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  “Right.”

  The uncle returned and placed a ten-gallon gas tank at the rear of the boat. He handed King a World War Two M1 Garand rifle loaded with eight .30 caliber rounds. It was old but reliable. The eight rounds combined with the eight in his handgun gave him sixteen shots. Not a lot when going up against a team of high-tech mercs, but all he needed was to take down one of them, then he’d pay the pain and misery forward with their Metal Storm weapons.

  “Make sure the bodies are found and buried,” King said. Atahualpa nodded. “Including McCabe.”

  Fear filled his eyes as he recalled the horrifying events of the previous day, but he nodded again and said, “I will. All of them.”

  King still had trouble believing McCabe could have killed all those people so viciously, but he had no other explanation, and no other recourse but to rescue Pierce. McCabe was missing, probably dead. And only Atahualpa had survived the attack. His goal was singular and he was locked on target like a stinger missile—King gave the engine’s starter cord a yank and opened up the throttle, puttering into the middle of the river—a very slow moving missile.

  14

  Ucayali Region, Peru

  The Rio Urubamba slid silently through the dense jungle like a boa constrictor hunting for prey. It meandered side to side in vast curves, sometimes nearly looping around on itself. If not for King keeping the old boat at full speed he wouldn’t have made it much more than a mile from Jauja. As it was, he doubted he’d traveled more than a few linear miles from the village. But this was the way his adversaries had come and he had yet to see a gap in the jungle where a boat could land.

  With the sun lingering just below the horizon, night would soon descend. He knew he should stop for the night, tie off to a tree and sleep, but he couldn’t shake his guilt over losing Pierce, not to mention the lives of McCabe and the dig crew. But all of their deaths combined didn’t outweigh the pain of allowing Pierce to be kidnapped. As strange as it was, his old friend was all he had left of his sister. With her death, he and Pierce had drifted apart some, like parents of a killed child—each reminded the other of Julie. They kept in touch over the years, but could never close the distance. When King received the invitation to Nazca he saw it as a chance to heal old wounds and regain a friend. Instead, he’d lost him, perhaps for good.

  With the stars beginning to emerge in the slit of sky visible through the overhanging jungle canopy, King could no longer ignore the growing darkness. Capsizing in the Amazon at night would be a quick and most likely painful way to die. He tried not to picture the creatures lurking beneath the brown water—caiman crocs, piranha, anaconda—but every now and then something beneath the surface would nudge the boat enough to rock it from side to side. In the dark, with his balance off, even a small nudge might be enough to send him overboard.

  As King began searching for a tree to tie the boat to, a small sandy beach opened up in the jungle. He made a beeline toward the shore and landed the boat. After shutting off the motor, he climbed over his bag and made his way toward the front of the long boat. If this had been the point where the others had landed, it would be written on the beach. He inspected the sand and found a series of clear tracks—all animal. The small beach led back into the jungle, no doubt merging with a game trail. Pierce was further downstream, perhaps already off the water, perhaps dead.

  King forced the thoughts of Pierce’s fate from his mind and began setting up camp. He broke out his small tent, built a quick fire, and began boiling river water to hydrate one of the MRE meals he’d brought. A sports bar probably would have been more nutritious and tasty, but the MREs were easy to get and King was used to them. Besides, a hot meal couldn’t be beat. King read the label. Tonight was buffalo chicken and corn bread. Not bad. He shook the contents out and saw a small pack of Charms candy. The brightly colored sweets found in only the occasional MRE were considered bad luck by most in uniform, more so if actually eaten. King picked up the packet, tore it open, unwrapped the first lime-flavored sugar square and popped it into his mouth. He never relied on luck.

  And the candy was good.

  As the dark blue sky turned black, King’s line of sight was reduced to what the fire lit—the beach, a 330-degree enclosure of jungle, and a small stretch of the lazy river. Above the river, between the trees, he could make out a slice of night sky that contained more stars than he could see from Fort Bragg. With no major city for hundreds of miles, this was one of the few places left on earth where the unadulterated night sky could be seen in all its glory. Just the small sliver of sky above was impressive.

  After downing his buffalo chicken and butter-slathered corn bread, he doused himself in bug repellent and laid back on the sand, staring at the slice of night sky. His mind craved to plot and plan his actions for the morning, but beyond waking with the dawn and following the river there was nothing to plan. He had to be fluid and roll with the punches as they came. The type to plan out details in advance, King wasn’t thrilled about the prospect of winging it, but he still had no doubt what the final outcome would be—lots of dead bad guys. He just hoped Pierce wouldn’t be among the dead.

  King raised his arm over his face and pushed a button on his watch. It glowed green in his face. Nine o’clock. Seven back home. Time to check in. King removed the satellite phone he’d taken from the Nazca dig site and breathed a little easier. At least he could coordinate this part of the mission. He dialed the number and waited for the call to go through. After the familiar digital recording played King spoke his call sign into the phone and was connected.

  “Any leads?” Deep Blue asked without a greeting.

  King felt confident that the man had been moving fast to make things happen on his end, and so Deep Blue’s curt voice didn’t faze him. King had never met the man. No one on the team had. But he was able to pull strings in Washington and the military like no one else, and King, for one, didn’t need to know the man’s identity. In this business, anonymity meant freedom to act, and Deep Blue seemed to have that in spades. “If a lazy day on the river counts, plenty,” King said. “Otherwise, nothing.”

  “The team is in the air and on their way south. Go ahead and activate your GPS unit now.”

  King placed the phone down and removed the GPS unit pilfered from Atahualpa’s jeep and switched it on. “It’s on,” he said into the phone.

  “Give me the serial number.”

  King read the number and waited as he listened to Deep Blue’s fingers fly over a keyboard half a world away.

  “Got you,” Deep Blue said. “Keep the unit on you at all times. We’ll drop the others right on top of you ASAP.”

  “If I’m still on the river when they get here they’ll need transportation.”

  “Copy that. I’ll figure out the details. You just stay alive.”

  “That’s the plan.”

  “Don’t worry about your buddy, King. We’ll get him back.”

  King felt bolstered by Deep Blue’s confidence. He hadn’t realized how deep his doubts about retrieving Pierce had become. “I’ll call back when I’ve got Pierce.”

  “You do that.”

  King hung up and switched off the phone, conserving the battery. The night settled around him again with the sound of birds chirping, monkeys calling, and an assortment of foragers scrambling through the underbrush. He was surrounded by life, but all he could see was the dancing fire, which began to die down. King gathered several branches from a fallen tree and tossed them on the fire. The damp branches sizzled but caught, popping as the gases inside heated, then burst. Sparks flew. The music and dance of the fire distracted him as the dry heat sucked away the dense jungle moisture and relaxed his body. Laying back on the sand, King’s thoughts drifted.

  But before his imagination took root a shriek in the distance snapped him up into a sitting position. He waited, breath held, for the sound to repeat. The shriek came again, like a B-movie actress letting loose. King drew his pistol. He thought the sound had grown closer, but the
acoustics in the jungle were impossible to gauge. The air was thick with humidity. The canopy reflected sound at odd angles. And the density of trees, foliage, and other physical barriers was so random that sound became fluid. Full of life. Unpredictable. The sound could have come from fifty feet away or a mile. He would never know. What he did know was that the rest of the jungle had fallen silent.

  King stoked the campfire into a raging inferno that would last the night and crawled into his tent, taking the Sig Sauer handgun and M1 Garand rifle with him.

  Predators were hunting.

  Despite the danger lurking in the rain forest, sleep came surprisingly easy that night. But his dreams were filled with the dead—past, present, and soon to be. His subconscious concocted several horrible ways for Pierce to meet his fate. In each dream, King would run to help but found his body slow to respond, as though weighted down by some invisible force. At one point he reached for his weapon and found only a TV antenna. The surreal dreams left him feeling groggy in the morning, even after a full night’s sleep, but they conveyed a crystal clear message—deep down, King didn’t think he could save his friend.

  At the first hint of light, King unzipped his tent, doused the fire’s remaining embers with sand, and repacked his bag. He looked at his watch. Five-thirty. He doubted the men he was after would wake so early. This was his chance to gain some ground. King took the GPS unit from his backpack and checked the battery. Its small screen glowed strong. The battery indicator showed it still held a three-quarter charge. More than enough. He repacked it and placed the bag in the boat.

  King lifted his leg to climb into the boat, but froze midstep. Smoke. Just a hint carried on the breeze. His campfire had obscured the smell before, but this was no campfire. He knew the difference between burning wood and the chemical smell of a modern structure in flames. King looked at the dark blue sky, just now shedding its stars. A brown haze drifted lazily in the breeze, rising from perhaps a mile away.

  He was close.

  He climbed into the boat, took an oar, and began pushing out into deeper water where he could start the engine. Before the front of the long boat pulled free of the damp sand beach, the boat rocked from a sudden impact. Off balance from pushing with the oar, King spilled over the side and into the water. Pushing off the muddy bottom, he launched to the surface expecting a giant fish or snake to try swallowing him whole. He fumbled for his sheathed KA-BAR knife as he kicked for shore.

  But no attack came.

  He climbed on shore, caught his breath, and searched for what had struck the boat. He began thinking it must have been a free-floating log, but a splotch of yellow next to the side of the boat told him otherwise. King stepped back into the boat, moving toward the object lodged against it. From the yellow and white fur covered in black spots, King could see the animal was a jaguar. Clearly dead. But what had killed it?

  After pushing the body away from the boat with the oar, King inspected the body. The big cat would have been a prime specimen when alive, but now... The lower half of its body had been torn away. Water-logged entrails floated free in the water’s currents, but no blood stained the water. The cat had been dead for hours, perhaps all night. His first thought was that a caiman had caught the cat off guard in the water, but a series of straight, two-inch-long puncture wounds didn’t look like croc bites. Something else had killed the jaguar—the Amazon’s top predator.

  As the body drifted downstream, carried by the river, King followed it with his eyes. He nearly fell out of the boat again. Carcasses littered the river, some intact, some in pieces. Monkeys, birds, cats, crocs, and rodents. Nothing had been spared. A slaughter had taken place while he’d slept. It was probably only his raging fire that kept him safe. King yanked the engine cord and launched the boat as fast as it could go. He kept his .45 in one hand and steered with the other, ever vigilant.

  There was something much worse than the average predator lurking in the jungle. Something that made a meal out of jaguars and crocodiles...and it wasn’t human.

  15

  30,000 Feet

  A sudden brilliant light turned the insides of Pierce’s closed eyelids bright red. He woke with a start, launched into a standing position, and then just as quickly fell down. He felt a hand take his arm and help guide his fall so that he landed on the same padded bench he’d been sitting on.

  “Easy now,” came a deep voice. “The drugs are still wearing off.”

  “Where am I?” Pierce asked, rubbing his eyes.

  “With friends,” said a second voice. “Take these.”

  Pierce felt two pills placed in his hand. “What are they?” His world was spinning and his mind was only half with it, but he wasn’t going to take a drug without knowing what it would do to him.

  “Caffeine pills. They’ll help counteract the sedative you were given...which should never have been given to you in the first place.”

  Pierce sensed that the man speaking really was irritated about his being sedated and decided to trust him. “Water?”

  A bottle was placed in his other hand. He opened his eyes a crack and looked at his hands. Two small blue pills in one. A bottle of Poland Spring water in the other. He popped the pills in his mouth and swigged the water. It was cool and refreshing. The pills dissolved quickly and took effect within seconds. A tingle ran up his spine and when it reached his skull it was as though a switch had been thrown and his mind came rushing back to him.

  Pierce looked up and saw two men looking down at him. One was tall and bald, wearing an expensive-looking suit jacket. The other wore dress slacks, a perfectly pressed shirt, and a red tie that complimented his groomed face, hair, and hands. Both wore kind smiles and had intelligent eyes. Assuming they were some kind of authority, he asked, “Did you catch the men who kidnapped me?”

  The tall, bald man’s crows-feet crinkled around his blue eyes as he held out his hand to be shook. Pierce took it with apprehension. As they shook hands, the man said, “Richard Ridley. Happy to make your acquaintance, Dr. Pierce. I am the man who kidnapped you.” Ridley smiled wide.

  Pierce looked at the other man, who now wore a frown. He pushed away from the men and found he had nowhere to go. Glancing around quickly he noticed the small white room was actually a cell.

  “Well, not me,” Ridley said. “But men who work for me.”

  “What do you want?”

  “The Hydra.”

  Pierce felt like he’d been punched. The man’s statement was so self-assured, so plain and blunt. Was he serious? Pierce decided he was, and realized that lying would do no good. “Why?”

  “I believe you were given an example of what we can do?”

  Pierce remembered the three bullet wounds in McCabe’s chest. How quickly they healed. How her life returned. “Regeneration.” Pierce glared at the man. “You could have just asked.”

  The man crossed his arms and gave Pierce a skeptical look. “You and I both know that as soon as the Hydra head’s authenticity was proven, no one would be allowed near it until whatever government agency claimed it was finished with it. In other words, never. You and McCabe would have no doubt disappeared along with the relic.”

  Pierce didn’t argue. He’d had the same fears as well. But he couldn’t forget the savagery of the attack on the camp. “My friend, Jack Sigler. What happened to him?”

  “Your ‘security,’ yes.” Ridley flashed a smile and chuckled. “He came a day early. An unfortunate turn of events. I’m sorry for what happened.

  Truly. It’s not how I envisioned things turning out. But you should know that both of your friends are alive and well. The crew was freed, as promised, two hours after you departed. They dug Jack out from under the stone. No one was seriously hurt.”

  Pierce couldn’t shake the feeling that there was more. He remembered a wave of apprehension before passing out. Something the kidnappers had said. But it escaped him. “Why did you take me?”

  “It never hurts to have an expert on the subject in question,” Rid
ley said.

  “And we like to give credit where credit is due,” the other man said. “When we announce our findings, you will receive credit for your part in the discovery.”

  “And you are?”

  “Todd Maddox,” he said. “I’m the lead geneticist here. I developed the regeneration serum that...saved your friend. It should never have happened in the first place.”

  Pierce detected guilt in the man’s voice. He seemed earnestly displeased with the situation. “Am I a prisoner?”

  “Not at all,” Ridley said. “In fact, I was hoping you’d join the team.”

  Pierce squinted at the man, making no effort to hide his skepticism.

  “You’ll be given full access to the artifact and may study it any way you want,” Maddox said. “All we require in return is that you help us unlock its secrets.”

  This all seemed too convenient, too well packaged to be real. But what choice did he have? He doubted these men would let him walk free. Even if King, McCabe, and the rest of the crew had been unscathed, they were still criminals. High-tech looters. He also had no doubt that King would come for him. That meant keeping the status quo for as long as he could. “Take me to it.”

  Ridley laughed and looked at Maddox. “He’s as ambitious as you.” He turned back to Pierce. “I’m afraid that’s not possible right now.”

  “Why not?”

  Ridley pointed to the side wall. “You have a window. Look for yourself.”

  Pierce stood and balanced himself against the wall. The floor had shifted beneath him. He looked through the small oval window and held his breath. The ocean sparkled far below. They were in an airplane.

  Ridley clapped him hard on the shoulder like they were old chums. “We have more than a thousand miles and thirty thousand vertical feet between us and Manifold Beta. Care for some tea in the meantime?”