The DMZ
Page 57
Standing up, Julie found that the bottom was woven flat enough to walk on, yet thick enough to offer protection for feet not as toughened to walking barefoot as those of the Amazonic natives. Despite her lingering soreness, it was surprisingly comfortable and supple under her first tentative steps.
She looked up to find Rick’s eyes on her as he demanded, “Can you make it?”
Julie nodded, and reached down to shove the remnants of her shoes and socks into her backpack.
“Good.” Swinging around to Bernabé, Rick said in slow, clear Spanish, “We are ready. Will you allow us to follow in your footsteps as we do not know the jungle as well as you and your people do? And could you please tell your men to stop when we reach within an arrow’s flight of this place? The white ghosts may have eyes in the forest, and we’ll need to hide ourselves.”
Rick had phrased it well, Julie approved, acknowledging Bernabé’s authority and the I’paa‘s tracking skills while diplomatically conveying the necessary warning. Bernabé grunted agreement and turned to relay Rick’s statement to the others without waiting for Julie to translate. When a murmur of agreement swept across the I’paa party, Bernabé lifted his spear, and the other I’paa began melting into the woods. Rick looked down at Julie.
“You stay with me,” he said curtly. “And for goodness’ sake, if you’re having problems, this time tell me!” He held her gaze. “And Julie—there’ll be no time for committee meetings or explanations out there. I need to know that whatever I say, I can count on you to do it immediately—no questions asked. Do you understand?”
“I understand,” Julie said levelly, but she swallowed miserably at the sternness of his tone. Did he really think she would jeopardize their mission by challenging his authority? She reached down for her knapsack, but as she slung it over her shoulder, Rick caught her wrist in his hand.
“I would give anything if I’d never gotten you into this!” he said urgently. “You know that, don’t you?”
The look in his eyes dissolved a cold, hard knot in Julie’s chest. She stood still under the grasp of his fingers. “We already went through this, remember?” she answered with quiet firmness. “You didn’t decide—I did!”
Rick’s grip tightened almost painfully around her wrist. “If anything happens to you—”
“It won’t!” Freeing her wrist gently, Julie managed a brief smile as she nodded toward Bernabé, who stood waiting for them at the far end of the outcropping. “Let’s go!”
TWENTY-FIVE
JULIE’S RENEWED HOPE THAT THERE was something positive they could do and every likelihood of reaching freedom and safety afterward, was more energizing than Bernabé’s jerky. In fact, if it hadn’t been for the urgency of the situation, the writer in Julie would have exulted at the incredible picture of which she was a part. The Indians flitting through the trees around her as shadowy and intangible as the ghosts they feared. The tips of Bernabé’s weapons a few paces ahead unhesitatingly setting their zigzag course through the tall hardwoods. The larger-built Special Forces officer, who was almost as noiseless and lithe in his movements as the I’paa.
Even Julie herself was moving more silently and easily than she’d ever been able to do before, the thin material of her foot-coverings enabling her to feel the jungle floor beneath her feet in a way her sneakers hadn’t allowed. She avoided twigs almost instinctively, feeling out bare spots of ground. In time, the anesthetic effect of Bernabé’s poultice began to wear off, but the pain wasn’t unbearable, and without the rubbing of her sneakers against cuts and bruises, she could ignore the dull ache.
Still, it was clear that the I’paa could have moved even faster without the Americans along. It was well over an hour when Bernabé waved his spear to signal a halt. A fresh plague of mosquitoes had already alerted Julie even before she caught sight of open sky through the trees and an explosion of ferns and elephant ears ahead.
It still astonished Julie how quickly the I’paa melted into cover. She spotted one warrior flat on his belly under a low-hanging elephant ear but only because she’d seen him standing there an instant earlier. Only Bernabé remained in sight. Stepping into the undergrowth, he motioned for Rick and Julie to follow. The vegetation closed in above them, tall enough to hide even the tip of Bernabé’s spear, and a moment later, they were peering out from beneath a thick cover of fronds onto an open body of water.
“This is as far as my people and I will go,” the I’paa warrior said flatly.
The water was as stagnant and algae-choked as the swamp through which they had wandered the last two days and might even have been an extension of the same system. If so, some geological upheaval in the past had spilled it into this part of the jungle, because here the majestic columns of the hardwoods marched right down to the water’s edge. Out in the open water, Julie could see the rotting stumps of what had once been dense forest. Bernabé indicated the far side of the slough, where the rainforest rose again from the drowned jungle floor.
“It was through there that we saw the boats come. But not to this place. To the place where the great path begins. That is where we saw the white ghosts.” He gestured with his spear toward the right. “It lies an arrow’s flight that way.”
As Julie translated, Rick withdrew his narrow-eyed scrutiny from the swamp to look down at the I’paa warrior. “Thank you, Bernabé,” he said quietly in Spanish. “You’ve done exactly what I needed.”
The I’paa hunter only shot him an oblique look. Rick let out a small sigh. “Why do I get the impression your friend here doesn’t trust me?” he demanded of Julie in low English.
Julie hunched her shoulders under the knapsack. “Can you blame him? These people haven’t had much reason to trust outsiders.”
“Yeah, well, just so he doesn’t take off on us. He looks tight enough to spook if I said boo! Tell him I’m going to check things out. I want you to stay here. I shouldn’t be long.” His tone brooked no discussion, and Julie offered none. “Whatever you do, don’t come after me. If I’m not back within the hour, you take Bernabé and his men and go downriver to the nearest authorities.”
Julie nodded. Then he was gone. She watched but could see no sign of his progress through the brush. She shifted her position under a patch of ferns to where she could look both across the swamp and back into the forest. Mosquitoes settled around her, and the need for silence made it more difficult to swat them away. A long-legged specimen landed on Bernabé’s exposed ribs, but the I’paa hunter didn’t seem to notice. Rick was right. The I’paa hunter looked jumpy enough to stampede into flight at any moment, his eyes darting nervously in all directions. What was she to do if Bernabé and his companions vanished before Rick ever returned?
But Rick was back far sooner than Julie expected—less than ten minutes by her watch. “It’s there,” he informed Julie grimly. “And way too close for safety, no more than twenty meters from here. Some ‘arrow flight’! If this is an example of your friend’s distance perception, we’ve got problems.”
Julie’s eyebrows rose. “But he was accurate. How far do you think an arrow goes in the jungle?”
“He—” As her question sank in, Rick broke off to glance above him where a sloth hung sleepily from a nearby tree branch.
“You’ve got a point,” he admitted. “I should have been a little more specific. In any case, I didn’t see any guards, but there were surveillance cameras, all right. I’ve taken care of them for now, and I want you to come with me. Bernabé too. I know he said they wouldn’t go any farther, but I’d like him to see for himself that there’s nothing supernatural about the place. The others too, if they’ll stay out of sight. You seem to connect well with these people. Can you explain it to him in a way he’ll understand? Tell him there’s no danger, at least not for now.”
There were no terms in I’paa for “surveillance” or “camera.” “The American riowa has found the ‘eyes’ of the white ghosts,” was as close as Julie could come. Even before she finished explaining, she
read their refusal behind their streaks of camouflage.
“Please, Bernabé,” she pleaded. “The riowa is telling the truth. I swear it to you. He doesn’t lie.” Unless you count pretending to be someone you’re not! “It is important that you come. He wishes to show you how the eyes of the ghosts can be made harmless.”
Bernabé gave Rick a hard look, then nodded reluctantly. “If this is so, then it would be a great thing to learn. But it is not the word of this man I believe. It is yours. If you are so sure he tells the truth, we will go with you.”
He hadn’t spoken above a murmur, but the other I’paa were suddenly with them, rising up through the underbrush or slipping forward between the tree trunks. Julie caught the upthrusted movement of Bernabé’s spear and thought she’d discovered something about their communication methods.
Rick took the lead with Julie on his heels and Bernabé right behind. Because of the swamp, the belt of vegetation was wide, extending well into the first line of trees. Julie, glancing back, knew the other I’paa had to be there, but she could never see more than one or two spread out beyond Bernabé’s stocky figure.
They had covered fewer than two dozen paces when Rick’s warning hand stopped Julie. Dropping to his belly, Rick wriggled forward around the base of a tall mahogany that was growing close enough to the water’s edge that the swamp had eaten at the earth in which it stood, leaving the roots on the outer side exposed and thrusting out into the water. Julie followed suit, and behind her the I’paa dropped to the ground, Bernabé so close on her heels that when Julie paused to loosen her backpack from a briar, the sharp head of his spear narrowly missed her leg.
Then Rick stopped crawling and released a hand from his AK-47 to motion Julie up beside him. Already, she could see an opening through the broad fronds cloaking his head and shoulder, but as she squirmed up to peer out, she stifled a gasp.
Julie had expected some form of road from Bernabé’s mention of a “great path.” But this? This was a highway! Concrete rather than asphalt, but as wide as any six-lane highway and as smooth as any of the better secondary roads in this country. Was it possible they’d somehow mistaken their position and wandered back into a settled area?
Bernabé crawled up beside her, his naked ribs quivering. Behind her she heard quickened breathing from two other I’paa who had crawled close enough to peer out.
Why were they so afraid? Julie couldn’t see where the road led, only the panorama between the mahogany around which they had crawled and another huge tree trunk that cut off her view to the right. But that section looked harmless enough—an empty stretch of concrete running between two shallow banks that were bordered on either side by a straight line of the massive hardwoods.
The vegetation ended abruptly before them, and along both banks the brush had been cleared as far as they could see. The crowns of the hardwoods arching overhead had to be enormous; there was no open sunlight on the wide road, only dappled shadows. Julie was inching forward for a better look when Rick’s arm blocked her passage.
“Watch it!” he hissed. He hooked his thumb upward. “Take a look up there. No, higher—about ten feet up.”
She saw it—a piece of camouflage netting decorated with very realistic artificial leaves and stretched across a wire cage, so that Julie would never have noticed the surveillance camera inside if Rick hadn’t pointed it out. The camera was bolted to a tree trunk since there were no branches at this low level. Only the fish-eye lens of the camera thrust out beyond the camouflage netting, and just as Julie spotted it, she heard a faint whir as the camera swiveled to a new position.
“That one’s okay. I adjusted it. But there’s plenty of others out there.”
Following the jerk of Rick’s head, Julie saw what he meant. Straight across the road, shadowed by the branches above it so that she had to look hard to spot it, another piece of camouflage netting marred the smooth trunk of a cedar. With horror, Julie watched as the lens below the netting shifted position to angle in on the bank where she’d been about to emerge.
“Just keep your head down, and you’ll be okay.” Glancing across Julie to Bernabé, Rick switched to Spanish. “These are the eyes that detected your men. As you can see, they are but machines built by men, not ghosts.” He added in low English to Julie, “Does he understand what a camera is?”
“It is like the tele,” Julie explained to the I’paa warrior. “What that eye sees”—she indicated the convex glass of the camera lens above them—“can be seen on the TV screen a great distance away.” Seeing that she wasn’t getting through, she added, “Like Betty La Fea.”
Light dawned on Bernabé’s face, and he turned his head to speak in swift I’paa to the two men bellied down behind them. A faint murmur carried the phrases “Betty La Fea” and “tele” back down the line.
“I think he got it,” Julie whispered wryly to Rick. “He’s just told them that the eye on the box—the camera—captures their image like the tele captures the image of Betty La Fea. I guess he isn’t the only one who’s been introduced to TV. I’m afraid he still thinks it’s magic. Television too, for that matter. But he’s told them they must not let the movement of the eye fall on them, or the white ghosts will see them and carry them away.”
“That’ll do as long as they know to stay away from the cameras.” Rick began to slither back the way they had come. “Let’s go! We’re done here.” There was a rustle as the I’paa behind them shifted out of his way. Julie was only too glad to wriggle back away from that probing eye across the road.
As soon as Rick had rounded the base of the mahogany, he stood up and strode out of the undergrowth into the open. Julie felt horribly exposed as she obeyed his gesture to follow, but Rick showed no worry, and as he reached the trunk of the tree beneath the surveillance camera, he glanced back at Bernabé, who was still hesitating under the broad leaves of the vegetation. “You can come out. It’s safe.”
Reluctantly, Bernabé joined them under the surveillance camera, though once again the other I’paa vanished. At this range, Julie could see what Rick had done to neutralize the camera. A broken-off twig was thrust into the wire mesh. The camera still rotated, but its angle was now directed out over their heads rather than down toward the ground.
Rick nodded toward the camera. “There’s another one on this side farther down. The pattern’s repeated about every twenty meters as far as I was able to check. I’m assuming they have the same on the other side of the road. But whoever set up the system is used to thinking in terms of wide-open spaces.”
Like a Middle Eastern desert?
“They’ve got the road out there fairly well covered. But on this side they haven’t taken into account that these cameras aren’t going to pick up a thing beyond that next line of trees—or they don’t care. There are no motion sensors either, which makes sense with the amount of wildlife coming through here. That means they’re counting on their isolation for defense, not their surveillance system. These …”—Rick gestured toward the camera—“are designed basically to keep a lookout for any natives wandering into the wrong place, not a trained covert insertion. Which is good news for us. It shouldn’t be hard to bypass their perimeter simply by circling around out of camera range.”
He shook his head disbelievingly as he studied the line of hardwoods that formed the outer perimeter of the road. “If John got caught by this, then he was being pretty careless. Or his companions, more likely!”
Bernabé had been growing more relaxed as the minutes passed and nothing happened. Now he prodded at the wire cage with his spear, examining the camera above his head with as much concentration as though it were an animal he were hunting. Julie, who had been translating Rick’s Spanish into I’paa, though she was sure Bernabé understood quite well, listened to his muttered question, then turned to Rick.
“He wants to know if his spear will destroy the eyes so the white ghosts will no longer see us. I guess he’s been on the outside enough to see that machines can break.”
Bernabé nodded even before Julie finished translating. “But what about that?” she added, gesturing to the branch that was jamming the camera base. “Won’t they check on that when they notice the angle is wrong?”
Rick shrugged. “If they check it out, it will just look like a piece of dead wood has fallen in there—or a monkey trying to get at the camera. From that cage, I’d say they’ve had problems with that in the past.”
They! Here she and Rick were, talking as if they’d already identified the mysterious “they” who built roads and set up surveillance cameras in the middle of the jungle. “But who are these people?” Julie demanded. “And why would they build a road out here? Or any of this?”
“That’s what we’re going to find out,” Rick said grimly. “Ask your friend just how far this road goes. Where are the buildings he mentioned?” His mouth tightened as Julie translated Bernabé’s answer. “What do you mean, two arrow flights? I can see that far from here! What is he trying to pull?”
Julie choked down a grin at his expression. “You forget—you can shoot a lot farther down an open road.”
Rick made an exasperated gesture, then stopped himself. “Fine. Just ask him if he’ll take us there. That’s all we need. I’d like to circle around to come out in back of these buildings he’s talking about. And it would be good if he’d have his men spread out again to keep watch. Just because we’ve seen no patrols so far doesn’t mean there aren’t any. Can you make sure he’s got all that?”
From the dark look the I’paa hunter slanted at Rick, it was clear that he did get “all that.” Lowering his spear, he drew himself up to meet the taller American’s narrowed eyes with a hard gaze that carried not a hint of deference, and before Julie could translate, he addressed Rick directly and in Spanish for the first time since their initial meeting. “You do not need to fear. We will take you to where you may see the riowa without being seen. My people do not know these machines of the white ghosts. But they do know how to watch for men.”