Unacceptable Risk (13 page)

He retched and coughed "Yes, we called him Girard. He's from France."

"He was here tonight?"

The man nodded.

"Beard?"

He nodded again, choking.

"Uses a knife?"

He nodded hard and fluid rattled in his lungs when he tried to speak. Turning nearly purple, he rolled his eyes back and his bowels let go.

Sam kept his eyes locked on the dying man's, and for just a second they flickered.

"You want to go after him, don't you?" Grady asked.

"Just a minute," Sam said, still watching the man. He leaned over to the man's ear. "In the end you did good." Once again the man's eyes rolled and Sam knew he was gone.

Sam nodded. "The three of you can haul Michael back to Galvez." Bowden had wavered on the edge of consciousness since being shot. "It's close. Michael, you've got a fast boat?"

"Very fast. But others, my friends, might have used it to take my journals. Doubt they've returned it."

"Let's hope Gaudet doesn't know about your boat—assuming it's even there."

"He wouldn't find it. Can't start it anyway. Needs an electronic chip." Michael was breathing deeply from the pain and trauma. "Ramos my friend has one and the other's in my pack."

"Good. I doubt he wants to try to drift a speedboat all the way to the Amazon even if he does find it."

"He'll go to the Tapiche."

"He could go down the Galvez," Javier said. "But once again he'd have no boat and I can't see him paddling a stolen dugout through Matses country. They don't kill people anymore, but a thief, a murderer, and a white man might be different."

Although Sam could tell Grady hated the idea, she wasn't going to stop him. It wasn't her way to wimp out in the clutch. And she trusted Yodo as much as Sam did.

Sam took out his GPS before starting off into the dark. He had to take a chance that Gaudet would head for the Tapiche. He struck off through the jungle, trying to walk something of a straight line. Looking ahead was surreal. It felt like passing through an underwater kelp bed. Aerial roots came down from branches like taut rope and small sacropia grew up with stems twice as thick as a man's thumb. It was hard to find a foot-wide space anywhere in the first few hundred feet of the trek. Interspersed among the growing saplings and aerial roots were the giants such as ficus, saeba, ironwood, kapok, and the feathery-leafed acacia whose branches gave an appearance similar to an evergreen softwood tree. At their bases some of the large trees had a splayed root system that had formed triangular-shaped wedges in the vertical plane so that the lower trunk of the tree looked something like the foot of a coat rack.

Traveling in a straight line turned out to be impossible and dangerous, so he risked using his flashlight, hoping he wouldn't walk into an ambush. On the forest floor wet leaves made for quiet steps, but the brush rubbing on his body and pack was noisy. On any incline the clay mud beneath the leaves made the footing tenuous and every slime-covered log was a hazard. Ants and other insects were crawling over him; attempts to brush them off seemed futile. He went after the little tickles on his skin, squishing anything that got under his clothing. Anytime he paused, the raucous sound of mosquitoes filled his ears with their mind-scalding wing-beat. He had spread repellent liberally over the exposed skin and wore typical UV-screening jungle clothes designed to cover most of his body.

The heat burned into him with the exertion of traveling fast through the tangles of vegetable matter that clung and slowed him. He couldn't spend a lot of time attempting to circumvent thickets. Every couple of minutes he glanced at the GPS and observed the gnarled track that he was leaving on the incandescent screen. Sweat dripped down onto the screen like rain as the heat squeezed everything but blood from his pores. On his feet he could feel the start of blisters as he continuously worked to keep his footing on the jungle floor.

After traveling a couple of miles he came to a sizable black-water stream that barely moved. It was a tributary of the Tapiche and it meant he might be slightly to the north of where he imagined. Or the map was wrong, which was very possible because it was made before GPS was available. He ran his light along the banks, illuminating pairs of eyes of a number of black caiman. Swimming at night was not appealing. There were more gruesome parasites and diseases in this part of the world than he cared to think about. And, having eaten piranha the prior day, it occurred to him that in some sort of cosmic justice the fish might want to return the favor.

He sighed. Without waiting any longer he stepped down into the muddy water and began walking. He removed his pack, threw the strap of his rifle across his back, then replaced the pack. It was a poor choice if he wanted to shoot from the river, but it freed both hands for swimming without fear of losing the rifle. Soon it was deep and he began the breaststroke. A caiman flung his tail and splashed, surprising him and causing him to pick up the pace. He tried not to think about the stickleback fish that had a bad habit of crawling up assholes and urethras, or the leeches that in some parts of the Amazon grew to eighteen inches. He told himself the sticklebacks were probably farther north.

He was halfway across when he sensed that something was wrong. He studied the far bank and saw a six-foot shadow by a big tree. And there was movement. He went limp and quiet, then turned and began swimming back to near where he started.

There was a shocking boom and a bullet hit the water an inch from his nose. Then the night filled with reverberating booms. Somebody was going to kill him with a semiautomatic high-powered rifle. Quickly he dropped the rifle to the bottom and got rid of the pack and all its flotation. One gulp of a breath and he went under. Bullets jetted through the water and he went the several feet to the bottom, knowing it would be a long time before he could come up. Had it been daylight he would already be dead. He felt for the rifle and slung it over his head, then began pulling himself along the bottom with his hands. He felt prongs everywhere and realized they must be branches of a submerged tree.

The bullets seemed to have stopped.

Sam could stay under for more than four minutes, which seemed phenomenal to his friends until he told them of deep divers who could stay down seven minutes. Reaching out, he felt for the branches and allowed himself to rise slowly over them. It used up precious time and air. Pulling himself across the tops, he found open water when he felt nearly out of air. He did a smooth breaststroke with a frog kick. A slow burn had developed in his chest and he could feel the weakness beginning in his body. He began to count strokes as a means of forcing himself onward. He would do ten strokes, and when he got to ten, he was determined to do five more. The burning was now strong and the desire for a breath was all-consuming. Five strokes extra had pain in his mind and body. Three more strokes. With his fingers he felt the bottom rising. His consciousness blurred. He was near the river's edge. He turned downstream. Just three more strokes. His mind seemed to be floating and he knew he was about to go lights out. Gently he rose.

He suspected the shooter would have lowered his gun after about three minutes and that he would then stare into the darkness. Ripples and sound betrayed a swimmer at night. Sam rolled and came up gently on his back. He denied himself a massive inhalation, forcing himself to be quiet. Few things took so much will.

The cacophony of an awakened jungle greeted his ears and he was grateful for something to cover the sound of his breaths.

When his lungs had stopped burning and his body had partially recovered he went under again. This time he swam downriver, figuring to put distance between himself and Gaudet before he crossed and began stalking the man. Somebody was going to die if Sam had his way. It would either be him or Gaudet, except he knew that Gaudet did not think that way. The moment Gaudet felt a shift in the odds he would flee. Gaudet preferred to kill from a distance, then disappear. Reading about it in the paper was good enough.

Above, the sky was black. There was almost no light. Trees overshadowing the river were barely visible where the tops framed the sky. There was no sound but the night time symphony of a startled rain forest. No shots. He was back on the far side of the river and downstream. After several breaths he was able to slow the gasping. Quietly he moved into the shallows so that his feet rested on the bottom. If he stood, there might be enough of him to see or hear. With an automatic rifle Gaudet wouldn't need to be very accurate.

Fortunately, combat wasn't Gaudet's forte. If it were, Sam knew that while he had been swimming, his pursuer, Gaudet, would have been charging him, getting as close as possible. Three more kicks downriver were uneventful; at the end of the third, Sam surfaced. It was even blacker than before. The cauliflower border of the trees against the sky was no longer visible. The forest had quieted slightly but was still like a concert hall compared to the night sounds of northern California wilderness where Sam had first learned from Grandfather the art of listening.

Trying to scan the opposite bank, he used peripheral vision, but the shadows were so deep, there was no form— only void. He was barely around one bend and it would not be safe to cross. The shooter could have moved downriver. Instead of crossing, Sam eased toward the bank and crawled on his belly into deep brush, hoping he wouldn't run into a fer-de-lance, the most poisonous snake in the Amazon. Once in the jungle, he went away from the river a hundred yards or so, turned on his flashlight, and walked downriver for twenty minutes, where he made a quiet, uneventful crossing.

Going as fast as he could, he went back into the jungle, then turned upstream until he figured he was near the point of the ambush. Without a GPS or access to Big Eye, he couldn't be sure that he was even traveling in the right direction. He attempted a ninety-degree turn in his general course of travel and immediately noticed a flash from a man-made light. It was only for an instant. He crept toward the river with his light turned off. Nearly an hour had passed. Feeling for every step, he could see nothing. As he walked, he made some slight noise and wondered if it would be enough to draw fire. The constant risk of instant death taxed him. Sweat poured down him as if he were running a race. His body was constantly trying to ready itself for a fight, but there was no fight. There was only the black, the jungle, and the next step. Near the river the bank would be steep; he began to feel for the drop. Overhead, monkeys were making chirps that sounded almost birdlike.

A donkey bird awoke and let the world know its displeasure. After walking many more minutes than Sam would have thought necessary, he was able to discern what he thought was an opening. Maybe the river. Feeling ahead with his foot, he at last perceived a drop-off. He had no idea how close he was to the ambush point. No doubt the shooter had moved, and Sam had glimpsed his light. Perhaps he was there, perhaps he was hundreds of yards off. He needed some bait. If he didn't find the man soon, he would attempt to continue on toward the Tapiche.

Sam hoped that the man was not within easy earshot. Working quickly, he stacked a row of palm fronds near the river. The row was a little over six feet in length. Then he leaped into the water, splashed, called for help in an agonized voice, jumped back onto the bank, and covered his face and hands in mud. Next he lay under the leaves, not quite able to bury himself but getting himself largely covered. Then he waited.

For several minutes there was nothing. Lying quietly his wet clothes and the mud cooled him. The temperature had fallen to perhaps 70 degrees Fahrenheit. There was a breeze and he could sense the weather changing. An extravagant display of lightning lit the river and made the trees stark against the sky. It would rain, and when it did, all sound would wash away with it. The rules of the hunt were changing with the weather.

He began turning his head and even his body, trying to watch 360 degrees in the occasional flashes of lightning. It was as if a mad photographer were running about the jungle with a flashbulb, disrupting the simple passion to kill. The lightning was a complication. With rain, noise would be almost a nonfactor. Eyes would become everything.

Something moved—a branch. It was maybe ten feet distant. Perhaps a monkey, a bird, or a snake. Perhaps a man. It moved again very slightly. Sam waited, content with his camouflage. When next the jungle lit the river, it became a luminescent trough into which the sky poured the light. He saw a man. The splash and the desperate calling had drawn the hunter to the hunted.

Sam was in his element. Some part of him, a major part, was a hunter. If possible, he would use his hands to subdue Gaudet, but not for any noble reason. He simply was more valuable alive than dead.

His quarry was moving very slowly and held a gun as if ready to use it. Huge bolts of lightning etched the black in all directions, even the canopy was lit by the power of the massive electrical strokes across the sky.

Sam watched the man take a step and then search the night. After what seemed like minutes, the man was within ten feet, his light playing through the myriad vertical roots. But his hunter was thinking of a standing man and not a muddy clump of sodden leaves. Sam considered trying to jump him. Too far. Too much noise. Sam pointed his .45 at his target's midriff, tempted to pull the trigger and end it all. There were pros and cons, but the biggest con was that he couldn't be sure it was Gaudet. Living with a cold-blooded killing was not acceptable when an alternative existed. So he waited.