Burial Ground (29 page)

"Get to the point already." Merritt had to
shout to be heard over the drum roll of rain and the thunder of the
waterfalls that carved a shallow valley between the peaks up in the
clouds. The world had become mist and water.

"All birds of prey are capable of flight.
Every single one of them. The iridescent feather has the size,
shape, and structure of a raptor feather, minus the microscopic
barbicels that hold the vanes together during flight. We're dealing
with a carnivorous bird that can't fly."

"So what does it do, hop really fast?"
Merritt smirked. "Thanks for the warning. If I see this terrifying
bouncing bird of yours, I'll guard my kneecaps and toes."

"Think of ostriches and emus. They can run
up to forty-five miles per hour."

"But you said this thing is the size of a
condor."

"Its remige feathers are the size of a
condor's. That only means that the wing size is the same. Ostriches
have disproportionately small wings compared to their body size."
Galen threw up his arms in frustration. "That jaguar was run down
and torn apart. And those alpacas were butchered."

"You're suggesting that birds were
responsible for that carnage? Flightless birds?"

Merritt shook his head and hastened his
step, but Galen sped up to keep pace.

"Nearly seventy percent of the area from the
Amazon basin through the Andes Mountains remains unexplored. There
are hundreds of thousands of acres upon which few humans have ever
tread. Who knows what could have survived through the eons out here
without the intervention of mankind? Heck, there are species of
plants in this jungle that date back to the Mesozoic Period."

"You've been hitting that flask of yours a
little too hard, my friend."

Galen continued as if he hadn't heard.

"It all makes sense."

"No," Merritt said. "It doesn't."

"Feathers are the one thing that has
remained untouched by evolution. Intact feathers have been
extracted from amber dating to the Albian stage of the Cretaceous
Period, and their structure is identical. We're talking about one
hundred million years of mutations and adaptations, and yet in that
amount of time, the feather has not changed one iota. And the
Cretaceous Period was the last time that this planet knew a
feathered, flightless predator."

"So you think there's a species of predatory
bird that has survived out here in the jungle for millions of years
without being discovered?"

"Yes. And we need to warn the others. If
this species could overcome a jaguar so easily, imagine what it
could do to us."

"The people in the village didn't seem
overly concerned."

"What are you talking about? They live
behind thirty-foot fortifications and keep their livestock inside
an impregnable stone pen. Don't you remember how those alpacas
screamed when we approached?"

"Tell you what," Merritt said. "Why don't
you run ahead and warn the others while I hang back and have a good
laugh at your expense."

"You don't believe me," Galen said. He
appeared genuinely hurt. "Look around you. Where are all of the
animals we saw in the forest several days ago? Where are all of the
monkeys and the deer and the flocks of birds?"

Merritt's stride faltered. Galen's
insinuation struck a chord with him. He'd been wondering the exact
same thing.

12:46 p.m.

The sound of a roaring river had just
reached Colton's ears when a hand closed over his elbow and spun
him around.

He drew his pistol and shoved it into his
assailant's gut.

"I need to talk to you," Merritt said
without even glancing at the weapon. He looked over Colton's
shoulder toward Leo. "You too."

"We don't have time for this," Colton
said.

"Make the time."

Colton stared down the pilot for a long
moment before holstering his gun.

"Everyone take a break," he called. Then
more quietly to Merritt, "You have five minutes."

He jerked his arm out of the pilot's grasp
and walked away from the path until he was under the wide branches
of a tree that appeared to have its entire system of roots
aboveground. Leo and Merritt were standing right behind him when he
turned around.

"This had better be good," he said.

Merritt stared at each of them in turn
before speaking.

"What's really going on here?"

"I don't know what you're talking about,"
Colton said.

"You know exactly what I'm talking about.
You two are hiding something. What are we going to find when we
reach our destination?"

"You know everything that we do," Leo
said.

"You're lying," Merritt said. "You two have
increasingly distanced yourself from the rest of us over the last
couple of days. You spend all of your time off on your own, talking
in whispers so that none of the rest of us can hear you. You're
obviously keeping something from us, and you're going to tell me
what it is. Right now."

"You're in no position to make demands,"
Colton said. He strode up to Merritt and got right in his face.
"Isn't that right, deserter?"

Merritt didn't rise to the bait.

"Why did you originally dispatch Hunter's
expedition?" He was speaking to Leo, but his eyes never left
Colton's. "What were you hoping to find?"

"The ruins," Leo said. "And a small fortune
in artifacts, of course."

"I don't believe you."

"No one cares what you believe," Colton
said.

"What about the other men from the party?
Neither of you seem especially concerned about finding them. I
can't remember hearing you mention them recently at all. In fact,
you've never once said their names."

"They're dead. You know that as well as I
do."

"Then all of this talk about rescuing them
was crap?"

"We don't actually
know
that they
aren't still alive," Leo interjected.

"So, if you're right and they're all dead,
what the hell do you think killed them? And why are we in such a
hurry to find out?"

It took all of Colton's effort to keep from
breaking Merritt's jaw.

"Can't you feel it?" Merritt whispered.

"Feel what?" Colton asked.

"The silence. You served in the field. You
know what I mean. The calm before the storm. Everything's too
quiet. Where are all of the animals, huh? I haven't seen any since
yesterday morning, so what cut this path? We're the only ones in
this area of the jungle. If we were in hostile territory, you know
damn well what this would feel like. An ambush."

"Your five minutes are up."

"When I find out what you're hiding, you're
going to wish you had told me when you had the chance."

And with that, Merritt stepped out from
under the canopy and into the rain.

"We never should have brought him," Colton
said. "He's become a liability."

1:02 p.m.

Leo's heart pounded so hard it felt as
though it might break through his chest. Sure, a good measure of it
was due to his age and the exertion at the high altitude, but the
better part of it was anticipation of what was to come. They were
so close now. The stream they now crossed on a series of staggered
boulders wasn't on their LandSat map; however, by extrapolating its
course farther to the southwest, it appeared as a hazy indentation
beside one of the sections of data loss at the edge. Somewhere on
the face of the mountain that reared up into the clouds directly in
front of him was the point where the satellite magnetometer
indicated the presence of an enormous vein of gold ore.

Soon, God willing, he would learn the truth
about his son's death.

He needed to know. The uncertainty was a
cancer eating him alive from the inside out.

With each step, they drew nearer a fortune
in gold, and yet all he could focus on was what it had cost him. He
remembered reading the parable of Midas to a four year-old Hunter
in a candlelit tent in Honduras. Never in a million years would he
have thought it would prove prophetic.

Colton had been unusually quiet all morning.
At first, Leo had assumed that it was the cowardly desertion of one
of his men that had him in a dour mood, but they had worked
together long enough for him to know better. He had never seen
Colton like this. There was definitely something of a much direr
nature consuming him.

He hopped from one slick rock to another.
The rain bludgeoned him, attempting to drive him down into the
racing stream and over the edge. Beyond the cliff to his right, he
could see only clouds through the rain. The rumble of the falls
echoed like a stadium filled with angry spectators shouting for
blood. He slipped on the wet boulder and thrust his foot down into
the cold water, but managed to scrabble back on top of it and lunge
to the next.

When he reached the far bank, he doubled
over, hands on his knees, and attempted to catch his breath while
the others crossed the rapids. Colton paced beside him, unfazed by
the effort. When Leo looked up, their eyes met momentarily before
Colton averted his stare.

With a great sigh, Leo stretched his back
and turned toward the jungle that covered the steep hillside to the
west. A wall of greenery swallowed the thin path and reached upward
into the ceiling of churning clouds.

He glanced over his shoulder at Colton.

"Walk with me."

Colton fell hesitantly into measured stride
beside him as they scaled the sloppy bank and stepped under the
protective canopy, out of the worst of the rain. Vines sagged
across the trail and branches grabbed at them from either side, but
they were able to duck and sidle their way through. Once Leo was
confident they were out of earshot and that the crunching sounds of
their passage would mask their words, he finally spoke.

"Give it to me straight."

Colton crashed through the underbrush behind
him. He made no immediate reply.

"How long have we been working together?"
Leo asked. He slowed to skirt a slender green viper dangling from a
branch in imitation of a vine.

"Long time," Colton said. Leo heard the
whistle of a machete and knew the snake was no more.

"Do you remember the first time? That Mayan
ruin in Guatemala?"

"Of course. We hauled out enough gold, jade,
and artifacts to fill the cargo hold of a Handymax bulk
carrier."

"And we argued over every little logistical
matter. By the time we set sail, I could have strangled you."

Colton chuckled.

"But I've never known you to hold out on
me," Leo said. "Until now."

They stumbled up the steep, muddy path. A
trickle of water carved a trench in the middle. Leo had to use his
hands to haul himself over a snarl of shoulder-high roots. Colton
dropped down on the other side behind him. Leo turned and looked
him directly in the eyes.

"I'm not holding out on you," Colton finally
said after a long, uncomfortable silence.

"You can't bullshit a bullshitter," Leo
said. He offered a tired smile.

Colton opened his mouth as if he were about
to say something, then closed it again. He sighed. Leo noticed the
man's rigid posture, how his right hand never strayed far from the
sidearm in the holster beneath his left arm. His gaze darted from
one side of the trail to the other. Finally, he glanced back toward
the empty path, and spoke in little more than a whisper.

"Rippeth didn't desert us. I found what was
left of him in the forest."

Leo wished the news surprised him. Perhaps
this wasn't exactly what he had expected, but with the way they had
prematurely broken camp in such a hurry and Colton's intensity
throughout the morning, he had suspected something serious. He
braced himself for the answer to the question he had to ask.

"What do you mean, 'what was left of
him'?"

"He'd been ripped apart." Colton didn't
blink when he spoke. His lips remained tight over his teeth. "There
was blood everywhere. All over the ferns and the trees, dripping
from the leaves overhead. Broken bones were scattered around the
path, still wet, flesh gone, except for patches of skin here and
there."

"Are you sure it was him?"

"I recognized his backpack and rifle."

"You didn't see his face?"

"I didn't go looking for it."

"And you haven't shared this with any of the
others?"

Colton's stare grew hard. Leo matched it,
and within read his answer.

"Good. Not a word to anyone until we figure
out what happened. This doesn't change anything. We're still
several days' travel from the nearest town. Panic will only work
against us." Colton nodded his agreement. "So who do you think
ambushed him? The natives?"

"There's no way the natives could have
inflicted that kind of damage. Whatever attacked him was some kind
of animal, and there had to have been several of them. His remains
were nearly identical to those of the jaguar we found. And the
alpacas that had been tied to that tree. Whatever they were being
fed to killed Rippeth and consumed him. Maybe an eighth of a mile
from where the rest of us were asleep in our tents."

"He obviously armed himself beforehand. For
Christ's sake, he had an automatic rifle and a pair of
grenades."

"But he never got the chance to use them.
The rifle was just laying there on the ground."

"We need to decide exactly how we intend to
handle---"

Footsteps crunched on the other side of the
tangle of roots. Leo fell silent.

Galen appeared down the trail, swatting at
the branches in his way. His look of determination under the hood
of his poncho was almost comical. Lines of water poured from the
plastic. He hitched his pants when he saw them and climbed over the
roots.

"We need to talk," he said as he dropped
down between them. He slipped in the mud and somehow managed to
catch himself before he fell.