When he spoke, his breath came in fits.
“Oh, I'll see the Fifth World. It is my destiny. You won't let her die. You came back here just for her.”
Andrea fired a shot at the floor, missing his exposed knee by an inch.
“Come on, Yum, we know she was in on it. We want her back, but it doesn't matter if she's alive. We just need the U.S. government to know what happened so they can call off their plans to go to war with Russia and Georgia.”
Cimil laughed.
“War with Russia and Georgia? Oh, that's good. I couldn't have hoped for better. Look, it's simple. Shoot me if you want her to die.”
Richards shifted her weight and then threw her head backwards. She connected with Cimil's nose, and he shrieked. His grip loosened enough that she managed to turn. His right side was now exposed, and Andrea fired a shot into his leg, taking out a chunk of flesh in his calf. Richards jammed her knee into his groin, and his arm fell away as he howled from the multiple blows. She stood up and glared down at him, seemingly unaware of her lack of clothing. He collapsed into a fetal ball on the ground as she shook her head at him.
“So, Yum. Was it good for you?”
Richards didn't bother to deny that she had helped Cimil stage the kidnapping. She stood naked, glaring down at him curled on the floor in pain. Simon grabbed a blanket from the bed and wrapped it around her, but she scarcely seemed to notice. He led her to the bed and nudged her into a seated position. He recognized the signs of shock.
“Madame President, we need to get Cimil secured. Then we need to talk.”
She nodded with no animation, eyes glassy. He stayed next to her, a hand on her shoulder. Andrea went to Cimil, who still writhed on ground, moaning. She jerked his arms around his back and handcuffed his wrists. The moaning changed to grunts, and he turned his head enough to glare at her.
At the door, Crowder and four other men appeared, all wearing jungle camouflage with brown face paint. The Marine Special Ops unit had joined them early that morning in Guatemala City. A special unit operating in conjunction with the Agency, it consisted of twenty officers, all company grade except for Major Crowder.
No one had known the area of Chelemha where the transmitter showed Cimil to be, so Braxton consulted with Yarrow and acting President Davidson in Washington. They decided that the full unit needed to go. An initial disdain on the part of the marines at including civilians in the mission gave way to acceptance as Crowder filled them in on Simon and Andrea's ability and experience. The assault on the nearly hidden building in Chelemha had taken less than three minutes and resulted in no Marine casualties.
Crowder looked at Simon, then at Richards.
“Simon, we need to get her somewhere secure ASAP.”
Simon led her over to Crowder, who took her arm and led her through the doorway, flanked by the other marines. Andrea yanked Cimil to his feet and tossed him backwards onto the bed.
“Well, Yum, I hope you enjoyed it while it lasted. It's over now”
His eyes remained glossy, but as he raised his head to stare at Simon, his voice showed no sign of the pain.
“Over? No, it's just beginning.”
“How do you figure that? We got the President back, and she doesn't seem too pleased with you. You nuked a small city and got caught. You're coming with us and you'll either disappear quietly forever, or you'll be publicly tried. The best you can hope for is a permanent prison cell. Your only hope is to tell us what you did with the other two nukes.”
Cimil's laugh jarred him. Even the arrogant and self-confident man Simon had known in college couldn't compare to this. He was like the James Bond villain who doesn't know the good guys always win.
“Simon, Simon. I don't need those any more. Any day now, people will start dying. At least everyone except my people. We have been chosen to enter the Fifth World. Your government won't kill me right away, and pretty soon they'll have more important things to worry about.”
“You're talking about the virus.”
“Ah, I see Andrea was paying attention. What can I say?”
Simon stepped to the bed and delivered a fist to Cimil's chin, which flopped sideways with the impact.
“You can tell us how you plan to survive while the rest of us die?”
Cimil wiped spittle from his lips, exposing teeth that gleamed white with an incongruous perfection.
“A cure, of course. Thousands of my people are now immune. I told you, it is our destiny.”
He tried to sit up, but Simon pushed him back down with the heel of his hand.
“How 'bout you tell us all about it? Where is the cure?”
The Guatemalan tried to pull his hands apart, and the chain on the handcuffs went taut. Instead he leaned on his side and looked up.
“Sorry, my friend, it's all gone. I couldn't help you even if I wanted to. And I don't want to.”
Simon stayed quiet. What could he do next? How much was true and how much was some lunatic fantasy? He needed some kind of clue.
“Uh huh. Then tell me this. Where did you come up with the virus and the cure?”
“Come now, I must have some secrets. Military scientists in every nation have been working on this stuff for a century. What does it matter?”
“It matters because—”
“Simon, you need to see this.”
Crowder stood in the doorway, his usual light tone displaced by urgency. “Bring him with you.”
Simon grabbed the handcuff chain and pulled Cimil to his feet. Then he pushed him out the door and down the hallway after Crowder. The Marine went into a room on the right and they followed.
President Richards leaned back on a long velour-covered couch. Andrea sat on one of the arms, and Cortez looked relaxed leaning back in a high wooden chair against the wall. Half a dozen marines stood at various points in the room with weapons drawn. The surprise was another man, his arms held by two more agents.
Simon blinked when he saw him. There was nothing particularly special about the man, who sported a crew-cut and average build. Maybe a little paunch starting in the mid-section. But the face, the face shook him to the core. Aside from a small scar above his left eyebrow, the man could have been Andrea Schmidt's twin.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
December 14, 2012: The Amazon
“Where in the hell are we?”
Gabriella Riccio leaned against a tree and watched Alistair Hitchcock drinking out of a canteen. In the era of bottled water and sports drinks, a battered metal canteen was a rarity. Most of her experience involved dry areas, where ancient objects could survive for centuries. She couldn't imagine anything lasting more than a few months in the riparian moisture.
“The Javari River valley. We're in Brazil now.”
Hitchcock grinned. In Boston, he'd struck Riccio as the stereotype of the uptight British professor. Watching him at ease tramping through the jungle for four days, she revised her evaluation. She'd also learned that before embarking on his current career, he flew helicopters for a decade in the Royal Air Force.
“Are we gonna get to an actual river? It just seems like one massive swamp to me.”
Four days ago, they'd flown into Lima, Peru and from there taken a tiny plane to the city of Iquitos. The city lay in the middle of the Peruvian Amazon region, and despite a population over 300,000, could only be reached by boat or by plane. The rainy summer south of the equator had begun, and once they left the city, solid ground became sporadic.
Hitchcock never seemed to doubt which way to go, even as they made regular shifts from their two boats to footpaths that were all but invisible from the water. Carrying the fiberglass canoe through these portages slowed them down, but Hitchcock explained that the deflated rubber raft was only a backup and couldn't be trusted as their sole transport. One large gash and they'd be trapped with no alternatives.
Now he answered her observation about the river. “I've been coming here for a while now, but the first time, I said the same thing. With so little e
levation change, these rivers don't have defined banks. We probably left the river proper fifty miles ago. For hundreds of miles from here to the Purus River, it's mostly swampland. Especially in the summer. However, we're almost at our destination.”
Hitchcock smiled at her.
“Are we set to move on?”
Joe Balaga stood up from his position on an ancient stump next to the canoe. He'd traded his flannel for Vietnam era jungle camouflage, and Riccio had to admit he looked impressive. Despite his extra weight, the programmer had shown no signs of slowing down during the four days.
“Hell, yes. I'm more than ready to reach a destination. Not that I'm complaining about the wonderful flora and fauna. Especially the fauna. At least three species of insects I didn't know existed have bitten me in the ass.”
He chuckled as he said it, and they laughed with him. He and Hitchcock hoisted the boat onto their heads and started walking. As Riccio followed, she could sense the excitement building with their objective now so close.
“So how far is it, anyway?”
Hitchcock's voice echoed off the inside of the canoe. “Not far. It's about—”
He stopped as three men appeared in front of them. All three had light brown skin and wore only shorts and a sandal-like foot covering. Two of them held spears up above their heads in almost a caricature of a savage native from a bad movie. But the third man pointed a small gun at them, and his hand did not waver.
He said something in a language that Riccio couldn't understand. Hitchcock responded in the same language, followed by a heavy silence. Riccio felt fear, and the seconds flowed like molasses. Then the gun dropped, and the hostile looks changed into grins. The man with the gun spoke in broken English so accented that Riccio could hardly follow it.
“Ali, you always welcome here. Good to see again.”
He embraced Hitchcock without reservation, and Riccio almost laughed out loud as the Englishman struggled to hide the discomfort he felt at the display of emotion. The man with the gun, Galdon, was the leader of a small village about four hundred yards away from where the boat pulled ashore. Hitchcock explained that he had taught the man English during the decade of visits, as well as picking up quite a bit of the native tongue himself.
No paths led to the village, and the three locals seemed to move almost without touching the dense vegetation. Compared to them, Riccio felt like she was smashing her way through. Soon enough, they arrived at a group of small houses built among a group of brazil nut trees. She sensed Hitchcock's presence behind her as she took it all in.
“The trees are unusual, aren't they, Gabriella? Normally they don't grow in a group like this, almost a grove. I've spoken with Galdon, and it seems clear that these were planted together centuries ago by the ancestors of this very tribe. Their root system supports more solid soil than you'd otherwise find in the area. Solid enough to build these houses. Whenever anyone asks me how people can live in a remote area like this, I think of these trees. That's what I love about my field, how many different ways there are to create civilization.”
“Amazing.”
She couldn't think of anything else to say. Her work involved people long dead, and she didn't know what she'd expected here. The houses were basic, and the people now poking their heads out to get a look at the newcomers wore something like the stereotypical “native” clothing. Somehow it all seemed more solid and permanent than she would have expected. According to Hitchcock, this village had been here in one form or another as long as the United States.
Galdon didn't come off as a superstitious or backwards savage, either. Aside from the accent, he formed his ideas the same as most of the people she'd ever encountered. A good lesson in the dangers of preconceived notions.
An hour later, they sat in one of the houses, eating the midday meal with a dozen members of the tribe. She learned that Galdon was the man who had found the body that Hitchcock called Julio. He and Hitchcock seemed to have a very close relationship, and while the westerner couldn't bring himself to engage in the backslapping and grinning of the Brazilian, he obviously enjoyed it.
“Galdon, we need to see again where you found Julio.”
Galdon cocked his head and then nodded with a sober expression.
“Yes. Can do that. Waters low this year, so still can see it. But will not see anything different than last time. When we found body. He is one of the caisso.”
Hitchcock turned to the others. “That can be roughly translated as buried ones. I have no idea what it means.”
Balaga lay on his side, eyelids drooping, but Riccio knew he'd been paying attention. Now he said, “Julio died recently right, this wasn't some old body out of a graveyard?”
“Yes, he was still stiff. He couldn't have been deceased for very long.”
Riccio pondered this. “Ask him where the buried ones come from?”
Hitchcock spoke in the native language, and Galdon gave a rambling answer that included a lot of hand gestures and pointing at the earth.
“He says from over the water. But also from under the ground. This is the same thing he told us when we first found the body. He doesn't know. I still think we need to go scour the area where we found the body. We didn't find out about the DNA until we got back to the States, so we didn't have much reason to do it when we first encountered Julio.”
Riccio nodded. “Makes sense. How far away is it?”
“Not far at all. Maybe an hour's boat ride.”
She turned towards Balaga. The red-haired grad student grinned at her, and she chuckled. She didn't even have to say a word and he knew she wanted to start searching right away.
“Yeah, Gabby, I agree. One thing, though.”
He held up the aged wooden bowl containing his lunch. “Let's wait until we're done eating. I don't know what the hell this is, but it's good.”
Something didn't feel right about this. As Riccio stepped out of the boat and stared down at the spot where Hitchcock said they'd found Julio, she felt a slight tingling in her neck. The sensation wasn't unusual for her, and she liked to think it meant her subconscious had picked up on something. Unfortunately, most of the time it turned out to be nothing. She'd just be a bit more careful and observant than she might otherwise. Hitchcock described how they'd discovered the body.
“It was luck that we happened to be here. This is pretty much outside of the tribe's normal hunting and fishing areas. I was trying to get a sense of where their territory ends, but I didn't have a tremendous amount of luck. They don't worry about things like that, they just go wherever they need to go. There isn't any competition to speak of.
“Anyhow, we were out here and Galdon saw the body. It obviously came from the river.”
Riccio turned to Galdon. “So, where did the body come from?”
He smiled at her. “River take him from underneath, bring him to here.”
He gestured with his head and chin out towards the river. Like so much of what she'd seen for the past two days, the area was a mass of vegetation and swamp, more oozing than flowing. But out in the distance, something caught her eye. Dark, and with more jagged lines than everything around it.
“What's that?”
Hitchcock swiveled his head and put his hand over his eyes to help block the sun. Then he took out his binoculars and looked again.
“I'll be gobsmacked. It appears to be some sort of rock outcropping. Not unusual, except they almost never are above the water, especially not at this time of year. And this one appears quite jagged as well. The river generally wears them down. It was raining when we were here before, so I never saw it. Galdon, what is that out there?”
Galdon's smile disappeared, a rarity since their initial encounter with the gun. He dipped his eyes to the ground and shifted his feet. “Place where people go away. Never come back. We not go there.”
Riccio said, “What do you mean, go away? Did you ever go there?”
He shook his head vigorously. “People not go since before I was boy. Old lead
er tell us not safe, so we not go.”
Hitchcock walked over to him and took one of his hands. Riccio could tell he'd made the effort to connect even though the contact didn't feel comfortable. Galdon recognized it too, and looked up with wide eyes.
“Galdon, my friend. We need to go out there now. Will you come with us?”
The Brazilian appeared to consider this. “Yes. Not go before. Not sure now, but can't think reason why not. Some scared, but will do it.”
“Thank you, Galdon. Thank you.”
Balaga already had the boat back in the water, and they headed towards the outcropping. Hitchcock and Galdon paddled, and they covered the distance in a few minutes. When she'd spotted the rock, the sky had been blue and clear. Now, Riccio looked back and could see a trace of fog rolling in towards the shore. Odd for that to happen in the afternoon, but maybe weather patterns were different near the equator. For some reason she no longer felt the apprehension she'd noticed earlier. She shook off these thoughts as they stepped out of the boat, and Hitchcock tied it to a small tree growing out of the rock.
Aside from a small ridge in one corner, the area was flat. About forty feet in diameter, made of dark stone, maybe volcanic in origin. Like everything else in the Amazon, little of it remained free from encroachment by vegetation. Except for two or three ten-foot tall trees near the edge, the limited soil kept the greenery small and easily pushed aside.
Examining the area took only a minute, and they didn't find any evidence of Julio, or any other people. They did find a pile of animal droppings, and Hitchcock explained that these were from a caiman.
“That's a crocodile, right?” Balaga glanced around as he asked the question.
Hitchcock laughed. “Yes, but you needn't worry. With four of us here making a racket, they'll be taking off in the opposite direction.”
After five more minutes of searching, they contemplated giving up and heading back to shore. The sun's rays burned down on them with tropical heat, but the land from which they had rowed was hidden in a fog bank.
The Mayan Legacy (A Simon Gray Thriller Book 1) Page 22