Secret of the Slaves (18 page)

For a moment Annja stared into the man's narrow and hard face. Then she sighed and went limp.

“That's right, honey,” the man said in his Midwestern accent. “Just take it easy. You'll like it. You'll like it so good you'll think you never got it before.”

He laid the flat back of his combat knife between her breasts, slid its tip into her thin blouse beneath the top buttoned button. “Once you do Ranger,” he said, “you won't never be a stranger.”

Annja moved like a viper striking. Her left hand shot out to seize his knife wrist, shoving it and the big blade, gleaming in starlight, to the side. It cut loose her blouse button as she whipped it away.

His eyes widened. His smile turned nasty.

“So you want to make it interesting—”

He sat astride her belly. He was too far up to control her long, powerful legs. With her foot flexed she snapped a kick against the back of his head, hard.

His head whipped forward. He reared back upright in reaction, waving the knife wildly. He had come up onto his knees, taking most of his weight off her. She whipped up her legs. Her feet went around his neck. She locked ankle over ankle.

Tucking her arms like a boxer's, clenching her fists, clenching her whole body to aid her effort, she rolled to the right with all her strength and weight.

The man's neck broke with a nasty sound.

The motion threw his body off her. It flopped like a fish in the scuppers in a final spasm.

She jumped up. Her nostrils were flared, her eyes wide and furious.

She had an audience. At least a dozen men were gathered around, standing or squatting to watch the show.

She swept them with a glance like lasers.

“Anybody else want to play?” she challenged them.

If they rushed her she was ready to summon the sword. But in a way she already had. The mystic steel had entered her spine, her soul. The fires of its forging blazed through her eyes.

One by one the men slunk away.

A
T ABOUT TEN
the next morning a French man the others called Taffy stood leaning over the starboard rail trailing his fingertips in the swelling yellow wake of the boat. Annja was in the bow doing some stretching in the limited space. The former paratrooper was perhaps twelve or fifteen feet from her. Sudden movement drew her eyes. An object like a blunt arrow broke the yellow swell. It was a huge black caiman.

The alligator-like reptile's mouth was open wide, showing pale yellow-pink lining and lots of teeth. It slammed shut like a bear trap on the Frenchman's arm. The broad, tapering head enveloped the limb to within six inches of his shoulder.

The Frenchman screamed in a clear falsetto. With a wrench of its huge body the caiman pulled him over the rail and into the water with a foam-edged splash.

Another shoot-out instantly followed. The mercs seldom strayed far from their weapons by choice, and doubly so since the arrow had come out of the green blankness of the woods. They emptied their magazines again into the roiling water. Annja wondered if they remembered their comrade was in there with the caiman, or whether they wanted to save him from a horrible death. Maybe they just didn't give a damn.

M
ORE ARROWS FLEW
from the shadowed bank when the boat wandered near in late afternoon. All fell short, disappearing into the river. With none coming near and McKelvey glaring at his men with a hand on the butt of his side arm, the mercenaries did not respond with a storm of fire. Instead they gripped their weapons hard and watched the jungle edge with hot, straining eyes. The boat scuttled back out toward the middle of the river.

Lieutenant McKelvey tried to strike up a conversation with Annja. He seemed diffident, more than half-ashamed. Perhaps he felt embarrassed by how little control he had over his men, who squabbled often and violently now, and seemed to refrain from falling on and killing each other solely because of the imminent prospects of easier prey.

She wondered how such an ineffectual man could find himself in charge of such predators in human form. She saw no better reason than that the mercenaries' masters, back at the gold camp or beyond, had decreed him so. The mercs with regular military experience, she knew, were massively conditioned to obey anyone their superiors told them to.

Mostly Annja tuned the lieutenant out, as she tuned out the bugs that swarmed and buzzed and bit incessantly. He was a tool to the great purpose she felt called on to serve. Not a good tool, particularly—and he and his men were likely too many or too few for what lay ahead. But they would serve well enough if the dangers of their quest wore them away instead of her, so long as she was left to face the final and greatest challenge.

In the end it was her task alone.

T
HAT NIGHT A SCREAM
awakened her.

She rolled off her pallet. Somehow she got out from under her mosquito netting without tangling herself in its folds. She was on her feet in a crouch in an instant, the sword firm in her hand.

She saw a flicker of motion from the top of the wheelhouse. A head with terrible incurving teeth flashed down to grab the upturned screaming face of a young man. Then coils as thick around as a truck tire slid down and around him, glistening in the light of the just risen moon. They seemed to move slowly, inexorable as fate. Yet by the time she reached him, sword raised to sever those thick brown-on-bronze loops of muscle, he was wound about three times.

His right arm, pinned against his body, couldn't reach his weapon. Annja saw the peristaltic action of the great serpent's body as it contracted around him, even as its weight bore him over the rail and off into the water.

The little round Belgian captain was out in a night-shirt, holding a big flashlight and screaming at the helmsman. The crewman had dozed at his wheel, and a trick of the current had drawn the boat under the overhang of trees on the banks. The anaconda had simply dropped down on the deckhouse from a branch and awaited prey.

In between barrages of abuse at his crewman she heard the captain wondering aloud just how the current could have so moved the boat when its slow, faithful engine was driving inexorably against it. As he vanished into the wheelhouse to take over the helm himself, Annja looked around to find the deck crowded with the surviving mercenaries. Instead of emptying their weapons into the waters that had claimed a third comrade, they all stared at her with big, round eyes.

“I was too late,” she said. “Sorry.” She walked forward. The mercenaries standing between her and her comfortless pallet melted from her like mercury from a fingertip. She made no mention of the sword.

Annja smiled a big smile. Grumbling, the others turned away. Presumably their work had inured them to horrors. These were new horrors, but, in the end, just horrors.

What force could make the boat stray from midstream like that? she asked herself as she ducked under the netting once more.

All might be explained by superior technology. That was what she had come for, wasn't it?

She lay back down. The gauntlet had been thrown. She would face her enemies boldly, unafraid.

She slept solidly the rest of the night, untroubled by dreams.

As the sun's first light poured forth, pursuing them upriver, the
Marlow
lookout's call roused Annja. Blinking and fuzzy she crawled out from beneath the mosquito netting to stand upright in the bow.

Ahead, just where the great river bent to the right, its base obscured by mist as if it floated on cloud, a vast tree or collection of trees with nine trunks wound somehow together leaned out over the mighty Amazon.

Their beachhead was a natural clearing filled with shoulder-high grass. Natural seeming, Annja realized, when she saw that what she had taken for a driftwood raft caught on the bank, another hundred yards or so past the nine-trunked tree, was actually the remnant of a wooden dock, slumped into the water.

As the
Marlow
approached shore the men gripped their weapons and stared fixedly at the landing site. Annja thought it was professionalism belatedly asserting itself. A distressed-looking McKelvey disabused her of the notion as he removed his crumpled boonie hat to wipe sweat from his forehead.

“This is a bad place,” he said. “We better pray your man Moran gets plenty reinforcements in to us pretty quick, like he said he would.”

“Why is that?” Annja asked.

“A logging party got ambushed ten, twenty klicks back upstream from here, not three months ago. They had a whole security company with them, 120 men or more, with armored cars, machine guns, mortars, everything. Another two or three hundred workers, bulldozers, the whole nine yards. The Indians, just wiped the jungle with 'em. Total massacre.”

“Why didn't I hear about it?” Annja demanded. It seemed to confirm they were in fact within reach of her goal. It also confirmed the level of danger.

“It wasn't the kind of thing that'd go on FOX News, ma'am,” he said. “Not everything that happens even gets on the Internet, especially when it happens way out here in the back of beyond. A few survivors made it back to the gold camp. Some of Bull Campbell's boys heard the bosses. Sounded like a real horror show.”

“What happened to the survivors?”

The lieutenant shrugged. But Annja noted his eyes slid away from hers. The Amazon camps were an ultimately Darwinian environment. And the big cage in the river always needed new gold panners, she reckoned.

Ashore, the men moved with self-confidence seemingly restored by familiar tasks. They unreeled rolls of the same German razor tape that topped the fence around Feliz Lusitânia. They set up curved plastic tablets whose convex face was stamped with the legend Front Toward Enemy. They erected little stands of equipment. It was all a very solemn ritual.

Annja had already knocked about the world enough in her young life to be familiar with most of it. The knife wire was suitably nasty. So were the Claymore mines. And the infrared detectors and infantry radars were undoubtedly far keener at night than plain low-tech human eyes.

Any stray capybara that chanced to wander out of the bush was certain to meet a swift and horrid fate.

As the activity got well under way McKelvey came to Annja, standing near the water. He seemed pleased. “We've got it under control now,” he said. “We're doing what we do. We shouldn't have any trouble now.”

“That's what we thought all along. And you've lost three men,” she said.

His worried expression came back. “Well, I know there are Indian attacks all the time….”

“In the backcountry, on mining and logging camps,” Annja said. “Tourist and trade boats come up and down this river all the time. They don't get attacked by Indians. Why your men now? With all these other incidents? And how many cases of anacondas attacking people have you heard about?”

“Well—there's those movies….” His voice trailed off as he realized too late how lame that sounded.

“There are documented accounts,” she said. “A few. But three fatal attacks? You think that's coincidence? Something doesn't want us here, Lieutenant.”

“Rationally—”

“Yeah. That's what I want to believe, too. But how rational is that level of coincidence?” Annja surprised herself with the question.

“Well…that's what all the guys with guns are for, aren't they?”

She resisted an urge to pat him on the cheek. “Sure, Lieutenant. And they'll probably even be some help.”

He smiled and nodded. “Lucky there's a clearing here, huh, Ms. Creed? Helps a lot.”

“I'm not so sure it's luck. I suspect this is an old, abandoned rubber plantation. The jungle takes longer to reclaim some fields than others.”

“Huh,” he said again. “You really know a lot about this place, don't you, ma'am?”

Annja scanned the surrounding trees. There was a break to the northeast. Beyond it she glimpsed more grassland. “Not as much as I intend to, Lieutenant.”

A
CCORDING TO PLAN
the mercenaries, having secured an initial perimeter, moved beyond the gap Annja had seen into the open grass to create a landing strip. The night before setting out from Feliz Lusitânia Annja had spoken briefly, almost robotically, by the camp radio-phone to Publico. He said he had finished his urgent mission overseas. He would join the party when they found the nine-trunked tree.

She had not asked him what his connection was to the camp and its evils. It no longer seemed important. Her quest consumed her utterly.

As the men set to work hacking and trampling the high grass, Annja decided to have a look around for herself. Walking off through a stand of trees along what she suspected was an old road leading northwest, she waved off the lieutenant's worried question, “Don't you want an escort, Ms. Creed?”

She still wasn't sure whether the mercenaries would prove more help than hindrance. She knew, ultimately, that what must be done, she must do alone. And after two days crowded on the boat with the surly, boisterous men, she wanted little more than to be left alone.

Unless it was a hot bath. But that would have to wait.

Emerging from the trees, she saw a cluster of buildings standing at the edge of the clearing a couple of hundred yards away. Guessing one was the old plantation house, and feeling the archaeologist's urge to explore abandoned human habitation, she struck out for them.

She kept an eye out for any of the numerous types of poisonous snakes that could be lurking to bite her. She kept her eyes moving all around, in fact. There were other dangers that never realistically threatened ecotourists—such as native arrows, anacondas and, of course, golden
onzas.
Not to mention the odd green energy beam.

As she walked along a rutted track through more high grass she wondered what other defenses the Promessans might have in store. Whether or not this was the actual border of the settlement known as the Quilombo dos Sonhos they were near to it—she was sure of it.

“I guess we'll find out soon enough,” she said aloud.

Small gold-headed blue birds flew up from the grass and away from her as she walked toward the buildings. As she drew closer she could see that they had fallen into ruin. The main building's walls, of stone or brick—either of which had once been expensively hauled all the way up the Amazon by shallow-draft steamboats—still mostly stood. Smaller outbuildings, presumably of wood, had mostly slumped into overgrown mounds.

She went into what had been the plantation house. Climbing vines veined the walls. Their suckers had torn away the whitewash in irregular sheets. Inside she found the upper floor and ceiling had fallen in. She could see the sky above, blue with clouds beginning to close. It would likely rain soon.

The floor was a jumble of broken beams and furniture, much covered by vines and grass and even brush growing through the floorboards. She wondered at the totality of collapse. Had the house been burned down?

Looking up at a jut of beam from the wall right above the entrance, she saw rippled char on its end that seemed to confirm it had burned through. That led her to new speculation—did it burn by accident? Lightning? Arson? Had the plantation been overtaken by the collapse of Brazil's rubber market, as Manaus had? Maybe it had been a front for the
quilombo
and the Promessans, as River of Dreams Trading Company was today, and had reached the end of its usefulness.

The Promessans, she thought, had a brisk way of dealing with things that outlived their utility. People, as well as artifacts, if the fates of the anonymous man in Feliz Lusitânia and Mafalda in Belém were any indication.

She backed out and went to the other sizable building. It was a chapel. Its walls of gray granite and even its arching slate roof were largely intact. The forest had grown right up against it.

Inside was bare but for broken pews and a layer of jungle litter on the flagstones. Buttresses mounted up the walls. Green lianas climbed them, as did chittering monkeys. Little blue ground doves pecked around the hollow altar. The windows had been broken out.

Annja wandered deeper into the chapel. Dry leaves skittered from her feet. Small creatures stirred unseen beneath drifted debris.

“Annja Creed,” said a voice behind her.

She spun. The sword appeared in her hand.

“You won't need that,” Xia said.

Her black hair, bound by what looked like a thin jade band around her temples, fell around her shoulders. She wore a sleeveless top of shimmering green, and what might have been a green suede skirt, leaving her firmly muscled stomach bare. The straps of sandals twined up her bare legs like serpents.

At her side stood Patrizinho, his arms crossed over his muscular bare chest. He wore loose brown trousers with gold trim and low boots with no visible seams or fastenings. Figured golden armlets encircled his forearms. His dreadlocked golden-brown hair was swept back into a brush at the back of his head by a gold cloth band. Neither bore weapons that Annja could see.

“I think I do,” she said. To her surprise her voice did not shake from her anger, or the force she was exerting to keep it under control.

“Do I even have to point out that if we wanted you dead you'd be dead already?” Xia said. Her tone was mild, conversational. Annja understood that sociopaths were often accomplished actors. “Or that we can escape at will?”

“If I'm alive,” Annja said, “I presume it's in your selfish interest to keep me alive.”

Patrizinho's face split in a huge grin. It tugged at her heart. He was so beautiful she
wanted
to believe in him.

“She almost gets it, doesn't she?” he said to his companion. “I told you, there is hope for her.”

“We shall all know very soon,” Xia said.

Annja laughed. It was a harsh sound. The laugh of a stranger. “You think I'm gullible because of how easily you tricked me before,” she said. “I may be a naive and spoiled North American. I may not be as streetwise as I like to think I am. I may not even be that smart. But I am capable of learning.”

“Good,” Xia said, smiling and nodding tightly. “Because time is short. So learn fast.”

“I already know all I need to about you.”

“Do you really believe so?” Patrizinho asked. He almost sounded surprised.

“You know
nothing,
” Xia said. “You have been misled, lied to at every turn.”

“By you!” Annja couldn't keep the metal out of her voice.

“No,” Xia said.

“Even now, if you look deep into your heart you can see the truth,” Patrizinho said. He held out a hand. “Please.”

“You risk compromising your destiny,” Xia said. “You are betrayed. Now you risk betraying yourself and all that you stand for.”

“How dare you talk of me betraying what I stand for!” she demanded. “What do you know about my destiny?”

Gripping the sword in both hands, she charged toward them. In blind, weeping rage she cocked the weapon back over her shoulder to strike.

Xia and Patrizinho stepped backward out of the doorway and stepped to the side.

When she ran out after them they were gone.

They must have gone into the underbrush, she assured herself. Though she could see no sign of it—no branches asway from being displaced, no stirring of growth deeper in, no birds startled into flight by human passage.

There was no point in pursuing, she knew. This was their forest. They could ambush her or evade her at will.

This proves we're in the right place! she exulted to herself.

From the southeast came the mosquito whine of airplane engines.

T
HE FIELD HAD BEEN VETTED
for relative flatness and firmness by the mercenaries. It was nothing the little aircraft, and a seasoned Brazilian bush pilot used to landing on rough fields, couldn't handle.

Mladko and Goran emerged wearing loose long-sleeved shirts and tan trousers. Their shaved heads were covered in Panama hats. They winged out to each side of the aircraft door and stood with thick arms crossed.

A similarly attired Publico emerged. McKelvey, alerted to the plane's approach by radio, snapped to attention and saluted. Sir Iain acknowledged him with an airy tip of a forefinger off his craggy forehead.

Then his blue eyes lit on Annja, walking crisply toward him across the field. His face seamed in smiles. “Ah, Annja my dear. Just the person I want to see. Carry on, Lieutenant. You're doing a splendid job.”

As mercenaries crawled into the plane between Goran and Mladko to unload Publico's luggage, the man himself walked to meet Annja. “Come,” he said, taking her by the shoulder. “Walk with me. Talk with me.”