I, Judas the 5th Gospel (13 page)

“Why can’t we chopper in?” Gates asked. “Bypass the river and the canyon and falls.”

Angelique gave a quick glance at DiSalvo, then spread her arms, indicating the jungle. “Where would you land?

“We fast rope down,” Gates said, referring to the technique of sliding down from the helicopter to the ground on thick ropes.

“You’d get caught in the triple canopy,” Angelique said. “And you can’t take many supplies with you. Plus we have to repack the gear for travel. And,” she continued, forestalling Gates saying something else, “there are smugglers and people growing drugs in the jungle between here and our objective. They tend to view helicopters, especially ones with Brazilian government markings, as the enemy. They shoot first and ask questions later. And they have surface to air missiles.”

“They can shoot at us on the river,” Gates observed.

“They can,” Angelique agreed, “but they can also see us on the river and I know them and can speak to them as I’ve met many before. We will have to pay them off for passage, which we can do on the river, but not when flying overhead.”

Gates looked skeptical, but said nothing further. Angelique sighed, exhausted from lying, but also from explaining. Those who had not spent time in the Amazon, particularly the Mato Grasso, had no idea what they were facing. People who had spent their lives in civilization were often overwhelmed when they ventured into the wild. She had no concern about the American soldier, as she was sure he had been in some pretty brutal places, but the others worried her. And she really didn’t know why some of them were going on this trip and DiSalvo had not bothered to explain. What did they need an historian for? And why was DiSalvo insistent on arriving on the Final Day?

“Listen,” Angelique said, getting the attention of the other five people. “Several things. First.” She opened up several plastic cases. “Everyone gets a weapon.” She held up an MP-5 sub-machinegun. Again, top of the line, although she would stick with her shotgun. “I assume the good Captain here can give you all a quick course on how to use these.”

Gates nodded. “First thing in the morning before we get on the boats. For now, nobody loads any weapons unless you’ve been trained on them.”

“I know how to handle weapons,” DiSalvo said, slamming a magazine home into the gun she had just handed him, which didn’t surprise Angelique.

“I don’t need a gun,” the tall archeologist, Hyland said. This also didn’t surprise Angelique. “I am here for my expertise and—”

“The jungle does not care about your expertise,” Angelique cut off the other woman. She tossed the sub-machinegun and Hyland caught it. Quickly, not brooking any more argument, Angelique tossed subs to Kopec and Lee. She opened another case and removed 9mm Berretta pistols secured in thigh holsters and passed them out. As she and Gates helped the three inexperienced members strap on the guns, she continued talking.

“We are going up the Xingu River. Further than I have ever traveled. Very few people have ever gone up past the Devil’s Fork. None have come back in living memory.”
Except me
, she suddenly realized. The name of the split in the river, and the implicit warning, caught everyone’s attention given their mission.

Angelique continued. “No one knows exactly how it got its name. But about one hundred and ten kilometers from here, there are two feeder rivers coming together. Immediately beyond the Devil’s Fork the two rivers begin breaking down into countless streams.”

Gates looked up from adjusting the thigh holster on Hyland’s long leg. “If we’re going further than you’ve ever been, and there are so many streams, how do you know which one to take? For that matter,” he said as he straightened up and glanced at DiSalvo, “how the hell do we know—” he paused, searching for the right word—“the target is up there? And do you know exactly where the target is located? It’s a big place.”

“How we know the Great Betrayer, Judas Iscariot, is hiding there,” DiSalvo said, “is none of your concern, nor is it necessary for the task at hand. Our last report on his location is over one hundred years old.”

“Eighteen sixty-seven to be exact,” Angelique said.

Doctor Lee had his pistol in his hand and was looking at it curiously as if a nurse had handed him the wrong instrument in the operating room. “How can you be so exact?”

“This is my land,” Angelique said, “and I know its history.”

“She’s correct,” DiSalvo said, both surprised and impressed she’d known the date. “In eighteen sixty-seven, Sir Richard Francis Burton, who was the British Consul in Brazil, traveled here.”

“And as far as it is known, he was the last one to come back down river alive after going past the Devil’s Fork,” Angelique said.

Lee awkwardly slid the gun back into the holster. “You’re joking, certainly.”

“I’ve seen people head up the river saying they were going past Devil’s Fork,” Angelique said. “I’ve never seen any of them come back.” She reached into a pocket and pulled out a piece of paper. It was something she had found a long time ago in school and kept to read to those she guided who became too cocky. “This is a copy of a telegraph sent less than a century ago by someone who was trying to follow Burton’s trail.” She read it out loud. “
’I have but one object: to uncover the mysteries that the jungle vastness of South America have concealed for so many centuries. We are encouraged in our hope of finding the ruins of an ancient, white civilization and the degenerate offspring of a once cultivated race
.’” She folded it and put it back in her pocket. “That was sent by Lieutenant Colonel Percy Fawcett, a British officer and explorer.

“Fawcett transmitted that telegram on April twentieth, nineteen twenty-five, just before leaving on an expedition up the Xangu River. He had his son and a cameraman with him along with some native porters.” She turned and nodded toward the river, unseen in the gathering darkness. “They came up the water, passed here and continued onward. They made one radio contact on May twenty-ninth, reporting a position about ten kilometers above Devil’s Fork. There was a cryptic reference to the Dark One, and then they were never heard from again.”

A short silence ensued, as each member of the team processed the information. Gates slammed a magazine into his pistol and slid it into his holster, startling the others except DiSalvo and Angelique.

For the first time, Angelique considered whether she might be descended from Fawcett. Perhaps there was a small community up there and they were her kin?

Gates looked at DiSalvo. “I assume we’re going to get a little more information on our target before we get there, given the poor track record of those who have gone before us?”

“It’s late,” DiSalvo said. “I suggest we all get some sleep so we can be on the river at first light.” DiSalvo turned to Gates and Angelique. “You two will prepare the loads for each boat. If any of the rest of you has any special equipment you need to bring with us, put it over there.” DiSalvo pointed at the path to the river. “Let’s get moving, people. You’ll be grateful for these hours of sleep.”

The group broke up. Gates went to Angelique and they began sorting through the mound of supplies the Brazilian soldiers had piled up haphazardly.

“Water and food are key,” Angelique said. “You don’t want to drink the river water unless you absolutely have to. There are parasites in it they haven’t even named yet.”

“Ammunition is more important than food,” Gates said. “You can go days without eating if you need to.”

“It looks like you just did,” Angelique said.

Gates glanced at her but didn’t say anything.

“Are you expecting a fight?” Angelique asked as Gates opened a case of grenades and began sorting out piles.

“You think those people you saw going up-river didn’t come back because they found paradise?” Gates asked.

“Do you think your bullets will work on the Dark One?” Angelique asked.

“Judas,” Gates said. “It would be better for morale if we called him that. And he’s a man, right?”

“A man who’s been alive for over two thousand years?” Angelique said.

“Yeah,” Gates said, “I can see where that could cause us a problem.”

Angelique looked at Gates and realized he was smiling. It transformed his entire face and character, but just as quickly as it appeared, it was gone. Angelique shrugged as she grabbed a box of meals and carried it toward the boats.

Gates watched her, and then turned to DiSalvo, who was looking at the screen of his satellite phone. “What’s the real reason we’re not using choppers?”

“We’re concerned about being tracked by satellite,” DiSalvo said.

“By who?”

“There are groups out there who want to stop us,” DiSalvo said.

“You’re just full of information,” Gates said. “What you don’t tell us could get us killed. We’re all committed to this mission. How about filling us in?”

“You know what you need to know,” DiSalvo said.

“I don’t think so,” Gates said, taking a step closer to the priest.

DiSalvo faced the soldier. “I’m in charge.”

“You have the official position of being in charge,” Gates acknowledged. “But I’ve learned there’s a difference between having the position of leader and being a leader.”

“Did you learn that in Afghanistan?” DiSalvo asked.

Gates’ face went hard, every muscle tight, the complete opposite of the man Angelique had just glimpsed. Without a word, he turned away and went back to sorting supplies.

Indian Ocean Airspace

The MC-130 Combat Talon was flying high, close to its ceiling, at thirty-two thousand feet. The Talon is a modified version of the Hercules cargo transport that the United States Air Force had first put into service in 1956. It was a testament to the airframe and concept that the craft was still the primary lifter for the service almost six decades later.

The Talon was the special operations version of the plane, with sophisticated electronics that allowed it to fly at night and in limited visibility. Most of the time, this ability allowed the craft to fly very low and very fast to avoid detection. For tonight’s mission, though, the craft was staying as high and as far away from the drop zone as possible. The fact that the Mission transmitted intense frequencies had been briefed to the crew, and they wanted to take no chances of being attacked by the facilities uplink. Thus, the track of the craft was over fifteen miles away, to the southeast of Moheli.

A red warning light began flashing, and the two men dressed in jungle fatigues detached their oxygen tubes from the central console and hooked them to the small tanks they had rigged on the front of their parachute harnesses. The men wore jump helmets with night vision goggles attached. The lower half of their faces were covered with a black balaclava. The red light stopped flashing and the back ramp slowly opened wide, the top retracting up into the high tail section, the bottom ramp leveling out, forming a platform.

Cold air swirled into the craft as the two men lowered their night vision goggles and turned them on. They waddled to the back ramp and stood on either side, holding their position by grasping the hydraulic arm that secured the ramp. They looked like robots, not a single square centimeter of flesh exposed to chill air at altitude, and the NVGs and balaclavas removing any appearance of humanity from their faces. Their main parachutes were rigged on their backs, a reserve across their stomachs with nav-boards on top. Long, hard, plastic cases containing rifles were slung over each man’s right shoulder and tightly secured. Their rucksacks with special gear dangled against the back of their legs. Both men were so encumbered, they could barely walk.

The green light flashed on and one man led the way, waddling off the ramp and into the dark night. The second immediately followed. As soon as they were stable, arms and legs akimbo to keep their bodies from tumbling, they pulled their ripcords. Square black canopies deployed above and the two men began ‘flying’ their chutes toward the drop zone they had picked, on the side of the mountain directly overlooking the Mission, as the Talon banked away and headed back toward Bagram Air Force Base in Afghanistan.

The Arabian Sea

“Bring us to launch depth.”

The Captain of the
USS Pittsburgh
had given the same order many times. Most of the time it was for training purposes, but during the second Iraqi invasion the
Pittsburgh
had launched over twenty cruise missiles at Baghdad. Tonight, according to the coded orders they had received, they were going to launch several more.

The
Pittsburgh
is a Los Angeles class attack submarine, the thirty-third of its kind. Costing almost a billion dollars, it carries twelve Tomahawk cruise missiles ready for firing in vertical launch tubes. The crew consists of twelve officers and one hundred and fifteen enlisted men, and while all worked as a tightly integrated team to prepare the ship to launch, not a single one of them had a clue what the target of their missiles would be, or even why they were launching.

They were following orders. It had been that way during the Iraqi invasion. They’d received orders to launch, the codes on the orders being authenticated, and they’d gone through these same motions. The targeting data, scrambled, had come into the ship’s communications center and been forwarded directly to the missiles without human eyes on the ship ever looking at it. It was the way the system worked. It was designed to reduce the possibility of human error and to keep advance notice of any launch as secret as possible.