Amazonia

"Of course, of course..." Garcia said in a tired voice, and stood. "I'll tell you all I know."

  It was a short talk. The padre explained as he led them past the altar to the common rooms of the church. The dining room had been converted into a makeshift hospital for smoke-inhalation victims, but no one appeared seriously injured. Garcia related how he had convinced a few Indians to track the dead man's trail, in case the fellow had any companions out there. The trail led to one of the tributaries of the Jarura River. No boat was found, but the tracks seemed to follow the offshoot's course, heading west into the most remote sections of the rain forest. The Indian trackers feared going any farther.

  Kelly leaned on a window overlooking the rear garden. "Can someone show us this tributary?"

  Garcia nodded. He had washed his face and seemed to have collected himself. Steel had entered his voice and demeanor as the initial shock wore away. "I can get my assistant, Henaowe, to show you." He pointed to a small Indian.

  Nathan was surprised to see the man was Yanomamo.

  "He was the only one of the tribe who remained behind," Garcia said with a sigh. "At least the love of our Lord Jesus was able to save one of them."

  The padre waved his assistant over and spoke rapidly in Yanomamo. Nathan was surprised at how fluent the priest was in the dialect.

  Henaowe nodded, agreeing, but Nathan saw the fear in his eyes. Saved or not, deep-seated superstitions still ruled the man.

  The group proceeded back outside, the damp heat falling upon them like a wet wool blanket. They skirted around the helicopters to find the Rangers had been busy. A line of rucksacks, heavily packed, lay in the dirt. A Ranger was positioned behind each one.

  Captain Waxman was inspecting both his men and their gear. He spotted the group and straightened. "We're ready to head out whenever you give the go." Waxman, in his forties, was pure military: stone-faced, broad-shouldered, his field uniform crisp with pressed creases. Even his brown hair had been shaved to a stubble atop his head.

  "We're ready now," Frank said. "We've got someone here to set us on the right trail." He nodded to the small Indian.

  The captain nodded and turned sharply. "Load up!" he called to his men.

  Kelly led their group to another row of backpacks, each about half the size of the Rangers' rucksacks. There, Nathan found the last members of the expedition. Anna Fong was in deep conversation with Richard Zane, both in matching khaki outfits with the Tellux logo emblazoned on the shoulders. To their side stood Olin Pasternak, sporting a clean but clearly well-worn set of gray coveralls with black boots. He bent down to pick up the largest of the packs. Nate knew it contained their satellite communication gear. But as he hoisted the pack, the man's attention was not on the fragile gear, but on the expedition's final member...or rather members.

  Nate smiled. He had not seen Manny since they had left from Sao Gabriel. The Brazilian biologist had been on one of the other Hueys. The reason for the separate flight was clear. Manny waved to Nate, a whip in one hand, the other holding a leather leash.

  "So how did Tor-tor handle the flight?" Nathan asked.

  Manny patted the two-hundred-pound jaguar with the side of his whip. "Like a kitten. Nothing like the wonders of modern chemistry."

  Nathan watched the cat wobble a little from the aftereffects of the tranquilizer. Stretching forward to sniff at Nate's pant leg, Tor-tor seemed to recognize his scent, and nuzzled him half drunkenly.

  "The big fellow's always had a thing for you," Manny said with a chuckle.

  Nate bent to one knee and rubbed the cat's jowls, cuffing him lightly under the chin. This earned him a growled purr of appreciation. "God, he is so much bigger than the last time I saw him."

  Olin Pasternak scowled at the beast, then mumbled under his breath and turned away, clearly unimpressed by the newest addition to the team.

  Nathan straightened. Tor-tor's inclusion had been a hard sell, but Manny had persisted. Tor-tor was close to being sexually mature and needed to log more jungle time. This trek would be of benefit to the cat. Additionally, the jaguar had been well trained by Manny and could prove of use--both in protection and in tracking.

  Nathan had added his own support. If the team wished to convince any Indians into cooperating, the presence of Tor-tor could go a long way toward winning them over. The jaguar was revered by all Indians. To have one accompany the expedition would give the team instant validity.

  Anna Fong had agreed.

  Slowly Frank and Captain Waxman had been worn down, and Tor-tor was allowed to join the expedition.

  Kelly eyed the cat from a safe distance. "We should gear up."

  Nathan nodded and picked up his own small pack. It contained only the essential supplies: hammock, mosquito netting, a bit of dry rations, a change of clothes, machete, water bottle, and filter pump. He could travel months in the jungle with little else. What with the wealth of the forest readily available--from various fruits and berries to roots and edible plants to abundant game and fish--there was little need to haul additional food.

  Still, there was one other essential piece of equipment. Nathan hooked his own short-barreled shotgun overa shoulder. Though the team was backed by the Rangers' weaponry, Nate preferred to have a little firepower of his own.

  "Let's get going," Kelly said. "We've already lost the morning putting out the fires." The slender woman hefted her own pack to her shoulders, and Nate couldn't help but stare at her long legs. He forced his gaze upward. Her pack had a large red cross printed on its back, marking the team's medical supplies.

  Frank ran down the line of civilian team members, making sure all was in readiness. He stopped in front of Nate, pulled out a faded baseball cap from a back pocket, and tugged it in place.

  Nate recognized it as the same one from when he had first seen the man at Sao Gabriel's hospital. "Fan?" he asked, pointing to the Boston Red Sox logo.

  "And a good-luck charm," Frank added, then turned to the group. "Let's set out!"

  In short order, the eighteen-man team tromped into the jungle, led for the moment by a small, wide-eyed Indian.

  Kelly had never been in a jungle. In preparation for this trip, she had scanned books and articles, but the first sight of the rain forest was not what she had expected.

  As she followed the four Rangers in the lead, she craned around in wonder. Contrary to old movies, the un-derstory of the Amazon rain forest was not a clotted mass of clinging vines and overgrown vegetation. Instead, it was more like they were marching through a green cathedral. A dense canopy of woven tree branches arched overhead, absorbing most of the sunlight and casting everything in a greenish glow. Kelly had read that less than 10 percent of the sun's light pierced through the unbroken green tent to reach the jungle floor. Because of this, the lowest level of the forest, where they walked now, was surprisingly clear of vegetation. Here the jungle was a world of shadow and decomposition, the domain of insects, fungi, and roots.

  Still, the lack of green vegetation didn't necessarily make trekking through the pathless forest an easy journey. Rotted logs and branches lay everywhere, frosted with yellow mold and white mushrooms. Under her boots, a slick mulch of decaying black leaves threatened her footing, while buttress roots that supported the gigantic trees in the thin soil snaked under the leaves and added to the risk of a twisted ankle.

  And though the vegetation down at this level was scant, it was not nonexistent. The floor was festooned with fan-tailed ferns, thorny bromeliads, graceful orchids, and slender palms, and everywhere around were draped the ubiquitous ropelike vines called lianas.

  The sound of a slap drew her attention around.

  Her brother rubbed at his neck. "Damn flies."

  Kelly reached into a pocket and passed a plastic bottle of insect repellent to Frank. "Put more on."

  He doused his exposed limbs and rubbed some on his neck.

  Nathan stepped beside her. He had donned an Australian bush hat, and looked like some cross between Indiana Jones and Crocodile Dundee.
His blue eyes sparkled with amusement in the jungle gloom. "You're wasting your time with that repellent," he said to Frank. "Anything you put on will be sweated off your skin in minutes."

  Kelly couldn't argue with that. After just fifteen minutes of trekking, she felt damp everywhere. The humidity under the canopy had to be close to a hundred percent. "Then what do you suggest for the bugs?"

  Nathan shrugged, wearing a crooked grin. "You surrender. You ignore them. It's a battle you can't win. Here it's an eat-or-be-eaten world, and sometimes you have to simply pay the price."

  "With my own blood?" Frank asked.

  "Don't complain. That's getting off cheap. There are much worse insects out there, and I don't just mean the big ones, like bird-eating spiders or footlong black scorpions. It's the little ones that'll get you. Are you familiar with the assassin bug?"

  "No, I don't think so," Frank said.

  Kelly shook her head, too.

  "Well, it has the unpleasant habit of biting and defecating at the same time. Then when the victim scratches the wound, he drives the feces loaded with the protozoan Tripanozoma crusii into the bloodstream. Then in anywhere from one to twenty years you die due to damage to the brain or heart."

  Frank paled and stopped scratching at the fly bite on his neck.

  "Then there are the blackflies that transmit worms to the eyeball and cause a disease called river blindness. And sand flies that can trigger Leishmaniasis, a leprosy type of disease."

  Kelly frowned at the botanist's attempt to shake her brother. "I'm well familiar with the transmittable diseases out here. Yellow fever, dengue fever, malaria, cholera, typhoid." She hiked her medical pack higher on her shoulders. "I'm prepared for the worst."

  "And are you prepared for the candiru?"

  Her brow crinkled. "What type of disease is that?"

  "It's not a disease. It's a common little fish in the waters here, sometimes called the toothpick fish. It's a slender creature, about two inches long, and lives parasitically in the gills of larger fish. It has the nasty habit of swimming up the urethras of human males and lodging there."

  "Lodging there?" Frank asked, wincing.

  "It spreads its gill spines and embeds itself in place, blocking the bladder and killing you most excruciatingly in about twenty-four hours."

  "How do you get rid of it?"

  By now, Kelly had recognized the little fish's description and nasty habits. She had indeed read about them. She turned to her brother and said matter-of-factly, "The only cure is to cut the victim's penis off and extract the fish."

  Frank flinched, half covering himself. "Cut his penis off?"

  Nate shrugged. "Welcome to the jungle."

  Kelly scowled at him, knowing the man was only trying to spook them. But from his grin, she could tell it was mostly all in good fun.

  "Then there are the snakes..." Nate continued.

  "I think that's enough," Professor Kouwe said behind them, rescuing the siblings from Dr. Rand's further lecturing. He stepped forward. "While the jungle must be respected as Nathan has suggested so eloquently, it's as much a place of beauty as danger. It contains the ability to cure as well as sicken."

  "And that's why we're all out here," a new voice said behind them.

  Kelly turned. It was Dr. Richard Zane. Over his shoulder, she noticed Anna Fong and Olin Pasternak deep in conversation. And beyond them, Manuel Azevedo stalked with his jaguar alongside the Rangers at the rear.

  She turned around and saw that the grin on Nate's face had vanished. His expression had hardened at the intrusion by the Tellux representative. "And what would you know of the jungle?" Nate asked. "You've not set foot out of the main offices of Tellux in Chicago in over four years...about the time my father vanished, as I recall."

  Richard Zane rubbed his small trimmed goatee and maintained his casual countenance, but Kelly had not missed the flash of fire in the man's eyes. "I know what you think of me, Dr. Rand. It was one of the reasons I volunteered for this expedition. You know I was a friend of your--"

  Nathan took a fast step in the man's direction, one hand balled into a fist. "Don't say it!" he spat out. "Don't say you were a friend of my father! I came to you, begged you to continue the search after the government stopped. And you refused. I read the memo you dispatched from Brasilia back to the States: 'I see no further benefit in extending Tellux's financial resources in a futile search for Dr. Carl Rand. Our monies are better spent in new endeavors.' Do you remember those words, words that damned my father! If you had pressed the corporate office--"

  "The result would've been the same," Zane said between clenched teeth. "You were always so naive. The decision was made long before I gave my report."

  "Bullshit," Nathan said.

  "Tellux was hit by over three hundred separate lawsuits after the expedition's disappearance. From families, from underwriters, from insurance companies, from the Brazilian government, from the NSF. Tellux was under assault from all sides. It was one of the reasons we had to merge Eco-tek's assets. It helped insulate us from other rapacious pharmaceutical companies. They were circling like sharks around our financially bleeding carcass. We could not continue funding a search that seemed hopeless. We had a bigger fight on our hands."

  Nathan continued to glower.

  "The decision had already been made."

  "You'll excuse me if I don't shed tears for Tellux."

  "If we had lost our battle, thousands of families would have lost their jobs. Hard decisions had to be made, and I won't apologize for them."

  Nate and Zane continued to stare each other down.

  Professor Kouwe attempted to mediate. "For now, let the past lie in the past. If we're to succeed here, I suspect we'll all need to work together. I suggest a truce."

  After a pause, Zane held out a hand.

  Nathan glanced to the open palm, then turned away. "Let's go."

  Zane shook his head and lowered his hand. He met the professor's eyes. "Thanks for trying."

  Kouwe watched Nate's departing back. "Give him time. Though he tries to hide it, he's still in a lot of pain."

  Kelly stared after Nathan. He walked stiffly, shoulders back. She tried to imagine losing her mother, then her father, but it was a loss she could not comprehend. It was a well of pain from which she didn't know if she could have emerged. Especially alone.

  She glanced to her brother, suddenly glad he was here.

  A call rang out from far ahead. One of the Rangers. "We've reached the river!"

  As the team continued along, paralleling the river, Nathan found himself lagging behind the others. To his right, glimpses of the river peeked from the tangle of vegetation that bordered the small brown tributary. They had been following it now for almost four hours. Nathan estimated they had traveled about twelve miles. The going was slow while one of the Rangers, a corporal named Nolan Warczak, a skilled tracker, kept them on the proper trail.

  An Indian guide could have moved with more assurance and set a faster pace. But after reaching the tributary, the small Yanomamo tribesman from Wauwai had refused to go any farther. He had pointed to clear footprints in the loam that led deeper into the forest, following the watercourse.

  "You go," he had mumbled in stilted Portuguese. "I stay here with Padre Batista."

  So they had set off, determined to cover as much distance as possible before nightfall. But Corporal Warczak was a cautious tracker, proceeding at a snail's pace. This left much time for Nathan to review his heated outburst with Richard Zane. It had taken him this long to cool off and consider the man's words. Maybe he had been narrow-minded and had not considered all the factors involved.

  Off to his left, the crackle of dead twigs announced Manny's approach. He and Tor-tor had kept a bit of distance between themselves and the rest. When the large cat was nearby the Rangers were edgy, fingering their M-16s. The only one of the unit who showed curiosity about the jaguar was Corporal Dennis Jorgensen. He accompanied Manny now, asking questions about the cat.
br />   "So how much does he eat in a day?" The tall corporal took off his slouch hat and swiped the sweat from his brow. He had shockingly white hair and pale blue eyes, clearly of some Nordic descent.

  Manny patted the cat. "Somewhere around ten pounds of meat, but he's been living a pretty sedentary life with me. Out in the wild, you almost have to double that amount."

  "And how are you going to keep feeding him out here?"

  Manny nodded to Nathan as he joined him. "He'll have to hunt. It was the reason I brought him along."

  "And if he fails?"

  Manny glanced to the soldiers behind them. "There's always other sources of meat."

  Jorgensen's face paled a bit, then realized Manny was joking and nudged him with an elbow. "Very funny." He fell back to join the others in his unit.