He had already formalized their route into the mountains, but there were still any number of variables for which he couldn't account. The maps couldn't predict the depth of the bodies of water or the speed of the current any more than they allowed them to find trails through the dense forestation. For the most part, experience suggested they should be able to follow certain aspects of the topography, but that still remained to be seen. Regardless, they had a starting point, and somewhere in the southern portion of this twenty-five square mile grid was their final destination.
The first thing they needed to do was inspect the area where Hunter had washed up along the Mayu Wañu. The medical examiner had estimated that his body had been in the water for somewhere in the neighborhood of seventy-two hours. He had, of course, qualified that assertion with the caveat that he hadn't been able to examine the remains quickly enough as the body had been delayed by the process of identification and the ultimately unnecessary quarantine. However, a detailed inspection of the river and its current, coupled with an educated guess as to its level at the time, ought to help him narrow down the range where Hunter must have entered the water. The boats had already been reserved, and the guides would be ready to lead them up the river before sunrise tomorrow.
But there was still one element that didn't sit well with him.
The sharp scent of guarana coffee preceded Gearhardt into the room. He carried a Styrofoam cup in each hand, and set one down in front of Colton.
"Here's what passes for coffee down here," Gearhardt said. He sat in the chair beside Colton. "It has the consistency of syrup and tastes like they burned it, which I didn't think was even physically possible."
"The guarana bean has four times as much caffeine as the coffee bean. They even use it in soft drinks."
"That doesn't make it taste any better."
"Get some cream and sugar then."
"And just when do you think I became a woman?"
Colton looked up from the digital elevation reconstruction to find Gearhardt smirking at him. This was good. It was the first time Gearhardt had made any attempt at levity since he had first called. Colton didn't blame the guy, but single-mindedness in a situation like this impaired the ability to adapt and recognize options and alternative solutions. And besides, he didn't much care for the idea of having to drag his old friend's corpse down out of the Andes.
"What did you think of the pilot?" Gearhardt asked.
"Merritt? Or should I say the former James Merritt Westlake? I read his dossier, same as you. Went AWOL from the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment during his second tour in Afghanistan in 2002. Just up and vanished in the middle of the night. Somehow, he managed to get out of the Middle East, and ended up here, piloting that flying heap of junk. In times of war, going absent without leave equates to desertion, an offense just shy of treason. If the Army were to somehow learn his whereabouts, they'd have him cuffed and on a plane stateside in a matter of hours. And now he reappears with your son's remains and a priceless headdress that could have financed a comfortable retirement down here where no one could ever find him. He took a huge risk sticking his neck out like that. Just walking into the Consulate where they could have challenged his fake identification and arrested him on the spot took serious balls."
"That's not what I asked, and you know it."
Colton sighed. "I don't trust any man who doesn't try to fence the headdress, or at least melt it down and sell it, under the circumstances. It goes against human nature. No one would have known, let alone caught him. Not unless he had his eye on the bigger score, and even then he'd be stupid to turn in the artifact. In my opinion, this makes him unpredictable. But to answer your question, no, I don't think he had anything to do with your son's death. I do, however, think he knows more than he's letting on."
"And this unpredictability? How does it factor into the equation?"
"It could not be a factor at all. He could climb back in his plane, take off, and we'd never hear from him again. Or..." Colton paused. "Once we turn our backs on him, we could find that we've made a terrible mistake. He was in special ops after all, and I've learned not to trust a military man."
"You were a military man."
Colton smirked. "You're the one who has to trust me."
"So what do you suggest?"
"How much do you think it would take to convince Mr. Merritt to willingly join our expedition without having to threaten him with his past? Keep your friends close and your enemies closer, and all that."
"What if he proves...unpredictable along the way?"
Colton smiled and nodded toward the doorway to the adjacent room, through which he could see two of the four men he had personally selected as their "dig crew" leaning against the far wall, taking advantage of the downtime while they could.
"We're prepared for every contingency," Colton said. "There's absolutely nothing we can't handle."
III
Laguna Pomacochas
Pomacochas, Peru
6:25 a.m.
Sam sat on the blonde sands of the shore and watched the sun rise across the rolling blue lake. The crescent ball of celestial fire seemed to set the gentle waves ablaze in a stunning showcase of oranges and yellows. She had nearly forgotten how beautiful this area of the world truly was. The smell of dew and exotic blossoms rather than exhaust and pavement; birdsong and the lapping of waves versus the grumble of traffic and airplanes; the crisp blue sky unfettered by the haze of pollution. She almost imagined she could see the thin rays radiating from the sun. Had it really been two years since she'd been here last? The bustle and demands of the university had swept her away, but it almost felt as though her heart had been here the entire time and now suddenly she was again whole, at peace with herself and the universe. She wished she could sit in this very spot forever, but there was a part of her that was raring to strike off into the mountains, where somewhere, hidden for centuries, lay the virgin ruins of the ancient civilization that had spawned the unique headdress, itself an amalgamous anomaly of cultural hybridization that should by no means even exist. The mystery of its origin was thrilling. Just thinking about it caused her heart to race.
She took a sip of the steaming guarana bean coffee and savored its bitter tang. This was one of the few perks of modern society she was going to miss in the weeks ahead. Boiling a handful of grounds over a fire served its purpose, but it just wasn't the same. Not by a long shot.
Draining the last of the brew, she rose from the sand and mounted the pier, accompanied by the hollow clump of her footsteps on the weathered planks. The two pilots were at the far end, unloading the gear from the cargo holds with less care than she would have liked. Some of those boxes contained sensitive electronic equipment: a ground-penetrating radar unit, a portable magnetometer, digging and grading utensils, cameras, sound gear, and a host of other goods they could never replace so many thousands of miles from home.
The dark-skinned pilot dropped a large duffel bag that made a crashing sound.
"Careful!" she shouted.
He looked up at her, shrugged, and muttered something under his breath. Her Spanish was a little rusty, but she recognized that he hadn't been apologizing. He turned away and went back to piling their belongings in an ugly heap that threatened to topple into the lake.
"If any of that stuff is broken---"
"You can take it out of my check," the other pilot said.
"That equipment is worth more than you make in a year."
"You'd be surprised what I make." The man offered a lopsided grin before resuming his task. "You could always help, you know."
"Sure. I'll do your job and then you can do mine. Think you can handle that?"
"So far all I've seen you doing is sitting on your duff drinking coffee. It might be rough, but I think I can swing it."
He was exasperating. She resisted the urge to stomp her feet in frustration and turned away. "Just try to be more careful," she called back over her shoulder.
If a
nything was broken, she'd do more than take it out of his check. She'd take it right out of his hide, and she'd revel in every second of it. Who did this guy think he was anyway? He was a pilot in the heart of the Amazonas Province, a washout who obviously couldn't cut the job back home in the States. And why was she allowing him to get to her anyway?
She glanced back only to find him still watching her with an amused expression. With considerable effort, she suppressed the urge to storm back down the pier and let him have a piece of her mind, and walked up the dirt road toward the hotel, where the others were already establishing a base of operations from which to launch their expedition.
An iron gate, flaking with rust, barred the thin walkway that separated the guest wing from the owner's abode. With a squeal of hinges, she opened it inward and passed into the courtyard. A flock of startled saffron finches exploded from the nests they'd chiseled into the building itself and swirled around the enclave. A rain of yellow and orange feathers and droplets of feces filled the air. She stayed safely beneath the overhang until she reached the first room, rapped a couple times with her knuckles, and entered.
Leo and the man who never left his side---Marcus Colton, if she remembered correctly---were still sitting at the small square table, poring over the stack of maps and conversing in hushed tones. Fat lot of good those fancy satellite maps would do them. The jungle grew and changed in unpredictable ways every single day, and it would determine their course, not the other way around. This region of the Western Andes had remained uncharted for a reason. No man was going to impose his will on the refined chaos that was the tropical cloud forest.
The flimsy door between the two rooms stood ajar. Beyond, the documentary director and her cameraman, neither of whom looked as though they'd been out of film school for more than a couple years, shared an animated conversation over steaming mugs and a platter of scrambled eggs dotted with red and green peppers. The four large men Leo had hired to carry their heavier equipment and act as her excavation crew lounged against the wall, seemingly reserving their energy for the journey ahead. They certainly weren't the graduate students with which she was accustomed to working. All four were in their late-twenties and appeared somehow hardened. In their hurry to catch the connecting flight from Lima to Chiclayo she had only been introduced in passing, but she believed she remembered their names. Nate Webber was the man on the end, shorter than the others, yet by no means small. He stood perhaps five-ten and had Hispanic dark eyes and skin, yet his shaggy hair was sun-lightened to a streaked auburn. Tad Morton sat beside him. He was taller and wirier, and reminded her of a farmboy with his sandy hair and freckles, but his brown eyes were sharp and always moving. Then there was Aaron Sorenson, a hulking, stereotypical Swede who could have passed for Dolph Lundgren from a distance, and Devin Rippeth, who immediately made her uncomfortable. His leathery skin was pock-scarred, his eyes a cold shade of blue. His head was shaved bald, but he had thick black eyebrows and a gruff goatee. What looked like the tail of a dragon curled around his neck from the tattoo beneath the collar of his T-shirt.
Knowing Leo, these men had been hired for more than their digging skills, but she wasn't about to complain. They needed to be prepared for anything. There were no hospitals or police in the unforgiving wilderness.
The final member of their party was conspicuously absent. She peered around one final time before slipping back out into the courtyard. He sat on the edge of the fountain, cold cup of coffee at his feet, his attention focused on his lap. She hadn't seen him when she originally entered, perhaps because he was sitting stone-still, the only movement his hands turning something over and over between them.
He looked up as she approached and gave her a weak smile, then returned his attention to his hands in his lap. As the only other academic here, she figured she should make an effort to get to know him. A cursory internet search had yielded a dozen articles and citations from the late-Eighties and early-Nineties. She'd been surprised to learn how similar their fields were, despite the subject matter. She had always pictured ornithologists as glorified hobbyists crouching in bushes with binoculars around their necks, but when it came right down to it, they were both scientists tracking the evolution of species over time.
"What's that?" she asked with a nod to the object in his hands. She sat down beside him on the lip of the tiled fountain.
He steadied it and held it up. It was a brown feather roughly the length of her palm with the faintest hint of green toward the end.
"I don't know. There are more than ten thousand species of birds in the world, just under a third of them in South America alone. Nearly every one of them is in one database or other, but this feather doesn't belong to any of them." He chuckled softly to himself. "That's the most exciting thing about it. Somewhere up there is a species that no one else has ever studied before, and I intend to be the first."
IV
9:08 a.m.
Merritt sat on the pontoon beneath the wing of his plane and dangled his bare feet into the lake. He fought the initial reflex to recoil his legs from the shock of the cold water, and finished the last of his guava juice, wishing it had been coffee. God, how he missed the stuff. Not a single day passed that he didn't question his decision to give it up, but at least he was sleeping better now, rather than lying awake for hours, a victim of his waking nightmares. It was a small sacrifice, however. Life was good again for the most part. Uncomplicated. Just how he liked it.
The military had granted him the opportunity to spread his wings. Unfortunately, it had also sharpened his talons and trained him to use them however and whenever it saw fit.
A bare-chested native rowed his dugout into the middle of the lagoon, a dark silhouette against the reflection of the rising sun on the waves. The diminutive man stood, gathered a fishing net from the heap at the back of the boat, and tossed it out onto the water. After a moment, the man sat back down and rowed farther away, the net's buoys bobbing in his wake. Merritt almost wished he could be like that man, but he did need just a little more excitement after all. For all intents and purposes, the flying provided just that. The speed. The heights. The battles against the volatile tropical elements and the rush of alighting on nothing more substantial than water. There was a part of him, the same part that had driven him to enlist in the Army and then pushed him into special ops, that longed for adventure and danger, but he still wasn't able to forgive that aspect of his persona. It had sent him careening through the gates of hell, and it had taken every last ounce of his strength to claw his way back out.
He closed his eyes and let the sun warm his face. It hadn't always been like that. He remembered all of the hours he had spent dusting crops with his father back home in Iowa, learning to fly in his old man's lap, rocketing so low over the fields that his props clipped the grain. Like his father before him, he was never happier than when he was in the sky, where nothing could touch him and he controlled his own destiny. The problem was that that life was too simple. He could see how it wore down a man in his father's eyes, like those of a dog tethered in a yard by the highway, watching all the cars speed past on the way to destinations it would never know. And it would have killed him just a little bit every day.
He heard footsteps on the pier, but paid them no mind. As far as he was concerned, his job was done. He'd unloaded every last bag and box from his cargo hold. They could sit on the end of the dock until the Second Coming for all he cared. It wasn't his responsibility to play bellboy, or pack mule for that matter. They could drag their weary asses down here and carry that stuff for themselves.
"Mr. Merritt," a voice said from behind him.
Merritt shook his head and enjoyed the gentle roll of the waves a heartbeat longer. He really wasn't in the mood for this.
"Look," he said, lifting his feet out of the lake. He rose, walked down the length of the pontoon, and hauled himself up onto the weathered planks to face the silver-haired man who had been sitting behind him on the flight, the one whose eyes had never
left his reflection in the mirror. "I unload the stuff as a courtesy. Beyond that, you're on your own."
The man offered an amused smile and extended his right hand. Merritt simply looked at it for a second before matching the man's stare and shaking his hand.
"My name is Leonard Gearhardt." The handshake lasted a beat too long, and Merritt had to slide his hand out of the older man's strong grip. "I wanted to thank you for what you did for my son."
Merritt should have suspected it. He was going to have to be much more careful. The lackadaisical life had dulled his instincts. Now that he knew, he could see the familial resemblance in the brows and eyes, the set of the broad jaw.
"I didn't do anything for your son, Mr. Gearhardt. There was nothing I could do."
"You made sure that his remains reached the proper authorities, and flew across the country to hand-deliver his belongings to the American Consulate." Gearhardt paused. "You could easily have made what was inside that bag disappear and no one would have been the wiser."
"And what kind of person would that make me?"
"A very wealthy one, Mr. Merritt. I can only assume you looked inside the rucksack. How easy would it have been to just slip out one little thing for yourself?"
Merritt felt his face flush with anger and his fingers automatically curled into fists. If there was one thing he'd learned in life, it was that either a man had honor or he didn't. It was a choice one had to make. There was no such thing as situational integrity. One bad choice invariably led to another, and the next thing one knew, he was sighting an innocent down the barrel of an assault rifle. Damn the consequences. He was never going down that road again.
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