With a sigh of great reluctance, Lincoln nodded. "Okay," he said as he gripped Simone's boonie hat in his hand. "I'll confirm when I arrive in Chachapoyas."
"Without delay, Lincoln."
He exhaled. "Without delay."
The call ended and Lincoln took a moment to scan the area once more for any signs that Simone -- or anyone -- had passed through, but all he saw was an undisturbed jungle, silent but for the presence of its own inhabitants.
Carefully, he folded Simone's hat and tucked it into one of the free pockets in his pants.
Without delay, Lincoln oriented himself in the direction of the village of Chachapoyas, and started in that direction, leaving behind the river and any thoughts of finding Simone Cassidy there, dead or alive.
All he could do was return to Clark, hoping that Simone was strong enough to survive the impossible.
_____
The density of the jungle dwindled as the sounds of rushing water grew louder.
Solomon stepped out into a small clearing at the base of the Gocta Cataracts where the rest of the mercenary team was waiting.
Squinting, he turned his eyes upward to gaze at the shelf mid-way up where they had recently stood.
Vincent emerged and stepped beside Solomon. Both men gazed up, but neither one could see up to the shelf, let alone to the top of the falls.
Solomon shifted his gaze to the turbulent waters where the falls came to a violent end. Numerous rocks of all sizes littered the area. Solomon's eyes shifted from one rock to the next to the next, but at no point did he find Simone Winifred Cassidy's bloody, pulverized corpse.
He snorted a little laugh. "I don't know how she did it, but she did it."
"Did what?" Vincent asked.
Solomon turned to Vincent. "She's alive."
"You don't know that. Just because she's not splayed out across the rocks or draped over the bank doesn't mean she's not wedged below the surface. The fall alone would kill her, and the force would drive her body under." He exhaled a heavy breath and turned his eyes upward again. "There's no way she made it. No possible way."
"When you're dealing with Simone Winifred Cassidy, you start believing in the impossible," Solomon said. "Do you think death can stop her? It hasn't yet."
Vincent turned a curious look on him. "It comes for us all, chap. When it's your time, there's no avoiding it, no matter what name you've got."
Solomon grinned. "Yeah, well, it already tried. In Dubai, she drowned. Not three days later, she was buried under a hundred thousand tons of rock. She emerged from that and then jumped off the Monastery of the Holy Trinity in Greece, on purpose. Four hundred meters without a parachute. Have you ever been to New York City, Vincent? I recommend you take a tour to the observation deck of the Empire State Building and look down. That's how high up she was when she made that jump. And she survived."
Dumbfounded, Vincent just stared back. The look in his eyes said that he didn't believe a word Solomon was saying, yet he somehow knew it was true. Some vague intuition confirmed it all. He knew Simone, how strong-willed she was, how fearless she could be in the face of mortal danger. But he didn't know how she could survive spilling over the edge of the waterfall.
"You make her sound like some kind of immortal," Vincent said just then. "She's only human."
"Then we have no excuses for our own failures," Solomon replied. "After all, we're only human, as well."
Vincent looked up again, still having difficulty believing anyone could survive the fall.
Solomon patted Vincent's shoulder and stepped around to face his team of mercs. "I want a unit of four following this body of water. The rest, return to the chopper. I want more eyes in the air." He looked to Vincent. "You, with me."
After the commands, Solomon accompanied the unit of four down the river with Vincent at his side.
"I thought you wanted me to deliver a message," Vincent said.
Solomon glanced at him. "You will."
"Care to clue me in on when, exactly?"
"When we find out what happened to Simone," Solomon said. "One way or another, we will find her. And you will explain to Clark Bannicheck, in detail, exactly what happened."
Wiping perspiration from his face, Vincent kept pace with the members of SWANN, wondering if it was better to find Simone dead or alive.
Solomon said he needed her alive, but Vincent didn't trust anything he said. Some strange feeling in the pit of his stomach told him that Solomon wasn't going to let him -- or Simone -- leave Peru alive.
Vincent marched on, as if marching to the gallows.
15.
Chachapoyas, Amazonas, Peru
Two dozen chanting voices surrounded her.
The vibration of their synchronous rhythm reverberated deep down in her bones. The sound, so close, so present, consumed her.
She did not see or feel anything around her, only the frequency of their chanting burrowing through her skin. Sound was the first sense that returned, and then, as she blinked her eyes open ever so slowly, she had vision once again.
The tribe kept chanting as she blinked again, squinting from the harsh rays of light breaking through the meager grass roof of ... wherever she was.
Touch returned next as she found herself completely comfortable despite being laid out on a wooden bed with little padding beneath her. She tried to lift her head, an effort that drove away the fleeting sensation of peace in an instant, replaced by a wave of intense pain that cascaded from her head down to her throbbing toes.
She rested her head back, closing her eyes and returning to darkness. She let the chanting soothe her, the vibration of the voices drive away the pain that she felt in nearly every part of her body.
Fragments of memory flashed through her mind's eye. Water. Flowing water. Flowing toward a great precipice. It spilled over the side, and so did she, tumbling down, surrounded by a violent force of water in free-fall.
Then, nothing.
The realization frightened her eyes wide open, and with a fight-or-flight determination, Simone pushed herself up to a sitting position.
The chanting voices halted at once, and the only voice to be heard was Simone's as she cried out from the pain in her left shoulder.
She grabbed it with her right hand and gently rocked forward and back on the hard surface of the bed. An attempt to swing her legs over the side to stand proved a greater effort than she had expected, and the villagers rushed to her side, urging her to stay in bed and rest.
At least, that's what she thought they were saying. The language and dialect were completely foreign to her, but their body language appeared to insist that she remain where she was.
As her mind calmed, Simone lay back on the bed and let her eyes close once again. Silence pervaded the sweltering space. The stillness that came after the chanting had stopped rang louder than all the voices of the tribespeople.
One voice cast away the stillness. It sang the same chant as before, but no other voices joined in.
Simone heard the shuffling of footsteps exiting the area in which she rested. She opened her eyes to find only two villagers remained -- the chanting man who appeared to her to be the village medicine man, and an older man she guessed to be the chief of the tribe.
The elder approached her bedside.
With an ever-present throbbing sensation at the back of her head, Simone turned to the elder. "What happened?" she asked without thinking if the man understood English at all.
"You fall," he said.
Simone made an arching motion with her hand. "Down the waterfall?"
The elder made a smaller arch with his own hand. "You fall here." He brought his hand down to where Simone had indicated. "Not here."
Simone exhaled a sigh of relief. She hadn't taken the plunge all the way down to the base of the waterfall, instead landing on something partway down.
"We find you on the ground. On the mountain," the elder said. "Bring you here to heal."
"Thank you," Simone said earnestl
y. "Thank you for helping me." She winced as she reached to place her hand on his.
"Rest," he urged. "You are hurt. You must rest."
"I must go," she said, but did not try to stand up again.
The medicine man stopped chanting and said something to the elder in words Simone did not understand.
"What did he say?" she asked.
The elder looked into Simone's eyes. "A shadow follows you."
Solomon. She knew he wouldn't stop until he found the meteor fragment. "Where is he now?"
The elder tapped his fingers to his chest. "With you. Always with you."
Simone blinked through a wave of nausea. She wasn't sure she heard him correctly. "He's here? In the village?"
The medicine man spoke again, his voice more urgent than before.
The elder translated, "Not a man. A shadow." He hesitated.
Again, the medicine man spoke.
The elder bowed his head. "A curse."
Simone pushed herself upright in spite of the pain in her shoulder. "What!"
With haste, the medicine man left them.
"Where is he going?" Simone asked as her heart rate climbed. "Did you say a curse?"
She had only just convinced herself that the wild idea of being cursed was a fantastical delusion, some form of coping mechanism her mind engineered to explain all that had happened in her missions with Clark. All of the violence, the bloodshed and death. All of the injuries and misfortunes. All of it, merely a symptom of the line of work she had found herself in. Everywhere she went, chaos followed.
It had followed her to Peru, into the river with the Green Anaconda, into the collapsing temple, on top of it where she had encountered the warrior wasps, and over the waterfall's edge.
"You must rest," the elder said again.
"There was a stone with me," she said. "A large, shiny stone." She estimated its size with her hands.
The elder nodded.
"Where is it? Did you bring it here?"
He pointed somewhere beyond the structure they were in.
Simone swung her feet over the edge of the bed, grunting as her boots touched the ground. It felt as if she had stepped onto a bed of nails, white-hot pain shooting up her legs like lightning.
"You cannot outrun the shadow," the elder said. "The shadow is always with you. It is within you."
Pausing to catch her breath, Simone brushed her hair away from her face and said, "I can't stay here. I will only hurt you."
Whether or not the curse was real, she hoped it was enough to convince the village elder to let her go before the "shadow" could do the tribe any harm.
Pushing herself up to stand, Simone shrieked as another jolt of pain ripped through her. She steadied herself on the grass wall of the hut, gingerly taking some uncertain steps. Her equilibrium was off. She knew she had a concussion, and something was definitely wrong with her left shoulder and right foot. Hardly anything between those two areas felt much better, but she had to get away from the village. If not because of the curse, then because of Solomon and his team who were no doubt looking for her that very moment.
She paused as the medicine man returned, holding a bowl of some unidentifiable liquid. He spoke directly to Simone.
"You must drink," the elder said. "It will help."
A short laugh slipped out from the absurdity of it all, but Simone regained her composure and thought about how to politely say no.
The medicine man pushed the bowl toward Simone. With reluctance, she took it in her hands.
The bowl was warm to the touch. She glanced to the elder, as if looking for direction.
"Drink. You will feel better."
"Then I can go?" she asked.
"You must drink first."
"But then I can go?"
The elder made a drinking motion with his hands and nodded to urge Simone on.
She took a deep breath and sipped from the bowl.
The liquid went down hot and bitter. She coughed and swallowed the concoction. It tasted of the jungle. Herbal. She didn't expect the tribe to poison her after doing all they had to help her to that point. It appeared to be some form of natural remedy. Almost immediately, Simone felt an easing of her perception of pain, and a lightness from head to toe.
She drank until the bowl was empty.
The elder took the bowl from her hands and pointed to where he had before when Simone asked if they had brought the meteor fragment down from the mountain.
Slowly and carefully, Simone limped out of the hut and into the burning light of day. She shielded her eyes, wishing she hadn't lost her boonie hat in the spill over the waterfall.
Ahead, she spotted a canoe bobbing gently in the little river that bisected the village.
Stepping closer, she saw the strange, almost cosmic glow of the shiny surface of the meteor fragment.
She turned to find the medicine man and the village elder standing nearby. "I can't move it on my own," she said of the meteor fragment. "I will need to borrow your boat."
The elder nodded.
Simone looked at the canoe and then back to the elder. It didn't sit right with her, to just leave with something of theirs, particularly after all they did to help her. She should be the one leaving something for them.
She searched her pants pockets, but there was nothing they would have any use for. The pack with all of her gear was somewhere back on the mountain, left behind after suffering the sting from the warrior wasp.
Looking down, she saw a bracelet on her wrist -- one she had made in her time with Indah on Mount Merbabu.
Simone removed the bracelet from her wrist and held it out for the village elder. "This is all I have to give you."
With a smile, the medicine man took it and placed it on his own wrist adorned with the jewelry of his tribe.
"I'm sorry it couldn't be more," she said as an unexpected wave of emotion came over her. She stopped talking to hold back tears. It wasn't often she felt so helpless.
"Journey safe," the elder said.
Two other members of the tribe helped Simone into the canoe and gave her a paddle. With a push away from the riverbank, Simone drifted with the current, away from the village.
She glanced back, praying that her shadow did not fall on the kind people who had just literally saved her life.
16.
Chachapoyas, Amazonas, Peru
Simone paddled the canoe until the pain in her shoulder was too great. Then she rested awhile.
Floating down the narrow river in some part of the Peruvian jungle unknown to her, she wondered if there was anyone ahead that could rescue her. She had only meager scraps of food from the village. Enough to survive on, at least.
Gently, she lay back, resting her head on the meteor fragment behind her. A weapon of catastrophic potential. What it was or where it came from seemed trivial in relation to the harm it could possibly inflict when placed in the wrong hands.
She wondered if the same energy could be harnessed for the betterment of society rather than the destruction of it. Foes battled over possession of the mysterious object not because of its potential to help others, but as a threat to retain dominance. A wartime promise.
Simone shifted in the canoe, struggling to find a comfortable position in which to rest, but with her shoulder banged up and her feet throbbing in constant pain, no such position existed. She simply had to deal with it.
She wondered if taking a dive off the waterfall was a good idea -- as if it ever could be. It had been an action without thought. Adrenaline was rushing through her like lightning. She’d lost all sense of time and her body reacted before she ever stopped to consider the dangers of her actions. The only thing on her mind had been getting hold of the meteor fragment before Solomon could -- a mission she accomplished.
Pushing herself back up to a seated position, Simone paddled some more, helping her little canoe down the river. Finding civilization was at the forefront of her thoughts.
From the back of her mind, a
thought sprang forward, something she had not considered until that very moment.
She stopped paddling as wheels turned in her head.
Upon finding civilization, what could she do with the meteor fragment?
Surely it would stand out as an anomaly. Injured woman emerges from the jungle with a basketball-sized chunk of glowing matter, unlike anything anyone has ever seen. The visual beauty of the meteor fragment would draw the attention of all who laid eyes upon it.
Simply moving the thing would be difficult with her shoulder and feet in the shape that they were. She likely could have carried it if she was unharmed -- months of working on a farm and working out in Indonesia had built her up to the strongest she'd ever been. But now that she had wrecked herself significantly by spilling over the waterfall's edge, moving it by herself was totally out of the question.
Think, Simone. Think.
Her cell showed no service. She had to keep moving down river until she found a signal to call for help -- Clark, Lincoln, whoever.
With the paddle gripped in her dirty hands, she hesitated.
A prodding notion held her back, some consideration deep in the recesses of her mind that she didn't wish to entertain, yet had no ability to ignore. It seemed at once preposterous and brilliant, like the barrier between insanity and genius so often imperceptible.
If she couldn't bring the meteor fragment into whatever city or town lay ahead, she'd have to leave it behind.
Not out in the open, but under the soil. Buried, with a marker only she would know identified its secret location. Impossible for any other living soul to locate.
The tug-of-war in her head raged with no clear victor. Each option equally enticing and frightening. Each pro as strong as its corresponding con.
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