Burial Ground (17 page)

"Are you one hundred percent sure it's
Hunter's?" Colton asked. The tone of his voice expressed not doubt,
but the solemn need for confirmation. They both knew the
ramifications of such verification.

"Estwing Supreme Light Weight Rock Pick.
Customized leather grip. I bought him an entire set as a graduation
gift when he finished his doctorate," Leo said. "I even had them
engraved with his initials."

He tilted the sharp hammer so that Colton
could see the HSG in flowery script.

Colton rose without another word and struck
off away from the camp toward where his men combed the surrounding
area. Flashlights strobed between trees and diffused into the
impregnable snarls of shrubs and vines as they searched for the
painted native.

They were never going to find him. Not until
he wanted to be found.

The man knew this jungle far better than any
of them and had spent his entire life avoiding detection. At the
same time, Leo was certain that he wouldn't run either. He was a
specter capable of hiding in their midst, and he was still
somewhere out there.

Watching.

His thoughts returned to his son. What
happened during Hunter's final days before his body was dumped in
the river?

He had to piece together that seventy-two
hour span, during which Hunter had obviously reached his quarry, as
evidenced by the placers in his rucksack.

And it all started with this hammer.

During his last satellite communication,
Hunter had made no mention of natives, nor had he so much as hinted
that he suspected his party was being followed, which meant that
the natives had shown themselves for the first time after that
fateful call and before the next was scheduled the following
evening. That left a twenty-four-hour window of opportunity for
ambush, and another forty-eight that would prove to be the final
two days of his son's life. The only variable he could rule out
with any sort of certainty was that Hunter's terminal wounds had
not been inflicted by arrows based on the ME's assessment that the
object with which he'd been stabbed had been hooked.

He heard one of the men holler to the others
from somewhere out of sight, but when no further shouting or
gunfire ensued, he returned his gaze to the orphaned rock pick.

"They didn't kill him," Sam said. Leo hadn't
heard her approach. She stood to the side of the fire with an
empathetic expression on her drawn face, and gestured to the trunk
beside him. "Do you mind?"

Leo shook his head and she eased onto the
log beside him. Had she been anyone else, he would have told her to
leave him alone, but she was his link to the past, and in many ways
an extension of the memories of his son. He cherished the years he
had spent in pursuit of fortune and adventure with this grown
woman's deceased father, the best friend he had ever had. He missed
the challenge, the camaraderie, the feeling of belonging to a
family. Ever since his wife left him and his son went off to
college, he had felt an emptiness that couldn't be filled, only
ignored by throwing himself into the conquest of the business
world. And now, here he was again, no wife, no son, sitting with
the adult version of the pigtailed child from a better time, who
undoubtedly despised him nearly as much as he despised himself.

"How can you be so sure?" Leo asked.

"Because he drowned," Sam said. "At least
that's what you told me..."

Leo looked quickly at her from the corner of
his eye. She had turned to face him so she could scrutinize his
reaction. It had been a test, and he had failed miserably. He shook
his head and inwardly chastised himself.

"What haven't you told me?" she asked in
little more than a whisper. "How did Hunter really die?"

"He drowned, Sam. Just like I said."

"You're lying."

Leo shifted so that he faced her. She
reminded him so much of her mother, but at the same time, her
father's inquisitive spark shined behind her eyes like the lamp in
a police interrogation room. And if she were anything like her old
man, she wasn't going to let this drop without some small
concession. At least for now.

"He
did
drown, Sam. Two medical
examiners worked the autopsy, and I made sure I was standing right
there to watch it. That's the God's honest truth. But you know as
well as I do that Hunter was an excellent swimmer. You two grew up
in jungles just like this one, swimming in rivers and lakes filled
with any number of things that could probably have killed you on
any given day. I just can't seem to swallow the idea of accidental
drowning. Can you?"

Sam looked away and didn't answer. Perhaps
she feared wounding an old man who had lost his only child, or
maybe a part of her had suspected as much all along. He hadn't been
forced to divulge the truth, but had given her something to think
about until he eventually had to come clean about the stab wounds.
She would hate him when that time came, but she probably already
did anyway.

"Do you want to know what I think?" Sam
finally asked after a long moment of silence.

Leo nodded. He could see the camera crew
hovering on the far side of the campfire, presumably waiting for
him to set down the hammer long enough for them to film it. While
he admired their tenacity, and had brought them along specifically
for this purpose, he had the urge to bludgeon them both with
it.

"I don't think the natives intend to harm
us," Sam said. "They've undoubtedly had ample opportunity to do so
already. And Merritt said the man he saw had a bow and arrows. They
could have easily picked us off from the cover of the trees a
hundred times over, especially considering how accurate they would
have to be in order to survive out here for so long." She paused.
"I do, however, think that the man made sure he was seen. They've
followed us this far without us noticing. They could have continued
like that for a long time. He wanted Merritt to see him, to see his
weapon. I believe it was a message of sorts."

"A message? What was he trying to purvey?
That if we don't turn back they'll shoot us?"

"Perhaps, but they've already had infinite
chances to do so already. If they wanted us dead, they never would
have betrayed their presence."

Her theory made sense, yet it did little to
calm the turmoil inside of him. True, any marksman of the caliber
she suggested could easily have sniped them from a distance,
invisible in the forest. The problem remained that these people had
come in direct contact with his son, and now he was dead.

"Hey," Merritt called from the edge of the
forest. He jogged over to where they sat. "Have either of you seen
our guides? No one can remember seeing them since shortly after
nightfall. And I can't find my backpack either."

11:02 p.m.

They had slowly worked their way to the
periphery of the camp, remaining just within earshot, where they
had waited patiently until their chance had finally come. Something
had distracted the group near the fire, drawing everyone's
attention, even the men who scoured the wilderness with their
automatic weapons. Santos had sensed that there would be no better
opportunity, and they had sprinted away through the jungle until
they had traveled far enough to safely return to the path.

Only the faintest hint of moonlight
permeated the canopy, but it didn't matter. They ran as fast as
their tired bodies would allow, tripping and falling, only to rise
and run again. Their knees and elbows bled freely through abrasions
thick with dirt, and their panting breaths were the only audible
sounds over their slapping, barefooted tread.

Kemen cried out. He stumbled and collapsed
yet again. Santos and Naldo slowed only long enough to drag him
back to his feet and jerk him forward.

Santos knew that once the men discovered
they were gone, the search would commence, but only for a short
while, and the hunt would be contained to the immediate area
surrounding the camp. No one would stray this far to the northeast
for fear of giving up hard-earned ground or sacrificing sleep. He
and his friends were in the clear now, but they weren't about to
slow for anything in the world.

Damn the money. The half they'd received in
advance was more than enough to cover the cost of their time and
gas. Besides, Santos knew now that their fare would not be
returning to Pomacochas to pay the balance. As long as he and his
friends escaped with their lives, that would be more than
compensation enough.

While he had forgotten the tales his
grandmother had spun in his youth, they had returned in startling
clarity upon first sight of the jaguar's savaged carcass. He had
thought the old woman mad. Her stories of winged demons in the
mountains of her ancestors had always seemed designed to scare him.
Even then, though, he had understood that as ridiculous as they had
sounded, she had believed them. And after witnessing the carnage in
that field, now so did he. There wasn't a man or animal in the
entire Andes range that could run down an adult jaguar, overcome
it, and tear it to shreds. Perhaps he didn't subscribe to the
legend of winged demons, but there was definitely something in the
jungle that he didn't want to encounter, especially in the
dark.

His companions had felt it too, and the
agreement to abandon their party had been struck without
reservation.

The youth tripped again. This time when he
landed, the shoulder strap of his backpack ripped. Its weight
slammed into the back of his head and hammered his face against the
ground. Kemen moaned and tried to roll over, his pitiful cries
muffled by the loam. Santos stopped to help him. It was then that
he noticed how fancy the backpack was. Crouching in the forest,
awash with darkness, and running in the lead with the boy at his
heels, he hadn't even seen it.

Now they were in real trouble.

"What is wrong with you?" Santos asked in
Spanish. He wanted to strike Kemen for his foolishness, but the
urge was superseded by the need to keep moving. "You should not
have taken this. Now they will definitely come after us."

"Mine was falling apart," Kemen sobbed. He
rolled over and blood poured from his nostrils. His nose must have
broken when his face struck the earth.

"We leave it," Santos said. "When they find
it, they will call off the search."

He wrenched the functional strap off of the
boy's shoulder, unfastened the top flap, and dumped the contents
onto the ground. Kemen's threadbare canvas satchel was buried in a
pile of clothes, notebooks, dehydrated rations, and foil-backed
punch-cards of medications and water purification tablets. There
was also a brand new digital camera. He held it up and shook his
head. The desire to beat some sense into the youth with it was
overwhelming.

"This? A camera? You risk our lives so you
can steal a camera?"

Tears streamed from Kemen's eyes and he
blubbered something unintelligible.

"We are wasting time," Naldo said. He had to
double over to catch enough breath to continue. "The forest is
still too quiet. We can not afford to delay here any longer."

Santos felt the man's trembling hand on his
arm and realized the truth of his words. He dropped the camera onto
the clothes, grabbed Kemen's pack, and threw it down onto the boy's
chest.

"Get up. We must continue. With or without
you."

He turned and sprinted after Naldo, who was
already twenty paces ahead on the path, a silhouette against the
shadows. Either Kemen followed them or they would leave him. The
boy had jeopardized their flight for a stolen camera that would
only bring a handful of nuevo sol. What in the name of God had he
been---?

With a crash of breaking branches, a dark
shape knifed across the path ahead, and just like that, Naldo was
gone.

A scream erupted from the trees off to the
left, but only for a split-second before it was cut short. It
trailed into a wet gurgle that was swallowed by thrashing sounds
from the underbrush. The bushes shook violently.

Abruptly, the noises ceased and the branches
shivered back into place.

"What was that?" Kemen cried from behind
him.

Santos held up a palm to silence the boy,
who only continued to sob. He could hear nothing else. The jungle
was still, the night unfettered by even the soft whoosh of a
breeze. He drew a deep breath and sifted through the myriad scents:
soggy earth, rotting kapok fruits, palm buds and cacao pods, and
something else...the almost metallic smell of raw meat, which grew
stronger with each passing second.

"Santos..." Kemen whined.

A single crackle of dead leaves to his left
and Santos threw himself into a jerunga shrub to his right. He
crawled toward the trunk of a massive tree framed by wooden liana
vines, slipped between them, and huddled against the base of the
trunk.

"Santo---!"

Another crash from the brush, but this time
there was no scream. The crunching sounds grew louder, building to
a ferocious crescendo, before dying as quickly as they had
begun.

Santos closed his hands over his mouth to
mute the sounds of his breathing. It was a futile effort. The
jungle was so silent that he could still clearly hear his frantic
respirations. He pressed backward until the bark bit into the bare
flesh on his back. His eyes darted from side to side. He could see
only darkness beyond the wooden bars of his prison.

A hawk-like shriek pierced the night from
the far side of the path. A heartbeat later it was answered by
another, this time from the opposite direction.

He held his breath and waited.

The only sound was the rapid thud of his
pulse in his temples.

Craning his ear toward the path, he listened
for even the subtle crinkle of footsteps on wet leaves.

A faint breeze caressed his cheek, bringing
with it the intensified scent of bloody flesh.