THE FBI THRILLERS COLLECTION Books 1-5 (131 page)

Sherlock spotted two coral snakes. She came to a stop and just stared two feet to her left into some undergrowth. There was no way a coral snake could go unnoticed. The vivid orange-and-white stripes slithered away from us and into deeper cover.

I checked to see that everyone’s boots were tightly laced up, the ends of their pants firmly tucked inside the boots. It was hard to tell with all the mud covering everything. At least we didn’t have any mud on our skin. Talk about itching. But no insects could get inside, and no snakes. I noticed bites on the backs of my hands. No hope for it.

Survival, I thought. We just had to survive. We didn’t hear any helicopters for the rest of the afternoon, or the noise of any other humans. It was just the four of us, alone in this living oven.

“Hot damn,” Savich shouted. “Look what I found. Ripe bananas, to go with our mangoes. Now the Baby Ruths can be our dessert.”

We also found some
pipas,
a green coconut you can crack open and drink out of. Since Sherlock had taken one of those huge leaves and fashioned it into a funnel to catch rainwater during the downpour, both the empty water bottles were full again. We picked half a dozen
pipas
just in case.

I was doing the hacking now, Savich carrying Laura. I said over my shoulder, after I’d had to whack a welter of green intertwined leaves three times to get them apart, “I wonder if they found Molinas, the bastard. Maybe they didn’t. Maybe a coral snake got him. Or maybe he’s still lying there with insects crawling all over him.”

“Or maybe,” Savich said, “this Del Cabrizo character was so angry that we escaped, he killed him.”

I didn’t want to think about what could happen to Molinas’s daughter.

We stopped to make camp when we came to another small clearing. When we stepped into the sunlight, we saw a flock of wild turkeys running through the deep grass to the other side. They disappeared into the forest. It was late in the afternoon, time to stop anyway.

Laura was getting weaker. It required too much energy for her to talk. I gave her more antibiotics, more aspirin, and two more pain pills. There were only four left. She didn’t have a fever, and the bandages looked clean, but she was getting weaker.

Sherlock swept our small campsite clean with the thick
net. The ground here was nearly dry because of the direct, hot sunlight. She managed to get it completely bare. “It’s important that we leave room so lots of oxygen can circulate. Once we build a fire, it will stay brighter and hotter.” I collected tinder: low, dead hanging branches, rotted pieces of tree that were dry. We managed to find some birch that Laura said was good for fires. Sherlock began digging a moat around our campsite. She said it would keep the critters out.

Savich used the scissors from the first-aid kit to make several fire sticks. He shaved the sticks with shallow cuts to “feather” them. “My granddaddy taught me how to do this,” he said. “It’ll make the wood catch fire more quickly.”

We mixed birch bark and dried grass. I stood back and watched Sherlock build a teepee of kindling over a pile of tinder. I handed Savich the matches from the first-aid kit and watched him light one of his fire sticks, let it burn brightly, and touch it to the tinder. I couldn’t believe it actually worked. It bloomed up bright and hot. It must have been ninety degrees, and there we were, sucking up to it.

“A hot dog might be nice,” Sherlock said. “Potato chips, some dill pickles.”

“Tortilla chips and hot salsa,” Savich said, rubbing his hands together, and grinned. Behind him, a branch shimmied. A brown-spotted gecko poked its head around a tree, looked at us, then pressed itself flat against the bark. I swear it disappeared.

“Maybe some pickle relish on the hot dog,” Sherlock said. “Forget the dills.” As she spoke, she was looking over at Laura, who lay quietly.

We were trapped in a Hieronymus Bosch painting and we’d managed, for a moment, to superimpose normalcy.
As evening settled in, the beetles began to move around. You could hear them scuttling to and fro. So many of them, all hungry. I smiled over at Laura. “We’re geniuses. Just look at that fire.”

But Laura wasn’t looking at either me or the fire. She was staring to her right, just beyond the perimeter of the campsite, just beyond Sherlock’s moat. Her face was whiter than boiled rice. I heard her say my name, her voice just above a croak.

I pulled the Bren Ten out of my waistband and slowly turned.

T
here, reared up on its hind feet, its claws extended, claws so ragged and huge that one swipe could have taken off my face, was a golden brown armadillo. Not one of those small guys you see as road kill on the west Texas highways, but a giant armadillo. I’d never even seen one in a zoo. I’d only seen pictures of them. It had a long snout and small eyes that never left us. The hoary flesh seemed to retract farther, showing more of its claws.

“It doesn’t eat people,” Laura whispered. “It eats worms.”

“That’s a happy thought,” I said as I lowered the Bren Ten. Who knew if men were out there to hear the noise? Savich tossed me a rock. I threw it, kicking up leaves and dirt not six inches from where the armadillo stood. It made a strange hissing noise and disappeared back into the undergrowth.

I heard a collective sigh of relief.

It was time to eat. Savich peeled mangoes with the first-aid scissors. A great find, those scissors. Savich assigned me the task of peeling bananas.

I eyed my slice for just an instant before eating it. I didn’t think we could get food poisoning or diarrhea from something we had just peeled. We each ate only two mangoes, followed by one banana, and polished it off with one of the precious Baby Ruths.

“It’s only eight o’clock,” Sherlock said. “Does anyone know what day it is?”

“If it’s Friday,” Savich said, “you and I would be putting Sean to bed and curling up downstairs with some of my French roast coffee.”

Sherlock grinned at the thought, then she scooted over to Laura. She lightly laid her palm on Laura’s cheek, then her forehead. “Mac, when did you give her aspirin?”

“Two hours ago.”

“She’s getting a fever. We’ve got to dump water down her throat and keep at it. That’s what the doctor told me to do with Sean when he had a high fever.”

I’d endured long nights before, but this was the longest. At least three dozen different beetles kept up an endless dissonant concert throughout the night. We heard things slithering all around us. I’d swear I heard at least a dozen winged things fluttering over my head. But the noise of those beetles, there was nothing like it.

Savich kept the fire burning bright. No more giant armadillos came to visit. No snakes slithered in to get warm. Just the four of us and the fever that was burning Laura up inside.

I was sleeping lightly when I felt her trembling beside me. The shakes, I thought, from a breaking fever. I got all the water I could down her throat, then eased her tight against me, and perhaps it worked because she stopped moaning and eased into fitful sleep for several hours.

We had to find civilization.

With our luck, we’d probably go loping into another drug dealer’s compound.

The next morning, we drank a bottle of our precious water, ate two more mangoes, three more bananas, and savored the last of our Baby Ruths.

When we were ready to head out, Savich looked at me and held out his arms. I shook my head and pulled Laura closer to my chest.

“Give her to me. You’re driving yourself into the ground, Mac. It hasn’t been that long since Tunisia. You do the chopping for a while. I’ll carry her until noon, then you can take over again.”

It was clear ahead, no need for the machete. It was an unlooked-for blessing.

Laura’s fever had fallen close to morning and hadn’t come back, as far as any of us could tell. But she was weak. The wound was red and swollen, but there wasn’t any pus. I rubbed in the last of the antibiotic cream. Her flesh felt hot beneath my fingers. I didn’t know how serious it was, but I knew we had to get out of this damned hellhole. I had very little of anything left. I prayed that a real live doctor would suddenly appear in the path just ahead of us, waving a black bag and speaking English.

When Savich was holding her, I took the edge of one of the shirts she was wearing and wet it. I dabbed it all over her face. Her mouth automatically opened. I gave her as much water as she wanted.

“I figure we pulled a little south before we stopped yesterday,” I said, once I’d gotten my bearings. “Let’s go due west and hold to it.”

“Look, we’ve got to be somewhere,” Sherlock said, swiping an insect off her knee. “It’s a small planet, right?”

“You’re right,” Savich said. “Sherlock, lead the way. Mac, you take the rear. Everyone, eyes sharp. I’ve got a hankering for a banana, so keep a lookout for some ripe ones.”

When it rained late that morning, Sherlock managed to capture a good half bottle of fresh rainwater, again using one of those big leaves as a funnel. She stood holding that half-filled water bottle, hair streaming down her face, covered with bite marks, puffed up proud as a peacock, grinning like a fool.

We were wet, but there was nothing we could do about it. Savich managed to keep Laura’s wound dry.

The ground turned to mud again and the undergrowth suddenly thickened. I pulled out the machete and began hacking. My arms felt like they were burning in their sockets. When we found a small area that enjoyed, for some reason unknown to me, a patch of clear sunlight, Savich laid Laura on her back on a blanket and wrapped another blanket around a water bottle to put under her head.

We got a small fire going within ten minutes this time. With that sun overhead, we found dry tinder quickly. With the fire burning brightly, the insects backed off.

Savich began peeling mangoes with the first-aid scissors. “I always liked these things,” he said. He gave a slice to Sherlock.

He cut off another thick slice and handed it to me. I waved it over Laura’s mouth. She opened up. She was still eating. The food seemed to rouse her. She sat up and said suddenly, “Sherlock, have you felt any sort of withdrawal signs? Like you wanted more of that drug?”

“God, no.” She shuddered. “Why do you ask? Oh, I see. If a drug’s not addictive, it wouldn’t be worth the drug dealer’s time to sell it. No repeat customers.”

“Right. Mac, how about you?”

“I haven’t felt anything either.”

“Maybe you guys haven’t had enough of it,” Laura said. “Maybe it takes more than three doses to get hooked.”

“Do you think Jilly was hooked, Mac?”

I hated to say it, but I did. “Yes.”

“I wonder who else in Edgerton has tried the stuff and what they’re doing now,” Sherlock said.

“I’ll bet you Charlie Duck tried it. The coroner told me there was something odd in Charlie’s blood. He was going to run more tests. Maybe he even tried it on purpose to find out what was going on. He was a retired cop, remember.”

“Maybe that’s why someone killed him,” Laura said.

“That works,” Savich said, nodding as he ate a bite of banana.

“Mac,” Sherlock said suddenly, “you had that hookup with Jilly when she went off the cliff and you were actually in bed in Bethesda. You just didn’t understand it. Well, maybe it happened again. Maybe Jilly was just in your mind, warning you.”

“There’s really no other explanation,” Savich said, folding up the banana peel. “Unless you just dreamed it up because you were drugged out of your mind.”

“I was drugged for sure. Whatever it means, I hope it also means that Jilly is alive. Jesus, Laura, this is tough to take,” I said, leaning over to feel her forehead. “How do you feel?”

“There’s something crawling up my leg—on the outside, at least.”

I swiped off the salamander, who flicked its skinny tail, then flitted off into the undergrowth.

Savich was carving another feather stick with the scissors. The damned thing looked like a piece of art.

Laura moaned. She was lying on her back, her eyes closed. Her face was paper white, her lips were nearly blue. I shoveled more aspirin down her throat.

There wasn’t much of anything left in the first-aid kit. My eyes met Savich’s across her body. He was frowning. He was also holding Sherlock’s hand, tight.

We slogged through the mud at least another couple of miles before we stopped for the night.

Laura was about the same the following morning, weak, shaky, and feverish. The wound was redder, more swollen. There was no kidding anybody now. It was bad. We had to get her to a hospital. We were up and walking, Savich carrying Laura, by sunrise.

“Due west,” I said again, and began hacking.

We found a stalk of ripe bananas at nine o’clock. Savich tore them off the stalk to the accompaniment of screaming monkeys, whose breakfast we were stealing. I was relieved they didn’t dive-bomb us.

It was nearly noon when I smelled something. I stopped dead in my tracks, lifted my head, and smelled. It was salt, so strong I could taste it.

I started to let out a yell when I heard men’s voices, loud, not twenty feet away from us.

“Oh, no,” Sherlock said, and backed up, dropping everything except her AK-47. “How could they have found us? Dammit, it’s not fair.”

Savich held Laura, who was either asleep or unconscious. He didn’t put her down, just drew back so I could come up alongside Sherlock.

“They don’t care that we can hear them,” I whispered. “Are there that many of them? Have they fanned out?”

“I can smell the salt now, Mac. We’ve got to be near the ocean.”

The voice moved away. Then, to my shock, I heard women’s voices. Then laughter. Lots of laughter, yelling, more laughter. I heard screaming, but not in terror, screaming and shouting in fun, and all of it was in English.

Something was very strange here.

The thick foliage melted away, everything suddenly thinning out. I took the lead, my Bren Ten in my hand, Sherlock in the rear, Savich carrying Laura between us. We moved as quietly as we could. I saw a troop of green parrots flying from one banana tree to the next, a phalanx of green with flashes of red and yellow. The salt smell grew stronger, and the sun slashed down through the trees above us as the thick canopy above disappeared.

I felt a breeze on my face. I broke through a final curtain of green leaves and stepped onto white sand. Savich inched out behind me. I heard Sherlock suck in her breath. We just stood there, staring.

We were standing at the edge of the rain forest, a good fifty feet of pristine white sand stretching between us and the ocean. It was the most beautiful sight I’d ever seen.

Some twenty yards up the beach were at least twenty men and women in swimsuits, playing volleyball.

There were beach towels strewn over the sand, a couple of sand castles, half a dozen umbrellas and beach chairs. To top it off, there was a guy on a seat set up some twenty feet above the ground, an umbrella covering him. He was a lifeguard.

Laura made a soft noise in her throat. She opened her eyes and looked at me. “What’s happening?”

“I’d say we lucked out, sweetheart. Just hold on. You
and I are going to be in that cold shower before you know it.”

The laughter slowly died away. The men and women were looking down the beach at us. Two of the men waved the others back and came walking toward us. I dropped the Bren Ten to my side. Sherlock eased down on the AK-47, trying to look a little less terrifying.

I yelled, “We need some help. We’ve got a wounded person here.”

The women came trotting up behind the men. One of the guys sprinted toward us. Short and fiercely sunburned, he was wearing glasses and a slouchy green hat. “I’m a doctor,” he said, panting when he stopped in front of us. “My God, what happened to you guys? Who’s hurt?”

“Over here,” Savich said. He carefully laid Laura down on a blanket Sherlock quickly spread beneath a palm tree.

She was barely responding. I unbuttoned the two shirts and bared the bandages. As he knelt down beside her, I said, “It’s a gunshot wound through the shoulder, happened two days ago. I had a first-aid kit, thank God. I didn’t set any stitches for fear of infection. I changed the bandages every day and kept the wound as clean as possible. But it looks like it got infected anyway.”

In the next minute, at least a dozen men and women circled around us. Savich rose and smiled at them, looking ferocious, I realized, seeing how dirty he was, with mud dried to his thighs and his growth of beard. He looked like a wild man, filthy and dangerous.

Then Sherlock laughed. She tossed the water bottles in their net to the ground and let out a big whoop. “We’ve been in the rain forest for over two days. Is this Club Med?”

The men and women just looked at one another. A man
in a loose red-and-white-striped bathing suit said, “No, we’re on a day trip here from up the coast,” he said, eyeing us closely. “You got separated from your guide?”

“We didn’t have a guide,” Sherlock said. “Where are we?”

“You’re in the Corcovado National Park.”

“Anywhere near Dos Brazos?” I asked, and slapped a bug off my neck.

“Yeah, it’s at the southeast end of the rain forest.”

Laura opened her eyes and looked up at the man who was carefully lifting up the bandage on her shoulder. “It’s all right. You just hang in there. It’s not bad. But you need a hospital. What’s your name?”

“I’m Laura. What’s yours?”

“I’m Tom. I’m here on my honeymoon. It’s a great place. Well, maybe it wasn’t such a great place for you. What happened?”