Burial Ground (14 page)

His only option was to go through with it,
even assuming Tasker had no intention of honoring their
partnership.

What were his alternatives? Slip off in the
middle of the night and go into hiding, his life ruined? He'd
sooner kill himself than live like that.

There would soon be questions regarding the
whereabouts of the marines, questions he would be unable to answer
without incriminating himself. And in this envelope was the rope
they would use to hang him.

Worse still, if Tasker was as evil as Eldon
now believed, what would prevent the man from returning to Lima to
tie off his loose ends?

But the greatest injustice was still to
come. Tasker had arranged for him to make the handoff to the
representatives for the Asian buyer. They would see him, and
ultimately be able to identify him should their underhanded deal be
uncovered. His fingerprints would be all over the transaction.

Eldon was damned if he did, damned if he
didn't.

Damned.

Andes Mountains, Peru

October 27
^th

10:39 a.m. PET

Merritt had passed the point of exhaustion
long ago, and they'd only been on the move for five hours. Again he
found himself asking what in the name of God he was doing here. He
could have been back at his plane, preparing to head anywhere in
the world he wanted to go. Instead, here he was, lugging nearly
everything he owned in the pack on his back, while the ever-present
cloud of mosquitoes made a human pincushion out of him. He had long
since abandoned the worry of vector-borne diseases, and now feared
he might not have enough blood in his body to simultaneously feed
the humming masses and sustain his life. And the more he sweated
with the exertion, the more insects he seemed to draw to him. His
shirt was already drenched, and rivulets traced the line of his
spine to his waistband and rolled down his legs. He could even
smell himself over the stench of the rotting detritus. Worst of all
was the claustrophobia caused by the low ceiling of branches that
admitted precious little sunlight and airflow, and closed in from
either side as though constricting. Ever since Afghanistan, the
sensation of an impending panic attack was never far behind. His
heart raced, his fingertips tingled, and he suddenly couldn't draw
enough air. He had to pause to focus on regulating his heartbeat
and breathing, and used the momentary respite to steal a glance
back over his shoulder at the rest of the party.

The birdman, with the fancy net over his
Panama Jack hat and head, appeared blissfully unaware as he
continued to annoy Merritt from behind with his need to bludgeon
them with his knowledge of every avian species they passed. The
other men had fallen a dozen paces behind. They conversed in
whispers, which only served to make Merritt nervous. It wasn't the
subject of their conversation that worried him as much as the grim
expressions on their faces. He was going to have to keep a closer
eye on them. Sam remained toward the front, where she walked behind
the birdman. She looked frustratingly comfortable in her tank top
with her flannel shirt tied around her cargo shorts, and somehow
had found the eye of the mosquito tornado. She neither swatted nor
slapped, and had developed only a thin sheen of sweat on her
brow.

The documentary crew chattered excitedly as
they filmed everyone and everything. Merritt made sure to keep his
back to them. He had thought the risk had ended when the caiman
stole their camera, but he should have known they would have
brought several in case of such an eventuality. They had to have
nearly twenty-four hours of footage already, and must have
catalogued every species of animal and tree they encountered. He
tried to ignore them and, in turn, hoped they would return the
favor. The last thing he wanted was for his face to appear on the
silver screen.

Gearhardt's son's path had remained
relatively clear at first; however the deeper they pressed into the
jungle, the more the vines and branches encroached. Merritt was
taking his turn swinging the machete, which had looked easy enough
when the others were wielding it in the morning. The reality was
entirely different. The weapon was far heavier than he had
imagined, and the muscles required to slash it with enough force to
part the sea of foliage weren't the kind he exercised on a regular
basis. Both shoulders burned and his arms had begun to tremble.
Maybe it was a guy thing, or perhaps the unwillingness to show
weakness in front of the men who thought they had him by the
short-and-curlies, but he wasn't about to be the one to call for a
reprieve. So he continued to swing, refusing to think about his
aching appendages, or about how few miles they had actually
traveled, or about what the men in the rear were plotting.

With a ferocious hack, a mess of branches
crashed down around his feet, and a flood of light flowed onto the
path. After so long traveling in relative darkness, the sunlight
was blinding. Merritt shielded his eyes and stepped warily into the
clearing. It was a light gap, an area where one of the massive
kapok trees had fallen and taken a cluster of smaller trees with
it, allowing the sun to reach ground unaccustomed to its golden
touch. The four-foot-wide trunk sprawled diagonally across the gap,
pinning broken trunks and shrubs under limbs that sagged with dying
leaves. Saplings that would otherwise have withered and died in the
shadows now stood taller than Merritt. Scampering sounds raced away
from their approach and a flock of birds, black against the sudden
suffusion of light, took to wing.

The oppressive humidity relented for a few
precious seconds as a gentle breeze reached the forest floor.
Merritt enjoyed the sensation while his eyes adjusted before
starting forward. With all of the abrupt changes at once, he didn't
immediately notice the stench.

"Ugh," he groaned. "What the hell is
that?"

"You mean
was
," Sam said. She slipped
past him and approached the fallen tree. Some kind of film
glistened on her forehead and cheeks.

Merritt caught up with her and had to ask,
"What's all over your face?"

"A combination of ground up lemon verbena
and pennyroyal leaves," she said. The tone in her voice suggested
she thought the answer self-evident. He waited for her to
elaborate, but she turned back to the tree and scaled the smooth
bark.

"So you're going to make me ask, huh? Why
did you smear plant sludge all over your face?"

"And arms and legs." He could tell she was
enjoying this. "Isn't it obvious?"

"I guess not." He mounted the tree and
crawled over behind her. Santos and Naldo scurried past him and
dropped down into a cluster of ferns. "Enlighten me."

"Have you seen any mosquitoes on me?"

Merritt hopped down into the weeds.
Something fast and green slithered away from his feet. A buzzing
sound drew his attention to the far side of the clearing, where a
black cloud roiled behind a gnarled ceiba trunk.

"So are you going to hook me up with some of
that magic concoction of yours or what?"

"I already told you which flowers to look
for.
Verbena triphylla
, lemon verbena, has lancet-shaped
leaves with little purple and white flowers, and
Mentha
pulegium
, pennyroyal, looks like a mint plant with columns of
purple dandelion flowers. Surely even you can figure it out from
there."

He grabbed her by the elbow and turned her
around to face him. "Why are you riding me so hard? What did I ever
do to you?"

"You called me a grave robber and attempted
to tarnish the memory of a dear friend," she snapped. Her face
flushed. "I'm one of the world's foremost experts on Chachapoya
culture, and I've undoubtedly spent more time in the jungles of
Peru than you. I've helped excavate two of the most fascinating and
scientifically important ruins, which draw thousands of tourists
every year and help stimulate the local economy. Every artifact I
discovered at those sites is now displayed in the Chachapoya Museum
in Leymebamba. Every single one of them. And you have the nerve to
call me a grave robber?"

Merritt released her arm and took a step in
reverse.

"I'm sorry," he said with a shrug. "I
obviously misjudged you, but can you blame me? No sooner do I give
the headdress to the Consulate than you guys show up with all your
digging gear. Like you, I tend to get a little defensive when it
comes to defiling the heritage of the people of this country."

A faint smile crossed her lips, but it
vanished as quickly as it appeared.

It was a start.

"What do you say?" Merritt asked. "Can we
start again from scratch?"

He proffered his hand. Her eyes met his.
Even the touch of her skin and the weak reciprocal shake made his
heart race. With a curt nod, she released his hand and turned back
to where Santos and Naldo now stood, appraising the angry swarm of
black flies.

Santos muttered something in Quechua as they
approached. He kissed his fingertips and made the sign of the
cross, then backed slowly away. He had paled considerably. Naldo
aped the older man's movements and headed back toward the
trail.

"
Supay
," he gasped, and nearly bowled
right through Merritt in his hurry.

Merritt was unfamiliar with the word, but
Sam wasn't.

"Demon," she translated. A crinkle formed in
her forehead between her brows.

"What's that supposed to mean?" Merritt
asked, but a moment later he had his answer. Were it not for the
tufts of golden fur hanging from the branches of the ceiba and
scattered through the ferns, the animal would have been
unidentifiable. Broken and disarticulated bones littered the
ground, the white calcium stained brown with blood. The flies
fought for space on the vegetation, which was crusted with what
looked like rust. With the exception of the knots of tendons on the
ends of the long bones, there wasn't a single scrap of flesh to be
seen. It looked like the animal had struck the ground at high
velocity like a meteorite, spreading its remains in a
shotgun-pattern that covered close to thirty feet, at the end of
which were the shattered bones of the skull.

"What could have done this to a jaguar?" Sam
asked.

"Probably poachers," the birdman said from
behind them. "And this is all that's left after the scavengers were
finished with the carcass." He stooped, plucked a feather from a
clump of grasses, and studied it for a moment before he stuffed it
into his backpack.

"I didn't see any even remotely fresh
tracks," Merritt said. "Those vines we were hacking through would
have taken weeks to obscure the path, and this mess can't be more
than a couple days old."

"They could have come from another
direction."

"Then they would have had to have been
natives since we're thirty-some miles into the heart of the
rainforest and that river is the only way in or out of this valley
from the east. And I don't see natives being this careless or
destructive. They would have carefully skinned the animal and
utilized every inch of it, right down to the bones."

"And most native South American cultures
revere, if not outright worship, the jaguar," Sam added.

"Well then, you tell me," the birdman said,
puffing out his chest and focusing on Merritt. "With your vast
knowledge of the animals of the Amazon and the cultures of the
hidden tribes, what happened to this jaguar?"

Merritt crouched beside the broken remnants
of the skull. Teeth surrounded the fragments of the mandible. A
hairy black spider scuttled out of one of the eye sockets where it
had funneled a web. He heard the crunch of footsteps as the rest of
their group arrived. Brushing aside a cascade of fern fronds, he
exposed the round cap of the animal's cranium.

"I have absolutely no idea," Merritt said.
He held up the crown of bone. A ragged hole had been punched
squarely through the middle, from which lightning-bolt factures
radiated to the very edges. "But I can't imagine it was a pleasant
way to die."

10:50 a.m.

Dahlia could tell something interesting was
transpiring in the clearing ahead. She and Jay had been trailing in
the rear with the freckled farmboy Morton, the dark-skinned Webber
with the sun-bleached hair, and their youthful guide, Kemen,
allowing the others to forge a path through the jungle while she
and her cameraman waited like vultures for anything intriguing to
pop up. They were definitely going to need it. So far, all they had
was some boring footage of the town, the river, and a bunch of
trees and animals.

She skirted around Morton and Webber, who
carried the large crate containing the ground-penetrating radar and
magnetometer units between them on long wooden poles that rested on
their shoulders, to get a better view of the gathering at the far
end of the light gap. The way everyone had rushed through the
opening reinforced her belief that there was something out there
worthy of documentation.

"Jay," she said, turning to her cameraman.
He had paled significantly and was soggy with sweat and the last of
the rain, which apparently had abated sometime while they were
beneath the dripping canopy. "Start filming as you exit the path. I
want to record everything as if we're walking into the clearing and
seeing whatever's out there for the first time."

"Isn't that exactly what we're doing?"

"Don't be a smartass. Just get that camera
rolling."

She stepped to the side of the beaten path
and waited for Jay to pass her. He held the digital recorder in
front of him and studied the four-inch monitor. Somehow, he managed
to mind his feet and the image at the same time. She had to give
him credit. The automatic stabilization system would prevent the
recording from bouncing violently with each step
Blair
Witch
-style, but it would be useless if he tripped and
fell.