CHAPTER 14

The water was dark and steaming, boiling with the heat and grotesque alien shapes. A school of piranha were tearing at his flesh in a feeding frenzy. The salt taste of the water was the taste of blood, and like the fish, he was feeding on his own bleeding flesh. The dark shape of a shark, blacker than the darkness, ripped away his groin and he could almost see the bloody remnants of his manhood dangling from the gaping maw of the shark’s saw-toothed jaws.

“Is there no redemption, then?” the shark asked him as it gulped and swallowed his flesh.

“No, there is no redemption,” he heard his dead, grinning skull say. His bones, picked clean by the piranha, began to rise in the current.

His skeleton rose slowly as the bubbles, like the time he had gone for his scuba certification dive near Anaconda Island, his instructor holding his chin up as they ascended. He had removed all his gear and left it on the ocean floor and they swam up together, forty feet toward the surface, exhaling all the way until he couldn’t exhale anymore and his chest began to burn for air. And still they rose, the water growing lighter and lighter as they neared the brightness that was the surface. Then it was brighter, and then it was dark again.

He opened his burning eyes, shimmering with fever. It was dusk. A giant red sun filled the jungle with fiery light, the edges of the leaves glowing as though they were burning. He could hear the chirping of the cicadas and the monotonous croaking of the frogs. From somewhere came the sweet, acrid scent of insect spray and he could feel the fish still nibbling at his groin.

His body radiated heat like a star and simply to breathe was agony. Descartes was wrong, he thought. I feel pain, therefore I am. And then he glanced down and saw his arms, still securely bound to the arms of the chair. His skin was mottled with red welts that seemed to cover his body. He saw the top of Inger’s head between his knees, her metal-bright hair glowing like an ember in the dying red light. She was sucking his cock. Madness, he thought. The universe is a mad dream.

He sat lifelessly bound to the upright chair, like the corpse of an African tribal chief. Inger had obviously dragged him to the doorway of the shed, where she had sprayed him and the area around the door with insect spray. He watched her with indifference as she moved her head, sliding his penis in and out of her mouth. He felt nothing but the pain and a mild sense of amazement that his penis could even get hard, because his body no longer seemed to belong to him. He stared at his bound hands, at the somehow reptilian network of crevices that covered his knuckles, spotted with welts from the ants, and saw for the first time what a prehensile claw his hand truly was. He willed his finger to move and was surprised when it did. It seemed to be the dead claw of some extinct animal, with a life of its own. Almost as an afterthought, he realized, with a surge of pain, that he was still alive.

Inger stopped sucking for a moment to look up at him, her mouth drooling like a beast, her eyes glowing like rubies in the fiery sunset and he knew that the fire in her eyes was madness.

“I wanted to have this one more time before they killed you,” she said, baring her teeth savagely.

As she bowed her head again to his groin, his leg lashed out, his shin catching her under the chin. He heard her teeth click as she tumbled to the ground. He rocked forward in the chair and fell on her stomach with his knees, knocking the breath from her. It had all happened without any thought; his actions had become totally instinctual. Every movement was agony for him, but that didn’t matter because he had only a single raging thought: kill Mengele.

He somehow managed to stagger to his feet as she lay there groaning and trying to get up. He planted his foot across her neck, pinning her to the ground and choking her. She struggled feebly against his weight, but Caine was implacable.

“Untie my hands or I’ll kill you,” he threatened, his eyes burning like the flames of hell itself.

“No,” she gasped and struggled desperately, but he leaned even harder, as though he wanted to stamp her out of existence.

“Untie my hands, you fucking animal,” he rasped.

“Yes, master. Oh, yes, master,” she managed to gasp and her hands fumbled at the knots around his wrist.

Caine squatted down, his knees on her chest, while she feverishly tore at the knots with her nails. The moment he felt the rope loosen, he freed his hand and grabbed her throat. He ordered her to untie the other hand and the seconds passed like hours till the moment he felt the knot give and he was free.

With a wide cruel sweep he slapped her face with every particle of strength in him, breaking her jaw. Then he grabbed her hair and hauled her into the chair. He gripped her hair tightly, as though he wanted to tear it out by the roots. Her eyes were wide with pain and horror as she stared up at him. And there was something else in them. It was beyond submission. It was, almost, gratitude. Because Mengele wasn’t her true love. Or the whip smacking against the leather boot. It was death she loved. He saw that now. Death and his handmaiden, pain. That was why she wanted and obeyed Caine, even as she trembled at the sight of him. With his hellish eyes and bloody, mottled skin he looked like nothing human.

“Where’s Mengele?” he rasped.

She tried to speak, but only unintelligible grunts came out of her broken jaw. He gripped her hair even tighter and twisted her head.

“If you can’t talk, point, you cunt,” he growled in her ear.

Her trembling hand pointed at the laboratory, where a single light was burning in Mengele’s office. She clutched at his grimy shirt as he began to pull away and shook her head desperately, her shiny eyes imploring him to stay. He shook her off and grimly tied her to the chair, gagging her mouth with a strip of her shirt.

He dragged her bound and moaning body back into the metal shed and closed the door. Then he began running toward the laboratory, his black figure almost invisible in the shadows of evening. Every step was agony, his brain burning with the high fever from the ant bites, but Caine was beyond mere pain. He was the hunter, closing on his prey.

As he approached the laboratory, he could hear the lilting sound of a violin playing the “Blue Danube” waltz. A mosquito bit his neck and he could have laughed because he scarcely felt it. He stopped to catch his breath in the shadow of the laboratory, then cautiously tiptoed to the lighted window and carefully peered inside through the screen. Mengele was standing near the desk, his eyes closed, playing his violin for Guenther and Helga, who were seated side by side on folding chairs, their faces rapt with the sentimentality of the music. Caine began to tiptoe around the building toward the front door. He had no plan, only the single consuming thought: kill Mengele.

He crept as silently as a shadow up on the porch and opened the screen door. The sound of the music was stronger now and it reminded him of Wasserman’s story, about how Mengele had ordered the inmate orchestra to play Strauss waltzes as the Jews were led to the gas chambers. His mind barely had time to register the fact that the sound of his footsteps was covered by the music before he was moving quickly through the doorway into the office.

Mengele saw him first and froze, his face a mask of shock and horror. Caine’s blood-splotched face, glittering green eyes, and savage, implacable movement gave him the appearance of a specter from hell. He moved irresistibly toward Mengele, who began to back away in terror against the desk. Caine’s first move was a spinning round kick that caught Guenther in the back, knocking him to the floor.

Helga sprang for a table against the wall and grabbed a scalpel, whirling to face Caine. As he moved toward her, she slashed at his face with the blade. Automatically Caine went into one of the sequences Koenig had rehearsed them in, over and over, till they could do it in their sleep. He blocked the slash with his left forearm and kicked savagely at Helga’s midsection, staggering her against the table. She tried to block the right hand chop he aimed at her temple, leaving her left side open, and he finished her with a lightning left uppercut to the ribs. He felt the rib crack under the rubbery layer of fat and whirled to face Mengele as she sank to the floor, but by that time Guenther had a massive forearm locked around Cain’s neck in a choke hold from behind. Caine immediately unlocked his knees and sank down, grabbing Guenther’s forearm with both his hands. Then he bent forward at the waist with a sudden jerk, sending Guenther flying over his head and toward the wall. Guenther’s head cracked against the edge of the table and he collapsed in a heap on the floor, like a puppet whose strings have been cut. His neck was broken.

Mengele was fumbling at a desk drawer, probably for a gun, but before he could grab it, Caine had lunged across the desk, his fist smashing against Mengele’s shoulder and knocking him against the wall. Mengele cowered against the wall as Caine stalked him, their eyes locked on one another.

“Nein, bitte,” Mengele whimpered. “I can make you a rich man, a million—” and threw a clumsy right hook at Caine’s head.

Caine sidestepped the punch, blocking it with his forearm, and put all his rage into a savage right hook to the ribs that came from his toes. Mengele’s ribs snapped like dry twigs and he sprawled across the desk, howling in pain and kicking desperately out at Caine. A wild lucky kick hit Caine’s midsection, knocking him back, and Mengele scrambled to his feet, his hand holding his ribs. Caine could hear the sounds of movement and voices from outside. He was running out of time. Rolf and the Indians would be on him at any moment. He remembered what Koenig had taught him, that you only use your body as a last resort. “No matter where you are, there is always a weapon at hand. A rock, sand, a bottle, anything will do,” Koenig had said.

As Mengele rushed for the door, Caine grabbed a ballpoint pen from the desk and raced after Mengele, cornering him in the lab. Mengele stood there panting, his tongue lolling like a heat-stricken dog, his eyes darting around frantically. He threw a flask at Caine and Caine barely managed to duck out of the way. Before he heard the flask smash behind him, he had already begun to move.

He aimed a stab at Mengele’s eye with the pen, but the stab was a feint and as Mengele’s arm came up to block the blow, Caine side-kicked Mengele’s groin. The back of Mengele’s head was exposed as he doubled over with a high-pitched scream. Caine stabbed at the back of Mengele’s neck, ramming the pen into the small indentation between the neck and the base of the skull. Caine felt a sudden tremor as Mengele’s body collapsed. He had hit the foramen magnum, perhaps the most vulnerable spot in the human body. Mengele was dead before his body hit the floor.

A savage exultation flooded Caine. It was like nothing he had ever felt before. A sense of pure joy and freedom beyond orgasm that only the gods can know. He let out an insane animal yell that was both terrible and awesome—the triumphant howl of primordial man, the killer ape. The hunter had made his kill and for an instant the jungle itself stood still.

A wide-eyed Indian face peered at him from the front doorway. Caine grabbed a flask and heaved it at the Indian, and the head disappeared. The flask shattered harmlessly on the doorpost. He suddenly became conscious of the babble of voices outside and the sounds of running. His body still tingled with the thrill of what he had done, but he knew he had almost run out of time.

He picked up a small corked vial that contained some tissue specimen floating in formaldehyde and slipped it into his pocket as he ran back to Mengele’s office. Helga had managed to get up on all fours and was slowly crawling, like a massive sloth, toward the scalpel on the floor. Caine kicked her in the side, connecting with the spot under the ribs that boxers aim at, and she dropped as though she had been poleaxed. He grabbed the scalpel and ran back to Mengele’s body.

Mengele’s hand was curled and grasping as Caine turned it over. It looked like a bird’s claw. He slashed quickly at the first joint of the thumb, the blood spilling over his hands and onto the floor. He felt no repugnance as he sawed away at the ligaments of the joint. It felt good to have Mengele’s still warm blood bathing his hands, almost as though he were enacting some ancient, savage ritual, washing his hands in the blood of his enemy. The scalpel grew slippery in his hand and he had to wipe his hands on Mengele’s shirt.

He glanced up to see three or four Indian faces staring at him from the doorway, their eyes wide with horror at the hellish spectacle of the white man kneeling over the body, dismembering the white god, Mengele. They were too frightened to attack or even move. None of them had ever seen anything like it. The white man with the bleeding face was a jungle demon incarnate.

“Justice,” Caine shouted at them, his body swaying drunkenly as he straightened up, his eyes burning with flames that were not of this world.

“For the Jews,” he cried, and then he remembered the old Gypsy at Auschwitz. “And the Gypsies. And for all the poor bastards from whom God hid His face when they cried out to Him!” he spat out. “And for me,” he said with quiet intensity. “Caine, the killer.”

And he lifted Mengele’s dead hand to his lips and savagely bit off the thumb at the nearly severed joint He spat the bloody joint into his hand. A sense of release came over him, like a baptism, and he flung the hand away from him and stood up. His lips were red and glistening with Mengele’s blood.

He glared at the Indians and began to walk toward them, as they started to back respectfully away from him. Like all primitives, they knew that madness is inspired by the gods. Then he stopped. He heard Rolf angrily cursing in German and Spanish, outside. He was screaming at the Indians to get out of his way. Caine had only a few seconds left.

Instantly he whirled, leaped over the body, and ran for Mengele’s office, clutching the bleeding finger in his fist. The doorpost cracked with a loud snap from the .300 caliber slug as he ran past it. He charged across the room and dived headfirst through the window, tearing the screen away and taking it with him as he rolled on the dark ground. He ran across the dark compound with sudden zigzags, like a fleeing rabbit, as the shots of the Winchester echoed through the night.

He stumbled and seemed to hear the hum of a bullet as it whizzed through the space where his head had been. He was tumbling in the mud and suddenly found himself waist-deep in the stream. He dived under the surface, letting the current carry him toward the black wall of the jungle’s edge.

The water was cool and soothing as he floated with the current. It felt like balm to his burning skin and the tension began to drain away. He wanted to float forever down the stream, like a log, drifting into a peace he had never known. The coolness touched him with a sense of absolution and he was almost asleep when he came to with a sudden jerk, thrashing and sputtering in the stream. A part of his mind was sounding a desperate alarm—unless he got moving, they would kill him.

He waded to the mudbank and staggered up the slope, somewhere near the edge of the clearing. He had to find the trail back to the Yarinacocha before Rolf and the Indians tracked him down. The darkness was almost complete and it was impossible to orient himself. Even if he found the trail, to attempt the jungle by night was madness. He was sure to lose his way in minutes. But to stay was certain death. Hell, it was death either way, he reasoned. Reason, that was pretty good, he thought. For the first time since they had marched him to the Anthill, his mind was reasoning again. He began searching for the mouth of the trail among the dark trees.

One by one the lights of the institute clicked on, casting dim pools of light over the compound. Soon the Indians would be after him, he knew. They would try to get him before he faded into the dark bush. But the light was a godsend. It would help him to find the trail and he ran faster. He thought he spotted the opening where he and Pepé had emerged from the trees and headed toward it at full speed, when he collided with an Indian, suddenly emerging out of the artificial twilight.

Caine lay dazed on the ground for a moment, then leaped to his feet as the Indian sprang at him, his tattooed face like a ferocious demon mask. Caine pivoted, his feet slipping in the dirt, moving into a clumsy spinning back-kick that luckily caught the Indian high in the chest, knocking him down. Caine didn’t hang around to finish the Indian off. He had to get to the safety of the trail. He didn’t think they would try to track him in the darkness; that would make them crazier than he was. Suddenly an opening in the trees was before him and he dived into it. Darkness swallowed him as he staggered down the trail, his chest heaving desperately for air.

Somehow he stumbled on through the darkness, branches whipping at his face, until his legs finally collapsed under him. The pain washed over him in waves, his body shivering with the violence of it. There was no end to it, he thought dully. The blackness of the jungle was ominous and eternal, like that of the grave, and his imagination populated it with snakes and scorpions and ugly, crawling shapes. So this is what it’s like to be blind, he thought with a shudder, and a feeling of helplessness and horror engulfed him. Stop it! he warned himself. That way madness lies. Who wrote that line, anyway? he wondered. Somebody. Shakespeare, probably. You’re alive, damn it. Alive! You did it, you son of a bitch. You pulled it off!

His breathing had grown more regular and the shivering began to ease off. Where was the thumb? he wondered, and it took him a full minute before he realized that it was still clenched in his fist. With fumbling fingers, he took the vial from his pocket and plucked out the tissue specimen. He put the thumb into the vial, recorked it tightly, and replaced it in his shirt pocket, buttoning it securely, the sharp smell of the formaldehyde filling his nostrils. He’d swap the thumb for a cigarette in a minute, he decided. If there was a part of his body that didn’t hurt, he couldn’t feel it.

They were sure to close his escape route, he knew. By morning Rolf would have radioed Pucallpa and the gunboat would be alerted, so the Yarinacocha was out. And even if he could somehow make it back to Pucallpa, the town was too small and isolated for him to evade the authorities and the Indians. Pucallpa would be a death trap, he realized.

Jesus! He had them all after him now: the Peruvian Army and policia, the locals, the Nazis, the Chamas, Yaguas, and Shipibos. And he was on their ground, not his. For him there was only the jungle, where no man can survive alone for long. They had him boxed, all right. And in the morning Rolf and an army of Indians would be on his trail, and they could move twice as fast as he could. It was hopeless.

If he could just get back to the survival pack he had hidden, he thought. It was his only chance. He thought about the AR-15 carbine hidden in the tree, and felt better. If he could just get back to it, he could take a few of the bastards with him, he reflected grimly. Christ, he wanted a cigarette badly. There were cigarettes in the survival pack, he reminded himself. He had to get back to it.

What time was it, anyway? He brought his wrist up to his eyes, the radium watch dial glowing in the darkness, like a constellation of stars. His eyes fastened greedily on the tiny specks of light. A quarter after nine. It was still early, in spite of everything that had happened. The night seemed endless.

Where was C.J. now? he wondered. Probably having dinner in some fancy restaurant, her face glowing from an afternoon on the beach, surrounded by the murmur of conversation and the tinkle of cocktails. Did she think of him, or was she really taken by all the superficial charm of the people around her? He felt a kind of contempt for their world of surfaces, filled with those who do not know that the ocean is not the surface you can see, but the depths that cannot be seen. Suddenly he began to laugh, because as desperate and painful as his situation was, he was luckier than they were. He was alive! He could feel life pulsing through his veins. He wondered if C.J. could ever see things that way.

He felt something move across his foot and he froze, the sweat rolling down his face as though it would never stop. Something long and slow and he knew it was a snake. And then the movement stopped and he was sure that within inches from him, somewhere in the darkness, the long, forked tongue was flicking out, sensing the air for the heat of his body, waiting to strike. He held his breath in terror. The slightest sound or movement would give him away. His instincts, harking back to tree-dwelling days, were screaming at him to run, but he couldn’t move. What was it? he wondered desperately. It was too light for a boa constrictor and that meant it could well be poisonous. There was no sound of rattling, so it probably wasn’t a bushmaster. It could be anything, a fer-de-lance, a palm viper, or a deadly coral snake. Whatever it was, it wasn’t his idea of a house pet. A bead of sweat hung on the tip of his nose, itching maddeningly. Go away, his mind screamed and it was almost worth getting killed just to scratch his nose. If he could just see its head—but it might be anywhere.

The screech of a howler monkey sounded from the darkness far above him. The cry was taken up by a trio of macaws and the jungle came alive with chattering cries. And then a slender, pale shaft of light touched his foot. It was the moon! he thought exultantly. If the snake would just move, he had a chance to get away. He could just make out the trail in the dim, ghostly light. He had to get out of there! Move, you bastard! Move!

At last, after what seemed like an hour, he felt the snake slither on and on across his foot and disappear, with a faint rustle of leaves, into the darkness. It must have been a good eight feet long! He forced himself to wait for at least twenty seconds more, counting them as if they would never end. He moved his stiff legs and broke into a run down the trail, feeling his way as much as seeing. It was time to perform the classic, military maneuver known as “Getting the fuck out of there.” He had to put as much distance between the institute and himself as possible before daylight. The distance he covered this night was all the head start he was going to get If only he had a flashlight! Or a cigarette, damn it, he thought, rubbing his nose gratefully as he ran.

The night passed in a kind of twilight daze, like that odd moment between sleep and waking when one is not sure which is the reality and which the dream. His brain was dizzy and increasingly confused. He couldn’t tell whether it was fatigue, or the darkness, or the pain, or the rising fever from the ant bites. Time and again he lurched into trees and bushes, bouncing against them, like a beaten fighter against the ropes. Each time they knocked him down, he would scramble up again and stagger on. He blundered into invisible spiderwebs that tickled his face with long, sticky fingers. With a shudder he tore through them with flailing arms and stumbled ahead, his skin crawling with the feel of hairy legs and no way of telling whether they were imaginary or real. He was completely exhausted, yet he went on and on, hardly knowing what he was doing. His arms hung like dead weights from his shoulders and his head swayed drunkenly, lolling on his panting chest.

It was nearly midnight when he finally collapsed. He tried to crawl to his feet, but he couldn’t make it and fell face-first into the decaying earth. Got to rest, he thought stupidly. You can’t rest, another part of him said. If the Indians don’t get you, the bugs and snakes will. You can’t lie down on the ground in the jungle. It was as though he had three selves: one that obstinately refused to move; a second that insisted on it; and a third that observed the debate as though it were a tennis match.

Your only chance is to rest, he told himself. No, your only chance is to move; there’s time enough for rest in the grave, he countered. Somehow he got to his feet again, stumbled ahead, and then he was down again. Can’t stay here, got to move, he thought dully, licking his dry lips with a tongue that felt raspy as a file. Take one more step, Hudson’s voice was screaming at him from the darkness and he was up again, lurching farther down the trail and then he was down again, sprawling in the rank, moist dirt.

The darkness was complete and he couldn’t tell whether it was the night, or whether he had blacked out. Got to get off the trail. Can’t let them find me here, his thoughts clinking dully against each other like coins in a nearly empty purse. He crawled heavily into the bush and blindly pulled at palm fronds to make a rough bed. The frond edges cut his fingers, but he was already in so much pain that he hardly felt it. He collapsed with a dry rustle on the small heap of fronds and then there was only the darkness.

Caine woke with a start at the cracking sound of a broken twig. The jungle was bright with the milky light of morning and the merry chirp of birds. The air buzzed with the sound of insects and it took him a few seconds before he remembered where he was. Through the dense foliage he could see the naked, brown figure of an Yagua on all fours, sniffing the ground like a dog. They were tracking him!

The Yagua stood up and carefully inspected the bushes along the trail. He was carrying a blowgun, a bamboo quiver of darts dangling from it. Caine knew that the darts were tipped with curare. Just to prick your finger with one of the darts would cause death within fifteen seconds, and he remembered Father José telling him that the Yaguas could hit a parrot at a hundred yards with their blowguns.

He needed a weapon desperately, he thought, his skin shiny with sweat. The Indian’s gaze passed right across the sun-dappled foliage in front of Caine, and Caine’s muscles tensed into knots. A shout sounded farther down the trail and the Yagua turned and trotted away. As he disappeared from sight, Caine began to breathe again. He glanced down at his sweat-slick arms, the skin swollen and welted as boiled sausage and he began to panic. The heat was intense and he couldn’t tell whether it was fever from the ant bites, or just the sun.

“Are you okay?” Hudson’s voice sounded in his ear, just as it had when he had sprained his ankle on their first twenty-mile cross-country march in Panama. Hudson had shown him how to tightly bind the ankle, but Caine didn’t think he could walk on it. Hudson just stood there glowering at him.

“When I say ‘Are you okay?” I mean, are you okay? I don’t mean your ankle. That’s just pain and pain is just pain. It’s no excuse for not doing anything. What I want to know is, are you okay?”

“I’m okay, Hudson, I’m okay,” Caine muttered, just as he had that time in Panama. He scrambled painfully to his feet and began to check his pockets, but there was nothing he could use for a weapon. He began to move slowly through the bush and cautiously started hiking down the trail, keeping his eyes peeled to the ground till he found what he was looking for: a dead branch of hardwood, about an inch in diameter. With difficulty he broke the branch into two roughly equal pieces, each about eight inches in length. He tied the two sticks at the ends with a length of tough, slender vine, which he cut by chewing with his teeth so that the sticks were connected by a two-inch-long stretch of flexible vine. He got a sense of power by just holding the crude nunchaka he had just constructed. It wasn’t the greatest weapon in the world, but he felt better just having it. You used it by holding one stick and whipping the other at your opponent, and it was efficient enough to have been outlawed as a deadly weapon by the state of California. He grimly looped the nunchaka through his belt and started down the trail toward the Yarinacocha.

Caine could hear the sounds of the Indians crashing through the bush long before he could see the shimmering light of the sun reflecting off the water. He quickly abandoned the trail and angled into the undergrowth, toward where he estimated he had cached the survival pack. If he could just get to the pack before the Indians spotted him, he might have a chance, he thought anxiously. Then he heard something and froze.

The Indians were all around him. He could hear the faint rustlings of movement as they picked their way through the jungle. Down toward the water a voice that sounded like Rolf’s was snapping orders in a muffled tone. There was a shout and then an ear-piercing scream that was cut off as suddenly as it had begun. The sweat poured into Caine’s eyes, stinging them sharply, and he blinked to clear them. He wearily leaned his forehead against a tree, the rough bark scratching his skin. Why didn’t they find him and just get it over with? he wondered.

When he finally opened his eyes and focused them, he realized that he was staring at a strange marking on the trunk. His heart skipped a beat when he recognized it. It was the blaze he had cut the night before last, to mark the way to the survival pack. He started into the clearing toward the three cedro trees and then froze. A wide-eyed Yagua was staring right at him, the blowgun already being raised to his lips.

Caine dived sideways into the brush as the poison dart thunked into a tree trunk, vibrating inches from his head. He rolled and, in complete desperation, charged at the Indian, who was raising the blowgun into position for another shot. He wasn’t going to make it, because the gun was pointed right at him and there was no way to miss at this range. Caine tucked his head and went into a forward roll, the dart ruffling his hair as it passed. With a loud war cry, the Indian dropped the blowgun and whipped out a knife.

Caine scrambled wildly to his feet and pulled the nunchaka from his belt. Warily the two men crouched and began to circle each other. The Indian slashed at Caine and he pulled back just in time, the glittering blade just missing the tip of Caine’s nose. The Indian shouted again for help and Caine knew he had to end it right away. He stumbled and the Indian thrust forward at Caine’s belly, but the stumble was a feint and Caine completed the move with a slicing crescent kick that knocked the knife hand sideways. Caine whipped the Indian’s arm with the nunchaka and the Indian screamed and dropped the knife. Caine whipped the nunchaka back horizontally with a wrist flick. The stick crashed into the side of the Indian’s head with a loud crack, knocking him to the ground. The Yagua lay unmoving, a thin trickle of blood seeping from his ear.

Caine didn’t take the time to check whether he was unconscious or dead; he raced for the center tree and tore wildly at its hollow core for the survival pack. He wrestled the suitcase out of the trunk and scrambled into the foliage only seconds before the clearing filled with chattering Yaguas and Chamas. Caine rolled behind a dead tree trunk which was swarming with termites and cautiously zipped open the suitcase.

The AR-15 came to his hand like an old friend and when he slammed the first clip home, he no longer cared whether they heard him or not. His eyes had gone flat and cold. He was the hunter once more. He carefully peered over the trunk at the clearing.

There were half a dozen Indians running toward him, three of them wildly waving their machetes. Caine swung the gun into firing position over the log and began rapid-fire, aiming at the farthest one first and working back toward the lead Indians. They went down like figures in a shooting gallery and the two lead Indians didn’t realize what was happening at first. Then they turned to flee and he got them in the back, just like that.

Silence filled the clearing, palpable as the humidity, as Caine grabbed the knapsack and headed back toward the trail. He had to get across to the other side before Rolf got there. Caine hesitated at the edge of the trail, crouching in the age-old stance of the jungle predator, his senses alive to any movement. A sudden stab of pain drilled his cheek and he almost cried out. He winced and an insect the size of a dragonfly buzzed his ear and was lost in the trees. He had been bitten by a mutaca and almost immediately he could feel the skin on his cheek tighten as it began to swell.

The trail was clear; all he had to do was cross it. Sure, he told himself, but he couldn’t make his feet move. How many times had they tried to cross empty trails in Laos, only to get cut down by the unseen enemy? Go on, you bastard, do it, he urged, but his feet were frozen in place. He wiped the sweat from his eyes with his sleeve. The dense greenery across the trail beckoned him like a distant view of Shangri-La. Why does a killer cross the road? he asked himself stupidly. To get to the other side, you gutless son of a bitch, he answered, jeering. Do it! You’re a dead man anyway, so just get it over with. That’s not why you cross the road, he amended. You cross it because you can’t stay here. And he stumbled awkwardly across the trail and crashed into the trees.

Rolf and the Indians would be along at any second, he realized, and feverishly dug in the knapsack for a length of fishing line. Rolf had the Winchester, with its greater range, but he had the AR-15 for firepower. Rolf was the key. If he could get Rolf, the Indians were odds-on to run for it. Then he saw two Chamas far down the trail and fired at them. They dived into the foliage for cover. He had to move quickly.

He tied one end of the fishing line to the bush and crawled through the scratching, tearing undergrowth to a tree about twenty yards away, trailing the line behind him. He propped the knapsack beside the tree as a shooting rest and took up the slack in the line. Now all he had to do was wait.

Sweat blinded him and he had to keep wiping his eyes with his sleeve. It was Laos all over again, he thought. It was like a wound that wouldn’t heal, a dull ache that never went away. “You never came back,” C.J. had said. It was exactly the way it had been for them. The fetid heat and sounds and stench of the jungle and always the enemy, invisible and yet you knew they were there. It had come back, that awful sense of frustration, because you never saw them, not even when they got you. You would lie there, your life draining away, while the medic told you it wasn’t bad, you would make it. You were one of the lucky ones, boy. You were going home. And you could look up and see the lie in the medic’s eyes, because he wouldn’t look at you and you knew it was bad, because you couldn’t feel it and those were the ones everybody said were the bad ones. And they would check your dog tags, for the blood-type, the medic said, but you knew that it was for the records before they shoved you into a body-bag. And there was nothing you could do, so you just lay there, feeling your life drain away and thought that you had come so close; you had almost made it. But it didn’t matter anymore, because C.J. had been right all along. He had never come back.

He whirled at a sudden rustling sound behind him, his heart fluttering like a trapped bird, but it was just a large turtle plodding through the undergrowth. Rolf would send the Indians around to outflank and flush him, he reasoned. He had a fairly decent field of fire, he thought, peeking carefully around the tree, but there was nothing to see but the dappled greenery along the trail. Where was Rolf? He had to draw his fire. If he waited much longer, the silent Indians would have him boxed. His nerves were screaming, like a fine wire being drawn tighter and tighter, until he couldn’t stand it anymore.

He jerked cautiously at the fishing line and the bush rustled harshly. Almost immediately the thwang of arrows flew at the bush, followed by the crash of the Winchester. Damn! He hadn’t spotted it. He desperately jerked the line again and the Winchester fired again, followed by a sudden, arching rain of arrows and darts at the bush. Caine jerked the line feebly once more and waited breathlessly.

An Yagua cautiously emerged from the undergrowth, his eyes rapidly darting about. Something must have frightened him, because he pressed back against the foliage. Come on, you kraut bastard, Caine pleaded silently. Then there was a movement, as a hand or something shoved the Indian forward from behind and Caine fired rapidly, emptying the clip at the bush behind the Indian.

As the Yagua tumbled dead to the ground, Caine slammed home another clip and continued firing at the bush until the clip was empty. Suddenly there was a murmur of voices and he could hear the Indians running, the sounds receding in the sullen heat. Caine loaded another clip and sprinted back across the trail, diving into the brush for cover, but nothing happened. He crept in a wide circle until he neared the bush he had been firing at. He went down on his belly and crawled slowly, one step at a time, until he was within close range. Then he snapped into a kneeling firing position and put half the clip into the area around the bush.

The jungle was silent except for the endless insect whine that was as much a part of the jungle air as the heat and the humidity. Caine crawled on his belly until he saw the bodies. Rolf was lying facedown, his back stained a dull red with blood. Next to him, a dead Yagua lay curled in a fetal position, part of his face scooped out, leaving a bleeding red mass. Someone must have run off with Rolf’s Winchester, because it was gone, he noted. Caine kicked Rolf’s body over, but there was no need for a coup de grâce. He could see that at a glance. Caine stared down at Rolf’s dead eyes.

“I forgot to tell you. I cheat,” he said to the dead, staring eyes. A cluster of insects had already formed near the body, feeding on the blood that seeped from Rolfs chest.

Caine ran back to the trail and retrieved the knapsack and fishing line. He trotted down the trail till he reached the edge of the water, the placid surface sparkling in the sun. There was no sign of the lancha. They must have sunk it, he mused. In the far distance, he could just make out the gunboat as it patrolled near the shore, the sound of the diesel engine like a distant insect buzz. Rolf must have radioed ahead, he thought with chagrin. The Yarinacocha and Pucallpa were closed to him for good. The trap had snapped shut.

He found Pepé’s body on the mud flats, near the water. The caimáns hadn’t gotten to him yet. His stomach had been pierced by a long Yagua arrow, the barbed point extending almost a foot out of his back. A deep rust-colored gash showed across the nearly severed throat, where a machete had mercifully put Pepé out of his agony. Caine sank to his knees in the rank mud beside the body. For the first time since he had found Lim’s body that day in Laos, and for no reason he could fathom, he began to cry.