The Jungle

“All right,” Juan had to agree. Looking upward, it was next to impossible to see any daylight at all. “We’ll start out again at first light.”

Everyone’s first order of business was to get the flameless heating units from their MREs to start chemically warming their entrées. Next came laying out nylon sleeping pouches with built-in mosquito netting. Finding areas big enough to lie comfortably in the dense jungle was a chore unto itself, so the single machete MacD had been carrying was put to good use.

By the time their food was ready everyone had their pouches rolled out but still tightly sealed to keep the armada of insects, which had plagued them from the moment the RHIB had come to a stop, from joining them for the night. No one said a word the entire time. When the meal was over, Juan pointed at Smith, then himself, then at MacD, and finally at Linda. This was the order for guard duty. He checked his watch, calculating in how many hours the sun would rise again, and held up two fingers. They nodded their understanding.

Cabrillo deliberately gave Smith the first watch because he knew he himself could stay awake to make sure the Legio

The night passed smoothly, if not exactly comfortably. A jungle at night contains an earsplitting symphony of bird and monkey cries, with a backup chorus of insects’ incessant chirping. Juan’s concerns about Smith were unfounded.

A clammy mist clung to the ground when they awoke, deadening the sounds of the forest and giving everything an eerie, otherworldly mien. They broke camp as silently as they made it, and within ten minutes of there being light enough to see they struck out again, MacD at point and Cabrillo in the drag position.

Mercifully, the jungle began to thin, and when MacD found a game path, they could move on at an almost-normal pace. Lawless paused every so often, to listen, for one, but also to check the trail for any signs that a human had used it recently. Given the amount of rain that fell on a daily basis, Cabrillo doubted he would find anything and was amazed when after a quick detour into the adjoining bush he came back holding a balled-up piece of silvered paper. A gum wrapper. He opened it and held it under Cabrillo’s nose. He could still smell the mint.

“Our Miss Croissard,” he whispered, “is no environmentalist, littering like this.”

Lawless pocketed the scrap while Juan checked the GPS. They had about a quarter mile to go.

Their pauses became longer and more frequent the closer they got, and everyone held their weapon at the ready, not knowing what to expect but prepared nonetheless. It was a good sign that birds and tree-dwelling animals cavorted in the canopy. It was usually a sure sign that there was no one else around.

The forest suddenly opened up into a small glade of kneehigh grass. They paused at the edge, like swimmers contemplating jumping into a pond, and surveyed the area. A gentle breeze made the stalks of grass sway and ripple, but otherwise nothing moved. Cabrillo judged that Soleil had made her final transmission from the right side of the open field near where the jungle started again.

Rather than cross the glade, they backtracked into the bush and approached the site from the side. When they were fifteen feet away from the GPS coordinates, Cabrillo spotted stuff on the ground at the very edge of the field. He realized immediately it was what remained of a camp. He spotted a dark green tent that had been slashed apart, its lightweight frame mangled beyond recognition. Stuffing from shredded sleeping bags looked like cotton balls. There were other items too—a small camping stove, plastic plates, articles of clothing, a hiker’s walking stick.

“Looks like we are much too late,” Smith said in a low voice. “Whoever attacked here is long gone.”

Cabrillo nodded.

He hadn’t known what to expect they would find, but this confirmed his worst fears. All that remained was to find what the animals had left of the bodies. It was a grisly but necessary step to prove to Croissard that his daughter was truly dead.

“You and MacD watch the perimeter,” Juan said. “Linda, you’re with me.”

With the two men keeping guard, Linda and Cabrillo moved closer to the little encampment. As they did, they saw that the tent had been riddled with small-arms fire. The nylon was peppered with tiny holes whose edges were singed black by the heat of the bullets.

Linda hunkered down to pull open the collapsed tent fly, her arm reaching out to the zipper like it was on automatic pilot. Her expression was one that said she wanted to be anywhere but here and doing anything but this. Juan stood bent behind her

The viper had been resting in the cool shadow of the tent, just out of view. The vibrations of two large animals’ hearts beating and their lungs breathing had woken it seconds earlier, so when it struck, it did so with the fury of the disturbed.

It moved so fast that high-speed cameras would be necessary to capture its strike. As its hood opened, and its needlelike teeth hyperextended from its mouth, drops of clear venom had already formed on their tips. It was one of the most powerful neurotoxins on the planet and worked by paralyzing the diaphragm and stopping the lungs. Without antivenom, death occurs about thirty minutes after the bite.

The lightning-quick snake aimed straight for Linda’s forearm and was about three inches from clamping its jaws around her skin and sinking its teeth an inch into her flesh when Juan’s hand snapped around its neck and used the awesome power of its uncoiling body to redirect the strike and hurl the serpent into the jungle.

The entire episode took a single second.

“What just happened?” Linda said. She hadn’t seen a thing.

“Trust me,” Cabrillo said, a little breathlessly. “You don’t want to know.”

Linda shrugged and bent back over her task. There were more items inside the tent—food wrappers, a mess kit, more clothes—but there was no body, or even blood. Juan reached over Linda’s shoulder, moving stuff around with his hands, concentrating on what he wasn’t seeing more than what he was. He cast around in the grass, eventually finding Soleil’s satellite phone, or what was left of it. A bullet had passed clean through the sleek high-tech device. He also found a bunch of spent shell casings. 7.62mm. They were doubtlessly fired from AK-47s, the old Soviet Union’s legacy to the world of violence.

He called softly for Lawless and Smith.

“They’re not here,” he informed them. “I think they were ambushed but managed to slip into the jungle. The attackers swept through the camp, took what they wanted—food, apparently, since we didn’t find any—and then went off in pursuit.”

Smith’s expression didn’t change except for a little tightening at the corners of his eyes.

The guy really was made of stone, Juan thought.

“MacD, think you can track them?”

“Give me a sec.” He ambled over to the edge of the jungle closest to the ruined camp. He dropped to a knee, studying the ground, and then examined the branches of the nearest shrubs. He took almost five full minutes before waving the others to him. Cabrillo had used that time to call the Oregon and give Max Hanley an update. In return, Max had told him that everything was quiet on their end.

“See here?” MacD pointed to a broken branch. The pulpy wound had turned ashen. “This here looks like sumac to me. This level of discoloration means the branch was snapped a week ago, maybe ten days.”

“So, you can track them?” Smith prodded.

“Ah sure will try, but no guarantees.” He looked at Juan. “Did y’all find any shoes or boots?”

“No.”

Lawless put himself into the minds of two terrified people ru