by Vince Milam
“I don’t know. More people searching, maybe. Would you call your team, please?”
She did. And reported that all remained normal. Although they had no awareness of an additional search party. My mind flashed to their possible assault tactics if the plane held MOIS agents. They’d chase us via boat. A floatplane could land them close. But the plane couldn’t maneuver through winding narrow rivers with any speed. Their quarry—us—would scoot away. And the closest boats for them to access were at the Swiss base camp. Oh, man. But I dialed the paranoia down, focused on the mission.
So back at it. A rainstorm passed overhead, and we both donned rain gear. Kim hunched under the oversized jacket and appeared small and fragile. Marble-sized drops pounded, each delivered with either tiny explosive splash points on the river or with resounding whacks against the aluminum hull. We continued the search.
“Another hour or so and we’ll make camp. Fix a meal, walk about. Before dark we’ll anchor again. Sleep on the boat.”
Kim nodded, still facing forward, and continued eyeballing both sides of the river’s green walls. She gave no other response. The rain passed and she shook out her raincoat, neatly folding it within easy reach. Resumed her focus. Random slight headshakes accompanied her usual body movements. She was clearly struggling with the situation. The Swiss team leader couldn’t fathom her fellow scientist, her compatriot, acting in such a manner. Or maybe Kim sensed failure. Failure at finding Amsler, a failure of leadership. The blues are a prickly business.
“She was here,” I said.
“There is no supporting evidence to indicate so.” She spoke toward the bow point. A shift in her position brought us face-to-face. “None. Your statement is pure speculation.”
“I smell her. Maybe not literally. But I smell her. She was here.”
She dropped a hand over the side and skimmed the water’s surface. A sixty-second silence.
“You have greater experience with such things. Perhaps you are right. Perhaps.”
She delivered the statement with the slightest of smiles. An improvement. A touch of optimism, hope. All good. It wouldn’t last long.
Chapter 14
An uneventful night, a cloudy morning, the trail unknown but near. Had to be. And the nagging questions over yesterday’s floatplane. A quick shore breakfast, filled with a sense of Amsler’s proximity. I asked Kim to call her camp once again. She did. No one responded.
“There could be many reasons for such a lack of communication.” She prepped her boat seating area for the day ahead. “We do not carry phones with us at all times. I will try again later.”
I didn’t like it. Not one little bit. But we headed upstream, slow, seeking. Kim and I both alternated between sitting and standing, the air thick and sticky. The wall of trees became closer, joined overhead. A vivid green tunnel constricted as the river narrowed, hemmed us in. We continued focusing on elevated access points. I spotted a hyacinth macaw eyeballing us with intense scrutiny as we passed underneath, its spectacular blue plumage combined with a bright yellow chin and eye patch. Other parrots and toucans and monkeys called and rustled overhead. Out of direct sunlight the sheen of sweat remained, but the accompanying thin rivulets stopped.
There it was. Clear as day and twelve feet in the air. The hacked stubs of tree limbs, headed inland. Everything changed. My quarry’s trail, spotted. Everything in me was elevated: my focus, my sense of joy, and, yeah, personal affirmation. Not a done deal, but a hot trail. I was closing in. Kim spotted it as well and whipped around, a bright smile and eyes sparkling. She remained silent, but her body language spoke volumes. I killed the motor, and the slow current backtracked our progress.
“She returned and entered here again. Somewhere along this bank,” I said, eyes peeled.
Three hundred yards downriver and nothing. I fired the engine, and at Amsler’s tree tunnel we pulled ashore. Webbed belt, fanny pack with first aid supplies, water, extra ammo. Glock holstered, machete in hand. Good to go.
“Let’s walk upriver. Look for signs.”
Kim scoped me with an unknowable eye crinkle. But she gave no argument and nodded agreement, glacier-blue eyes still lit with excitement. Several hundred yards later a small creek stopped our progress. We stood shoulder to shoulder and searched the area. It was quieter here, fewer signs of life, less overhead action from birdlife. Few insects buzzed. Not a major change in our environment, but discernible. The small creek gurgled over a fallen branch prior to joining the river. A nick in the branch said it all.
“No,” Kim said. “No, this is not the place. We must continue our search.”
“This is it.”
“She did not return here.”
“Yeah, she did. This creek held another eight or so inches of water when she came back. Her boat’s light load drew six inches of water. And she risked a broken boat propeller. Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead.”
I led. Kim, her daypack adjusted, followed without comment. Amsler had toted a heavy equipment container. She’d have sought the closest access point and avoided a long haul inland. Two hundred yards up the creek, it shone as if lit with spotlights. Markings of a boat pulled ashore. Remnants of soft-sand footprints, even after heavy rainfall. And the drag marks of a heavy container. I had her.
After a violent wander through spookville and fruitless search days, I had her. Amsler’s discovery and, maybe, Amsler’s demise. No victory stake pounded, no need for high-fives. But a welling of satisfaction, of alright. A touch of You can run but you can’t hide, Amsler. And a brief pause for fulfilling accomplishment. Yessir. I had her.
Kim stared and absorbed the signs. She got it. Whipped around and squeezed me in a wild-abandonment bear hug. Even kissed my cheek.
“It would appear you do possess certain skills, Case Lee.” She banged my chest with both her palms. “An explorateur extraordinaire, to be sure! My heart pounds!”
Another smack on the cheek, and she pushed away. Her celebration faded, although her smile remained.
“We must now proceed with the utmost caution,” she said, adding several finger shots as emphasis. “An amazing discovery lies ahead, but one also most dangerous.”
“Agreed. Let’s move slow. Eyes, ears, noses. Crank up the senses, Kim. I need your help for this little exercise.”
She nodded back, still smiling. I was too. But with tight lips. The drag marks and occasional machete swipes discernible near the creek faded into deep jungle. A not quite hair-on-end sensation filled me. A sixth sense kicked in. There was something bad wrong with this place. Nothing you’d put your finger on, but a dark-alley vibe. A time, place, texture thing. Not right and filled to the brim with potential danger.
Six paces and the land began to rise. The drag marks continued, the machete cuts fewer. Amsler had hurried, plowed through vegetation. But a root scrape here, a furrow in the detritus there. Headed inland. And this place was quiet. Weird quiet.
As we progressed, the rain forest became sick. There was no other way to explain it. What should have been flexible branches snapped when pushed aside. The rich green foliage was now muted, ill. Leaves yellowed, stems drooped. The normal vibrancy of a rain forest gone, drained. Amsler’s way forward became an easy follow as the vegetation’s usual resilience to intrusion was now lost. Twigs underfoot snapped instead of the usual yield and spring back. There was something wrong, unhealthy.
Signs of a staging area appeared. We stopped in an area of prep, deployment. Feet had scuffled, the heavy case opened. And a different track added. Two tread lines appeared, faded, appeared again. Miniature tank tracks. A machine running on treads. And a smell I knew too well. It permeated the area, sat as a morbid wet blanket across the landscape. Unreal and otherworldly and horrific. Kim gripped my upper arm.
“This is most dangerous,” she said. “Can you feel it? We are near. And my skin is covered with bumps.”
“I can feel it. It’s like another world. Surrounded with potential life, but quiet. Devoid of movement and
activity. Too still.”
“What is this smell?” she asked.
“Death.”
We locked eyes. The sweat faucet stopped. A near-chill washed across me. I’d experienced dead zones before. Areas where human-driven battle and explosions and carnage held center stage. But not here, not now. There was an environmental terminal illness dominating our setting. Strange. So damn strange.
“Amsler deployed a small tracked vehicle here. Radio-controlled. She walked alongside, driving it.”
She released my arm. I trailed Amsler and her machine. Foliage cracked when we brushed it aside. I maintained an intense focus on Amsler’s trail. Cautious, we’d stop dead after two or three steps. I sought surrounding visual clues, anomalies. Kim neither spoke nor prompted me to move forward during the stand-stills. We both conducted overhead searches as well, seeking birds. Seeking life. None. Nothing.
Thirty slow-motion paces later, the trail changed. Amsler had stopped and shifted her feet. Her remote controlled driver’s spot, where she’d sent the treaded vehicle ahead.
“We don’t go any farther after the vehicle,” I said. “Amsler stopped here. So do we.”
“Are you most certain she went no farther with her equipment?”
“Yeah. I’m certain.”
High odds the small vehicle was equipped with a live camera feed. Amsler could steer it without personal visual directions.
“She is not dead,” Kim said, a personal buttressing of hope. “We must assume this.”
“Poor assumption. All we know is she’s not dead right here.”
“And our next action? If she did not progress from this point, it would appear this is the edge of a safe zone.”
“Nothing safe about this. Any of this. And she moved on from here while she sent the vehicle toward her objective.” I lifted my chin toward Amsler’s still-evident trail markers ahead. A few foot scuffs, a hacked branch every few paces. Kim squinted, then nodded.
“I do not understand. If she guided the equipment from here, why did she move forward again?”
“Don’t know.”
I squatted and sought a view through the underbrush where the small vehicle had passed. Nothing. A slight stinging across my eyes—whether real or imagined, unclear. I stood and performed a slow pirouette, senses cranked, the shift of my jungle boots on dirt and fallen leaves the lone noise.
A slow-moving insect flew toward us from our back trail. Dragonfly-like, although unrelated to any dragonfly I’d seen. It wasn’t surprising—millions of undiscovered insects resided in remote jungles around the world. Large—a good ten inches long—with two sets of wings as a standard dragonfly, but with a leisurely wing beat. A floating motion, passing close. A jet-black body with translucent gossamer wings. A distinct electric blue dot at each wingtip. It hovered near us and continued on its way through the jungle. The same direction as Amsler’s tracked vehicle.
At intermittent intervals I’d lose sight of it before it reappeared, wings stroking slower than the second hand on a watch. Thirty yards away it faltered, missed a stroke, fluttered on its side in midair, continued. Five or so paces farther, one set of wings ceased operating. It spun, helicoptered, as it dropped and disappeared from sight. Dead.
Chapter 15
“Did you observe this?” Kim asked. While I stood on tiptoe attempting to maintain sight of the insect, she dipped low and found a view spot beneath much of the foliage. “Most amazing.”
“Yeah. Amazing.”
A nearby tree, two feet in diameter, was wrapped with a climbing vine as thick as my wrist. A perfect stairway upward. I sheathed the machete and began climbing. Kim watched, silent. Every third foot placement caused the circling vine to break apart, and I slid past lost ground. I’d performed such a climb numerous times in the past and vines never broke. They were tough and resilient and clung to the host tree’s trunk. This one was brittle and unhealthy.
Ten feet up, then twenty. A leg-lock around the trunk. And a view so bizarre, so insane it could and should have been a warped artist’s rendition. Three massive trees were centered in a circle of death. Their canopy huge, thick, and draping. For fifty yards in every direction stunted, dead, and dying vegetation. The circular area was marked with a yellow-brown coloration. The three trees—healthy. From the air or from satellite photos their massive canopy would hide most of the underlying dead zone. An area with carcasses littered about. I was surprised there weren’t more. Several dozen monkeys in strange suspended decay. Hundreds of birds. But the lack of even more carcasses said the rain forest animals had learned. Learned to avoid this area. Stay away or die.
“What is it you see?”
“A hellscape.”
The trio of trees weren’t the killer. Surrounding their base in an irregular pattern, a beacon of purple. It leapt out—the lone living color below the trees’ green umbrella. The strange mottled purple of strap-leaved plants. Long leaves, waist-high, pointed upward. They stood sentinel around the trunks of the host trees. And nestled against this patch of purple, Ana Amsler’s small-tracked vehicle.
In brushed aluminum, the size of a large microwave oven, and covered with functional apparatuses, it had the appearance of a Mars rover. I fished a set of small binoculars from my fanny pack and scoped the scene. The plants—still and upright and perhaps the deadliest thing on earth. I didn’t have the foggiest notion what to look for, so I focused on the machine. High-end construction. Of course—Swiss. A miniature car battery provided power and contributed the lion’s share of the vehicle’s weight. Several devices jutted, one of them the camera for navigation.
“Well?” Kim asked below me.
“Well, I’d like you to climb up here after I get down.”
“But of course.”
The binoculars provided the required magnification. The small vehicle also displayed an articulated robot arm and a strange lineup of small polished aluminum canisters mounted in a bandolier with space for five. Four remained. Mounted along one side of the rover was an aluminum tube the size and shape of a gift-wrapping tube. At its base, a tank—a compressed air tank, with actuator. The rover’s cannon. Had to be. The toxic sample delivery system.
The entire machine was impressive. A miniature mobile sample collection device. The air cannon angled at forty-five degrees, pointed toward an area ahead of us. Toward another part of the safe zone. Or semisafe zone. Hell, for all I knew, I’d drop out of the tree like the dragonfly any second.
I returned the binoculars and paused for a final look. A grove of three massive trees, strange purple strap-leaved plants at their base. A kill zone extending fifty yards in every direction. All shaded by the massive canopy of the apparently immune trees. Yeah, Amsler had picked up on something from the satellite images. No doubt. An overlooked clue. And made a beeline to this area. As I climbed down, I gave a final glance, a final capture of nature’s most lethal circle. Oh, man.
“Stick these in your pocket,” I said, handing her the binoculars. “And don’t linger up there long.”
The circling vine didn’t break under her weight as it did under mine, and she shinnied up the tree. At first, she didn’t speak. Kim stared with mouth open and gave a slow headshake.
“Mon Dieu!”
“Amen.”
I had a powerful urge to get out of there. I don’t scare easy. But fear of this, the drop-dead unknown, grabbed me hard.
“Incredible. Fantastique!”
“Yeah. Incredible. It’s those purple plants.”
“Oui. So it would seem.”
This wasn’t a plain vanilla world-class toxin. No, ma’am. It was airborne. There was no conjecture about mortality when blown by the wind. No confusion about death administered. A minuscule skin touch or inhalation—done deal. Oh, man. It didn’t get any worse than this. A little gift from nature’s gumbo any terrorist organization would drool over. And kill to get their hands on.
“So, let’s be clear. Wind will carry this stuff.”
She remained focu
sed on the dead zone.
“Incredible.”
“Kim.”
“Incredible. Oui, oui. A wind, a breeze.”
“Okay. So I’ve become very interested in current wind conditions. Would you help me keep an eye on the treetops? Movement up there means air movement down here.”
And air movement at ground level would trigger two folks hauling it like greased lightning. Oh, man.
“One can hardly describe such a scene.”
“Yeah. Got that part. Breeze, Kim. We don’t want to be downwind of this little patch of wonder.”
“Clearly a symbiotic relationship with those large trees.”
“And it’s unclear whether hanging this close won’t kill us with residual effects.”
“Plants do not simply spew toxins into the environment.”
“Yeah, well, those purple ones didn’t get the memo.”
There was no point becoming too emphatic, too forceful with Kim regarding personal danger. A high-end scientist was situated over my head, enraptured. An element of scientific fascination would play out. But long discussions weren’t on the agenda.
“Plants only release toxins when touched or ingested.”
“Okay. Let’s talk botany later. Check the rover. The robot vehicle. We have to talk about it.”
“Spores? Fungi related to the purple plants? Or a release from the plants themselves? Incredible.”
“I mean, we could be breathing the stuff right now. So use the binoculars, please. Focus on the rover.”
“Yet there are microbes that appear unaffected! Note the decomposition of the animals. The monkeys and birds decompose at a remarkably slow rate. Yet they are decomposing, so there are life forms resistant to the toxin.”
“Kinda doubt we fall in that category. Use the binoculars, please. Check out the rover.”
“Rover?”
“The robot vehicle.”
She did.
“How large a sample is needed?” I asked.