And then it hit him.
The sudden and rapid movement. The stasis of the beacon for almost an hour now.
'Saddle up men,' he said. 'We break camp in fifteen minutes. Full night vision. We're running hot.'
There was a moment of hesitation.
'They've discovered the tracking device,' Tasker snapped. He shot a glance at McMasters, who seethed under the accusation. 'Once they found it, they relocated it as quickly as possible, hoping to throw us off their scent. They're probably already moving out while we're wasting our time sitting here debating it.'
Tasker looked at each of his men in turn. McMasters, Telford, Reubens, and Jones: four identical dark-eyed, mud-crusted interchangeable grunts. How dare they not immediately respond to a direct order.
'Move!' he snapped. 'Now!'
This time the men leapt up from where they sat. Within ten minutes, all supplies were packed and all gear stowed. They hit the path in double-time with the awkward lenses strapped tightly across their foreheads. The darkness brightened in subtle shades of green and gray. Snaking roots cast uneven shadows across the path, making the ground appear to rise and fall in waves. Severed vines dangled to either side from where they'd been hacked away during the previous day.
McMasters fell back from the lead when the trail widened and spoke softly so that only Tasker could hear.
'What are the rules of engagement?'
'You are not to directly engage the targets until I give the order. We need them to lead us to the prize first. For now, this is old fashioned recon. We wait and watch. And once they've led us to the treasure, we wipe them off the face of the planet.'
McMasters gave a sharp nod and jogged back to the point.
Tasker was furious that their surveillance had been discovered. He had thought McMasters the most skilled of his men, but apparently he had been wrong. Their prey had found the tracking device within twenty-four hours of its placement, which was entirely unacceptable. Now, like rabbits, they were running. As always though, Tasker was prepared for this contingency. The night vision goggles would still allow them to track their quarry, and they would be able to do so under the cover of night. Everything would still go according to plan. All this setback had cost them was sleep. Still, they were better rested and in better shape than those they pursued, who had barely slept either of the past two nights, and had surely exhausted themselves creating this path that he and his men could now traverse at more than ten times the speed with which it had been forged. They would reach the location of the tracking device shortly after sunrise, and by the time the sun set again, they would be within striking distance.
Movement from his right caught his eye. For a fraction of a second he could have sworn he'd seen the blur of a running man off in the jungle. It must have only been an illusion created by the random alignment of branches and leaves. They were professional soldiers. They would have known if anyone had even tried to get within a hundred yards of them.
He returned his focus to the path ahead, and the fortune that awaited them.
Chapter Five
I
The backpack was crumpled in the middle of the path amid the mess of its dumped contents. Crimson dots spotlighted the jumble from the thin beams of the rising sun that managed to reach through the interwoven branches. The world around them hummed as though with an electrical current. Mosquitoes swarmed over the bushes to either side of the path in greater numbers than he had ever seen in one location in his life. They covered the leaves and filled the air in roiling clouds.
He knelt beside the overturned rucksack. His men surrounded him, automatic rifles pointed into the infested jungle at the four points of the compass. The tracking device was still in the bottom of the outer left pouch where McMasters had pinned it into the lining by the single metal prong. It showed no signs of tampering or manipulation. He moved on to the former contents of the bag, and sifted through long- and short-sleeved shirts, jeans, cargo pants, socks, boxers, and a host of other personal items: toothbrush and toothpaste, eye drops, a small medical kit, and prescriptions for Ambien, BuSpar, and Xanax. The foil punch-cards intrigued him. A sleep aid, an anti-psychotic, and an anti-anxiety/anti-depressant. Whoever the bag belonged to appeared to be a real nut job. He turned over a windbreaker and a spider the size of his hand raised its forelegs at him.
'Christ.' He drew his hunting knife and impaled the creature through the thorax, pinning it to the earth. While its legs squirmed and twitched, he evaluated the sections of soil beneath it and between the proliferation of roots and weeds. There. Two distinct sets of footprints, both bare. Interesting.
Tasker yanked the blade from the spider's back, wiped it on his fatigues, and shoved it back into its sheath. He stood again and surveyed the chaos as a whole. Several feet to the west of the path, the groundcover was flattened and uprooted. Beyond were more partial footprints, spaced far enough apart to confirm what they already knew. The men had been running. The one carrying the pack must have tripped and fallen, spilling everything out of his backpack. So why hadn't he repacked his belongings and continued onward? Even an expensive digital camera remained facedown in the dirt.
He turned his attention to the swirling masses of mosquitoes. Now he needed to determine what happened to the men whose footprints terminated right here.
The smell of violated flesh and spilled blood reminded him of the scent of the bodies he had pulled out of the rubble in the aftermath of a market bombing in Baghdad during Desert Storm. It was all around him, which made it impossible to pinpoint the source. Fortunately, he didn't have to look very far. He pushed through a spear-leafed bush tangled with vines that reached the ground from the branches of the ceiba tree above it, and immediately saw the remains through the swarming insects and the carpet of them on the ground. The bones were shattered and spread out over an area ten feet square. A disarticulated foot rested closest to him, skin black, capped with the severed tendons that attached to the stub of the ankle. There was a portion of a knee here, a section of spine there. A broken ribcage crawling with bloated black flies and mosquitoes alike. He skirted the carnage until he reached what was left of the cranium. The crown had been broken to leave just the bowl of the occipital portion of the skull, which was alive with bugs feeding on the residual vessels in the membranous lining. The upper row of teeth was still attached, minus the four in the very front. The conglomeration of bones that formed the bridge of the nose and the orbits was splintered and fragmented. Tatters of clothing were draped over the surrounding branches like garlands. He looked up to see flies fighting over the droplets of blood that had dried on the undersides of the broad leaves in the lower canopy.
Tasker whistled in admiration. Whoever attacked this man had absolutely obliterated him.
Crouching, he studied the mud despite the protests of the startled insects. There wasn't a single discernible human footprint, only a handful of faint impressions that barely compressed the earth. They resembled the imprints of a camel's hooves, only much lighter and with a wider splay. Whoever did this had done an exceptional job of covering their tracks.
'There's another one over here,' Telford called from somewhere off to his right.
Tasker rose and fought his way through the snarls of vegetation. Telford hovered over what was left of the body, nervously swinging his rifle from side to side as he watched the forest. The area was similarly littered with bones and ripped clothing.
'This ain't right, man,' Telford said. 'I can't think of anything that could have possibly done this. Anything.'
Beads of sweat drew lines through the mask of mud on Telford's face. The whites of his eyes stood out like beacons. He freed one hand from the weapon and pulled the golden cross out from beneath his shirt so that it dangled over his fatigues.
