Altar of Eden

by James Rollins

  Behind her, Scott’s voice grew agitated. She turned as he lowered his radio and hurried over to Lorna.

  “Jack radioed in. The cat’s been spotted over at the farm. Why isn’t it here? I thought you said she’d stay by her cub.”

  Lorna turned and stared toward the burning cabin, digesting the new information. The helicopter swept past, stirring hot smoke over the channel, yet careful not to fan the flames toward them. Still, fiery ash rained over the boat and sizzled into the water.

  “I’m sending the chopper Jack’s way,” Scott said. “See if it can’t chase that monster away from the children.”

  Despite the heat, Lorna went cold. Children. Slowly she sensed an inkling of the cat’s intent. She thrust out an arm.

  “Give me the radio. I need to speak to Jack now!”

  JACK INSPECTED THE circle of fires. They completely surrounded the campsite. Randy kept in step beside him. They both carried their rifles. Jack had everyone retreat into the center of the camp’s tents, as far from the edge of the bayou as possible. Only those with weapons kept guard near the flames.

  Still, they only had seven men.

  Not enough to keep a perfect vigil on the forest.

  With the fires blazing high, Jack’s night-vision goggles were useless. The surrounding old-growth forest remained a dark, impenetrable wall. The cat had been spotted briefly by one of Jack’s men. But it was gone before he could even shift his rifle into position.

  “Fucking ghost” were the words used to describe it.

  Randy spoke at his side. “She’s playing with us. Like a cat with a bunch of mice.”

  Jack knew what his brother meant. The jaguar had proven to be a skilled hunter. She wouldn’t have allowed herself to be spotted so easily. It was as if she were testing them.

  Something felt wrong about this.

  His teeth ached with tension of it all.

  “Over here!” a man shouted on the far side of the encampment. It was one of the scoutmasters. His rifle blasted.

  Other men scrambled toward his position.

  Some fired blindly.

  Randy made a move to follow, but Jack grabbed his arm. “No!”

  Maybe it was his years of hunting the bayou, or his two tours playing cat and mouse with insurgents in Iraq, but Jack recognized that they were being set up.

  He scanned the forests to either side. Randy understood, mirroring his action, his rifle poised and ready at his shoulder. But there was too much ground to cover for just the two of them.

  Jack spotted the danger too late.

  On the far side of a tent to the left.

  A boy had been carrying firewood—a camp chair broken into kindling—toward the stockpile near one edge of the tents. He had stopped, half turned toward the sound of the gunshots. Behind him, a large shape burst out of the forest. In one bound, the cat hurdled the fires and landed within their secured area.

  The attack was so fast, the boy didn’t even have a chance to scream.

  The cat grabbed him by the back of the shirt, spun off one paw, and leaped back over the fire and into the woods with the child.

  Jack had his rifle up and pointed, but he had hesitated for a fraction of a heartbeart, afraid he’d hit the child, an instinctual reaction. And the wrong one. The boy was dead either way.

  At his waist, his radio kicked in. “Jack! Come in!”

  He would’ve ignored the call, but the voice was Lorna’s, and she sounded panicked. He snatched the radio and lifted it to his lips.

  “What is it?” he barked, unable to hold back his frustration and anger.

  “The cat! I think she’s going for the children.”

  Jack let out a shuddering breath. “You’re too late. She already attacked and killed a boy.”

  “Killed? No, Jack, that’s not what—”

  From the forest, a sharp cry echoed out. Jack lowered the radio. It had to be the boy. His wails continued to echo out of the darkness, rising and falling in raw terror.

  But at least he was still alive!

  Relief fired through Jack, but also worry.

  Why was the boy still alive?

  Jack remembered Randy’s description of the cat and the mouse, which suggested one grim answer.

  Cats played with their food before killing it.

  As Jack listened, the screaming went on and on.

  LORNA HEARD THE cries through the radio’s open channel. That was enough. She turned and shoved the radio at Scott. “Call the chopper back.”

  The helicopter had begun to sweep toward the farm.

  “What for?”

  “I need to get over there! With the cub!”

  Scott frowned but he didn’t argue and lifted the radio. He shouted into it. Seconds later, the helicopter retreated back toward the boat. He lowered the radio.

  “We can’t land the chopper on the deck,” Scott said. “They’re going to drop a harness. It’s a short hop over the fire to the farm.”

  As realization struck her, Lorna felt instantly ill. Her blood drained to her feet. Her stomach tried to follow.

  “They can haul you all the way up into the helicopter,” Scott explained. “But it’ll be quicker if they don’t have to. They can simply ferry you in the harness.”

  As she pictured swinging by a wire, the helicopter returned with a pounding sweep of its rotors. She looked up. Spooling from a winch by the chopper’s side door, a thick cable lowered down a yellow rescue harness.

  She suddenly regretted her rash decision. She hadn’t fully thought this through. It was bad enough flying in a chopper while inside the cabin.

  The harness arrived, swinging and bobbing. Garcia grabbed it and hauled it toward her. She fought not to back away. It took all her will to simply hold her ground.

  Scott took the blanket-wrapped cub as Garcia helped her into the harness. He slipped it over her head and under her arms, then cinched it tightly. “Are you okay?” he asked.

  As answer, she pointed. “Pass me my rifle.”

  Childress retrieved the tranquilizer gun from the deck. With a bit of effort, she awkwardly slung it over her shoulder. Once she was ready, Scott passed the cub back to her. She hugged it to her chest.

  Scott gave her a questioning thumbs-up.

  Not trusting her voice, she merely nodded.

  Satisfied, Scott backed a step and twirled his arm over his head.

  The engine above gunned harder, and the harness suddenly dug into her armpits. Her legs lifted off the deck. She kicked, anxious to touch ground again. But it was too late. The helicopter climbed while, at the same time, the winch retracted several yards of the cable.

  She stared down as the boat dropped away under her. She tore her gaze away. She wanted to close her eyes but knew that would terrify her even more. Ahead, the log home still blazed. The roof had long caved in, leaving behind a smoldering frame. Smoke poured upward, licking with flames.

  The helicopter climbed higher, aiming to fly over the ruins. She didn’t think they’d make it. The pilot must have thought the same. The winch hauled her up farther. Then they were over the inferno.

  The chopper’s blades cut through the smoke and swirled a searing tornado around her. She held her breath and finally closed her eyes. The heat scorched as if she were flying over the mouth of a volcano. She hugged hard to both the harness and the blanket-wrapped cub.

  Seconds later, they were clear. The temperature plummeted. She took a tentative breath of clear air and squinted her eyes open. The view below was peppered by black ponds. Wooden walkways, platforms, and bridges filled the spaces in between, along with a few tin-roofed outbuildings. On the far side of the ponds, a circle of fire lit the dark bayou. People clustered in its center.

  The campsite.

  The helicopter banked in a gentle arc toward the encampment. Momentum swung her outward on the cable. Wind rushed over her. For just a moment she felt a flush of exhilaration—but only for a moment.

  Movement drew her attention directly below.
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  A man burst out of one of the smaller shacks, an outbuilding sprouting a tangle of antennas. He pounded across the walkway below. He waved a thick black shotgun in one hand and cupped his mouth with the other, shouting. The roar of the helicopter drowned out his words. He must’ve heard the chopper and thought it was the Coast Guard rescue force.

  Frantic that he was ignored, the man ran faster—too fast. He finally spilled over his own legs and went sprawling hard onto the planks. She watched his shotgun strike the boards. Even through the engine’s howl, she heard the gun blasts. A staccato series of slugs strafed out of the smoking muzzle.

  Then the helicopter lurched above her, bobbling in the air.

  Like a hooked trout on a line, she rocked and jerked in the harness.

  Clutching for her life, she craned up. Oily smoke poured from the back of the helicopter. An unlucky round must have struck something vital.

  The chopper tipped on its nose and began a fast descent, trailing flames now.

  Lorna stared down as the world rushed up at her.

  They were going to crash.

  Chapter 20

  Jack watched the helicopter plummet out of the sky.

  Below its undercarriage, a figure swung in a rescue harness. From the flag of blond hair, Jack knew it was Lorna. The helicopter fought to slow its descent, wobbling wildly, rotors faltering. The pilot had the wherewithal to aim the craft away from the encampment, avoiding the gathered children.

  Banking to the west, the chopper swung toward the bayou, dragging Lorna with it. She hung thirty feet below its floats. As the aircraft dropped, she struck the boardwalk hard and skidded across the planks on her back, dragged by the crashing helicopter.

  But she wasn’t hauled far.

  The chopper crashed into the forest just beyond the farm’s border. Spinning rotors sheared treetops, then the blades broke away and catapulted deeper in the bayou. Jack waited for an explosion, but only a thick cloud of smoke rolled into the sky. The hard-fought descent and cushion of the swampy bower must have blunted the impact.

  “Bolton! Reese!” Jack turned to his teammates, bellowing to be heard above the cries and screams from the camp. “Check on the pilot!”

  As they took off Jack sprinted toward the nearest bridge, followed at his heels by Randy. He’d lost sight of Lorna.

  Across the farm, a man staggered to his feet, backlit by flames. He stumbled forward, heading in Lorna’s direction, too. He carried a military-grade shotgun. It looked like an AA-12, a combat auto-assault weapon used in urban warfare, capable of chewing apart a steel oil barrel at thirty yards or blasting through walls.

  Jack had seen the man fall, followed by the accidental burst from his gun. Must’ve been running with his finger on the trigger. Goddamn yokel had more firepower than he could handle. He’d seen it often enough in the backwaters.

  The bigger the gun, the bigger the ego.

  Jack dismissed the jackass and searched for Lorna.

  Was she still alive?

  LORNA LAY ON her back, dazed, ears ringing. She must have blacked out for a moment. She rose up on an elbow and heard screaming nearby. As if she were waking from a nightmare, it took her half a breath to remember where she was. She remembered twisting on her back as she hit, protecting herself as best she could as she was dragged. Still, her entire backside felt as if someone had taken a belt sander to it.

  A shadow fell over her and growled. “Jeezus H. Christ! Are you all right?” The nasal in his voice pitched higher. “I didn’t mean to shoot. It was an accident, I swear. If you hadn’t gone off and kept flying away . . . I mean, didn’t you goddamn see me?”

  His words were harsh, graveled, more accusation than concern, as if what had happened were all her fault. But there was something else about the voice. Maybe it was the situation: on her back, dazed, woken into a nightmare.

  Past and present blurred around her.

  The shadowy shaped dropped next to her, loomed over her. His face was sculpted out of darkness. He reached for her.

  “Don’t move.” It sounded like a threat. “You’re all tangled up.”

  Still, she pulled away.

  Something about that voice . . .

  All of a sudden it struck her like a blow to the gut. The voice, even the shape of the silhouette leaning over her. She knew this man. Gasping in shock, she scrambled back, as if trying to escape a past that had haunted her for over a decade. She became further snarled in the helicopter’s cable and her harness.

  “What’s wrong with you?” The speaker stepped forward, turning slightly to face the approach of pounding boots, his face lit by the fires.

  She stared, shell-shocked. She recognized that man’s features: the crooked nose, the fat lips, the piggish eyes. Memory crushed her. An empty space filled inside her with color and noise. In her ears, she heard her own sobbing, her cries to stop, felt again the humiliation and terror. She must’ve blocked it all away, pushed it deep down with everything else. Traumatized, she had somehow convinced herself that she’d not gotten a good look at her attacker.

  She was wrong.

  Here was the man who’d tried to rape her ten years ago, whose attack led to Tom’s death. “Lorna!”

  She jumped at the call of her name. It was Jack, running toward her, coming to the rescue like before, blurring past and present even further.

  Still, Lorna didn’t take her eyes off the bastard in front of her. He seemed to shrink and drop back into the shadows as Jack came running up with his brother.

  Jack hurried to her side, not even giving the monster a second glance. He dropped hard to his knees. “Lorna, don’t move!”

  Though the words were the same as a moment ago, she heard no threat this time, only heartfelt concern in Jack’s voice.

  “I’m okay,” she said to him, then repeated it for herself. “I’m okay.”

  She grabbed his arm. He helped her up and out of the harness. Over his shoulder, she watched her attacker retreat away, heading across the farm.

  “It’s him,” she said.

  Jack noted where she stared—then stiffened next to her in recognition. His face became a thundercloud.

  Randy swore sharply. “Shoulda known. Garland Chase. Sheriff Gumbo’s inbred bastard. Who else would go and shoot half-cocked like that?”

  Lorna clutched Jack’s shoulder, finally putting a name to a nightmare. Garland Chase. Her voice rang with a mix of certainty and disbelief. “He’s the bastard who attacked me. The night Tommy died.”

  Randy turned sharply toward her.

  “I know,” Jack whispered.

  Randy squinted. “What’re you two talking about?”

  Jack’s brother knew nothing about that night. His family had grown to hate her, to blame her, the same family she’d once hoped would be her own. She began to tremble, perhaps still half in shock from the crash.

  Jack took her in his arms and held her.

  She didn’t resist. She felt the strength in his arms and something indefinable, a warmth and closeness long missing from her life. In his arms, she realized for the first time the true depth of her loss that horrible night—not just the loss of an unborn baby and a young lover, but also an entire family, a future full of love and warmth.

  She’d lost it all that night.

  Yet, with that recognition came no sorrow. Instead, anger, hot and bright, surged through her. Lorna was done with secrets, sick to the bone of them. She pushed out of Jack’s arms—and fully out of that old nightmare. This wasn’t the past. She wasn’t a scared half-drugged teenager any longer.

  She looked around her and spotted her tranquilizer gun. She stalked over to the rifle, picked it up, and hurried ahead. Fire still blazed down her back with every step, but the pain helped focus her.

  Jack came alongside her. “Lorna, what’re you thinking of doing? He’s not worth it.”

  She burned him with a glare. “Of course he’s not worth it. I’ll deal with that bastard later. Right now we have bigger problems.”


  She searched to either side of the boardwalk, backtracking along the path on which she’d been dragged. When she hit, she’d lost hold of the blanket and the cub. Both went flying out of her arms on impact. But where had they gone?

  She rounded another pond—a breeding pond from the looks of it—and spotted a flash of crimson below, near the water’s edge. Beyond the rail, a grassy bank ringed the pond. The fire blanket and its cargo had rolled halfway into the water.

  Lorna set down her rifle, ducked under the rail, and dropped below.

  Ahead, the blanket squirmed. A plaintive mewl sounded. The motion sent ripples across the pond’s mirror. Out on the water, black logs drifted closer, drawn by the motion. A scaly-ridged pair of eyes rose like a submarine’s periscope from the water.

  A pair of boots struck the grassy mud behind her.

  Jack.

  She kept her focus on the pond, on the blanket, and rushed forward. She reached the bank in four steps. The blanket shook as the trapped cub struggled to escape the water.

  If it got loose . . . ran off . . .

  A hem of the blanket lifted. She spotted a tiny white muzzle, whiskers. Lorna lunged forward, sliding on her knees in the mud. She grabbed the blanket and scooped up the cub.

  “Gotcha . . .”

  She leaned back, pulling the cub to her chest. She rolled to her feet and straightened—when water exploded from the pond’s edge. An alligator burst out, jaws wide, fish-belly—white maw and yellow teeth flashing in the dark.

  Lorna jerked back, but she was too slow.

  The jaws snapped with enough force to shatter bone. Teeth caught the trailing edge of the blanket and ripped it out of her grip. The beast surged back and tossed its leathery head. The blanket went flying, and the cub got hurled along with it. The small cat hit the grass, rolled, then pounced back to its tiny paws. It took off like a flash of lightning away from the pond.

  No . . .

  Lorna knew she’d never be quick enough to catch it again. If it reached the open bayou—

  —but Jack dove across its path. Like a tight end catching a fumbled football, he snatched the panicked cub in midflight. He rolled with the cat clutched to his belly. As he came to a stop, shadows stirred under the boardwalk behind him.