The boy obviously had no idea how lethal the jungle and mangroves could be. He was probably a small-town kid who hung around bars and ran messages for his brother.
“We can’t do that, especially not at night-and not with those men out there.” Max could feel the boy’s nervousness as well as his own. He had no desire to go wading waist-deep in the dark estuary with saltwater crocodiles cruising. Max knew the boy wasn’t thinking straight, and if he panicked, they both might die. There was no choice; Max had to shock him into focusing on survival.
“Don’t tell me what to do!” Xavier grunted, trying to push Max away.
“Listen to me,” Max hissed, his hand reaching to the boy’s shirtfront, twisting it into a knot. He used his strength to hold Xavier back, to stop him from running blindly into the night. “We survive every minute. We can’t even think about tomorrow! We can’t even think about getting out of this mess tonight. We stay where we are and do the best we can. You want to go out there? I don’t like crocodiles or water snakes, and I don’t like men with guns. They killed the others. You think they won’t kill you?”
Max felt the boy’s body relax in surrender. Xavier had never had to think for himself. Alejandro had shielded him all his life. His thought process was totally messed up.
“I’m thirsty. I am hurting. I need water,” he whimpered.
Max pulled him forward and pushed the creeper into his hands. “If we get through tonight, we’ll get water tomorrow. Now climb! Get into the fork of the tree. I’ll be right behind you.”
No sooner had Max issued the command than a bloodcurdling wail tore at their nerves. Xavier hesitated, his feet already off the ground, but his hands froze in fear as they clutched the creeper.
“Get going!” Max yelled, forgetting there were men probably within earshot. Like a child’s scream, the sound became a banshee wail of fear. And closer! Palms and bushes thrashed as something hurtled toward them from the depths of the night.
Max’s hair stood up on the back of his neck, and ice-cold goose bumps tickled his spine. What was it? It didn’t matter; there was no time to think about it. Xavier had still not moved. Max punched him hard. The boy shouted in pain, but it did the trick-he scrambled up the creeper. The undergrowth shuddered as if a mighty force had been let loose. The sounds of terror escalated, louder and louder until they were almost unbearable.
The searchlight swung into the trees, and Max saw a deep black shadow of a beast, its eyes glaring yellow, its ivory-colored fangs smothered in blood. A black jaguar gripped a paca, a rodent about the size of a small dog, in its unyielding jaws and shook it violently, killing it by snapping its neck. The big cat turned and carried its prey into the smothering forest. The searchlight jerked through the night. Max and Xavier clung to the fork in the tree’s boughs. They heard the boat cutting back and forth in the shallow water, the beam of light sweeping across them. But no alarms were raised, no voice called out and no gunshots tore into the jungle. The boat’s engine pitch changed as the throttle was opened, roaring louder and then becoming more muffled as it eased away into the surf. The two boys were left with the comparative silence of the chattering insects.
Had the big cat caught their scent? For all Max knew, the hapless paca had come between them and the jaguar, offering a more manageable victim. A clawing, biting attack surging out of the blackness would have been all they’d have known about it.
How close had they been to death?
A few strides?
Despite the cloying heat, Max shivered.
It had been too close.
It was the longest night Max could remember. When the cool predawn light seeped through the canopy, he blearily checked out the ground below. His face was puffy from fretful sleep, his limbs stiff from lying crookedly in the tree. Beyond the strong breeze swishing the palm fronds and treetops, he could hear the sea washing against the shore.
He shook Xavier. The boy groaned, then quickly sat up. Max clambered down the vine and moved toward the sound of the crashing surf. He reached the small beach where they had landed the day before, and now he could see that Alejandro had chosen the only place where they had any chance at all of getting ashore; they were on a spit of land. Fifty meters away, curving into the estuary, the mangroves cluttered the shoreline. For the two boys to try to make their way through there would have been exhausting, dangerous and probably impossible.
The salt air refreshed Max, but he resisted running into the small waves to wash himself free of the grit and sweat that had clung to his body since they entered the jungle. The Coast Guard cutter was still beyond the reef, while men in Zodiac inflatable boats swept the lagoon, doing a final daylight search for bodies. Max kept a low profile in the undergrowth and scrunched down into the sand. A moment later, Xavier joined him, shivering despite the warm breeze. He had barely slept, evidently. Max looked at the boy’s agitated state. Perhaps it was more than fear and grief that Xavier was dealing with.
“Listen, are you on drugs? Are you going through withdrawal?”
Max could see the boy’s expression was genuine. “Drugs?” Xavier asked. “Are you kidding me? Alejandro would kill me if he saw me touch that stuff. I need a cigarette. You got any smokes?”
Max was relieved the problem wasn’t as bad as he’d imagined. He shook his head. Xavier shrugged and nodded toward the water. “They still here, eh?”
“They won’t hang about all day; we’ve just got to wait until we can move,” Max said. He was already planning their escape from the confines of the overgrown peninsula.
“Move? What do you think we can do out here? We’re going to die-that’s what’s going to happen to us. This is the wilderness. Nobody lives here; nobody comes here. Except the drug boats. This is what we do: we wait till they have gone and we light a fire, a big fire. We make smoke. The boats will come for us.”
Max didn’t look at him, keeping his eyes on the inflatable that weaved its way in and out of the coral outcrops. It seemed to Max that the men were withdrawing to the ship, that they had achieved most of their tasks the night before.
“You can do that, if you want,” Max said, “but what exactly are you going to make a fire with? And, if you do find a way, how are you going to survive until someone, maybe, sees the smoke? You have no food, you have no water and you’re going to have to stay in that tree for safety. I reckon you’ll be dead in less than a week. You think your drug-running friends haven’t already heard about the attack? They’ll be lying low for a while. They’re not going to come out here when there’s a Coast Guard patrol in these waters.”
Max squirmed back into the undergrowth, Xavier dogging his footsteps. “We need water now; otherwise we won’t even get through today,” Max said.
They were above the high-water mark, and Max was scrabbling in the sand. He lifted up two or three fan- shaped shells. “Find me some rocks that look like these.” Max ran his finger along the ragged edge. “Broken, like this.” He beckoned Xavier into the trees and began the search. “We need something that might cut. You want a drink? Find me a cutting stone.”
Making sure they stayed out of sight of the patrolling sailors, it took twenty minutes to find half a dozen stones; then Max made his way back to the mangrove. He took one of the jagged rocks and began stripping fibers from a palm tree, twisting and gathering them until they became long and thick enough to act as rough string. Then, finding a piece of fallen wood, he split the string apart near one end with the sharp stone and forced the stone down through the string. Using the fibers, he bound the stick at the base of the jagged rock, then did the same at the top of the split, securing the rough-edged piece of stone. Max had just made a primitive ax.
He pulled down one of the vines and hacked at it. It took three or four attempts, but he finally managed to cut away a two-meter section. He kept his thumb over the end, as you would cover the end of a hose.
“Open your mouth,” he told Xavier. Max held the vine over the boy’s mouth and released the pressure of his thumb. Water trickled down and Xavier slurped greedily. It tasted slightly woody, but they both drank without hesitation.
“Where did you learn that?” Xavier asked.
Max shrugged. You had to think for yourself. You had to look around and see what might save you. He knew it must have been his father who had told him about water collecting in jungle vines. That thought was interrupted by the sound of the ship’s horn blowing. Max ran back to the shore and hunkered down among the small bushes. The American cutter was turning. Mission accomplished.
Xavier muttered under his breath. Max did not need to understand the language to comprehend its meaning; it was obvious that he was cursing the men who had killed his brother.
The boys lay in the sand and watched until the vessel disappeared behind the headland. Max gazed at the
