Amazonia

Brail, who had been assigned as his new lieutenant after Jacques disappeared, spoke near his feet. The tracker knelt over a map, marking off small X's as his units reported in. "The net's secure, Herr Doktor. Nothing left now but mopping up:"

Louis could tell the man was anxious to bag his own limit here.

"And the Rangers? The Americans?"

"Herded toward the center, just as you ordered:"

"Excellent:" Louis nodded to his mistress at his side. Tshui was naked, armed only with a little blowgun. Between her breasts rested the shrunken head of Corporal DeMartini, hung around Tshui's neck by the man's own dog tags.

"Then it's time we joined the party." He lifted his twin pair of snubnosed mini-Uzis. They felt powerful in his hands. "It's high time I made the acquaintance of Nathan Rand."

9:12 A.M.

"You watch over your brother and the shaman," Nathan said, sensing time was ru

"You don't have a weapon:" Kelly knelt beside the shaman. With Nathan's help, the two had wrangled the tribesman into a hammock. Kelly had shot him full of morphine, quieting his pained thrashing. A belly wound was one of the most agonizing. With no better solution, she was now slathering the entry and exit wounds with Yagga sap. "What are you going to do if you catch him?"

Nate felt a fire in his own belly, just as agonizing as a bullet wound. "First he betrayed my father, now he betrayed us:" His voice choked with anger. He wanted only one thing from the man. Vengeance.

Frank spoke from his hammock. "What are you going to do?"

Nathan shook his head. "I have to try."

He headed toward the exit. Distantly the explosions had died down, but gunfire spat sporadically. The fewer the shots, the more obvious it became that the village was being wiped out. Nate knew they would fare no better, not unless something was done. But what?

Stalking down the passage, at first cautiously, then faster and faster, around and around, Nate was reminded of the serpentine pattern of the Ban-ali symbol, winding in a spiral. Could this passage be what the symbol represented, or was it what Kelly had conjectured earlier, a crude representation of the twisted protein model, the mutagenic prion? If it represented the Yagga's tu

He ran around a corner and stumbled over a dead Indian lying in the tu

Nate looked down and saw another body, just its legs, around the next curve. Another Indian.

Zane.

Nate scrambled to his feet, his blood on fire. The man was picking off the unarmed stragglers here, healers and aides to the shaman, brutally clearing a bloody path to the tu

Nate shoved down the tu

In the clearing around the tree, a few Indians retreated toward the Yagga.

By now, an ominous quiet had settled over the village.

Nate edged along the branch, but he couldn't get a good look across the glade toward the nightcap oak and his team's temporary homestead. The branch pointed the wrong way. He couldn't even spy the entrance to the Yagga. Damn it.

Pistol fire sounded from below. Zane! A scream erupted from the field on the tree's far side. The coward must be hiding down at the tu

The Indians in direct sight below fled toward the cover of the thicker wood.

Nate stared across the glade. There was no sign of his friends.

As Nate sidled along the thick limb, his toe nudged a rope coiled atop the branch. He looked closer. Not rope, he realized, but one of the vine ladders.

"A fire escape," he mumbled. An idea flashed into his mind-a plan forming.

Before he lost his nerve, he shoved the piled vine over the edge.

The ladder unrolled with a whispery sound until it snapped to its full length, only three feet from the ground. It was a long climb, but if Zane was down there, perhaps Nate could sneak up on him.

With no more plan than that, Nate mounted the ladder and began a hurried climb earthward. He raced down the rungs. If his group and the remaining Indians could fall back here, they might have a more defensible position. But before that could happen, Zane had to be eliminated.

Nate reached the end of the ladder and hopped off.

Tall roots rose all around him, and it took Nate a moment to orient himself. The stream was behind and off to the left. That meant he was about at the four o'clock position from the tu

Three o'clock . . . two o'clock . . .

Somewhere off in the forest, a spatter of automatic gunfire erupted. Another grenade exploded. Clearly the fighting had not entirely ceased in some parts of the village.

Using the cover of the noise, Nate crawled and edged his way around the tree's base. At last, he spotted one of the tall buttress roots that flanked the entrance. One o'clock.

Nate leaned against the trunk. Zane was beyond the obstruction . . . but how to proceed from here was the tricky part. Another pistol shot rang out from Zane's bunker. Nate frowned down at his empty hands.

What plan now, hero boy?

9:34 A.M.

Zane knelt on one knee, aiming out with his pistol. Tiring, he supported his weapon arm with his other. But he refused to let down his guard, not when victory was so close. He only had to hold out a little longer, then his role in this mission would be over.

One eye twitched to the nut full of the miraculous sap. It was a fortune worth billions. Though St. Savin Pharmaceuticals had made a sizable deposit in Zane's Swiss account to buy his cooperation, it was the promised bonus of a quarter percentage point of gross sales that had finally sold him on the betrayal. With the potential in the Yagga's sap, there was no limit to the wealth that could flow his way.

Zane licked his lips. His role here was almost at an end. Days ago, he had successfully slipped the computer virus into the team's communication equipment. Now all that remained was the final endgame.

Late last night, Favre had instructed Zane to obtain a sample of the sap and protect it with his life. "If those damn natives pull some jackass stunt," Louis had warned, "like setting fire to their precious tree to protect their secret, then you're our fail-safe:"

Zane had, of course, agreed, but unknown to his murderous partner, Zane had his own backup plan in mind, too. Once secure here, Zane had poured a small sample of the sap from the nut, sealed it in a latex condom, tied it off, and swallowed it. An extra bit of insurance on his own part. Any betrayal and a competing pharmaceutical company, like Tellux, would find itself in possession of the miraculous substance instead of St. Savin.

Distant rifle shots sounded from the woods. He spotted flashes of muzzle fire. Favre's men were cinching the noose. It would not be long.

As if confirming this, a grenade exploded at the glade's fringe. A dwelling in one of the huge trees blew apart, casting leaf and branch high into the air. Zane smiled-then he heard a voice within the echo of the blast. It sounded close.