It was at that moment, however, that their helicopter exploded.
THE EXPLOSION echoed throughout the valley.
Wizard, Solomon, and the kids all spun as one to see the chopper burst out in a massive fireball.
Zoe came running back along the riverbank, staring at the flaming wreck of the Huey.
Then a branch snapped on the opposite bank and she whirled to see a dark figure slither out of the water and disappear into the foliage.
A native.
Then it hit Zoe.
The Neetha had been found over the centuries, probably on many occasions. By explorers, by accident, even by one Angolan patrol, it seemed. But if an outsider who found the tribe never got away to tell the world about them, then the Neetha would forever remain the stuff of legend.
And what better way to distract a recently arrived visitor than with these spectacularly carved trees—the great statues absorbed the visitor’s attention while the tribe’s saboteurs sank their boat or disabled their chopper.
And now they’ve trapped us, too,Zoe thought.
“Christ,” she said. “How could I have been so—oh, damn.”
They emerged from the foliage at the base of the huge carved trees: dark-skinned tribesmen, their faces covered in harsh white warpaint, their yellow eyes bloodshot. Foul bony growths protruded from their foreheads and jaws, giving them a gruesome, less-than-human appearance.
Proteus Syndrome,Wizard thought.Deformities caused by diet and worsened by years of inbreeding.
There were maybe sixteen of them and they held bows and guns in their hands. They crept forward in a low manner, cautious but strong.
As they approached from all sides, Zoe, Solomon, and Wizard instinctively formed a circle around the two children.
“I think our search is over,” Solomon whispered. “It appears the Neetha have found us .”
THE REALM OF THE NEETHA
THE REALM OF THE NEETHA
KATANGA PROVINCE, CONGO
DECEMBER 14, 2007, 1930 HOURS
SURROUNDED by Neetha warriors, Zoe and the group were force-marched up the left-hand river fork—a winding walk through dense foliage and past some rocky rapids. At one point in their journey, Wizard tripped on a root and fell; he rose to his knees only to find a knife pressed again his throat, a Neetha guard gripping him in the apparent belief it had been an escape attempt.
“Quwanna wango,”the Neetha man hissed. Wizard froze as his captor slowly pressed the blade against his throat, drawing a thin line of blood. Zoe and the others all held their breath…but abruptly the guard released Wizard with a rude shove. No one else lost their footing after that.
As night fell, they came to a great cliff that rose high above the jungle.
A large crack in the otherwise-solid natural wall loomed before them, a dramatic ravine perhaps twenty yards wide.
Plugging the base of this ravine was an imposing man-made structure—a huge stone fort lit by flaming torches and constructed of enormous cube-shaped boulders. Hundreds of sharpened elephant tusks flanked a steep stone stairway that led up to the structure, all pointing aggressively outward.
The only gap in the fort was a great gateway at its base. At least twenty feet high, it was built in the shape of an animal’s jaws bared wide. A fast-flowing river gushed out from its lower half and tumbled down a canal in the center of the stone stairs—so that there seemed to be no actual footway that allowed access through the gateway.
Ten Neetha warriors manned a platform in front of the gate. With them, snarling and grunting and straining on leashes, were hyenas.
“Tamed hyenas?” Zoe breathed in horror as they climbed the stairs.
Wizard whispered, “Hieronymus claimed that the Neetha used hyenas as hunting dogs, but his claims were dismissed as fanciful. He said they rear hyenas from cub age and train them using a terrible system of beatings and starvation.”
Solomon hissed, “If a hyena could be tamed, it would be an incredible asset. Their sense of smell is second to none. You could never hope to escape a pack hunting you.”
“A trap back at the river. Destroyed boats and planes. Hyenas as guard dogs,” Zoe said. “What the Hell have we got ourselves into?” She gripped Lily’s hand a little more tightly.
They came to the great gate at the top of the stairs. One of the sentries there blew a horn, and suddenly a wooden bridge fitted with steps was lowered from inside the arch structure. It slotted into place so that it straddled the flowing river rushing out from the gate’s yawning mouth.
Dwarfed by the terrible archway, surrounded by their fearsome guards, Zoe and her team stepped onto the drawbridge and disappeared inside the gate, entering the realm of the Neetha.
They emerged inside the ravine.
Sheer vertical cliffs rose dramatically on either side of them, soaring toward the sky.
At the top of the ravine, four hundred feet overhead, the trees of the rain forest had been deliberately bent, forced to grow inward so that they formed a canopyover the ravine, blocking it from outside view. To an observer
