'Still, it's at least something,' Kelly said, refusing to dismiss this bit of hopeful news. 'Some sign that others are out there:'
'And besides, these yams are damn good,' Frank added, munching a mouthful. 'I was already getting sick of the rice:'
Manny grinned, running his fingers through his jaguar's ruff. Tor-for had feasted on a large catfish and lay stretched by the fire.
The Rangers had set up a second campfire a short distance away. At sunset, they held a short service for their fallen comrade. Now they were sullen. Only a few muttered words were shared among them. It was unlike the previous nights when the soldiers were full of ribald jokes and loud guffaws before settling to their own hammocks and posts. Not this night.
'We should all get to sleep,' Kelly finally said, pushing to her feet. 'We have another long day tomorrow:'
With murmured assents and a few groans, the party dispersed to their separate hammocks. When returning from the latrine, Nate found Professor Kouwe smoking near his hammock.
'Professor,' Nate said, sensing Kouwe wanted to speak to him in private.
'Walk with me a moment. Before the Rangers activate the motion sensors:' The shaman led the way a short distance into the forest.
Nate followed. 'What is it?'
Kouwe simply continued until they were deep within the jungle's gloom. The camp's two fires were only greenish glows through the bushes. He finally stopped, puffing deeply on his pipe.
'Why did you bring me out here?'
Kouwe flicked on a small flashlight.
Nate stared around. The jungle ahead was clear of all but a few trees: short breadfruit palms, oranges, figs. Bushes and low plants covered the forest floor, unnaturally dense. Nate realized what he was seeing. It was the abandoned Indian garden. He even spotted a pair of bamboo poles, staked among the plantings and burned at the top. Normally these torches were filled with tok-tok powder and lit during harvest times as a smoky repellent against hungry insects. Without a doubt, Indians had once labored here.
Nate had seen other such cultivations during his journeys in the Amazon, but now, here at night, with the patch overgrown and gone wild, it had a haunted feeling to it. He could almost sense the eyes of the Indian dead watching him.
'We're being tracked,' Kouwe said.
The words startled Nate. 'What are you talking about?'
Kouwe led Nate into the garden. He pointed his flashlight toward a passion fruit tree and pulled down one of the lower branches. 'It's been picked bare:' Kouwe turned to him. 'I'd say about the same time as when we were hauling and securing the boats. Several of the plucked stems were still moist with sap:'
'And you noticed this?'
'I was watching for it,' Kouwe said. 'The past two mornings, when I've gone off to gather fruit for the day's journey, I noticed some places that I'd walked the night before had been disturbed. Broken branches, a hogplum tree half empty of its fruit:'
'It could be jungle animals, foraging during the night:'
Kouwe nodded. 'I thought so at first, too. So I kept silent. I could find no footprints or definite proof. But now the regularity of these occurrences has convinced me otherwise. Someone is tracking us:'
Who.
'Most likely Indians. These are their forests. They would know how to follow without being seen:'
'The Yanomamo:'
'Most likely,' Kouwe said.
Nate heard the doubt in the professor's voice. 'Who else could it be?'
Kouwe's eyes narrowed. 'I don't know. But it strikes me as odd that they would not be more careful. A true tracker would not let his presence be known. It's almost too sloppy for an Indian:'
'But you're an Indian. No white man would've noticed these clues, not even the Army Rangers:'
'Maybe:' Kouwe sounded unconvinced.
'We should alert Captain Waxman.'
'That's why I pulled you aside first. Should we?'
'What do you mean?'
'If they are Indians, I don't think we should force the issue by having an Army Ranger team beating the bushes in search of them. The Indians, or whoever is out there, would simply vanish. If we wish to contact them, maybe we should let them come to us. Let them grow accustomed to our strangeness. Let them make the first move rather than the other way around:'
Nate's first instinct was to argue against such caution. He was anxious to forge ahead, to find answers to his father's disappearance after so many years. Patience was hard to swallow. The wet season would begin soon. The rains would start again, washing away all hopes of tracking Gerald Clark's trail.
But then again, as he had been reminded today by the caiman's attack, the Amazon was king. It had to be taken at its own pace. To fight, to thrash, only invited defeat. The best way to survive was to flow with the current.
'I think it's best if we wait a few more days,' Kouwe continued. 'First to see if I'm correct. Maybe you're right. Maybe it's just jungle animals. But if I'm right, I'd like to give the Indians a chance to come out on their own, rather than scare them away or force them here at gunpoint. Either way, we'd get no information:'
Nate finally conceded, but with a condition. 'We'll give it another two days. Then we tell someone:'
Kouwe nodded and flicked off his flashlight. 'We should be getting to bed:'
The pair hiked the short distance back to the glowing campfires. Nate pondered the shaman's words and insight. He remembered the way Kouwe's eyes had narrowed, questioning if it was Indians out there. Who else could it be?
Arriving back at the site, Nate found most of the camp already retired to their hammocks. A few soldiers patrolled the perimeter. Kouwe wished him good night and strode to his own mosquito-netted hammock. As Nate kicked out of his boots, he heard a mumbled moan from Frank O'Brien in a nearby hammock. After today's tragedy, Nate expected everyone would have troubled dreams.
He climbed into his hammock and threw an arm over his eyes, blocking out the firelight. Like it or not, there was no fighting the Amazon. It had its own pace, its own hunger. All you could do was pray you weren't the next victim. With this thought in mind, it was a long time until sleep claimed Nate. His final thought: Who would be next?
Corporal Jim DeMartini was quickly growing to hate this jungle. After four days travelling the river, DeMartini was sick of the whole damned place: the eternal moist air, the stinging flies, the gnats, the constant screams of monkeys and birds. Additionally, closer to home, mold seemed to grow on everything-on their clothes, on their hammocks, on their rucksacks. All his gear smelled like sweaty gym socks abandoned in a locker for a month. And this was after only four days.
Pulling patrol, he stood in the woods near the latrine, leaning on a tree, his M-16 resting comfortably in his arms. Jorgensen shared this shift with him but had stopped to use the latrine. From only a few yards away, DeMartini could hear his partner whistling as he zipped down.
'Fine time to take a shit,' DeMartini groused.
Jorgensen heard him. 'It's the damn water. . :'
'Just hurry it up.' DeMartini shook out a cigarette, his mind drifting back to the fate of his fellow unit member Rodney Graves. DeMartini had been in the lead boat with a few of the civilians, but he had been close enough to see the monstrous caiman rise out of the river and rip Graves from the other boat. He gave an involuntary shudder. He was no plebe. He had seen men die before: gunshots, helicopter crashes, drowning. But nothing compared to what he had witnessed today. It was something out of a nightmare.
Glancing over his shoulder, he cursed Jorgensen. What's taking the bas-tard so long? He took a deep drag on the cigarette. Probably jerking off. But then again, he couldn't blame Jorgensen if he was. It was distracting with the two women among them. After setting up camp, he had covertly spied upon the Asian scientist as she had stripped out of her khaki jacket. Her thin blouse beneath had been damp from sweat and clung invitingly to her
