Teeth clenched, Nate edged to the wall, weighing his chances of firing at Zane. But the odds weren't good, not with Kelly's life at risk. He unslung his gun and heaved it through one of the slits.
Zane nodded, satisfied, and backed toward the exit. 'You'll have to excuse me, but I have a rendezvous to make. I suggest you three remain here. It's the safest spot in the valley at the moment:'
With those snide words, Zane slipped out of the chamber and disappeared down the throat of the tunnel.
8:12 A. M.
Deep in the jungle, Manny ran alongside Private Camera. Tor-for raced beside them, ears flattened to his skull. Explosions ripped through the morning, smoke wafted through the trees.
Kostos ran ahead of them, screaming into his radio. 'Everyone back to home base! Rally at the dwelling!'
'Could they be our people?' Manny asked. 'Responding to the GPS?'
Camera glanced back at him and frowned. 'Not this quick. We've been ambushed:'
As if confirming this, a trio of men, dressed in camouflage gear and armed with AK-47s and grenade launchers, trotted into view.
Kostos hissed and waved them all down.
They dropped to their bellies.
An Indian ran at the group with a raised spear. He was nearly cut in half by automatic fire.
Tor-tor, spooked by the chattering gunfire, bolted forward.
'Tor-tor!' Manny hissed, rising to one knee, reaching for the cat.
The jaguar dashed into the open, across the path of the gunmen.
One of them barked something in Spanish and pointed. Another grinned and lifted his weapon, eyeing down the barrel.
Manny raised his pistol. But before he could fire, Kostos rose up ahead of him, the M-16 at his shoulder, and popped off three shots, three squeezes of the trigger. Blam, blam, blam.
The trio fell backward, heads exploding like melons.
Manny froze, stunned.
'C'mon. We need to get back to the tree:' Kostos scowled at the jungle. 'Why the hell aren't the others responding?'
8:22 A.M.
Kouwe kept Anna behind him as he hid behind a bushy fern. Dakii, the tribal guide, crouched beside him. The four mercenaries stood only six yards away, unaware of the eyes watching them. Though Kouwe had heard the sergeant's order to regroup at the nightcap oak, with the marauders so near, he dared not signal his acknowledgment. They were pinned down. The group of mercenaries stood between them and the home tree. There was no way to get past them unseen.
Behind him, Dakii crouched as still as a stone, but the tension emanating from him was fierce. While hidden, he had watched more than a dozen of his tribesmen-men, women, children-mowed down by this group.
Further in the wood, explosions continued to boom. They heard screams and the crash of dwellings from the treetops. The marauders were tearing through the village. The only hope for Kouwe's party was to flee to some sheltered corner of the jungled plateau, hope to be overlooked.
One of the soldiers barked into a radio in Spanish. 'Tango Team in position. Killzone fourteen secure:'
Kouwe felt something brush his knee. He glanced over. Dakii motioned for him to remain in place. Kouwe nodded.
Dakii rolled from his side, moving swiftly and silently. Not a single twig was disturbed. Dakii was teshari-rin, one of the tribe's ghost scouts. Even without his paint, the tribesman blended into the deeper shadows. He raced from shelter to shelter, a dark blur. Kouwe knew he was witnessing a demonstration of the Yagga's enhancement of its wards. Dakii circled around the band, then even Kouwe lost track of him.
Anna grabbed his hand and squeezed. Have we just been abandoned? she seemed to silently ask.
Kouwe wondered, too, until he spotted Dakii. The tribesman crouched across the way. He was in direct sight of Kouwe and Anna, but still hidden from the four guards.
Dakii rolled to his back in the loam, aiming the small bow he had found high into the air. Kouwe followed where his arrow pointed. Then back down to the mercenaries.
He understood and motioned for Anna to be ready with her own weapon. She nodded, staring up, then back down, understanding.
Kouwe signaled Dakii.
The tribesman pulled taut his bowstring and let fly an arrow. A tiny twang was heard, as was the louder rip of arrow through leaf. The mercenaries all turned in Dakii's direction, weapons raised.
Kouwe ignored them, his gaze focused above. High in the branches was the ruin of a dwelling, but left intact among the branches was one of the little ingenious inventions of the Ban-ali, one of their makeshift elevators. Dakii's arrow sliced the support rope that held aloft a cradled counterweight, a large chunk of granite.
The boulder came crashing down, straight at the group of mercenaries.
One was smashed under its weight, his face crushed as he glanced up a moment too late.
Kouwe and Anna were already on their feet. From such close range, they emptied their pistols at the remaining trio, striking chests, arms, and bellies. The group fell. Dakii rushed out, an obsidian dagger in his hand. He ran at the mercenaries and slit the throats of any who still moved. It was quick and bloody work.
With a hand, Kouwe steadied Anna, who had paled at the display. 'We have to get back to the others:'
9:05 A.M.
From the height of the chasm, Louis had a wide view of the isolated valley. A pair of binoculars hung around his neck, forgotten. Across the jungle, smoke rose from countless fires and signal flares. In just over an hour, his team had encircled the village and were now closing slowly toward the center, toward his goal and prize.
Brail, who had been assigned as his new lieutenant after Jacques disappeared, spoke near his feet. The tracker knelt over a map, marking off small X's as his units reported in. 'The net's secure, Herr Doktor. Nothing left now but mopping up:'
Louis could tell the man was anxious to bag his own limit here.
'And the Rangers? The Americans?'
'Herded toward the center, just as you ordered:'
'Excellent:' Louis nodded to his mistress at his side. Tshui was naked, armed only with a little blowgun. Between her breasts rested the shrunken head of Corporal DeMartini, hung around Tshui's neck by the man's own dog tags.
'Then it's time we joined the party.' He lifted his twin pair of snubnosed mini-Uzis. They felt powerful in his hands. 'It's high time I made the acquaintance of Nathan Rand.'
9:12 A.M.
'You watch over your brother and the shaman,' Nathan said, sensing time was running out. 'I'm going after Zane.'
'You don't have a weapon:' Kelly knelt beside the shaman. With Nathan's help, the two had wrangled the tribesman into a hammock. Kelly had shot him full of morphine, quieting his pained thrashing. A belly wound was one of the most agonizing. With no better solution, she was now slathering the entry and exit wounds with Yagga sap. 'What are you going to do if you catch him?'
Nate felt a fire in his own belly, just as agonizing as a bullet wound. 'First he betrayed my father, now he betrayed us:' His voice choked with anger. He wanted only one thing from the man. Vengeance.
Frank spoke from his hammock. 'What are you going to do?'
Nathan shook his head. 'I have to try.'
He headed toward the exit. Distantly the explosions had died down, but gunfire spat sporadically. The fewer the shots, the more obvious it became that the village was being wiped out. Nate knew they would fare no better, not unless something was done. But what?
Stalking down the passage, at first cautiously, then faster and faster, around and around, Nate was reminded of the serpentine pattern of the Ban-ali symbol, winding in a spiral. Could this passage be what the symbol represented, or was it what Kelly had conjectured earlier, a crude representation of the twisted protein model, the mutagenic prion? If it represented the Yagga's tunnel, what did the helixes at each end of the spiral mean? Did one
