Santos muttered something in Quechua as they approached. He kissed his fingertips and made the sign of the cross, then backed slowly away. He had paled considerably. Naldo aped the older man's movements and headed back toward the trail.
'
Merritt was unfamiliar with the word, but Sam wasn't.
'Demon,' she translated. A crinkle formed in her forehead between her brows.
'What's that supposed to mean?' Merritt asked, but a moment later he had his answer. Were it not for the tufts of golden fur hanging from the branches of the ceiba and scattered through the ferns, the animal would have been unidentifiable. Broken and disarticulated bones littered the ground, the white calcium stained brown with blood. The flies fought for space on the vegetation, which was crusted with what looked like rust. With the exception of the knots of tendons on the ends of the long bones, there wasn't a single scrap of flesh to be seen. It looked like the animal had struck the ground at high velocity like a meteorite, spreading its remains in a shotgun- pattern that covered close to thirty feet, at the end of which were the shattered bones of the skull.
'What could have done this to a jaguar?' Sam asked.
'Probably poachers,' the birdman said from behind them. 'And this is all that's left after the scavengers were finished with the carcass.' He stooped, plucked a feather from a clump of grasses, and studied it for a moment before he stuffed it into his backpack.
'I didn't see any even remotely fresh tracks,' Merritt said. 'Those vines we were hacking through would have taken weeks to obscure the path, and this mess can't be more than a couple days old.'
'They could have come from another direction.'
'Then they would have had to have been natives since we're thirty-some miles into the heart of the rainforest and that river is the only way in or out of this valley from the east. And I don't see natives being this careless or destructive. They would have carefully skinned the animal and utilized every inch of it, right down to the bones.'
'And most native South American cultures revere, if not outright worship, the jaguar,' Sam added.
'Well then, you tell me,' the birdman said, puffing out his chest and focusing on Merritt. 'With your vast knowledge of the animals of the Amazon and the cultures of the hidden tribes, what happened to this jaguar?'
Merritt crouched beside the broken remnants of the skull. Teeth surrounded the fragments of the mandible. A hairy black spider scuttled out of one of the eye sockets where it had funneled a web. He heard the crunch of footsteps as the rest of their group arrived. Brushing aside a cascade of fern fronds, he exposed the round cap of the animal's cranium.
'I have absolutely no idea,' Merritt said. He held up the crown of bone. A ragged hole had been punched squarely through the middle, from which lightning-bolt factures radiated to the very edges. 'But I can't imagine it was a pleasant way to die.'
II
Dahlia could tell something interesting was transpiring in the clearing ahead. She and Jay had been trailing in the rear with the freckled farmboy Morton, the dark-skinned Webber with the sun-bleached hair, and their youthful guide, Kemen, allowing the others to forge a path through the jungle while she and her cameraman waited like vultures for anything intriguing to pop up. They were definitely going to need it. So far, all they had was some boring footage of the town, the river, and a bunch of trees and animals.
She skirted around Morton and Webber, who carried the large crate containing the ground-penetrating radar and magnetometer units between them on long wooden poles that rested on their shoulders, to get a better view of the gathering at the far end of the light gap. The way everyone had rushed through the opening reinforced her belief that there was something out there worthy of documentation.
'Jay,' she said, turning to her cameraman. He had paled significantly and was soggy with sweat and the last of the rain, which apparently had abated sometime while they were beneath the dripping canopy. 'Start filming as you exit the path. I want to record everything as if we're walking into the clearing and seeing whatever's out there for the first time.'
'Isn't that exactly what we're doing?'
'Don't be a smartass. Just get that camera rolling.'
She stepped to the side of the beaten path and waited for Jay to pass her. He held the digital recorder in front of him and studied the four-inch monitor. Somehow, he managed to mind his feet and the image at the same time. She had to give him credit. The automatic stabilization system would prevent the recording from bouncing violently with each step
Dahlia watched over his shoulder as he traversed the path, ascended the toppled trunk, and dropped again to the ground. The crowd ahead had begun to disperse, and was now spread over a span of roughly twenty feet, at the end of which several crouched amid the ferns, inspecting something on the ground. Whatever they had found held them enrapt. Her heart raced. It took every last ounce of restraint to keep from commanding Jay to run ahead. This was the perfect opportunity to build dramatic tension. If the viewer felt even half of the anticipation that she currently experienced, their film would truly be something special.
'I want to see it like they did when they discovered whatever's down there,' she said. 'Stick to the path until you can clearly tell what's going on, then go over to where those guys are kneeling.'
Jay followed her direction perfectly. By the time he broke off to the right, she had an unobstructed view of what had attracted so much attention. Between the roaring buzz of the swirling flies, the curls of desiccated skin and fur, and the wash of blood and broken bones, it reminded her more of news footage from Serbia than anything she had expected to find in the jungle. The sheer ferocity with which the animal had been slaughtered was frightening, beyond even the aftermath of the attack of a great white shark. What could possibly be responsible for such carnage?
'Are you getting this?' she asked. Her voice trembled with excitement.
'Hard to miss.'
Jay slowed his pace and angled the camera in such a way that if she craned her neck, she could see the monitor too. Part of her had expected the scene not to translate through the lens, but if anything, the camera and the level of the zoom served to amplify the atrocity.
When they finally caught up with the others, Merritt was holding up a fractured section of the cranium.
'Give me a tight zoom on that part of the skull. Make sure to get the hole.'
Merritt noticed the camera in his face, dropped the bone, and backed hurriedly away.
'Cut,' Dahlia said. Jay stretched his back and rolled his head on his neck. 'Let's get one more shot looking straight down this mess from the edge of the tree line. Zoom in past the remains, and then zoom out as fast as you can. It looks like the animal was torn apart while it was running. I want to see if we can replicate the effect on film.'
She turned and headed toward the wall of foliage, listening to the crackle of Jay's tread on the detritus to ensure he was following, the only sound other than the muffled voices and the static buzz of black flies. She paused. That in itself was noteworthy. Where was the dissonance of the calling birds, the screeching monkeys, and the croaking frogs? It was as though nearly all other life had vacated this region of the rainforest.
After just a few short minutes in the blazing tropical sun, she felt the cold emanating from the shadows beyond the trees. Hackles stippled her triceps and crept up her spine as she turned her back on the watchful jungle.
'Stay right there,' Jay said. He had nearly reached her, but now stood in place, ever-so-slowly raising the