Echoes of the Well of Souls (6 page)

"I hope this won't be like Matatowa," the reporter sighed. "Everything set up for it to blow, half a million bucks spent, and the damned earthquake hits three hundred miles south. I'd hate like hell to have this thing drop into the lap of ABC."

Their attitude was reassuring to the novice scientist. No talk of danger, no talk of risks, no reservations—just how to get the story. It may have been foolish to dismiss those thoughts, but it was also infectious. Maybe one
did
have to be crazy to do many of the things others took for granted; maybe those who took the risks were the ones who knew how to live, too.

"You're going to have to be on your best behavior and bite your tongue at this ranch, Doc," Terry said to her.

"Huh?"

"These are
extremely
dangerous guys," she explained. "Nobody knows how many people they've killed or what they're capable of, but no matter how macho or weird they are, go with the flow. I haven't dealt with these guys face to face before, but I've dealt with their type in Colombia. The Nazis must have been like these guys—smart, articulate, well educated mostly, often charming and cultured, but nutty as fruitcakes in the most psychopathic way. No comments, questions, or moral judgments. We're not here to do their story this time. Let's just do
our
job, okay?"

She nodded. "I'll try and just stay out of their way if I can. We won't exactly have a lot of time, anyway."

"We'll probably have one of them with us," Maklovitch noted. "I seriously doubt if they're going to like a lot of low-level photography of that region without some controls on their part. They'll have a man with us and another with the ground station just to make sure that nothing they don't want seen gets out. Don't worry too much about it, though; satellites can take better pictures of the region than Gus can."

"Like hell," the photographer growled. "Give me an altitude of just a few hundred feet and I'll tell you what's real and what's camouflage. Besides, we don't have a lot of satellite coverage in the southern hemisphere. They'll be on their toes with us. Bet on it."

"Yeah, well, don't you go trying to get away with shots you know are taboo," Maklovitch warned. "This thing's dangerous enough as it is. It wouldn't take much convincing if we were to wind up dead and burned from what they'll say is a tragic accident with the debris from this meteor. There're too many of these crackpots down here for us to cause trouble with Campos. Let the powers that be handle that. You just get the shots you're being paid for and not the kind in the back of the head."

The "Seat Belt" sign went on, and they heard the engines slowing; they were coming in on the Campos airstrip.

Darkness fell fast in the tropics, and it was difficult to see much. It was clear that the strip wasn't commercial caliber; it was bumpy as hell, and they could hear cinders hitting the wings and underside of the plane as they taxied in and slowed to a stop.

It was almost seven-thirty; seven and a half hours to go.

The door opened, and the heat and humidity streamed in. If anything, it seemed far worse than even Manaus, although climatologically there wasn't a lot of difference. A beat-up old station wagon, a full-sized American model not seen on U.S. roads in a decade, bounced up, and several men got out. They carried submachine guns and looked incredibly menacing.

One of the men shouted something to them in rapid Spanish, and Terry responded in kind. She turned to them and said, "Everybody's supposed to get into the wagon and go up to the main house. Air crew, too. They say they'll unload the rest of the gear and bring it along. I think they're supposed to search the plane—and the gear— although they don't say that."

"No problem," responded the voice of the pilot behind them. "They did this earlier today, although Joel and I just had to stand behind the wagon."

Terry said something sharply to the men in Spanish, then explained, "I just told them not to touch the communications equipment and relays. If they get out of whack, we might as well not be here."

The Americans all squeezed into the wagon, and the driver slid in, put his Uzi between his legs, and roared off. Lori was glad to see that she wasn't the only one suddenly holding on for dear life.

The ride was mercifully short, and soon they were in front of an imposing Spanish-style structure that seemed out of place in the middle of nowhere. Three men were waiting, two of whom had weapons and looked like bodyguards; the third was a tall, dignified man who seemed to have stepped out of the pages of some Latin novel. White-haired, including a thick but extremely well-groomed mustache, his skin almost blackened by the tropical sun, he nonetheless was more Spanish than South American and a far cry from the Brazilians they'd been with the past day. He was also the sort of man who clearly had not only been handsome when young but had remanied so into advancing age.

So help me, he's even wearing a white suit!
Lori thought, somewhat amused in spite of her nervousness at being around so many guns.

John Maklovitch got out first, followed by the others. He approached the man in the white suit casually and nodded.
"Buenas noches,"
he said in a friendly and seemingly unconcerned tone.

"And good evening to you, my friend," responded the older man in a deep, rich baritone with only a trace of an accent. "I am Francisco Campos, at your service. I must apologize for all the guns and procedures, but this is a very dangerous area. To the west, we have some of the most ruthless revolutionaries on this continent; to the east, some of the most savage tribes remaining on Earth. We have a rigid set of precautions, and although some really are not appropriate for your visit, it is easier for my men to maintain their routine. The sort of men who are willing to live out here are not always the most intelligent, but they are good people."

"We understand perfectly," the newsman responded smoothly. "We were a bit concerned that they might disturb our transmitting equipment. It's delicate and needs to be calibrated as it was in Manaus this afternoon. If it's thrown out of whack, we will have disturbed you for nothing."

"They have been alerted by your technical staff here as to what to look for and what not to touch," Campos responded. "Please be assured that none of my men will harm your equipment in any way. Of
that
I can assure you. But come, you will be eaten alive by the insects out here. Come inside and relax. I can get you drinks and perhaps a light supper."

"Thank you. Your hospitality is most gracious. Uh—may I present my companions? The air crew you have seen, but this young lady is my producer, Theresa Perez, and this other lady is Doctor Lori Sutton, our science adviser for this story. The tall one here is Gus Olafsson, our cameraman."

"Delighted to meet you all," he responded, bowing slightly. "Perez?" he said quizzically. "You are from a Latin country?"

"Some say that," she responded. "Miami, actually."

"Cubano?"

"Partly. My father was—a
Marielito.
My mother was from Grenada. But I was born in Florida." She paused. "I apologize and mean no insult, but we have to get set up and in communication with Atlanta. We'll have to do one or two standups before we take off. They're already running nearly continuous coverage, and they'll be expecting us. Perhaps when we are done we can avail ourselves of your generous hospitality, but it
is
our job."

He paused, and for a moment they weren't sure if he was going to take this as an insult, but then he smiled and said, "Of course! I apologize for my stupidity! You see, we are very remote here, and schedules, time clocks, and such are as foreign as snow to us.
Mariana
is our watchword here, I fear. But there is but one meteor,
si
?
And it will not wait. I understand." He turned to one of the other men and barked some crisp orders in Spanish quite different in tone from the one he was using with them, then turned back to them.

"I have asked Juan, my son, to accompany you. With him along, you will find few barriers. His English is fairly good, so you should not need the lovely Senorita Perez to translate, and Juan is a very good helicopter pilot who can assist when you need it." He paused again and for the first time seemed slightly nervous. "This meteor—it is huge, yes?"

"Very large," Maklovitch acknowledged. "Maybe the biggest thing to hit the Earth in thousands of years."

"What will happen when it hits, if I may ask? Here, for example."

Lori decided it was time to take over. "Senor, I don't think we should mince words. Perhaps nothing, although the last track I saw takes it within 150 kilometers of here. There will be debris, some of it possibly as large as heavy rocks and some of it extremely hot. The explosion itself when it lands will be gigantic, like an exploding volcano or worse. How much of the effect you'll get here, whether fallout of rocks or blast damage, will depend on how close it hits. Make no mistake—if it does not clear the Andes, and we do not believe it will, it will hit within a 150-kilometer radius of this estate. Within fifty, you will suffer some strong damage. Within a hundred, some minor damage analogous to an earthquake about that far away. I would certainly take some precautions to secure things, tie them down, get breakables off shelves, that sort of thing, but I wouldn't panic. The odds are very good you won't be in the direct path—but you will know when it comes."

Campos seemed impressed by this. "I thank you. I will do what I can to 'batten the hatches,' as they say, then watch you and pray."

"They hooked up a relay to the house?" Maklovitch asked, impressed.

"No, no. I will watch you on my satellite television. On CNN."

The reporter seemed momentarily taken aback. "Good heavens!" he muttered, more to himself than to the others. "I wonder if the ratings people know about places like this?"

Just then a figure emerged from the house, summoned apparently by one of the bodyguards.

There was no question that Juan Campos was the son of Francisco, but there was a difference far greater between them. What was handsome and cultured on the older man seemed somehow raw and violent in the younger, almost as if the veneer of civilization had been stripped off with the years. His hair was long and black, his mustache was large and bushy, and the eyes were—well,
mean.
He wore green military fatigues that showed custom tailoring and combat boots, and the leather gun belt around his waist held a holster with a mean-looking automatic pistol sticking out of it.

Lori thought, but didn't dare say, that the younger man looked almost like the generic poster of a Latin American revolutionary.

Francisco introduced them around, and the younger man nodded to each in turn, giving each of the news team a penetrating stare, as if he were trying to memorize every detail he could see about them.

Finally he said, in a voice both deeper and more gruff than his father's as well as more heavily accented, "All right. We go."

Terry gave Lori a sudden look that was understood almost instantly; this wasn't their guide but their keeper, and no matter what kind of bastard he was, he was in charge.

They walked around the very large hacienda toward some large outbuildings in the rear, and almost instantly they could see where the crew had set up. A small area against a nondescript green-painted barn was being test lit by some very bright portable lights, and a generator rumbled to give the whole thing power. Gus was happy to see that they'd brought his gear around, and the crew, almost all Brazilians, had already unpacked some of it and set up for the spot.

Terry looked around in the darkness. "Too bad we couldn't get a better backdrop," she commented. "This could just as well be Macon County with that barn."

"No photographs of the ranch," Juan Campos growled. "Your plane or this barn only."

She shrugged. "Too bad. John will have to carry the remoteness with his personality."

The reporter chuckled, but then he turned to Juan Campos to get the other ground rules straight. "What do you want me to say about where we are?" he asked. "Just that we're on a remote airstrip well inside the jungle, or can I say more?"

"You may mention my father and his hospitality," the man in green responded. "In fact, we want you to do so. But do not mention me or what you have seen here."

"Fair enough. Uh—for the record, what does your father officially grow and export from here?"

"Bananas," Juan Campos responded flatly. Terry rolled her eyes, and Lori had a hard time not laughing in spite of the danger. It was all too, well,
comic book,
real as it might be.

"Doc, you and John stand over there against the barn," Terry instructed. "We want to play with the lighting, and Gus wants a camera test. We'll have to adjust to get rid of some of the shadows. John, I'm going to talk to base and see what they want and when."

They were already getting bitten by all sorts of small insects—a medical crew had met them at the airport in Manaus and had filled them with shots, but in spite of that and liberal doses of industrial-strength bug repellent on the plane, Lori was still not sure what was biting her or how hard it would be to look into a camera and not keep scratching and swatting. Thoughts of assassin bugs and malaria mosquitoes came to her unbidden. Once in the lights, though, the little bastards seemed to gang up in swarms. It was going to be a very tough few minutes with those lights on.