The Amazon Code (41 page)

Even if Joshua
did
keep his word, they would need all the luck they could get. Joshua’s old team, the mercenaries, had already reached the stash of weapons and it was only a matter of time before they untied and freed the remainder of their crew.
 

The tribesman spoke, again a guttural, grunting sound, and Reggie raised his eyebrows.
No idea what you’re talking about, man.
The man repeated the noises.
 

One of the other warriors spoke, then turned and sneered at Reggie. Reggie shrugged.
 

He heard the odd set of words spoken a third time. The man in front of Reggie raised his hands, pushing the spears up and out of the way. Reggie waited, unsure of what the man’s intentions were.
Is this another sacrificial ritual?
He wasn’t about to force the man’s hand, but Reggie had never been the type of person to wait around for someone else to act.
 

Reggie took a slow, small step backward. The tribespeople tensed, but their leader didn’t budge.
 

“What are you doing?” Ben whispered. He saw Ben out of the corner of his eye, frozen in place opposite him in the tunnel. He had only moved his mouth, clearly as terrified as Reggie.
 

“We have to make them understand…” Reggie muttered. “The guns.”
 

Ben nodded. The leader of the indigenous warriors stepped forward, again closing the gap between himself and Reggie. Reggie thought about what he was going to say.
What
do
you say to a group of people who have no idea how to understand you?
 

He decided not to say anything.
 

Reggie lifted his hands up, one in front of the other, in the shape of holding an invisible assault rifle. He curled the index finger of his right hand around a nonexistent trigger, and held his left hand in an upward-facing cupped palm. He pointed it to the side, toward the cave wall.
Don’t want this guy to get the wrong idea.
 

The man frowned, then brought the torch down to see Reggie’s hands in greater detail. Reggie shook his hands gently, pretending to fire. He made the pattering sounds of gunshots with his mouth, keeping it quiet enough to — hopefully — not upset the warriors.
 

He repeated the process a few times, moving the positions of his hands to aim the “gun” in different directions, all the while continuing the noises. The warrior stared, still frowning, then brought his head back up and straightened.
 

His eyes widened and he turned to the others in his group. He pointed at Reggie, excitedly chattering with the two men closest to him. They discussed for a few seconds, and Reggie was relieved to see the spearmen place the butts of their weapons on the ground and stand at ease.
 

The lead warrior spoke again to Reggie, but his voice had changed. Where there was a slight gruffness before, the man was now using a different set of consonants, almost a singsong-like voice, and Reggie interpreted it as a question.
 

“See,” he said under his breath, “that’s the thing. I can’t understand what you’re saying.” He enunciated the words out of frustration at the language barrier. Reggie pointed behind him, toward the covering of vines at the entrance to the tunnel, and performed the gun-holding action once again.
 

The warrior spoke again, this time to his team, and three of them peeled off from the group of five. They walked to the front of the tunnel and pushed aside the vines, exposing the tunnel to a surprising amount of moonlight. The gunfire grew louder, and Reggie noticed that there didn’t seem to be as many screams emanating from the valley beyond.
 

We’re running out of time.
 

The leader of the warriors pushed Reggie forward. Reggie heard Ben moving alongside him as well. The two men were marched to the tunnel’s entrance, directed by the two warriors. When they’d reached the opening, the three warriors in the front suddenly broke into a run, aiming toward the group of boulders to the left.
 

They’re going for the guns,
Reggie realized.
Either they’re going to help us or I’ve just taught them how to use the weapons against us.
 

It didn’t matter which it was — Reggie didn’t have a choice. He was pushed out of the cave by the leader and into the vulnerable openness. He ran, hoping that Ben was behind him.
 

A head poked up from behind one of the boulders, just as it had before. They had only been in the cave for a couple minutes, so the men behind the circle of boulders were still guarding whatever weapons remained stashed there.
 

“Reggie, duck!” he heard Ben yell.
 

Before he could, he felt a cool swish of air just next to his head, then saw the head behind the boulder lance backward violently. Only then could he make out the outline of a spear, sticking up in the air above the soldier’s head, affixed to his skull. The man didn’t make a sound as he fell backwards.
 

Reggie was amazed.
What a shot,
he thought. The warrior who’d thrown the spear quickened his pace and reached the boulder at the same time as the first three men out of the cave. Reggie, Ben, and the leader of the small band of fighters were right behind them.
 

Unlike the other circle of rocks Reggie and Ben had hidden behind, this group of boulders had clearly been placed in a specific formation — a circle. In the center of the circle was a pile of weapons — the four assault rifles, sidearms, and combat knives from the four mercenaries who’d been sacrificed to the lake, as well as Reggie’s own weapons and the two remaining backpacks they’d brought along. Ben didn’t see the bag Joshua had been carrying, the smaller pack that the tribe had stripped from his back when they’d arrived.
 

While he was relieved to see a small stack of weapons piled there, it also meant that the
rest
of the mercenaries either already had their weapons back or were about to. He glanced to the lake but it was impossible to tell from this distance whether the soldiers were still tied to their posts. Once again he thought of Joshua, Archie, Paulinho, and the girls, and hoped they were safe or had somehow escaped.

There was also
another
problem. The guns weren’t the only things waiting inside the circle of boulders.
 
Two mercenaries, not including the one who had already been killed by the spear, were posted inside the circle, each facing outward a different direction, keeping watch.
I guess they’re not tied up anymore.
One of the men was already swiveling around to see what the commotion behind him had been. He saw his dead comrade first, the spear protruding from the man’s face, leaning backward at a steep angle. Then he noticed the native warriors, creeping over and around the wall of boulders. He lifted the gun and fired.
 

Reggie winced, ducking, as the first warrior went down. The second was able to launch a spear, but by then the second mercenary had turned around to help. Reggie retreated, grabbing Ben before he entered the ring.
 

“We’re going around,” he said. Ben nodded, but broke away from Reggie’s grip. “What are you doing?”
 

“I’ll go around the
other
way, then,” Ben said. Before he could argue, Ben was gone.
 

Reggie ran around the rest of the rocks and aimed for the gap between two of the smaller boulders. This was where one of the soldiers had been posted up, and he gained speed as he entered the ring. He had no weapons, but he hoped he at least had the element of surprise. There were two more bursts of gunfire, and Reggie hoped the shots didn’t land on target.
 

He breached the line of boulders and saw that Ben had made it to his entrance at the same instant. Both men ran toward the center of the circle, aiming for their chosen soldiers standing just next to the pile of weapons. In his peripheral vision he saw two of the natives, bleeding on the ground inside the ring. The leader of the group and the last warrior were nowhere in sight.
 

In the last split-second before impact, he focused again on his target — the soldiers both had their backs to him and Ben, holding their guns up and at the ready for a frontal assault. Reggie dove forward, aiming for the lowest part of the man’s back. He hoped to not only tackle the man solidly but provide him with as much pain as humanly possible in the process. The connection was abrupt, and Reggie’s vision lit up in a flash of white.
 

The pain quickly subsided and he had a brief moment of weightlessness as he felt himself soaring through the air with his prisoner beneath him. He wrapped his arms around the man, and both tumbled to the ground, hard.
 

He’d knocked the air of the soldier, but the man was recovering quickly, already starting to roll sideways to shake the attack. Reggie reacted faster, having the benefit of not being on the bottom of the pile, and he reached over and grabbed at whatever weapon lay nearby.
 

A pistol.
Good enough.

The man was struggling beneath him now, but Reggie lifted the gun up and pressed it against the man’s temple. “This ends
now
, buddy.”
 

The soldier froze, recognizing defeat. Reggie felt him relax slightly but he continued to watch the man’s hands. The pile of weapons was equally within reach for the soldier. “Don’t even think about it,” Reggie said. “Ben, you okay?”
 

Reggie didn’t turn away, not daring to let the man he was sitting on catch him off guard. He still had the gun to his head, but Reggie wasn’t taking any chances.
 

“Ben, you there?”
 

Reggie jumped at the sound of a gun firing directly behind him. He momentarily dropped the pistol from the man’s head, startled.
 

The man took the opportunity to lurch forward a few inches and grab the knife on the ground in front of him. In a single, swift motion, he swiveled his upper body around and backhanded the knife point toward Reggie.
 

Reggie was in motion, but it was too slow. He saw the point of the knife falling closer and closer to his face, as if watching a slowed down instant replay from a separate camera angle. He forced his body to move faster, but he wasn’t going to make it.
 

The knife curved through the air until it was an inch from his eye, then stopped. Only then did Reggie’s mind register another gunshot. The soldier beneath him immediately sagged, his arm dropping back to the ground and releasing the knife. Reggie saw the open hole on the side of the man’s head, the tiny circle of blood marking the entrance wound.
 

“What the hell, Ben?” Reggie yelled. “He surrendered. We could have used —“

“Well, we can’t anymore. He’s dead,” Ben said. Reggie could hardly hear him. “And keep your voice down. You’re screaming.”
 

“
You
discharged a weapon next to my
ear
,” Reggie yelled. “It’s not funny.”
 

“Didn’t say it was,” Ben said, shrugging. “Come on. Stop whining, you’re supposed to be trained for this.”
 

69

“WE NEED TO GET BACK to the lake and find the others,” Ben said. Reggie was opening and closing his jaw, trying to regain his hearing.
 

“You go on,” Reggie said, still talking far too loudly. “I’ll hang back and cover you.”
 

“You sure?” Ben asked. He hadn’t expected the man to decline.

“I was a sniper back in the day, so I’m better off back here, anyway. Besides, someone needs to make sure the mercs don’t get to the tunnels.”

Ben hadn’t considered that, but he knew Reggie was right. Whatever his decision, Ben was going to get back to Julie. “Okay, fine. Let me have some of those.”
 

Reggie was already handing Ben the assault rifles. He ignored the knives, but kept his two pistols for himself.
 

“How many of them are left?” Ben asked.
 

“Bad guys? We took care of three here, the natives got four earlier, and I think they started with ten or eleven, right?”
 

“So a few more.”
 

“Yes, but a few more
well-trained
soldiers, hunting us. And without weapons, we’re fish in a barrel.”
 

Ben nodded, then turned to leave.

“I got your back.”
 

The four assault rifles were heavy. There was no possible way to carry any of them in a position he could actually fire one, and he was reminded once more at his complete reliance on Reggie’s ability to ‘get his back.’ Ben was also not able to carry extra ammunition, so whatever was remaining in each gun’s magazine was all they’d get.
 

He hoped it would be enough.
 

He increased his pace, fighting against the awkward weight of the rifles but plodding along without trouble. The lake was about 100 yards away, but it felt like a mile. His legs were straining, he was drenched in sweat, and the air was heavy with moisture. He was having a hard time breathing, as if in a steam room. Every inhalation was marked with stabs of pain as the exertion, stress, fatigue, and heat all acted against him.
 

The lake was growing larger and larger every second, and suddenly he was there. He’d reached the building closest to the small lake and used every bit of remaining strength he had to step over the dirt threshold and check the interior.
 

“Julie?” he shouted.
 

No answer.
 

He found them inside the second building, huddled together. Archie, Julie, Amanda, and Paulinho, who had somewhat of a dazed look in his eyes but was otherwise healthy. Ben assumed they were hiding, but when Julie didn’t rush toward him when she saw who had entered, he took a closer look.