Burial Ground (24 page)

Another avian shriek. This time much closer.
Perhaps the raptor was circling the clearing and waiting for its
opportunity to pick at the gnarled remains.

His bloody hand grew slick on the rifle's
grip. He had to pause to inspect the mass of gauze, which was so
thoroughly saturated that he was forced to peel it off and hurl it
into the underbrush. The wound had started to scab over, but not
well enough to staunch the flow of blood or hide the angled bone
chips. He cursed and fumbled another roll of gauze out of his
pocket, then wrapped his hand as tightly as he could bear. It
didn't take long for the blood to soak through the fresh
bandage.

"Goddamn savages," he grumbled.

The forest around him was so silent that
even his stealthily placed footsteps made the detritus crackle far
too loudly for comfort. Shadows claimed the trees and shrubs around
him, and choked visibility down to a few feet to either side. A
mosquito whined in his ear, but he resisted the urge to slap it
until he felt the stinger poke his skin, then quietly squished it
on his cheek.

A heliconia bush swayed ahead. The orange
blossom, shaped like a roadrunner's head, nodded back and
forth.

He felt no wind.

His finger tightened the trigger into the
sweet spot. The slightest application of pressure would fire a
fusillade of bullets at the rate of ten rounds per second.

The movement slowly stilled, and the flower
resumed its former position, a wary bird peering out from behind
the bush on a long, slender neck.

He raised the rifle into firing position and
advanced in increments of inches.

A cold bead of sweat rolled down his temple
from his forehead and dripped onto the stock.

Another step forward and he was directly
beside the heliconia.

A low clicking sound came from the tangled
vegetation to his left.

The moment he turned in that direction, he
realized his mistake.

Leaves rustled and he smelled rotten
flesh.

Something sharp impaled his side.

He was cleaved from his feet and pinned to
the ground beneath a heavy weight.

Searing pain in his neck.

A flood of warmth over his face and
chest.

Damp tearing sounds.

Darkness descended on the buzzing wings of
black flies.

11:58 p.m.

Tasker would have had a harder time tracking
a herd of stampeding elephants for as cautious as his prey had
been. Perhaps the appearance of the natives had thrown them off his
scent. They had known they were being followed, but he didn't think
they suspected they were being tailed by two separate factions. And
now they had their hands full with the Indians, as he imagined he
soon would as well. Their trackers had been trailing his men and
him, too. He rarely saw them, but their presence was impossible to
miss. Now, he could either wait for them to spring their trap, or
he could go on the offensive. He reveled in the prospect of the
latter. Only time would tell.

The expedition party's trail had led
directly to the stone fortification. There had been no signs to
suggest they had veered off in either direction, which could only
mean one thing. They had passed through the wall and into whatever
was on the other side, and they wouldn't have been allowed to do so
without an escort. He didn't feel like calling out for the natives
to show themselves in order to chaperone them through the city
walls, so they were just going to have to go around.

His men were staggered a quarter mile apart
and concealed in the jungle so they could study the fortress and
the lay of the land. Based on the way the mountains rose steeply to
the northwest beyond the walls, he could only assume they would be
better served by taking the southernmost route around, but in this
game, there was no room for assumptions.

Torches surrounded the fortress in iron
chimneys built onto the tops of tall stone columns. They burned so
brightly that they had to be fueled by something more than mere
wood. A chemical of some kind perhaps? The fierce flames turned
night to day in a fifteen-foot-wide stretch that allowed them to
clearly reconnoiter the perimeter, but would expose them too soon
if they attempted to approach from the jungle.

Another fifteen minutes had passed. It was
time for his men to report in. They had watched the fortifications
long enough. It was time to make their move.

"Northern front, all clear," McMasters
whispered through his earpiece.

"No sign of movement here, either," Reubens
said. He was positioned at the northwestern edge of the fortress,
where the monolithic manmade wall met with the chiseled limestone
mountainside. Earlier he had reported that there was no way around
on that side, and none of them had been able to identify the
entrance to what they assumed to be a village from the distance.
The wall appeared impassable, yet somehow the others had crossed
through it at the point where their tracks ended. Surely he and his
men would be able to pick up their trail again wherever they exited
on the other side. If they had even been allowed to leave.

Tasker waited for Jones to call in his
status.

The far cry of a circling hawk broke the
silence.

A minute passed.

"Jones," he whispered into his
microphone.

He peeled apart the layers of static, but
gleaned nothing.

Jones had been dispatched along the southern
bank of the wall to the left of where Tasker now crouched behind a
termite-infested log, from which an abundance of epiphytes bloomed.
He had yet to miss a check-in. Something was wrong. A dozen
different scenarios played through Tasker's mind, the most likely
of which was that Jones had stumbled upon the natives and had been
forced to bed down in radio silence. Then again, he could always
have come under attack now that they were separated.

Tasker hadn't heard the chatter of gunfire,
though, and no Marine could be so easily ambushed. Not without
getting off at least a single shot in his defense.

"Jones," he whispered one last time. Still
no reply. This wasn't good. He gave the command. "Close rank."

Tasker held perfectly still while he waited,
listening for any sound to betray the approach of hostiles and
watching the vine-draped stone wall for the slightest movement.
Again, the only thing he heard was that same avian
skree
,
farther away this time. Another bird answered from higher up in the
mountains beyond the fortress.

Five more minutes ticked interminably
past.

Crunching in the underbrush to his
right.

Tasker spun and leveled his assault rifle at
the shadow of a man as it emerged from the forest. His finger
tightened on the trigger. He was a breath away from firing when
McMasters's features resolved from the darkness. Reubens stepped
out from the trees a moment later. Even with their night vision
goggles and the infrared flashlight beams affixed to the
apparatuses, they flinched when Tasker rose from beneath the drape
of moss and vines.

He nodded to them, then inclined his head in
the direction he had sent Jones.

They followed the face of the wall from the
anonymity of the jungle until they reached the corner, then
paralleled the southwestern fortification toward the point where it
met with the sheer cliff that served as the western aspect of the
fortress. So far there had been no sign of passage, and nothing to
indicate a struggle.

He held up his fist and they paused. Minus
the crackle of the detritus underfoot, he could faintly discern
screams coming from somewhere ahead. Not human screams, but deeper,
shriller, almost equine.

As they listened, the cries abated, and they
were again swaddled in silence.

"Jones," he whispered. "State your
position."

The only response was the unnerving buzz of
static.

Tasker was getting angry now. If Jones had
turned yellow and decided to make a break for it, he would hunt him
down like a dog and teach him a lesson about desertion. The
coward's death would be slow and excruciating.

He appraised the remaining men, who showed
no outward signs of derision. Good.

Lowering his fist, they continued through
the forest until the buzz of static intensified. Tasker lowered the
volume, but the noise persevered from somewhere ahead.

Black flies. He had grown intimately
familiar with their telltale noise. He would have recognized it
anywhere.

The sound grew louder as they skirted a
trunk the size of an overpass pylon and slipped through a thicket
of spear-leafed saplings. He smelled the focus of the insects'
attention and raised his rifle. Easing forward in his shooter's
stance, he passed from the trees into a cluster of knee-high ferns
growing in the lee of a Brazil nut tree. Moisture from the bushes
soaked into his pants, still lukewarm despite the fact that it had
been hours since the last rainfall. The swarm of flies swirled like
snow in front of him and crawled in shades of green over the leaves
and groundcover. A drop of fluid pattered his shoulder. He looked
up in time to see another fall from the corner of his eye.

"Jones?" he whispered. His own voice echoed
back at him from the ground to his right.

Another drop fell onto the back of his
trigger hand. He brought it to his lips and dabbed it with his
tongue.

Blood.

"Fan out," he whispered.

Tasker glanced from the canopy to the tree
trunks and then to the shrubs as he inched forward, shoving the
ferns aside with his feet so he could see the ground. The cracked
lens of an infrared light was partially buried in the dirt. Two
steps later, he found the remainder of Jones's helmet,
turtle-shelled from a sharp impact.

"Jesus Christ," Reubens whispered.

Tasker was about to ask what the man had
found when his question was answered. A broken section of skull
rested at his feet, still shimmering with fresh blood. The scalp
and hair were still attached, alive with crawling black bodies.

They had been separated for less than an
hour and Jones had last checked in no more than twenty-five minutes
ago. What could have done this in that amount of time? More
importantly, what could have overwhelmed the soldier so suddenly
that he hadn't had time to squeeze the trigger?

There was no doubt in his mind that Jones
had been attacked by the same animals that had ripped apart the
three men they had found earlier. A lone individual couldn't
massacre and consume a human being so quickly. There had to be
several of them out here in the jungle with them, lurking somewhere
in the shadows.

He turned toward a clattering sound to his
left. McMasters lifted Jones's rifle from the bushes.

The soldier pressed the barrel to his bare
cheek and shook his head to confirm what Tasker already knew.

It was cold.

Tasker resumed his search. His left foot met
resistance. He knelt, one eye on the forest, the other on the
ground as he shoved aside a mess of wet branches. His hand closed
around what felt like a sharply broken branch the thickness of the
grip of a baseball bat. He evaluated it in shades of green and
black. Bifid spinous processes, segments of bone interspersed with
cartilaginous discs. A cervical spine. He flung it aside and stood,
wiping his hands on his pants.

"God. Is that a hand?" Reubens whispered.
"No amount of money is worth...this."

"Your share has already nearly doubled,"
Tasker said. "We're talking about several million dollars
here."

Reubens didn't respond. He simply nudged the
severed hand with the toe of his boot.

"You could always turn back," Tasker said.
Reubens glanced up. Tasker read the look of hope on the man's face.
"Sure. No hard feelings. McMasters and I would be happy to absorb
your share. I just don't know if I would want to be wandering
around alone in this jungle right now, do you?"

Reubens hesitated before he replied,
appearing to reach a firm decision. He jut forth his chin. "No,
sir."

Tasker made no attempt to hide his smug
expression. He owned these men.

There was nothing they could do for Jones
now.

"Let's get the hell out of here," he
whispered.

"What could have done this?" McMasters
asked.

"The fuck if I know," Tasker said. "But from
here on out, we stay together. If anything moves, blast it to
kingdom come."

Andes Mountains, Peru

October 30
^th

1:09 a.m. PET

Colton awakened with a start. Hands clasped
his shoulders and shook him sharply. A shadowed face loomed over
his, unidentifiable. He drew his pistol from his side and shoved it
into his assailant's gut.

"It's me. Sorenson," the shadow whispered.
"We have a problem."

The man's Scandinavian features slowly came
into focus as the lingering residue of sleep dissipated.

"What---?"

"Shh," Sorenson hissed. He tilted his head
toward the open tent flaps. "Outside."

Colton slid out of his sleeping bag fully
dressed, shoved his feet into his boots, and crawled out of the
mosquito netting. Something must have happened. They wouldn't have
roused him otherwise.

He checked his watch. 1:10 a.m. Ten minutes
past the changing of the guards. A tingle passed through his
abdominal viscera. Something had gone seriously wrong. The humid
air was electric with tension.

With a glance back to confirm Leo was still
asleep, Colton crawled out of the tent behind Sorenson. Morton and
Webber stood beside the fire, whispering animatedly. The light cast
shadows of worry on their faces. Where was Rippeth? Colton was
still looking for the man when they joined the others. Sorenson
spoke in a hushed tone.

"Rippeth's gone."

"What do you mean, 'gone'?"