Amazonia

  She leaned into him, and he instinctively circled her with his arm.

  Covering the upper limbs of the tree, drawn by the moisture, were hundreds of butterflies, perched on branches and leaves, fluttering through the bower. Each had wings about a handspan wide, brilliant blue and crystalline green.

  "Morpho species," Nate said. "But I've never seen this color pattern."

  Kelly watched one specimen waft by overhead through a beam of sunlight. It seemed to shine with its own luminescence. "It's like someone shattered a stained-glass window and showered the slivers over the treetops."

  He tightened his arm around her, trying to capture this moment forever. They stood in silence and awe for several minutes. Then distant voices intruded, rising up from below.

  "I suppose we should go down," Nate finally said. "We have a lot to accomplish."

  Kelly nodded and sighed. Nate understood her reluctance. Here, isolated above everything else, it was possible to forget, at least for a while, the heartaches and hardships ahead of them. But they could not escape the world forever.

  Slowly, they finished dressing. As they were about to leave, Nate crossed to the rear deck and unhooked the bamboo-and-palm-leaf awning so it fell back across the rear door, returning the room to the way he found it.

  Kelly noticed what he did and moved nearer, examining the hinges along the top margin of the door. "Closed, it blocks the doorway...pushed open and stilted, it's a shade cover for the deck. Clever."

  Nate nodded. Yesterday he had been surprised by the ingenuity, too. "I've never seen anything like it out here. It's like my father mentioned in his notes. An example of the tribe's advancement over other indigenous peoples. Subtle engineering improvements, like their crude tree elevators."

  "I could use an elevator right now," Kelly noted, stretching a kink from her back. "It does make you wonder, though," she went on, "about the Yagga--about what it's doing to these people."

  Nate grunted in agreement, then turned to reassemble his own pack. There was much to wonder about here. Once ready, Nate gave the room a final inspection, then crossed to the door where Kelly crouched.

  As Kelly slung her pack to her shoulder, Nate leaned in and kissed her deeply. There was a moment of surprise...then she returned the kiss with a matching passion. Neither of them had spoken of where the two would go from here. Both knew much of their urgency last night had come from a pair of wounded hearts. But it was a start. Nate looked forward to seeing where it would lead. And if her kiss was a clue, so did Kelly.

  They parted, and without another word, they headed to the ladder leading down to the common areas of the dwelling.

  As Nate descended, cooking scents swelled around him. He reached the bottom rung and hopped off. After helping Kelly down, they both walked through the common area to the large front deck. Nate's stomach growled, and he suddenly remembered his hunger.

  Around a stone hearth set into the deck, Anna and Kouwe were finishing the final preparations for breakfast. Nate spotted a loaf of cassava bread and a tall stone pitcher of cold water.

  Anna swung around with a platter of honest-to-goodness bacon in her arms. She lifted her bounty. "From wild boar," she explained. "A pair of tribeswomen arrived with a feast at daybreak."

  Nate's mouth watered. There was also more fruit, some type of egg, even what looked like a pie.

  "No wonder your father stayed here for so long," Private Carrera mumbled around a mouthful of bacon and bread.

  Even this reminder of his father failed to squelch Nate's appetite. He dug in along with the rest.

  As he stuffed himself, Nate realized two of their party were missing. "Where are Zane and Olin?"

  "Working on the radio," Kostos said. "Olin got the GPS up and running this morning."

  Nate choked on a piece of bread. "He got it working!"

  Kostos nodded, then shrugged. "He has it recalibrated, but who knows if anyone's receiving."

  Nate let this information sink in. His eyes flicked to Kelly. If the signal was received with the revised coordinates, they could be rescued as soon as this evening. Nate recognized the glimmer of hope in Kelly's eyes, too.

  "But without the main radio to confirm," Kostos continued, "we may just be spittin' in the wind. And until I get solid confirmation, we proceed with our backup plan. Your mission today--along with Kelly and Zane--will be to make sure Frank is ready for a quick evac if necessary."

  "Plus to gather some of the tree's sap," Kelly said.

  Kostos nodded, chewing hard. "While Olin works on the radio, the others of us will split up and see if we can't find out more from the Indians. Get intel on those damned repellent powders."

  Nate didn't argue with the sergeant's plan. GPS or not, it was safest to proceed as cautiously and expeditiously as possible. The remainder of the meal was finished in silence.

  Afterward, the party vacated the dwelling in the nightcap oak and climbed down to the glade, leaving Olin alone in the dwelling with his satellite equipment. Manny and the two Rangers headed in one direction, Anna and Kouwe in another. The plan was to rendezvous back at the tree at noon.

  Nate and Kelly headed toward the Yagga with Richard Zane in tow. Nate hitched his shotgun higher. The sergeant had insisted every member of the party go armed with at least a pistol. Kelly had a 9mm holstered at her waist. Zane, ever suspicious, had his Beretta in hand, eyes darting all around.

  In addition to the weapons, each of the three teams had been equipped with one of the Rangers' short-range Saber radios, to keep in contact with one another. "Every fifteen minutes, I want to hear an all-clear from each group," Kostos had said dourly. "No one stays silent."

  Prepared as well as they could be, the group split up.

  As Nate walked across the glade, he stared up at the giant prehistoric gymnospore. Its white bark glistened with dew, as did its leaves, flickering brightly. Among the tiered branches, the clusters of giant nut pods hung, miniature versions of the man-made huts. Nate was anxious to see more of the giant tree.

  They reached the thick, knobbed roots, and Kelly guided them between the woody columns to the open cavity in the trunk. As Nate approached, he could appreciate why the natives called their tree Yagga, or Mother. The symbolism was not lost to him. The two main buttress roots were not unlike open legs, framing the tree's monstrous birth canal. It was from here that the Ban-ali had been born into the world.

  "It's big enough to drive a truck through," Zane said, staring up at the arched opening.

  Nate could not suppress a small shudder as he entered the shadowy heart of the tree. The musky scent of its oil was thick in the passage. All around the lowermost tunnel, small blue handprints decorated the wood wall, hundreds, some large, others small. Did they represent members of the tribe? Did his own father's palm mark this wall somewhere?

  "This way," Kelly said, leading them toward the passage winding up the tree.

  As Nate and Zane followed, the blue prints disappeared eventually.

  Nate glanced along the plain walls, then back toward the entrance. Something was bothering him, but he couldn't exactly put his finger on it. Something didn't look right. Nate studied the flow channels in the wood, the tubules of xylem and phloem that moved water and nutrients up and down the trunk. The channels ran down in graceful, winding curves around the passage walls. But down below, where the passage bluntly ended, the flow channels were jagged, no longer curving smoothly. Before he could examine this further, the group had passed beyond the tunnel's curve.

  "It's a long climb," Kelly said, pointing ahead. "The healing chamber is at the very top, near the crown of the tree."

  Nate followed. The tunnel looked like some monstrous insect bore. In his study of botany, he was well familiar with insect damage to trees: mountain pine beetle, European elm bark beetle, raspberry crown borer. But this tunnel had not been cored out--he would stake his life on it. It had formed naturally, like the tubules found inside the stems and trunk of an ant tree, an evolutionary adaptation.
But even this raised a new question. Surely this tree was centuries older than the first arrival of the Ban-ali to this region. So why did the tree grow these hollowed tubules in the first place?

  He remembered Kelly's muttered words at the end of last night's group discussion. We're missing something...something important.

  They started passing openings through the tree's trunk to the outside. Some led directly into huts, others led out onto branches with huts beyond. He counted as they climbed. There had to be at least twenty openings.

  Behind him, Zane reported in on the Saber radio. All was well with the other teams.

  At last, they reached the end of the passage, where it ballooned out into a cavernous space with slits cut high in the walls to allow in the sunlight. Still, the chamber was dim.

  Kelly hurried over to her brother.

  The small shaman stood across the room, checking on another patient. He glanced up at their approach. He was alone. "Good morning," he said in stiff English.

  Nate nodded. It was strange knowing these words were most likely taught to the man by his own father. He knew from reading his father's notes that this shaman was also the Ban-ali's nominal leader. Their class structure here was not highly organized. Each person seemed to know his place and role. But here was the tribe's king, the one who communed closest with the Yagga.

  Kelly knelt at Frank's side. He was sitting up and sucking the contents of one of the tree's nuts through a reed straw.

  He set his liquid meal aside. "The breakfast of champions," he said with his usual good-natured smirk.

  Nate saw he still wore his Red Sox cap--and nothing else. He had a small blanket over his lower half, hiding his stumped legs. But he was bare-chested, revealing plainly what was painted there.

  A crimson serpent with a blue hand-print in the center.

  "I woke up with it," Frank said, noticing Nate's gaze. "They must have painted it on me during the night when I was drugged out."

  The mark of the Ban-ali.

  The shaman stepped to Nate's side. "You...son of Wishwa Kerl."

  Nate turned and nodded. Apparently their guide, Dakii, had been telling tales. "Yes, Carl was my father."

  The shaman king clapped him on the shoulder. "He good man."

  Nate did not know how to respond to this. He found himself nodding while really wanting to rip into the shaman. If he was such a good man, why did you murder him? But from working and living with indigenous tribes throughout the region, he knew there would never be a satisfactory answer. Among the tribes, even a good man could be killed for breaking a taboo--one could even be honored by being turned into plant fertilizer.

  Kelly finished her examination of Frank. "His wounds have entirely sealed. The rate of granulation is amazing."

  Her expression must have been clear to the shaman. "Yagga heals him. Grow strong. Grow--" The shaman frowned, clearly struggling to remember a word. Finally, he bent down and slapped his own leg.

  Kelly stared at the shaman, then at Nate. "Do you think it's possible? Could Frank's legs really grow back?"

  "Gerald Clark's arm regenerated," Nate said. "So we know it's possible."

  Kelly crouched. "If we could watch the transformation in a modern medical facility..."

  Zane interrupted her, lowering his voice and keeping his back toward the shaman. "Remember, we have a mission here."

  "What mission?" Frank asked.

  Kelly quietly explained.

  Frank brightened. "The GPS is working! Then there's hope."

  Kelly nodded.

  By now, the shaman had wandered off, losing interest in them.

  "In the meantime," Zane hissed, "we're supposed to gather a sample of the sap."

  "I know where it comes from," Kelly said, nodding toward a channel carved deep into the wall. Shielded by the two men, she picked up the empty nut drained by her brother and pulled out the straw. She crossed to the wall and removed a small wooden plug. A thick red sap began to flow into the channel. She bent the nut's opening into the flow and began collecting the sap. It was slow work.

  "Let me," Zane said. "You look after your brother."

  Kelly nodded and stepped to Nate. "The stretcher is still here," she said, pointing an arm to the makeshift travois. "When and if we get the signal, we'll have to move fast."

  "We should--"

  The first explosion shocked them all. Everyone froze as the blast echoed away. Nate stared at the open slits high up the curved walls. It was not thunder. Not from blue skies. Then more and more booms followed. Beyond the roar, sharper cries arose.

  Screams.

  "We're under attack!" Nate exclaimed.

  He turned and found a pistol pointed at him.

  "Don't move," Zane said, crouching by the wall, a tight and scared expression on his face. He held the nut, now overflowing with sap, cradled in one arm, and the 9mm Beretta in the other. "No one move."

  "What are you--" Kelly began.

  Nate interrupted, immediately understanding. "You!" He remembered Kouwe's suspicions: other trackers on their trail, a spy among them. "You goddamn bastard. You sold us out!"

  Zane slowly stood. "Back away!" The pistol was held rock steady on them.

  Beyond the tense room, explosions continued to boom. Grenades.

  Nate pulled Kelly away from Zane's threatening gun.

  Behind them, the shaman suddenly bolted toward the opening, frightened by the explosions, oblivious to the closer threat. A sound of alarm rose on his lips.

  "Stop!" Zane screamed at the tribesman.

  The shaman was too panicked to listen or to comprehend the stranger's tongue. He continued to run.

  Zane twitched his gun and fired. In the enclosed space, the blast was deafening. But not so deafening as to drown out the cry of surprise from the shaman.

  Nate glanced over his shoulder. The shaman fell on his side, clutching his belly, gasping. Blood flowed from around his fingers.

  Red with anger, Nate turned on Zane. "You bastard. He couldn't understand you."

  The gun again pointed at them. Zane slowly circled around, keeping his weapon aimed. He even kept a safe distance from Frank's hammock, not taking any chances. "You were always the gullible fool," the Tellux man said. "Just like your father. Neither of you understood anything about money and power."

  "Who are you working for?" Nate spat.

  Zane now had his back to the exit. The shaman had rolled into a moaning ball off to the side. Zane stopped and motioned with his pistol. "Toss your weapons out the window slits. One at a time."

  Nate refused to budge, shaking with rage. Zane fired, blasting wood chips from between Nate's toes.

  "Do as he says," Frank ordered from the hammock.

  Scowling, Kelly obeyed. She freed her pistol from its holster and flung it out one of the windows.

  Nate still hesitated.

  Zane smiled coldly. "The next bullet goes through your girlfriend's heart."

  "Nate..." Frank warned from the bed.

  Teeth clenched, Nate edged to the wall, weighing his chances of firing at Zane. But the odds weren't good, not with Kelly's life at risk. He unslung his gun and heaved it through one of the slits.

  Zane nodded, satisfied, and backed toward the exit. "You'll have to excuse me, but I have a rendezvous to make. I suggest you three remain here. It's the safest spot in the valley at the moment."

  With those snide words, Zane slipped out of the chamber and disappeared down the throat of the tunnel.

  8:12 A.M.

  Deep in the jungle, Manny ran alongside Private Carrera. Tor-tor raced beside them, ears flattened to his skull. Explosions ripped through the morning, smoke wafted through the trees.

  Kostos ran ahead of them, screaming into his radio. "Everyone back to home base! Rally at the dwelling!"

  "Could they be our people?" Manny asked. "Responding to the GPS?"

  Carrera glanced back at him and frowned. "Not this quick. We've been ambushed."

  As if confirming this, a
trio of men, dressed in camouflage gear and armed with AK-47s and grenade launchers, trotted into view.

  Kostos hissed and waved them all down.

  They dropped to their bellies.

  An Indian ran at the group with a raised spear. He was nearly cut in half by automatic fire.

  Tor-tor, spooked by the chattering gunfire, bolted forward.

  "Tor-tor!" Manny hissed, rising to one knee, reaching for the cat.