with Grady.
"GPS? Map? Electronic?" Sam said.
The man nodded and Sam pulled the man's packsack out from underneath him. Inside was a handheld GPS.
"Girard?" Sam asked, sticking the small electronic map in front of the man's face.
The man didn't answer.
Sam pointed his pistol at his nose. "Girard?"
The man shrugged. "I don't know."
Chapter 7
Fear in the night is gone with a single torch; fear in the day must be pushed out like dirt from the badger's burrow.
—Tilok proverb
Grady walked behind Michael Bowden, who lay on the travois dragged by Yodo. Periodically he called out the name Marita, no doubt the woman they had buried in the jungle before they left. They had finally told him she was dead. Since then, he had been very quiet. Early morning light barely made its way to the forest floor but she welcomed it, as the night had seemed a harbinger of terrors too numerous to count.
They were headed for the trail that ran from Herrera to Santa Jose on the Galvez. Javier led the small party.
As she walked through the dripping green forest, Grady fantasized about a simple room with a chair, a bed, a shower, and an air conditioner. She wore lightweight nylon-polyester jungle pants and a shirt like every other yuppie who went to the Amazon. The clothes dried fast and afforded UV protection—it was space-age stuff. On her back she carried a pack bulging with Yodo's things so that he could remain as unburdened as possible for the task of dragging the crude stretcher. It seemed that Michael was nearly delirious from the morphine, but when he wasn't pumped full of the painkiller, his suffering (albeit silent) was so great that they hastened to remedicate him. Even so, he frequently asked Grady if she was all right and if she was tolerating the jungle. Once he explained that she needed to be wary of snakes and spiders, as if it might not have occurred to her.
Grady now carried a gun and was prepared to use it.
Occasionally she could see the sky and she noticed black bottoms to the clouds. They passed a large snake curled around the lower branches of a tree. It spit a forked tongue in their direction, seeming to wish death on all who passed by. A giant scorpion, surely the mother of all bugs, crunched under her boot, and nearby a foot-long insect sat like a skeleton in a morgue.
Michael's wounds were bad, but his essential character came through, and Grady found him even more appealing than she had in his books. He was intelligent, sensitive, and handsome to boot. He spoke sincerely, absolutely without guile, a rarity in Grady's experience. His constant concern for her safety won her over completely.
When they finally made the trail, it was a tunnel in the green, in places six feet wide and obviously the beneficiary of regular machete hacking. This made it a more logical place to make an ambush. That caused new worries.
Then it got much worse.
They heard something large, maybe man-size, moving through the jungle. They stopped and it stopped. At this point Grady could see only a few feet into the heavy foliage. The mosquitoes were fierce and distracting. As they waited and watched, the gun became heavy in her hand.
"Let's keep moving," Yodo said. At the same time he signaled for Grady to get down. She squatted. He signaled for her to move back so she duckwalked back down the trail, careful to make no noise. She wasn't sure what Yodo had in mind, but she assumed he wanted them to spread out for a reason. Perhaps it was a more effective way to fight with guns.
They all aimed their firearms, waiting for something to emerge. Silence. The gun grew heavier in her hand.
"Send her ahead, not behind," Bowden whispered. Then he looked at Grady. "Down the trail to the Matses."
Yodo was now signaling for her to come ahead, so she reversed and, in response to Yodo's waves, went past Michael Bowden, who touched her hand.
"Get out of here," he whispered.
She nodded without knowing why. She had no desire to head out by herself even on a trail, but Yodo seemed adamant and Sam would bust a gut if she rebelled against the leadership. Sam's lectures had had an effect. She kept moving. Down the way about fifty feet or so, the trail took a small bend. As she went around it, she knew the others would disappear from her sight.
Now Yodo was signaling frantically that she hurry. She stood and started to jog as quietly as she could. Immediately she realized how much harder it was to be alone in this strange place. Once down the trail she ran in earnest; then she came to a fork and took the one to the right. She supposed they figured that Michael was the target and she could run ahead on the trail, both to get help and to be safer.
The foliage along the edge was growing over the trail and it had narrowed to a couple of feet. As she ran, she came to more forks, and it usually seemed obvious which was the larger and more well-traveled path. Then it began to get difficult as the splinter trails looked the same. Finally she found herself walking through the jungle. She realized she should look back and mark the trail in her memory, but when she did so, the two large sacropias—and the rest of the jungle for that matter—seemed entirely unfamiliar. Looking up, she recognized nothing distinctive.
She decided to backtrack a few feet. Past the closest sacropia she looked for a trail but saw nothing. When she went to the next tree, she saw a faint pathway through the foliage that immediately forked. Her heart started to beat faster as she imagined getting lost in the vast jungle.
She had no GPS and she knew Yodo meant for her to stay on the trail. But which trail?
She decided that one of the trails was slightly more disturbed and that would be the one she had arrived on, so she took a few more steps, moving slowly, careful not to leave the track. Then she heard something rustling through the leaves at her side. It was barely perceptible. Instantly she aimed her gun and flicked off the safety. Whoever it was would be blown to the next world if they looked the least unfriendly. It stopped. She could feel her heart beating in her chest. She peered through the branches, wondering if she should walk toward or away from the rustling.
Curiosity won. She took about ten more steps down the track and stopped. Again she heard the sound. Then it stilled and she was left with only the birdcalls and the pounding of her heart. A donkey bird took up his eerie call. With great care she moved ahead, her gun still pointing in the direction of her stalker.
As she moved—he moved. Maybe it was a coincidence. She took a few more silent steps, and once again, whatever was shadowing her stopped when she stopped, moved when she moved. It had to be human because an animal could not be so synchronous. Sweat ran down her sides, back, and arms as the thought of Gaudet stole into her mind. She fought to control herself, remembering the native girls. Stories of his slow and calculated tortures began to soften her mind and made concentration difficult. The unbelievable cold of the persona came back to her now as if breathing in her face. Her knees began to shake and she bent over, knowing that she was losing control.
Then, letting Sam's reassurances echo through her mind, imagining Sam's voice instead of Gaudet's, she forced herself to stand straight and pointed the gun, thinking that she'd shoot the moment she saw him. But the lack of further sound unnerved her, and she ran back the way she'd come, moving hundreds of yards before realizing that the trail had disappeared again.
Her chest was heaving and her breathing was loud. She listened.
Branches were being pushed aside, still on the same side of the track. She ran again, heedless of direction or paths, praying she'd find Yodo before her stalker c
aught up.
She thought she saw the trail and she tried to maintain her speed, though the footing was slick with mud.
Then she stopped short and cursed herself. She remembered something Sam had told her long ago: fear was her biggest challenge, and it was defeating her. With absolute clarity she recalled that she must think of the forest as a home. Her home. The first thing to do was find a safe place. If cold weather was killing her, then it had to be safe from cold; if she was hunted, then she had to make herself safe from the hunter. Nearby she saw a walking palm. She went deep in the foliage and, with her back to the many branched trunk, she sat. She could see fairly well but could not easily be seen.
It felt safer. If Gaudet were following her, she would make him come and get her and make him pay with a bullet to the chest. Her breathing had slowed and her mind was beginning to work again.
Then she heard movement. This time she remained motionless and the noise stopped. She told herself again that no one could approach her without revealing themselves. Despite buzzing mosquitoes she kept her gun aimed and controlled her breathing. Off to her left she saw a scorpion, but fortunately it wasn't coming her way.
More movement. Someone was getting closer and they were straight ahead, right down the gun barrel. She let her finger clamp heavily on the trigger. She remembered the disemboweled native girl and Michael's story of his wife and the rape of Marita's sister. She had no doubt that she was about to kill. A terrible confidence grew inside her. Then she heard a faint movement behind her and her heart jumped in her throat. Slowly she turned her head, but she couldn't see more than a few feet.
Now the stalker in front of her was taking a step about every thirty seconds, but the sound was barely detectable. A leaf moved. She drew a bead about chest high. There was a white hand parting heavy vines and then it froze. Nothing moved. She considered shooting. The thick post sight on the front of the gun was wavering, even with the double-clench grip. Something bounced off her head. She jumped. Ahead of her Sam stepped out of the jungle.