The Codex (25 page)

They halted in a small grassy clearing. Tom and Vernon laid Pingo down, and Tom bent over him, desperately feeling for a pulse. There was none. He located the wound. It was horrifying. An expanding bullet had struck Pingo in the back, between the shoulder blades, and emerged with explosive force from his chest, leaving a gaping hole more than six inches across. It had passed directly through the heart. It was amazing he had lived for even a few seconds after a wound like that.

Tom glanced up at Chori. The man had an expression on his face that was absolutely cold.

“I’m sorry.”

Don Alfonso said, “There is no time to be sorry. We must go.”

“And leave the body here?”

“Chori will stay with it.”

“But the soldiers are surely coming—”

Don Alfonso cut him off. “Yes. And Chori must do what he must do.” He turned to Sally. “You keep his gun and ammunition. We will not see Chori again. Let us go.”

“We can t leave him here!” Tom protested.

Don Alfonso grabbed Tom’s shoulders. His hands were surprisingly strong, like steel clamps. He spoke quietly but with intensity. “Chori has unfinished business with his brother’s killers.”

“Without a gun?” Sally asked as Chori took out of his leather bag a tattered box of ammunition and handed it to her.

“Silent arrows are more effective in the jungle. He will kill enough of them to die with honor. This is our way. Do not interfere.” Without a backward glance Don Alfonso turned, swiped his machete across a wall of vegetation, and plunged through the opening. They followed, struggling to keep up with the old man, who moved with the speed and silence of a bat. Tom had no idea where they were heading. They walked for hours up and down ravines, wading swift streams, at times hacking their way through dense stands of bamboo or ferns. Biting ants rained down on them and crawled down their shirts, and several times Don Alfonso impaled small snakes with his machete and flicked them aside. It rained briefly and they were soaked.

The sun came out and they steamed. Clouds of insects followed them, biting viciously. Nobody spoke. No one could speak. It was all they could do to keep up.

Hours later, when the light began to die in the treetops, Don Alfonso halted. Without a word he sat on a fallen tree trunk, fished out his pipe, and lit it. Tom watched the match flare up and wondered how many more they had. They had lost almost everything with the burning of the boats.

“What now?” Vernon asked.

“We camp,” said Don Alfonso. He pointed with his machete. “Make a fire. There.”

Vernon got to work and Tom helped.

Don Alfonso pointed his machete at Sally. “You: Go hunting. You may be a woman, but you shoot like a man and you have the courage of a man.”

Tom looked at Sally. Her face was smudged, her long blond hair in tangles, the gun slung over her shoulder. He could see in her face everything he was feeling: the shock and surprise of the attack, horror at the death of Pingo, dread at the loss of all their supplies, determination to survive. She nodded and went off into the forest.

Don Alfonso looked at Tom. “You and I will build a hut.”

An hour later, night had fallen. They were sitting around the fire, eating the last of a stew made from a large rodent Sally had shot. A small thatched hut sat nearby, and Don Alfonso sat in front of a pile of palm leaves, stripping them and weaving them into hammocks. He had been silent except for giving terse orders.

“Who were those soldiers?” Tom asked Don Alfonso.

Don Alfonso busied himself over the hammocks. “Those were the soldiers who came upriver with your other brother Philip.”

“Philip would never permit an attack on us,” said Vernon.

“No,” said Tom. He felt his heart sink. There must have been a mutiny on Philip’s expedition, or something else had happened. At any rate, Philip must be in grave danger—if not already dead. The unknown enemy, therefore, had to be Hauser. He was the one who had killed the two policemen in Santa Fe, who had arranged for their capture in Brus, who was behind this most recent attack on them.

“The question,” Sally said, “is whether we go on or go back.”

Tom nodded.

“It’d be suicide to go on,” Vernon said. “We’ve got nothing—no food, no clothes, no tents, sleeping bags, or food.”

“Philip’s up ahead,” said Tom. “And he’s in trouble. It’s pretty obvious that Hauser’s the one behind the killing of the two policemen in Santa Fe.

There was a silence. “Maybe we should go back, resupply, and return. We won’t be able to help him like this, Tom.”

Tom glanced at Don Alfonso, plaiting deftly. He sensed from the studiously neutral expression on the old man’s face that he had an opinion. He always looked that way when he was about to disagree. “Don Alfonso?”

“Yes?”

“Do you have an opinion?”

Don Alfonso laid the hammock down and rubbed his hands together. He looked Tom in the eye. “I do not have an opinion. I have instead a statement of fact.”

“Which is?”

“Behind us is a deadly swamp in which the water is lowering every day. We have no dugout. It will take a week at least to make another. But we cannot stay in one place for a week, because the soldiers will find us, and the manufacture of a dugout creates clouds of smoke, which will be a signpost for all to see. So we must keep moving, on foot, through the jungle, toward the Sierra Azul. To go back is to die. That is my statement of fact.”

34

Marcus Hauser sat on a log by the fire, Churchill in his mouth, field-stripping the Steyr AUG. The weapon didn’t need it, but for Hauser it was a repetitive physical process that was almost a form of meditation. The rifle was mostly made of finely machined plastic, which Hauser liked. He retracted the cocking slide knob, grasped the barrel grip and, using his left thumb, pressed the barrel locking latch down. Then he rotated the barrel clockwise and pulled it forward. It came free with a satisfying smoothness.

From time to time he glanced into the forest where Philip was chained up, but there wasn’t a sound. He had heard a jaguar roaring earlier in the day, a roar of frustration and hunger, and he didn’t want his prisoner getting eaten, at least not before he had figured out where old Max had gone. He heaped some more wood on the fire to beat back the darkness and the prowling jaguar. To his right, the Macaturi River slid past the camp, making soft splashing and gurgling noises as it eddied and flowed. It was a beautiful night for a change, the velvety sky dusted with stars, which were reflected as faint dancing lights in the surface of the river. It was close to two o’clock in the morning, but Hauser was one of those fortunates who needed only four hours of sleep a night.

He chucked another log on the fire to increase the light and slid the bolt assembly out of the receiver. His hand lightly caressed the smooth pieces of plastic and metal—one warm, the other cold—and he savored the scent of gun oil and the clicks of the well-machined parts as they disengaged. A few more well-practiced moves and the rifle lay in front of him, stripped to its six basic parts. He hefted each piece, examining it, cleaning it, running his hands over it—and began putting them back together. He worked slowly, dreamily even: no boot-camp haste here.

He heard a faint sound: the whine of the returning boats. He paused, listening carefully. The operation had concluded, and the men were back right on time. Hauser was pleased. Not even a half-assed group of Honduran soldiers could have screwed up such a straightforward op.

Or could they? He saw, materializing out of the dark body of the river, the dugout, but with three instead of five soldiers in it. The boat docked at the large boulder that served as a landing stage. Two men hopped out, firelit forms moving against the darkness, and helped a third man out. He walked stiffly, and Hauser heard a groan of pain. Three men—and he had sent out five.

He refitted the butt plate, slid the bolt assembly back in, and reset the housing latch to the left, working by feel, his eyes fixed on the figures moving toward the fire. The men approached diffidently, nervously, one soldier supporting his wounded colleague. A three-foot-long arrow had passed through his thigh, the feathered end sticking out the back, the barbed metal point out the front. The pantleg had been torn and was stiff with dried blood.

The men paused, saying nothing, looking mostly at the ground, shuffling their feet in shame. Hauser waited. The enormity of his mistake—in trusting these men to perform the simplest of ops—was now obvious. He went back to reassembling his gun, rotating the barrel back into place and then reseating the magazine, sliding it into the stock with a click. Then he waited, weapon laid across his knees, an icy feeling in his heart.

The silence was excruciating. One of them would have to speak.

“Jefe—” the lieutenant began.

He waited for the excuses.

“We killed two of them, jefe, and burned their boats and supplies. Their bodies are in the canoe.”

Hauser said, after a pause, “Which two?”

There was a nervous pause. “The two Tawahka Indians.”

Hauser remained silent. This was a disaster.

“The old man with them saw the trap before we could open fire,” the teniente went on. “They turned around. We chased them downstream, but they managed to land and escape into the jungle. We burned their boats and supplies. Then, as we pursued them into the jungle, we were ambushed by one of the Tawahka. He had a bow and arrow, so much the worse for us. We couldn’t locate him until he got two of us and wounded the third, and then we killed him. You know how these jungle Indians are, jefe, silent as jaguars ...”

His voice trailed off miserably. He shifted nervously, and the man with the arrow through his thigh let escape an involuntary groan.

“So you see, jefe, we killed two and drove the others into the jungle with no supplies, no food, nothing, where they will surely die—”

Hauser rose. “Excuse me, Teniente, this man needs immediate attention.”

“Si, señor.”

With the rifle in one hand, Hauser rose and put his free arm around the wounded man, easing him off the soldier who had been supporting him. He leaned over and said gently, “Come with me. Let me take care of you.”

The teniente waited by the fire, his face sagging.

Hauser supported the man and led him away from the fire. The man groaned, limping. His skin was hot and dry; he had a fever.

“Easy,” said Hauser. “We’ll just take you over here and fix you up.” He led the man about fifty yards into the darkness beyond the camp-fire and eased him down on a log. The man staggered, groaned, but with Hauser’s help was able to sit on the log. Hauser removed the man’s machete.

“Señor, before you cut out the arrow, give me whiskey.” The man whimpered, terrified of pain.

“This won’t take but a second.” He gave the man a gentle pat on the shoulder. “We’ll have you fixed up in no time. I promise you, the operation will be painless.”

“No, señor, please, whiskey first ...”

Hauser bent over the arrow with the machete. The man stiffened, gritting his teeth, staring at the machete in terror and noticing nothing else. Meanwhile, Hauser raised the muzzle of the Steyr AUG to within an inch of the back of the man’s head. He eased the trigger back to full auto fire and squeezed off a short burst. The fire struck the man obliquely, the force of it throwing him backward off the log where he landed, sprawled head down, unmoving. All was then silent.

Hauser returned to camp, washed his hands, and reseated himself by the fire. He picked up the half-smoked Churchill and relit it with a burning twig. The two soldiers were not looking at him, but some of the others, hearing the noise, had come out of their tents. They had their guns and were looking around, confused and alarmed.

“It is nothing,” said Hauser, waving them away. “The man needed surgery. It was short, painless, and successful.”

Hauser removed the cigar, knocked back a slug from his hip flask, and reinserted the wet tip of the cigar between his lips, drawing the smoke in. He felt only partly refreshed. It wasn’t the first time he had made the mistake of entrusting a simple task to these Honduran soldiers only to see it fail. Unfortunately, there was only one of him and he couldn’t do everything. It was always the same problem—always.

Hauser turned and smiled at the teniente. “I’m a very good surgeon, Teniente, should you ever have need of it.”

35

They spent the following day in camp. Don Alfonso cut a gigantic stack of palm fronds and sat cross-legged next to them for most of the day, pulling them into fibrous strips and weaving palm-leaf backpacks and more hammocks. Sally hunted and brought back a small antelope, which Tom dressed and smoked over the fire. Vernon collected fruits and manioc root. By the end of the day they had a small supply of food for their journey.

They inventoried their supplies. Between them they had several boxes of waterproof matches, a box of ammunition with thirty rounds, Tom’s daypack containing a tiny Svea backpacking stove set with an aluminum pots-and-pans set, two bottles of white gas, and a squeeze bottle of insect repellent. Vernon had escaped with a pair of binoculars around his neck. Don Alfonso had a pocketful of candy bars, three pipes, two packs of pipe tobacco, a small whetstone, and a roll of fishing line with hooks, all of which had been in his greasy leather bag, which he had snatched from the burning dugout. They all had their machetes, which they had been carrying tucked in their belts at the time of the attack.