Rising Storm

John's hands. The miner's eyes rolled back in his head and he dropped to the trail in an ungainly heap.

John smiled smugly at Dieter. There were other ways than brute strength to handle things.

'My mom taught me that,' he said.

'Your relationship with your mother is a beautiful thing, John,' Dieter said, slapping him on the shoulder. Then he grabbed a handful of John's shirt and lifted him onto his toes, drawing him close. 'If you ever disobey an order like that again,' he snarled, eyes blazing, 'I'll make what I did to these guys look like a kindergarten romp. Are you getting me, John?'

Connor had expected a reprimand, but the genuine ferocity of it startled him. He nodded, surprised, The big guy really cares, he thought, embarrassed and obscurely pleased. Who'da thunk it? Certainly he wouldn't have. His mother's previous friends sure hadn't, and he was used to discounting any interest the men around her showed in him.

'Say it!' Dieter demanded, giving him a shake.

'I'm getting you,' John said, some of his wonder leaking into his voice.

They stared at each other for a long moment, then von Rossbach let him go and turned toward the Indian. He reached down to help the chief sit up.

'Are you all right?' the Austrian asked in Portuguese.

Instead of answering, the native looked at him for a long moment before switching his glance to John, then climbed to his feet on his own. John racked his brain for anything useful he could say in Yamomani and came up blank. He'd only known a few words and that was six years ago.

Dieter looked the chief over as he cut his bonds. 'I don't think he's badly hurt.

The nose is the worst of it.'

'Dieter,' John said in a strained voice.

The Austrian looked up, his face going blank. From out of the jungle, up and down the trail, small brown men glided, seeming to appear from thin air and jungle shadows. Every one of them was armed, some with the traditional bow, some with blowguns, some with cheap shotguns bought from traders. Like their chief's, their faces were impassive, but their eyes were angry.

The chief snapped at them and they reluctantly lowered their weapons, keeping their eyes on the white men. With a glance at the unconscious miners he spoke

<a few words and his tribesmen looked pleased; a few even went so far as to smile. As one, they moved forward and stripped the miners bare, then slapped them awake and tied them together in a circle, facing outward.

'What are you going to do with them?' John asked.

The chief slowly smiled, not a pleasant smile.

'They walk home,' he said, moving his hand like a crippled spider. 'Go slow.'

John and Dieter looked at each other, puzzled. Barefoot on this trail wouldn't be a treat for the miners, but it didn't seem to make up for the abuse the man had received at their hands. The chiefs smile turned truly evil.

' Marabunda,' he whispered.

'In the Rio Negro,' von Rossbach muttered.

'Hunh?' John said.

'Old-movie reference,' Dieter explained. ' Marabunda are army ants. They can be very destructive when they're on the move, sort of like land-going piranha.'

' Marabunda cross trail,' the chief said, gesturing up the trail where the miners had been pushing him. ' Marabunda move very slow. White mens move very slow.' He moved his hand in the spider gesture again, then he speeded it up. 'Or maybe they dance very fast.'

He laughed, then nodded at his people, who whacked the miners on their legs with the flats of their machetes and got them stumbling down the trail. They hooted their derision as their prisoners stumbled and fell, one man's pale legs kicking in midair as the ones underneath cursed and shouted at him to get off them. The Indians slapped them with their machetes or threw small stones to get them up and moving.

John frowned. 'They're not going to get eaten, are they?' he asked.

The chief laughed outright at that. 'They stand still, si. But they no stand still, they run.' He wiped the blood from his face and turned to follow his men. 'You come see?' he invited.

'We must go.' John pointed down the trail in the opposite direction.

The chief nodded. 'You are friends.' He called out and a man came running.

'This Ifykoro,' the chief said. 'He guide. You go safe from our lands.'

'Thank you,' Dieter said simply, and John nodded.

The chief smiled and turned away. Lifting his bow, their guide took off down the

trail at a jog. With a weary glance at one another von Rossbach and John followed him. Just before a loop in the trail that would take them out of sight, John looked over his shoulder.

The Indians were enjoying themselves, harrying the miners and chanting abuse.

John smiled; for all their anger they weren't really hurting their victims. I wonder how Skynet will handle these people.

Here in the depths of the rain forest they might not suffer too much from the initial nuclear attack, and they might hang on for years before any of the machines came along to harvest them.

John winced at the thought. He liked these people. He remembered them from when he was ten; as long as you didn't get into a blood feud, they were honest.

They were among the few human beings on earth who could make that claim.

Except it would never occur to them to make it.

They deserve to live in peace, he thought, and to die in their own time. And he would work, for the rest of his life, to see that they could.

PORTO VELHO, CAPITAL OF

RONDONIA, BRAZIL

John nibbled carefully at the hot skewer of grilled pirarucu—a huge Amazonian fish—that he'd bought at a stall. He looked around and let out a contented sigh.

The chaos of a South American marketplace felt like a homecoming to him. He'd grown up in places like this, eating food like this.

In fact, he'd haunted this very market when he was ten and they'd spent three

months here after coming out of the jungle while his mom got it together. Which was how he found out a number of things that were very helpful to his mother.

He wandered down an alley, taking a bigger bite of the fish on his skewer. God, this was good! He'd missed the taste of pirarucu.

He could also have helped Dieter, had Dieter thought to ask him. But the big guy had told him to stay put, like he was some little kid, and had gone out. Naturally John followed him. He watched von Rossbach approach a modest palacete not far from this very alley. Watched as two bullet-headed thugs had held a gun on him and searched him. Really searched him, not an easy once-over like you see in the movies; these guys had all but brought out the rubber gloves.

That's what you get for going to visit Lazaro Garmendia without an appointment, Dieter, John thought.

Garmendia was the area's foremost mob boss; his specialty was smuggling, though he tended to avoid drugs. There were vague rumors about a nasty run-in with some Colombians—no one knew any details. But he'd do pretty well anything else for money, though he preferred it to be illegal, immoral, or sadistic.

A very scary guy and terribly sensitive about his perks. You showed him respect or he showed you what for. John didn't think von Rossbach had even thought to bring Garmendia a gift. Bad sess, Dieter.

He stopped in front of a slight recess in a blank wall and gobbled the last of his fish, then he broke the stick and put it in his pocket. Let's see if I remember how this goes, he thought. John bent down and studied the left edge of the recess.

Yep, there it was. A pebble projected from the rough stucco that made up the

coating on the wall. John pressed on it. There was a click and a very slight line of darkness appeared where there had been a solid joint. He turned to the right and found a similar pebble up high, almost beyond his reach; he