Greene's Calling: Seventeen Book Three (A Supernatural Action Adventure Thriller Series 3) (3 page)

A frown dawned on his face as he slowly circumnavigated the remains of the aircraft and the ruins of his dwelling. He knew the chances of finding any survivors were remote at best. He soon spotted the body of the pilot.

The head and shoulders of the burning corpse could be seen sticking out from the rubble of what had once been his bedroom. If not at the moment of the collision, the man would have died during the explosion that followed.

Conrad grimaced. If the crash had happened at night, he and the dog would have been toast. His eyes followed the black fumes spiraling sluggishly toward the sky. It would only be a matter of minutes before someone in Alvarães spotted the smoke trail. Fear of a forest fire would have the authorities on his doorstep by the afternoon.

He turned and started to negotiate the area around the blast zone. Tail tucked firmly between his hind legs, Rocky padded silently next to him.

It was the dog who found the second body. About thirty feet south of the point of impact, at the end of a trail of flattened orchids and heliconias, a figure lay jammed between the buttress roots of a young kapok tree.

Conrad squatted and inspected the still shape held at an awkward angle in the timber embrace of the rainforest. The scent of the crushed flowers was at odds with the stench of burnt flesh rising from the dead man in the suit. The tilt of his head and legs indicated a broken back and neck.

Rocky whimpered and lowered his nose to the ground. He leaned forward cautiously and sniffed the area next to the body before rising with his forepaws against the buttress roots. He let out a sharp bark.

Conrad followed the dog’s excited gaze to a branch some forty feet above the ground.

‘Well, I’ll be damned,’ he muttered.

Caught on the hanging vines dripping from the moss-covered bough was a slim, metal briefcase. The immortal studied the line of Bala ants marching up the trunk of the tree. Climbing to retrieve the case was not an option; he had been stung by the giant ants too many times to even think about risking their painful wrath. After a moment’s contemplation, he stood up, reached behind his back, and retrieved the gilded staff tucked in the waistband of his trousers.

‘What d’you reckon?’ he asked the dog, spinning the rod between his fingers. Rocky huffed approvingly.

Conrad twisted the second ring on the shaft and pulled on the ends of the weapon. The staff came apart to reveal a pair of gleaming short swords. The dog jumped back at the slick, metallic noise, a low whine escaping his jaws.

Conrad lifted his right arm behind his head and threw the blade in his hand. The sword cartwheeled in the air with a faint hum and sliced neatly through the creepers holding the briefcase prisoner. It fell to the fern-covered ground. The sword thudded into the earth next to it, gilded end vibrating to a slow stop.

The immortal bent and retrieved the case. Bar some superficial scratches, it was intact. He turned it and stared at the combination lock on the front. His gaze shifted to the dead man. He placed the briefcase on a giant root, walked over to the body, and patted it down under Rocky’s anxious stare. His fingers closed on a wallet in the inside pocket of the suit jacket. He stood and flicked it open.

The dead man’s surname was McPherson. He couldn’t make out the rest of the details of the California driving license tucked inside the front holder; the wallet was heavily scorched. He raised an eyebrow when he found the burnt remains of a dozen hundred-dollar bills and a half-melted Amex card. The rest of the wallet was empty. There was no sign of a code for the combination lock.

Conrad turned and considered the briefcase. If the plane was indeed a charter as he suspected, a flight plan should have been filed with the airport where it took off. There would, however, have been no legal requirement on the part of the pilot to include the name of his passenger. The contents of the case might reveal the identity of the dead man.

He eyed the dog questioningly. Rocky barked once, his tail spinning furiously from side to side. Taking that as a sign of the canine’s approval, Conrad wedged the briefcase between the roots of the kapok tree, raised a sword, and jabbed sharply at the combination lock. It broke after three blows.

He sheathed the twin blades, tucked the short staff inside his waistband, and picked up the case. Rocky trotted beside him as he headed for an open area of land away from the trees. He knelt down in the dirt, placed the briefcase on the ground, and unfastened the clasps. The dog’s hot pants washed over his neck as he lifted the lid. His hands stilled on the metal.

The case contained two items. The first one was a thick envelope; the second was a 9mm semiautomatic Colt pistol lying atop it. Rocky lowered his head and sniffed at the gun. Conrad pushed the dog’s muzzle aside and carefully picked up the weapon. He checked the chamber. It was loaded.

He removed the magazine, ejected the bullet from the port, and placed the gun on the ground. He reached for the envelope next. A loose sheaf of papers fell out and scattered across the rich, moist earth as he lifted it.

He scooped it up and examined the short, cryptic lines covering the top sheet. The next two papers were folded maps depicting the areas of a large outside space and the floor plans of an oval-shaped building. Sunlight gleamed on the glossy surfaces of the remaining ten sheets as he slowly thumbed through them.

They were all photographs, each depicting a different, solemn individual dressed in a conservative suit and wearing sunglasses. Although they all had loose-fitting jackets over their shirts, he spotted the strap of a gun holster and the curling wire of an earpiece on several of them. From their poses, they had all been unaware they were being snapped. His fingers froze on the last shot. Rocky huffed and licked the picture.

Coldness gripped Conrad as he stared at the hauntingly familiar features of Laura Hartwell.

Chapter Three

T
he late afternoon sun was bathing the swamp in red light when Conrad finally departed the clearing where his home once stood. As he suspected, officers from the Alvarães civil police and the local branch of the military firefighter corps arrived by boat barely an hour after the crash.

Rocky’s barks alerted him to their approach. By the time they reached the mouth of the small channel that snaked through the rainforest floodplain from the lake next to Alvarães, the fire had died down and only smoldering parts of his cabin and the larger sections of the Cessna remained. He watched the vessels chug steadily toward the jetty and strolled down to meet them.

‘Olá, Conrad,’ said the olive-skinned man who stepped out of the first motorboat.

‘Matheus,’ Conrad acknowledged with a brief nod.

Matheus Luiz Diaz was a senior officer of the Alvarães District Police. Like his father before him, he had trained and worked extensively in Manaus, the capital city of the state. Now in his late forties and married with three children, he bore the same wiry build Matheus senior had retained until an untimely death from a heart attack half a decade ago.

Conrad became aware of a pair of wary stares. He glanced at the two officers who had accompanied Diaz. The men lowered their eyes hastily and started chatting with the firefighters in the second boat, a hint of anxiety evident in their voices. The immortal swallowed a sigh. He could hardly blame the policemen. He was a legend among the superstitious locals.

Although Diaz used to regard him with the same guarded expression, the police officer appeared to have come to terms with the mystery that was Conrad’s existence, despite the fact that they first met when the man was still in diapers.

There had been many tales and fables concerning Conrad bandied about in the area over the years. The immortal himself had been responsible for several of them. His all-time favorite was the story of how he had discovered the elusive Tree of Life while exploring the jungles of the Amazon sixty years ago, drank from it, and promptly burned it to the ground. The one he took the most offense to was about him being the reincarnation of an ancient demon god who feasted on the flesh of the sacred creatures of the forest, thus gaining longevity and eternal youth from the souls of his damned victims.

Though he was no vegetarian, Conrad humanely slaughtered and cooked the animals he ate. And last time he looked, he had failed to grow any horns, fangs, or claws to justify the first half of that particular myth. His birthmark had not helped matters. As far as the locals were concerned, someone with a black Aesculapian snake on his forearm was not exactly an ode to virtuousness.

‘Well, that’s not something you see everyday,’ said Diaz in Portuguese. He stood next to Conrad on the bank of the swamp and contemplated the wreckage of the Cessna amidst the smoking ruins of the log cabin. ‘What happened?’ He bent and ruffled Rocky’s ears. The dog whined and licked the policeman’s face.

‘A plane fell out of the sky and ruined my fishing day,’ Conrad replied.

Diaz grunted and shook his head. He muttered something under his breath about now having seen it all and gestured to his men.

‘You catch anything?’ said the policeman as his officers lifted boxes of equipment out of the boat.

‘I did,’ said Conrad. ‘It got dumped back in the water when the boat flipped.’

‘That’s tough,’ murmured Diaz. ‘Still, it could have been worse.’

Conrad stared mutely from him to the remains of the cabin.

‘It could have crashed right on top of you is all I’m saying,’ said Diaz with a shrug.

‘Well, it kinda did,’ retorted the immortal.

The officers took his statement and set to work quickly, examining and photographing the scene of the accident while daylight still remained. Forensic help from Manaus would not be dispatched for at least a couple days, and they could not leave the two corpses where they lay. The firefighters declared the area safe and left after half an hour, their vessel churning the waters of the swamp with a whiff of gasoline as it disappeared through the inlet toward Alvarães.

Conrad watched silently as Diaz’s men zipped the two corpses in the body bags that had been brought across by a third boat. He had returned the passenger’s wallet to the inside pocket of his charred suit and taken a close look at the man’s hands minutes before the authorities arrived. The metal briefcase was at the bottom of the swamp.

Diaz and his officers left just after five. Conrad bade them goodbye and waited until the sound of their motorboats faded in the distance before he turned and strode into the forest, Rocky at his heels.

A giant sandbox tree stood some two hundred feet from the swamp. He squatted at the north base of the trunk and pulled at the vegetation on the ground. Concealed beneath the living camouflage he had arranged over the bulging roots was a dirt-colored trapdoor. Rocky nosed at his hands when he opened it and exposed the hollow space underneath.

The cavity measured four by three feet and was nearly half as deep. It contained a large, gray, army metal crate fastened with an industrial-sized padlock. He retrieved the key from a crack inside the sandbox tree and opened the container. Oiled hinges moved silently when he lifted the lid.

The envelope that had been in the dead man’s briefcase lay near the top of the chest. He dropped it inside an empty, worn, military-issue rucksack. Rocky sniffed at the other contents of the container, crossed his eyes, and sneezed.

Conrad scratched the dog behind the ears as he contemplated the collection of firearms laid neatly in narrow compartments at the bottom of the crate. It had been a couple of months since he last cleaned them. He selected a Heckler & Koch P8 semiautomatic pistol and put it in the backpack along with some magazines.

Taped to the lid of the crate were half a dozen waterproof Ziploc bags. He removed the one that contained a passport, a wad of hundred-dollar bills, and some savings bonds, and tucked the whole thing inside his waistband.

Conrad locked the chest, closed the trapdoor, rearranged the green screen, and put the key back in its hiding place. He sniffed at his shirt. His clothes had long since dried in the permanent heat that lingered under the canopy of the rainforest. They now held the stench of smoke, sweat, and death. He wrinkled his nose; he seriously needed to change. Unfortunately, all his earthly belongings had gone up in flames in the explosion that followed the plane crash.

‘Ah well, you’ll just have to live with the smell, boy,’ he told Rocky with a sigh.

The dog huffed and licked his hand. Conrad returned to the swamp, walked over to the jetty, and dropped the backpack in the stern of the canoe. The vessel rocked slightly, the puddles at the bottom gleaming in the crimson light.

Rocky hopped inside the raft, eyes shining and excited huffs leaving his jaws as his tail traced frantic circles in the air; he had been a hardcore fan of boat rides ever since he was a puppy.

Conrad turned and cast a final look at the place that had been his sanctuary for six decades. Although he was loath to leave it and return to the world he had willingly abandoned, he no longer had a choice in the matter. The contents of the dead man’s briefcase had seen to that.

As the evening calls and cries of the rainforest wildlife rang out across the darkening canopy, he stepped inside the canoe, picked up the oar, and headed east into the forest toward the Rio Solimoes.

It was dark by the time they reached Roxanne’s hut. The aroma of cooked cassava, fried green bananas, and grilled fish reached Conrad’s nostrils well before he saw the flickering yellow flames of a fire between the trees. He guided the raft to a narrow landing abutting a bank that held a small house on stilts.

A short, stout shadow appeared in the doorway of the thatch and wood construct as they disembarked. Rocky scampered ahead, a friendly whine escaping his jaws. His claws clattered on worn hardwood as he climbed the steps to the shallow porch. The figure at the top leaned down and patted his head before straightening slowly with a crackle and pop of arthritic bones.

The orange glow of a tobacco roll flared in the gloom. The heady, pungent smell of Roxanne’s homemade mapacho cigarette drifted toward Conrad as he paused at the foot of the stairs.

‘Olá,
Deus
Demônio
,’ said Roxanne in a parchment-dry voice.

‘Olá,
Ela
Diabo
,’ muttered Conrad in response.