Lauren scraped away some more mud, revealing something that looked like a letter from the alphabet.
It was an 'N'.
'What the hell… ?' Nash said.
Words began to take shape.
No entrare. . .
Race recognised them.
'No entrare“ was Spanish for 'Do not enter'.
Lauren scraped away some more mud and a whole sentence appeared in the centre of the boulder, crudely scratched into the surface of the stone. It read:
No entrare absoluto.
Muerte asomarse dentro.
Race translated the words in his head. Then he swallowed hard.
“What does it say?' Nash said.
Race turned to face him. At first, he didn't say anything.
Then at last he said, 'It says, “Do not enter at any cost. Death lies within.”'
'What does “AS” mean?“ Lauren said.
'I would guess,” Race said, 'that “AS” stands for Alberto Santiago.'
Back in the village, Doogie Kennedy kicked away a loose rock restlessly. It was dark now and the rain was still falling and he was pissed at having been left back in the village when he really wanted to be up in the mountains with the others.
'What's the matter, Doogs?' Corporal George 'Tex'
Reichart asked from over by the moat on the eastern side of the village. Reichart was a tall, lanky beanpole of a man. He hailed from Austin and was a genuine, grass- chewing cowboy—hence his nickname. 'Not gettin' enough action?'
'I'm awright,' Doogie said. 'I'd just rather be up there in them mountains findin' whatever it is we're here to find, than down here babysitting a goddamned village.'
Reichart chuckled softly to himself. Doogie was good value. A bit on the dim side, but keenlkeen as mustard.
What Tex Reichart didn't know, however, was that behind his small-town Southern drawl, Doogie Kennedy was in fact an exceptionally intelligent young man.
Preliminary testing at Fort Benning had revealed that Doogie had an IQ of 161—which was odd, because he had only just barely graduated high school.
It was soon discovered that, throughout his school years in Little Rock, Arkansas, young Douglas Kennedy's quiet, God-fearing accountant father had beaten him senseless every evening with a leather strap.
Kennedy Snr had also refused to buy school books for his son and on most nights he would make the boy stand in a dark, three-by-four-foot closet as punishment for serious misdemeanours such as slamming the door too loudly or overcooking his father's steak. Homework never got done and young Doogie only managed to complete high school through his extraordinary ability to take in mentally what was said in class.
He joined the Army the day he graduated and he would never return home. What school administrators had seen as just another shy young kid scraping through high school, one sharp old recruiting sergeant had seen as the mark of a determined and brilliant mind.
Doogie was still shy, but given his intelligence, his willpower and the support network of the Army, he soon became a hell of a soldier. He swiftly made Ranger grade, majoring in sniping. The Green Berets and Fort Bragg had followed soon after.
'Guess I'm just itchin' for some action,“ Doogie said, as he came over to where Reichart was laying an AC-7V 'Eagle Eye' sensor by the eastern moat.
'I wouldn't go getting your hopes up,' Reichart said, flicking on the Eagle Eye's motion-activated thermal- imaging system. 'I don't think there's gonna be much excitement on this trip—'
There came a loud beep from the motion sensor.
Doogie and Reichart exchanged a quick look.
Then both of them snapped around to scan the dense section of rainforest in front of the motion sensor.
There was nothing there.
Just a tangle of criss-crossing fern fronds and empty forest.
Somewhere nearby a bird whistled.
Doogie snatched up his M-16 and cautiously stepped over the log-bridge that spanned the eastern section of the moat. He moved slowly forward, toward the suspect section of jungle.
He reached the edge of the rainforest, flicked on his barrel- mounted flashlight—
—and he saw it.
Saw the glistening, speckled body of the largest snake he had ever seen in his life! It was a thirty-foot anaconda, a monster of a snake, slinking lazily around the gnarled branches of an Amazonian tree.
