The Furies (40 page)

Ariel nudged Margaret aside and leaned into the cockpit. “Are you going to ditch?”

“Affirmative.” Veronica's voice was high-pitched and frightened. “I'll try to reach the river.”

The beeping alarm sounded again.
Too low. Terrain. Too low. Terrain.
While Margaret wept over Gwen's corpse, Ariel ran to John and grabbed his arm, dragging him to the stack of duffel bags at the back of the cabin. “Get in there!” she shouted. “Get on top of the pile!”

“What?”

“Just follow me!” She climbed on top of the bags and wriggled down into the space between them.

John doubted this would work. He never saw a stewardess demonstrate this technique during a flight-safety presentation. But he climbed the pile anyway and squeezed into the dark niche where Ariel lay. Although he couldn't see her so well, he could hear her breathing fast and hard. The duffel bags around them muffled all the other noises, but he could still hear the alarm and the oddly calm voice.

Too low. Terrain. Too—

TWENTY-NINE

Sullivan enjoyed the biggest surprise of his life the next morning.

He and his men were camped at another deserted Ranger airstrip, this one in western Minnesota. They'd arrived the night before and found signs of recent activity—footprints and tire tracks in the mud, a trash can full of shredded documents in the trailer beside the runway—but the Rangers had apparently abandoned the post several hours before the Riflemen got there. Sullivan was convinced that the Chief Elder had been at this airstrip, plotting against him, and he grew enraged when he realized he'd just missed her. His vision blurred again, clouding so much he could hardly see a thing. Shortly before midnight, though, he received a radio message from Comandante Reyes. The rebel commander reported that his guerillas had downed one of the Furies' Gulfstreams, which had crashed into the rain forest near the Yarí River. The good news eased Sullivan's rage. His eyesight cleared, and for a few hours he was able to get some sleep.

And then, at 7:00
A.M.
, he was awakened by the sound of an aircraft. He rushed out of the trailer and saw a Gulfstream G280 high overhead. The jet slowly circled the airstrip, as if its pilot were studying the ground and deciding whether it was safe to land. Anyone with eyes could see that the strip was occupied by Riflemen—several dozen Harley-Davidsons were parked in the field beside the runway—so Sullivan fully expected the plane to go away. But instead the Gulfstream descended.

His men gathered along the runway and surrounded the jet as soon as it came to a stop. The pilot shut down the engines, and a few seconds later the door to the cabin opened. The first to step out of the plane was Grace Fury, first cousin to Elizabeth. She was a deputy to the Chief Elder and the most fecund woman in the whole family. Over the past five hundred years she'd borne seventeen daughters, nine of whom were still alive. She'd also given birth to nineteen sons, all deceased except for the latest one, Archibald, Sullivan's unfortunate spy. Grace wore a black, long-sleeved, ankle-length dress, a style she'd adopted back in the sixteenth century. Sullivan hated her almost as much as he hated his mother.

Right behind Grace was Claudia, also a cousin to Elizabeth, who formerly ran the geothermal plant that Archibald had sabotaged. She was accompanied by her son Gower, who wore a bandage on his shoulder and an angry scowl on his face. Bringing up the rear were the Gulfstream's pilot and copilot, both of whom happened to be granddaughters of Grace. No one in the group seemed frightened or nervous, even though Sullivan's men pointed a dozen rifles at them. On the contrary, they seemed defiant and determined. They were full of grim purpose.

Grace Fury crossed the runway and approached Sullivan. His men stopped her and checked her for weapons, patting down the slim body beneath the black dress. She endured the inspection, silent and unsmiling. Once his men gave the all clear, Sullivan stepped toward her. He could barely contain his curiosity.
What the hell was she doing here?

Grinning, he bowed before her in an elaborate, mocking fashion. “Greetings, milady! Thou art more lovely than a summer's day, and more temperate. Thou art the very embodiment of temperance.”

Her upper lip twitched, but other than that she didn't respond to his taunts.

“I'm delighted you came to visit,” he continued. “May I ask how your son Archibald is faring? I do hope your sisters don't punish him too severely. He's a good lad at heart.”

“Archibald is dead.” Grace's voice was low and hoarse. “While riding in our truck convoy yesterday he grabbed a pistol from one of the guardsmen and shot himself.”

Sullivan gave her a look of exaggerated sympathy. “Oh, this must be a terrible blow for you, milady. And I suppose it's my fault, is it not? I feel just awful about this.”

“Cordelia is dead too. And so are Margaret and Lily. And Lily's paramour as well. You have much to celebrate.”

He did indeed. He felt a surge of joy in his chest. “Were they all in the Gulfstream that went down in Colombia? I suppose you received their distress signals before the jet crashed?”

“Aye, and we heard the calls for help radioed by our friend Kuikuro. Did you know that your Colombian allies slaughtered him and everyone else in his village?”

Sullivan shrugged. “What can I say? We're paying the guerillas well, so they're eager to please.”

Grace's lip twitched again. She was trying hard to conceal her emotions, but her contempt was too strong. “Let me explain our reasons for coming here. The Chief Elder has chosen new leaders for our family to replace the ones you murdered. Claudia and I are now members of the council.”

“Congratulations, milady. I'm sure this is a dream come true for you. But where is my mother? Why isn't she here as well?”

“We've been ordered to take you to her. In this Gulfstream.”

Sullivan looked askance. “Do you take me for a fool? I'm not going anywhere without my Riflemen.”

“You can bring as many of your men as will fit on the plane.”

“But Mother will have a larger number of fighters at her side. I believe I've killed most of your guardsmen, but surely a few dozen have survived.”

“We've chosen a meeting place that will be to your advantage. If you're still worried that we're planning to trick you, you can keep me here as a hostage, and Claudia, too. That will guarantee your safety. Elizabeth wouldn't forfeit our lives just to eliminate a scoundrel such as you.”

It was intriguing, Sullivan had to admit. But he remained suspicious. “And what's the purpose of this meeting, pray tell?”

Grace's throat bobbed. She was swallowing hard, tamping down her disdain. “Elizabeth wants an end to this war. She has a proposal for you.”

THIRTY

It was only much later—after they'd clambered out of the wreckage of the Gulfstream and waded through miles of waist-deep swamp and found a hiding place at the foot of an enormous kapok tree—that John understood how he and Ariel had survived. She explained the reasons in a sober voice as they huddled on the ground between the kapok's giant roots, which stretched from the trunk in five-foot-high tentacles that hid them from view. They'd slept for a few hours in the shelter of this massive root system, and now Ariel reached into her backpack and pulled out a handful of the military-style rations she'd salvaged from the duffel bags in the Gulfstream. The rations looked like granola bars, each wrapped in clear plastic.

“The first reason is that we had an excellent pilot. Veronica did a good job of controlling our descent.” Ariel examined the ration, trying to see what was inside the wrapper. The sun had come up half an hour ago, and early-morning light filtered into the rain forest. “A damn good job, considering what she had to work with. That jet had a hundred bullet holes in it.”

John nodded. “I'm still amazed she got it off the ground.”

“She did everything right. If she'd had a few more seconds, we would've made it to the river. We would've cleared the trees and made a soft landing in the water.” Ariel shook her head. “That's what hurts so much. She came so damn close.”

Fixing her eyes on the ration, Ariel started to unwrap it, but after a couple of seconds she stopped and stared at the ground. John guessed she was remembering what they'd seen after the crash, after they'd crawled out of the Gulfstream's severed tail, which had broken off from the rest of the aircraft and wedged into the mud and black water of the swamp. All around them, smaller pieces of the jet were scattered across the jungle. Torn sections of the wings hung in the tree branches. One of the engines poked out of the fetid water, its upper section still burning. And there were body parts too. Margaret and her daughters had been crushed and mangled.

“But why did we survive and the others—”

“The tail's the safest part of any aircraft. It stayed in one piece while the rest of the fuselage broke apart. The duffel bags also helped, by cushioning the impact. And the rest of it was luck, just pure dumb luck. Without it, we'd be dead, too.”

She shook her head again, slow and mournful. John was a bit surprised by the depth of her grief. He knew Ariel hadn't liked her Aunt Margaret very much. In fact, the two women had seemed to despise each other. But now that Margaret was dead, Ariel seemed almost as distraught as she'd been after the death of Cordelia, the aunt she'd loved. John wondered if the extreme longevity of the Fury women intensified their bonds. Maybe Ariel's feelings for her aunts were so powerful because they'd lived together for so long.

She finally took a deep breath and looked up. She stared at the ration in her hand, as if trying to remember what she was going to do with it. Then she gave it to John. “Here, try this one. I think it's peanut butter.”

He took a bite. It was brown and starchy and tasted more like licorice than peanut butter, but he ate it anyway. He was too hungry to be choosy. “So who attacked us last night? It wasn't Sullivan's men, was it?”

“No, they were FARC guerillas. But it wasn't a coincidence that they showed up at the airstrip just as we landed. They must be working for Sullivan. He must've paid them to ambush us. He knew we were heading for the new refuge on the Yarí River, and he didn't want us to get there.”

“Do you think the guerillas will come looking for us? Now that it's morning, they'll probably investigate the crash site.”

Ariel shrugged. “It all depends on how competent they are. If they have good tracking skills, they might be able to tell that we left the site. We probably broke a few branches when we waded through the swamp, and a good tracker could follow the trail.” She examined another ration, holding it up to the light. “But if these guerillas aren't native to the area, they won't go very deep into the jungle. It's a dangerous place if you don't know what you're doing.”

“Yeah, I already figured that out.” He held up his arms, which were dotted with insect bites. “When we were going through the swamp last night I heard something splashing in the water. Something big and heavy.”

“I heard it, too.” She unwrapped her ration and started eating. “It was either an anaconda or a caiman.”

“Caiman? That's like a crocodile, right?”

“They rarely attack people, but when they do it's usually fatal. They're fast and big, up to twenty feet long.” She took a bite out of the starchy brown bar in her hand. At the same time, she turned her other hand in a circle, pointing at the kapok tree and the area around it. “That's why we didn't stop last night until we found some high ground. I wanted to get away from the caimans and piranhas.”

John raised his head and peered over the kapok's massive roots. The tree dominated a smallish hill that rose above the jungle's floodwaters. They stood on an island in the rain forest, a patch of dry land surrounded by swamp. They'd have to return to the black water if they wanted to go anywhere. “So what's our next step? If Sullivan knows about the refuge, it doesn't make sense to go there, does it?”

“No, I'm sure the guerillas are already at the bend in the Yarí. Sullivan probably told them to slaughter any Furies who arrive.”

“Maybe we should head in the opposite direction then? Go up the river instead of down?”

“That would be the smartest move if we only had ourselves to worry about. But I'm concerned about my cousins in the Caño Dorado expedition. Mother ordered them to go to the refuge as quickly as possible. Although she probably realizes by now that Sullivan's allies shot down our plane, she may not be able to send a warning to Mariela. The expedition is traveling through an area that has no radio towers.”

He knew Ariel well enough to guess what she was planning. “And you think
we
should try to warn them? Convince the expedition to turn around before they run into the guerillas?”

She nodded. “I think we can intercept them, but it won't be easy. We're ten miles upstream from the refuge, and Caño Dorado is still hundreds of miles downstream. If the guerillas are lying in wait at the bend in the river, we'll have to maneuver around them somehow.” She turned toward the rising sun. Somewhere in that direction, behind the thick green curtains of foliage, was the Yarí. “What we really need is a canoe. A dugout canoe, the kind the Amazon tribesmen use. Then we could slip past Sullivan's allies by navigating the channels that run parallel to the river.”

John frowned. He didn't like this plan. He understood that Ariel was trying to protect her cousins, but he wished that just this once she'd think about her own safety. “I don't know. It sounds kind of dicey.”

“We're not completely defenseless, you know.” She picked up her carbine and pointed at John's. They'd carried the rifles all the way from the crash site, holding them above the floodwaters as they'd waded through the swamp. “And I know the rain forest pretty well, maybe better than the guerillas do.”