of hunger and pain. Peace. It would be so easy to give in.
His reserves were nil. In captivity, the daily battle to survive had taken its toll, left him depleted in body and mind. He was tired and desperately hungry now. He groaned loudly and fought the urge to sleep again. Hadn’t he just slept? How long? A minute? An hour? More? He had no idea.
Around him, the animals of the daylight, too, were noisily preparing for sleep. The nocturnal creatures, their omnivorous appetites whetted, were beginning to stir. The air was suddenly cool. The sun fell suddenly in these latitudes and left behind a sky of cobalt blue and vermilion against which the black palms marching along the riverbank were silhouetted.
High above the treetops, a small cloud, lit from within like a Venetian lantern, hovered above the dark sea of trees. It was really all so very beautiful here. This twilight hour was like some faint memory of love; or fading dreams of happier childhood times. He closed his eyes and tried to hold these comforting images, but they skittered away, leaving a vacuum that delirium could slide into unobserved.
He fixed his pale eyes on the waning yellow moon and wondered if he had the strength of soul to survive.
For not the first time in his life, death looked good.
Alexander Hawke, dreaming of peace, finally slipped into the waiting arms of a coldly beckoning Morpheus.
2
H awke’s vivid dreams were filled not with beauty but with looming images of death and horror. During his long months in captivity, he had become a new man. Different, and, he thought, during those periods when he felt rational, not necessarily better. He had seen true evil up close on a daily basis. For most of his life he’d refused to shake hands with the devil. Now, he felt they were on a first name basis.
The inhumanity he’d witnessed in the terror-training camps was of a different order of magnitude from anything he’d ever experienced before. In the waning days of the first Gulf War, young Royal Navy Flight Lieutenant Alexander Hawke had been flying close air support at low altitude over Baghdad. His airplane had been blown out of the sky by an Iraqi missile battery and both he and his weapons officer had been captured within the hour. It had been a most unpleasant experience. Yet even his brutal Iraqi jailers had shied away from the kind of cruel savagery he’d witnessed in the jungle camps.
He’d always suspected that men with absolute power were capable of absolutely anything. Now he knew that old axiom to be true. He felt weakened by the sureness of this belief, diminished by his new knowledge. Which was strange. Alex Hawke had always lived by the rule that what did not kill him only made him stronger. But Hawke did not feel strengthened by what he’d seen in the jungle.
He only felt colder.
Colder and harder.
The stars and bit players of these past episodes in captivity haunted his nightmares. In his malarial state, they crowded his waking hours as well. He would see a figure standing in a clearing, beckoning him; blink, and they would be gone. The thin line between nightmare and reality was becoming dangerously blurred. What was he really made of? What was he truly capable of? He didn’t know anymore.
The drums were silent. Perhaps the Xucuru had moved on. Missed him, somehow. He was conscious of a strange new sensation. Hope.
Now, lying hidden in his bed of reeds beside the river, edging toward consciousness, he was suddenly sure of one thing. There could be no surrender. Not now. Not yet. He must have slept all night, because he felt just a hint of the old vigor as he struggled awake.
No, not quite yet, old fellow, the narrator of dreams was saying in the background. Feverish and shivering, he allowed himself to drift upward, float into the conscious green realm of heat and jungle. The sun was up, fierce, reflecting off the brown surface of the river and the extravaganza of colors that comprised his forest. He rubbed his neck just below the ear, and his hand came away sticky. A vampire bat had nipped him during the night.
Blood, he thought looking at the smear on his palm. He smiled at the bright red oxygenated sight of it. He was probably infected, and probably dying of septicemia, but by God he was still alive. He had one chance, he thought, small as it might be. One last chance to escape.
You better Belize it.
There was a way, he thought now, sitting up in his bed of reeds, that the doomed expedition he’d led could be remembered as a success. If he could just put his current predicament in the correct perspective, he could argue that this one man, the lone survivor of an expedition purportedly launched to find El Dorado, the Lost City of the Amazon, had succeeded beyond his wildest dreams.
What he had discovered could prove to be vastly more valuable than some fabled city of gold. If he could survive to tell the tale.
He stood up, stretched his limbs. He was free. He had work to do. Yes. He was determined to survive long enough to raise an alarm about things he had witnessed. Evil was spawning under the perfect cover of the canopy. Even in his own span of captivity, he had sensed its insidious monstrosity. A force for terror was growing like some cancerous being, its tentacles reaching deep into the vast uncharted Amazon Basin, unseen and unchecked. Somehow, he had to live long enough to tell this story.
A howler monkey screamed just inches above his head and snapped him back to what now passed for reality. He froze. A lone jaguar was circling nearby, his nose in the air. He would easily die right here if he didn’t act fast and with something akin to rational thought. One needed to prioritize at times like this, that’s what his stint in the military had taught him about survival in hostile environments.
Hawke did just that.
One, keep breathing. Two, fashion some kind of weapon. Three, get to an outpost on the river. Get help.
A telephone. That’s what he needed. For that, he had to reach the nearest sizable river village. He had used the stars last night, making a rough calculation as to where he was. He believed the nearest outpost would be Cuiaba, a few days’ river travel to the east. It was hardly civilization but it would do for now.
He would need a sharpened bamboo spear. And a canoe. He’d learned their simple construction watching the Indians construct them in the camps. He would find and kill a tapir. With their short limbs, the small piglike mammals were easy to catch. Yes, first track and kill a tapir with his spear. Stretch its skin over a bamboo frame and build some kind of small canoe. Yes.
He shaded his eyes, peering over his stand of reeds, scanning the river in both directions for any sign of the Xucuru. Nothing. Only the indolent flow. The glare off the sun-flecked water was paralyzing, making his eyes red and watery. He needed to get out of the sun and find his tapir, build his boat. He felt dizzy and wanted to lie down again but there was no time for that. He must hurry.
His mind raced ahead of his body as he made preparations to move on.
He told himself he would be safe when his canoe reached Cuiaba. They would give him the pills for his fever. They would bandage his seeping wound. He would eat something other than roots and worms. He would dine on roast lamb and sleep once more in a feather bed. He would see friendly faces once more. He needed—damn mosquitoes!—he needed to get out of the blistering heat or he’d soon pass out again and then his goose would be well and truly cooked.
He managed to stagger a few steps through the deep mud and once more he was safely under the green umbrella. Gathering strength from some resource deep inside, he moved quickly through the tall thicket. He could see the bend in the river curving away. He had an eye peeled for a lone dugout, the inevitable Xucuru scout traveling in advance of the war party searching for him.
He made his plans for the possibility of survival. He would hide by day. He would fashion some kind of torch and travel by night. He would track and kill his tapir and eat its flesh. With its skin, he would build his canoe. When the sun fell, he’d return to the river and civilization.
That, at least, was the plan.
BY MIDDAY, with the sweat pouring off of him, and the subsequent chills, Alex Hawke had accomplished
