A few minutes later, Ted joined them on deck, carrying three bottles of water. “You need to rehydrate,” he said.
Crow, Dylan, and Marty clung to the rail and shook their heads. Ted leaned over the side. The surface looked like it was boiling.
“Piranhas?” Marty managed to ask between retches.
“Definitely,” Ted affirmed.
The Rivlan steered itself around a bend, and they saw why Ted had slowed down. There were at least a dozen boats on the water in front of them. Beyond the boats was a good-sized town belching out a ton of smoke and pollution. The rain forest had been cut down for as far as they could see on both sides of the wide river.
“I didn’t see this town on the map,” Dylan said, taking one of the bottles.
“It hasn’t been here long enough to be put on a map,” Crow said. “I’m not even sure it has an official name. I was here a couple of months ago. The locals call it Sorrow. And there’s plenty of that onshore. Someone discovered gold here eight months ago, and from what I understand it’s almost tapped out now.” Crow took a tentative sip of water, belched, but managed to keep the sip where it belonged.
“Sorry about the abrupt slowdown,” Ted apologized. “I’ll try to ease into it next time, but it will be a while before we can speed up again. There’s a lot of boat traffic the next ten or fifteen miles. It opens up after that.”
“What kind of boat is this exactly?” Crow asked.
“Experimental,” Ted answered. “Fast.”
“Fast?” Crow said. “It’s impossible. I’ve never …”
Marty was barely listening, and it wasn’t because of his stomach. It was sorrow. He’d read about rain forest destruction and had watched documentaries about it, but that hadn’t prepared him for the devastation before him. It looked like the Grim Reaper had mowed the trees down with a giant scythe, then set them on fire. The smoke burned his eyes. He walked over to his hammock, took the binoculars out of his pack, and rejoined the group at the rail. The devastation looked worse close-up. People were cooking food over fires. Dozens of half-naked little kids ran around with oozing sores on their arms and legs. Ramshackle stores displayed unrefrigerated baskets of meat and fish. Other people were selling what looked like used camp supplies, such as tents, picks, and shovels — no doubt from gold diggers who had gone bust. There were a lot people hanging out on the muddy streets. Most of them were men. Most of them were drinking. Marty gazed at the dock along the river in front of the town. Ted had been wrong about the barge being the last place to gas up. The dock was stacked with fifty-gallon barrels. They were refueling a large boat called the Anjo that was clearly a cut above all the other boats on the river, including the Rivlan, at least on the outside. He glassed the people on board. The men were dressed in jungle fatigues and looked fit. They were carrying sidearms, but somehow he didn’t think they were with the Brazilian Army or police. A woman came up from below deck and began talking to one of the camo guys. Marty almost dropped the binoculars in the river.
“Yvonne,” he said.
Dylan grabbed the binoculars, nearly taking Marty’s head off with the strap.
“Where?” Ted asked.
“On that boat getting fuel,” Marty replied.
“Who’s Yvonne?” Crow asked.
“I see her,” Dylan said. “Who are those guys with her?”
“May I?” Ted held his hand out for the binoculars. Marty ducked out of the strap, and Dylan handed them over.
Ted checked out the boat. “Mercenaries,” he said. “Probably some of the same guys that attacked the Coelacanth.”
“What’s a Coelacanth?” Crow asked.
“A prehistoric fish,” Marty answered. “A cryptid. Rediscovered in 1938 in South Africa. By —”
“It’s the name of our research ship,” Ted interrupted. “The one Noah Blackwood tried to sink off the coast of New Zealand, where we were capturing a giant squid.”
Crow took a look through the binoculars. “They do seem to be military. And one of them is looking at us through his binoculars.”
Marty took the binoculars from him. Crow was right. One of the camo guys was zeroed in on them. He said something. Yvonne walked over to him and peered through the binoculars. “Busted,” Marty said. “Yvonne’s spotted us. What do we do?”
Ted smiled. “The only thing to do is to give her a friendly wave.”
Marty was happy to oblige. Yvonne returned the wave with a gesture of her own, and it wasn’t exactly friendly.
“Time to go below,” Ted said. “We’re just about through the boat traffic. When we get around the bend, clear sailing for about five miles. Someone will need to keep an eye on them.”
Marty handed the binoculars to Dylan and grinned. “Hang on tight up here.”
“I think it’s Agent Crow’s turn,” Dylan said.
“Knock it off,” Ted said. “The Gizmo comm is down, but the dragonspy should be working. It’s on a different partition. Launch it.”
“Dragonspy?” Crow asked.
“It’d be easier to show you.” Marty pulled the Gizmo out of his pocket and pushed the WAKE icon. A tiny drawer slid open, revealing a golden insect the size of a dragonfly. Its wings unfolded. He pushed another button, and the dragonspy rose into the air on two sets of wings. He flew it around the cluttered deck, then brought it to a hover just above Crow’s head.
“Amazing,” Crow said. “What powers it?”
“Light,” Marty answered. “The wings double as solar panels.”
Crow looked at Ted. “It’s like a miniature drone. I can see now why the CIA is keeping an eye on you. They don’t want anyone else to get this technology.”
“You’re right,” Ted said. “If they had their choice, they’d keep us restricted to Cryptos Island, surrounded by the navy.” He reached into his pocket, pulled out a pair of glasses, and handed them to Marty.
“What are these?” Marty said.
“Put them on.”
The glasses had straps on the arms to keep them from falling off. Marty slipped them on and was rewarded with a perfect dragonspy’s-eye view from the corner of each lens. “Whoa! Google Glass?”
Ted shook his head. “Spyglass. Why limit your vision to what your eyes are looking at? There’s audio as well. Try not to lose them. They’re the only pair in existence.”
Meaning they’re probably worth a million dollars, Marty thought. “What does Anjo mean?” he asked aloud.
“It’s Portuguese for ‘angel,’ ” Crow answered.
“Oh, brother,” Marty said. “That boat should be called Satan instead.”
He flew the dragonspy over to the Anjo and they went below.
* * *
Yvonne pulled out her sat phone and called Blackwood as she watched the Rivlan limp its way upriver. Noah answered on the first ring.
“Yes.”
She told him about the Rivlan.
“Where are you?”
“Some godforsaken river town getting refueled.”
“What does the Rivlan look like?”
“It’s a junker.”
“Right, just like the Coelacanth was a junker,” Noah said. “Their boat may look like junk, but I can assure you, it isn’t. Who’s on board?”
“Marty, Dylan, Ted, and an old guy I’ve never seen before. There could be other people below that I didn’t see.”
“Tell me more about the old guy,” Noah finally said.
“In his seventies. Tropically baked. American, I’d guess.”
“What else?” Noah asked.
“They have a lot of gear strapped to the deck. Can’t tell what it is.”
“Just follow them,” Noah said. “We don’t want to make a move on them until we have everything in place. Make sure they don’t spot you. Got it?”
Yvonne’s stomach lurched. She thought about lying to him, but it was too late. Her hesitation gave her away.
“Don’t tell me they saw you,” Noah said.
“They spotted us befo
re we spotted them,” she admitted.
“How could you let that happen?”
“I thought we were way ahead of them.”
“Apparently, that ‘junker,’ as you call it, is faster than you think,” Noah said.
“What do you want us to do?”
“Can you take them out?”
Yvonne looked out at the river. The Rivlan was two hundred yards ahead, and it didn’t seem to be in any hurry. “Not here,” she answered. “Too many witnesses. We should be able to catch them upriver, though.”
“Get on it,” Noah snapped. “Everything and everyone aboard is expendable.”
“What about Grace and the hatchlings?”
“They’re not aboard the Rivlan,” Noah answered.
“How do you know?”
“Do you think you’re the only person working for me in Brazil?” Noah asked.
“I guess not,” Yvonne said, wishing she could take the question back.
“Apparently, you haven’t used the telemetry gear I gave you,” Noah said.
“You didn’t tell me what it’s for.”
“It’s for the hatchlings,” Noah said.
“Oh, the —”
“Exactly,” Noah interrupted. “The hatchlings and Grace are already at the jaguar preserve. Your job is to make sure the Rivlan and its passengers don’t join them there.”
“What are the rules of engagement?”
“Make it look like a tragic accident. If you fail to make it look like an accident, I will have you killed. How does that sound?” Noah ended the call.
Yvonne kept the phone to her ear as if Noah was on the still on the phone talking to her. The three men with her, whom she hadn’t met until she arrived in Manaus, stared at her with hard eyes. She forced herself to smile as if Noah were saying something humorous to her — as if he hadn’t just threatened to kill her if she failed. Noah had told the men that she was in charge, something that did not sit well with them. Now she wondered if she really was the one running the show here. Noah said he would have her killed. Were these her executioners?
“Okay, then,” she said cheerfully. “I’ll let you know. Bye-bye.”
The men continued to stare at her.
“What’s the story?” Spike said.
They all had ridiculously stupid nicknames. Spike, Blade, Point. Spike seemed to be the one in charge. When they weren’t leering at her, they were doing sit-ups and push-ups, sharpening their knives, and cleaning their guns.
“We have the go to take them out,” Yvonne said.
“The go, huh?” Spike said.
The three men laughed.
Yvonne ignored them and reminded herself not to use military terms again. “We’re supposed to make it look like an accident,” she said.
“Guess that negates using rocket-propelled grenades,” Edge said.
“Yeah, and machine guns. Bummer,” Blade said.
Another round of laughter.
“What’s your plan?” Spike asked.
“I’m an animal trainer, not a soldier,” Yvonne said.
“Yeah, I got that,” Spike said. “We need a dog trained or something, we’ll let you know. How about we follow them upriver, catch ’em along a lonely stretch of water, board ’em, kill ’em, then scuttle their boat, making it look like they ran into something, or exploded. That sound good?”
Yvonne nodded.
“Cast off!” Spike shouted, and climbed up to the wheelhouse.
Yvonne made her way to the bow.
Spike backed the Anjo away from the dock and swung it around. When he reached the main channel, he pushed the throttle to full bore. The powerful engines roared and the bow lurched up. Yvonne stumbled, but caught the rail before she fell backward. She turned and looked up at the wheelhouse. Spike gave her a nasty grin and a sarcastic salute.
Yvonne could hardly wait to get off the boat and out of Brazil, but not before she reunited with Marty and Dylan for a little payback. First, they had stolen the hatchlings from under her nose, humiliating her in front of Noah Blackwood. Then they had nearly scared her to death by shoving her into a pitch-black laboratory with the chupacabra. It didn’t matter that the chupacabra had turned out to be a harmless potbellied pig. She had been in that room for over an hour on top of a lab bench, convinced that the chupacabra was going to tear her throat out at any second. The fear she’d felt then still haunted her, but it wasn’t the worst part. The whole experience was made infinitely more humiliating by the fact that it was Butch McCall who had saved her. He’d burst into the room with his gun drawn. She had never been so happy to see someone in her life … until he switched the light on and they saw the pig wearing the chupacabra’s harness. Yvonne had screamed in rage. Butch had collapsed onto the floor in a fit of laughter. She had never heard Butch laugh before; she had barely seen him smile. The pig had run over Butch and out the door, squealing. This had made him laugh even harder. Making it worse, when Butch told Noah what the boys had done to her, Noah had laughed, too, in spite of the fact that he’d wanted to kill both Yvonne and Butch for costing him the hatchlings, his panda cubs, the four children, his helicopter, and his pride.
Yvonne had to hang on tightly as Spike brought the Anjo around the bend. In front of them was a stretch of straightaway that went on for miles. There wasn’t a single boat on the water for as far as they could see.
Spike slowed the Anjo to a crawl. Yvonne turned and looked up at the wheelhouse. He had handed control of the boat over to one of his men and was coming down the gangway carrying two pairs of binoculars. He passed her a pair.
“They either found a tributary, or they’re hiding in the cover along shore,” he said. “It’ll take some time, but we’ll flush ’em out.”
Yvonne shook her head. They hadn’t found a tributary. They weren’t hiding. “They’re gone,” she said.
* * *
Marty and the others smiled down at the Gizmo screen at Yvonne’s frowning face. Marty had taken off the spyglasses so that everyone could see what the dragonspy was tracking.
“We’re not gone,” he said. “We’re thirty miles upriver from you.”
“Thirty-two point six,” Ted corrected. They were all back on deck again as the Rivlan slowly chugged its way through another logjam of boats. “Checking the tributaries is going to slow them way down. There are hundreds of them along the Amazon. It’s incredible how difficult it can be to find someone along the same river.”
“Tell me about it,” Crow said. “I’ve been down here for months looking for Buckley Johnson. And I don’t think he’s been trying to hide from me.”
“How did you find him anyway?” Dylan asked.
“Luck,” Crow said. “I tracked him from Arizona to Mexico. Lost him in Mexico, then picked his up his trail again in Costa Rica. Lost him again in Rio, then picked the trail back up in Manaus, then lost him again. I wandered from town to town, village to village, for months. I was about ready to hang it up when I ran into a guy who wholesales carrots.”
“Carrots?” Marty asked.
“Oh, man!” Dylan said. “Caught by his carrot addiction.”
“What are you talking about?” Ted asked.
“Buck lives on raw carrots,” Dylan explained. “It’s almost all he eats.”
“Bucks Bunny,” Marty said.
“That’s really bad,” Dylan said.
“Anyway,” Crow continued, “the carrot wholesaler said that a guy named Buck shows up at his warehouse once a month like clockwork and loads up. Said he was a biologist working at Lansa’s jag preserve. And that I had just missed him. He came through a few days before I got there with two women and a young guy. I got ahold of the local police, and they gave me a lift upriver after I gave them a bucket of cash. They wouldn’t take me any farther than the fuel barge. That’s when Travis Wolfe flew in on Noah Blackwood’s helicopter.” Crow looked at Ted. “What exactly is your beef with Noah Blackwood?”
“It’s a long and sordid story,” Ted said.
/> Crow pointed upriver at the heavy boat traffic. “Looks like we have some time.”
Ted began, “It started out with Noah hiring Wolfe and me to catch a great white shark for him …”
Luther was at the edge of camp watching a thick line of army ants destroying and eating everything in their path.
The hatchlings had been fed. Buck was trying to pick up radio signals from the collared jaguars — with no success because every communication device in the camp was down. Grace and Ana were sitting outside their hut having an intense girls-only conversation, which Luther had absolutely no interest in.
He looked at his watch. I would be several hours until the next feeding.
Or food toss, he thought. Buck’s new feeding technique was efficient, taking a fraction of time as his own, but it was also boring. Ana had said that they should all stay in camp until there was word from Wolfe or Laurel.
It was more of a suggestion than an order, Luther thought. And who put her in charge anyway? Time to check this place out.
He went into Jake’s hut and found an old climbing harness and a cracked helmet.
Now all he had to do was find a way up into Flanna’s web. He thought about telling Ana he was going to do a little canopy exploration, but he was pretty sure she wouldn’t be on board, so he decided to use the don’t tell, don’t hear no technique, which had worked well for him most of his life. He took the path farthest from the huts.
Several things struck him about the rain forest. He had known it was going to be hot and humid, but knowing it didn’t prepare him for how it actually felt. The air was thick and stifling, making it hard to breathe. His T-shirt, pants, socks, and underwear were drenched in sweat. The other thing that surprised him was the noise. The rain forest echoed loudly with buzzing, clicking, chirping, squeaking, screaming, chattering, rustling, and other creeping sounds. Luther walked down the narrow path feeling like there were a thousand eyes on him.
Something bit him on the neck. He slapped it and in the process cut the back of his hand on a razor-sharp leaf, which hurt worse than the bug bite. It seemed like everything in the rain forest was out to get him.
Death by a thousand cuts.