Rogue Angel 47: River of Nightmares (22 page)

Chapter 38

Annja took the path that Edgar and Moons had forged. It was late afternoon, and even at her best speed she wouldn’t reach Dillon’s camp before sunset. There might be nothing there; the Brazilian cops or government officers might have found the place and swooped in. Based on her description of the approximate location, coupled with Dillon’s permits on file, they could have found him.

D’jok said he’d heard helicopters, too.

This could well be an unnecessary waste of time.

But Annja had to see for herself.

The miles melted with her quick pace, though she stumbled several times in her haste, her feet catching on tree roots that snaked across the ground, tangling in vines, the forest rising thick all around her. Once she stepped in a hole, the burrow of some creature, and twisted her ankle. A minor sprain. She kept going, though a little slower and with a little more care.

The sky was clear, no hint of rain, and the air was filled with the scent of damp ground, flowers and suddenly something truly awful. She skidded to a stop.

What was that stench? Not fire, like back at the village. Something that she couldn’t put a name to. Dead fish? Maybe a honking big barrel full of dead fish. The hair on the back of her neck stood at attention and she held her hand down to her side, calling the sword. There was movement to her right, something rustling the branches, causing one of them to snap. A wuffling sound like a horse might make, then a shrill, earsplitting shriek.

Annja crouched and faced the source of the stench and the ruckus, seeing a shape through the foliage, a massive shadow that came closer. It pushed aside saplings and trundled into view.

Her mouth fell open.

The beast resembled both monkey and sloth. As it came closer still she saw that its front legs were longer than the back ones. That its back sloped and it was covered with thick, matted fur. In places the fur was missing, perhaps from a battle with a big cat. When it turned slightly, Annja saw where claws had raked it. The exposed skin looked thick and bumpy like an alligator’s.

“Crap,” Annja breathed. “Just crap.”

The creature’s snout was long and sharply tapered at the end and filled with tiny jagged teeth that glistened in the sun.

It reared back on its hind legs, and Annja involuntarily trembled. It was taller than her by at least a foot. It shrieked again and reached down with a three-toed foot, wrapped its claws around a young tree and pulled, uprooting it. Turning and squarely facing Annja, the beast ripped the tree in two in a powerful display of strength, shrieked again. The beast belched a sulfurous cloud of vileness and made Annja gag.

This was a mapinguari, one of the beasts she’d come to the Amazon to find. It was both beautiful and horrible, and here Annja was without a photographer or a camera, no means of recording the creature for posterity. But perhaps that was why nature had allowed her this glimpse, because she could not record it.

It was real, not a myth. The descriptions the villagers had provided of it had not been adequate. Her stomach roiled as another puff of ghastly stench came her way.

A number of the monsters her program chased were mere legends. Some she believed had existed; some she was certain were pure fabrications embellished by popular media. But to see one face-to-face. It was no more than a dozen feet away.

“Incredible,” she said. Annja wished Roux—wished anybody—was here with her to validate the encounter. A sighting like this should be shared. She could slay the beast, or try to. It truly looked formidable and might do her in. But if she killed it, the thing’s carcass would be her proof, one of history’s monsters that she’d chased and caught!

Annja dismissed the sword and held her hands to her sides.

There’d been no reports of mapinguaries attacking people. And she wasn’t about to make a trophy of one just for her television program.

“You are incredible,” she told it.

The mapinguari shrieked again and dropped down to all fours. It swung its head back and forth, snout raking through the bushes. It opened its maw to show its bright white teeth, and then it clumsily turned and headed back into the foliage, in the direction of the river.

Annja held her breath and watched until she could no longer see even its shadowy shape and could no longer hear its thrashing through the underbrush. The birds started up again. She stood quiet for several more minutes, taking deep breaths. The freshness of the rainforest air had returned. If only Marsha or Wallace had been here to record this, not just for
Chasing History’s Monsters,
but just to have a visual record of this creature.

And since the mapinguari was real, perhaps the other Amazon creatures she’d come in search of were, too.

Somehow Annja would talk Doug into financing a return trip. But she suspected she’d not see a creature like this ever again.

The sun had set by the time she reached Dillon’s camp. The surrounding forest was dark, but the cloudless twilight sky over the clearing revealed the remnants of a battle. A half-dozen Dslala tribesmen lay outside the log perimeter, bodies riddled with bullets and insects. From the smell and look of them, they’d been dead for several days. A few of the bodies had gaping holes in them, scavengers come to dine. She knelt at the closest body and quickly backed away, a snake slithered over the torso.

D’jok had said five days; that would be about right.

She climbed the log wall rather than walk around to the barbed wire gate. There were another half-dozen Dslala tribesmen in here, bodies in the same horrible state—masses of maggots, some bloated with gasses. The smell was intense and the insects swarmed around the corpses. There were fatalities on Dillon’s side, too; she saw four men, all in coveralls, some with kneepads, two with helmets on as if they’d come up from the mine to join the fight.

Annja padded closer, wanting to see how they’d died. Poison darts, each of Dillon’s men, the darts still in them. Their eyes were hollow sockets and pieces of their faces were gone. She looked away and toward the tents. No one else had been here yet. Maybe they hadn’t found the place, or maybe her report and the one Duarte had made on the phone from his farmhouse were in a stack on someone’s desk.

When she got back to Belém she’d find someone to do something about all of this. She was nothing if not persistent.

“Dillon!” she hollered. Hand out to her side, she felt the sword poised at the ready. “Dillon, you monster!” His wasn’t one of the bodies, and neither was Hammond’s.

D’jok had heard helicopters. Maybe Dillon had hitched a ride out with one of his so-called plant shipments.

“Dillon!”

The tent canvas flapped in the wind that gusted. There was no one in the main tent, which had been stripped of its computer, microscopes and various other devices. Cases of batteries remained. The drawers of a file cabinet were open, and the cabinet itself leaned forward, unbalanced. Whatever files that had been in it were gone. She went back outside, took a helmet off one of the dead men, scraped out the insects, and turned on its light. Back inside the main tent, she searched more thoroughly. The light died and she replaced the batteries, stuffed a few more batteries in her pockets, and continued to rummage around.

Nothing useful. She’d hoped to spot forgotten jump drives or other computer-related items so she could follow Dillon’s electronic trail.

Next tent, and the next, and the next. All of them empty, a place of ghosts. And in the growing darkness, it was a place of eerie shadows. The insect chorus started, frogs and nightbirds joining in. Faintly she heard a big cat snarl. She brushed away mosquitoes the size of quarters.

Beyond the perimeter she saw where helicopters had landed fairly recently, the marks still evident in the damp ground. Two helicopters of different sizes, one quite large by the print it left. Dillon probably needed it to take his men out of here...though he’d had fewer to accommodate after the fight with the Dslala.

Annja returned to the camp and took down all of the sleeping tents and one of the larger ones. She wanted the nylon cords from them. Inside the tent that covered the crevice to the emerald mine, Annja sat and worked on the cords, tying them together, making a harness for herself, tying another length together and looping that over her arm. Outside, she tied one of the ropes to the generator and tugged fiercely; it would hold. They’d taken the rope ladder with them. She found another helmet inside the tent, and opted for it, as it didn’t stink of a dead man. She put it on, tested the light, and went down the hole.

She noticed a difference right away; two more graves had been added, and there was a mound of wilted wildflowers on the oldest. At least Dillon, or his men, had enough respect to bury some of their dead. But they’d left others up top to rot, and so they’d left the camp in a hurry. He’d mentioned to her and Marsha that he had a small camp twenty or thirty miles due west. Maybe she’d go there next. But first a little more exploring.

Picks had been abandoned, buckets—but these were empty. There were a few small chunks of emerald-laced rocks along the wall where the men had been working. Undoubtedly valuable, the smallest pieces weren’t valuable enough for Dillon. Farther along and she saw a gaping hole in the wall where the massive emerald had been. They’d managed to get it out...unfortunately, Annja thought. They’d also managed to pretty well strip most of the thick emerald veins, though dozens of smaller veins had been left untouched. She imagined they’d been working around the clock and could almost picture Dillon’s face red with rage that he’d had to abandon this pot of gold.

She picked a sturdy outcropping, looped the other cord around it and tied it tight, tugging repeatedly to make sure it would hold. Annja didn’t want to risk getting trapped in the cavern below. Yes, the underground tributary was a way out, but that wasn’t a ride she ever wanted to repeat.

Down again.

The light dimmed and Annja replaced the batteries. My kingdom for a camera, she thought, as she stared at the walls with all their primitive paintings and at the bones of the ancient beasts. She allowed herself a few minutes to ogle the cave paintings, the one bright spot in this otherwise beyond-miserable day.

Then she went to the center of the cavern, where she’d left the mapinguari skull. Next, she found Moons’s body. Because it was cooler here, the girl’s body wasn’t too badly decomposed. Annja could deal with it. She gathered up the body and managed to get it to the level above.

Annja went back for the mapinguari skull. She’d only take the one, and leave all the rest of the bones behind.

Wait...one more notion. Annja retraced her steps and returned to the area the men had been mining, picked up a few small emeralds and put them in her pocket. They were for Moons, to pay for getting her body back to her parents, which wouldn’t be cheap, and to pay for a proper burial.

Then back up top. She laid Moons’s body in the tent, the skull next to it, and looked outside.

Annja might make it back to the shaman’s hut by midnight if she started now. But it would be slower going with Moons’s body. Annja wasn’t going to leave her here to rot with the dead Dslala and Dillon’s men. Waiting until the morning might be prudent. But there wasn’t a trace of rain in the air, and she’d made the trip between the village and this camp enough times to find her way even in pitch darkness. She went outside and took the canvas and poles from one of the smaller tents and fashioned a litter, wrapped Moons’s body in another section of canvas and tied it to the litter. Then she sat the skull on top of that.

Annja was halfway to the barbed wire gate when she saw him.

“Hammond.”

“Should’ve shot you before I tossed you into the hole. I had bullets then.” Hammond’s twin machetes gleamed in the starlight.

“Where’s Dillon?”

Hammond chuckled. “Gone.”

Annja could smell Hammond, though he was nearly two dozen feet away. He stank of sweat, strong enough for her to pick it up despite the reek of the corpses. He was filthy, his skin streaked with mud, dried blood and other stains, his face a mass of scratches.

“So the master left the dog behind.” Annja was taunting him. “Did he leave you any scraps? Or did he take all the money and gems for himself?”

Hammond’s lip curled. “I stayed to clean up some loose ends. I just didn’t expect—”

“—me to be one of them?”

“No,” Hammond admitted. “I expected you to be dead.”

“Where’s Dillon?” she tried again.

“A long way from here.”

Annja dropped the litter poles and stepped aside as he rushed her, summoned her sword and brought it around, catching both his blades as he swept them in, meaning to cut her in half.

“Where the hell did the sword come from?”

“You wouldn’t understand,” Annja said. She skittered back to give herself more room and get Hammond away from Moons’s body. She wanted it to remain in reasonably good condition. “This sword, it belonged to Joan of Arc.”

He spit at her and shifted his grip on each machete. Hammond wasn’t usually clumsy; Annja had noted earlier that he was rather stealthy, but clearly he wasn’t used to using machetes as weapons, and he obviously didn’t know any of the rudiments of fencing. Still, he was angry and determined, and that combination was dangerous.

“Tell me where Dillon is.” Annja set her jaw and locked eyes with his. Hammond’s expression was cold.

“Safe,” Hammond said. “Where no one can get to him.”

“You going to join him?” Annja circled slowly, and he turned to keep her in front of him.

“I like it here.” Hammond gestured with a machete to her sword. “And I’m liking that weapon. It will look good hanging from my brand-new belt, don’t you think?”

“Charlemagne held this sword when he was a young boy,” Annja said. She didn’t mind recounting the rest of the sword’s history for Hammond. The moment she saw him by the barbed wire gate, she knew what the outcome would be. Hammond wouldn’t be telling any of her secrets.

He rushed in and cleaved with both machetes, and Annja parried one blade, catching it on the edge of her sword, the metal squealing, then hooking it at the handle and yanking, hurling the machete away. The other blade she’d managed to dodge, but she felt the air from his swing.