In the darkness it was hard to judge the depth of the well. At least a hundred feet to the water’s surface, Danielle guessed. She picked up a small stone and released it over the edge.
“One thousand one, one thousand two, one thous—”
The splash interrupted her, but it was the next occurrence that surprised them. A moment after the impact, bright, phosphorous foam began to bubble up and the odor of sulfur became instantly more pungent.
“It looks like …” Danielle began.
“Acid,” McCarter said, finishing the sentence.
“Acid?” Hawker asked.
McCarter turned to him. “The sulfur in the air had to come from somewhere. Looks like it’s coming from down there. The gasses are bubbling up through the water like the carbonation in a soda can. Sulfuric acid.”
Hawker’s face wrinkled. “Do I even want to know what they used that for?”
“Probably,” McCarter said, “to get rid of the bones.”
As Hawker looked into the pit, Danielle turned to McCarter.
He spoke her thoughts aloud. “Bitter water,” he said. “Bitter water, indeed.”
CHAPTER 21
That night, a wailing call echoed across the clearing, a human voice, rising and falling in a wavering chant. It was a hollow and haunting sound. And one Pik Verhoven had been expecting.
Danielle turned to her left where Verhoven sat, his coffee mug on hold in front of his mouth. He’d told her earlier that something would happen, he’d told her it would happen tonight. Movement in the trees had given it away. Voorloopers, he said: scouts.
In the hours since, he and his men had made a sweep into the trees looking for the natives, hoping to chase them off. They’d found only footprints, strange gouges in the trees—like some kind of territorial markings—and tracks with only two claws. Nearby, they’d found the remnants of two animals, butchered horribly, covered in mud and the same open blisters they’d seen on the body in the river. “More warnings,” he’d told her.
In response, Danielle had chosen not to sleep. She ran a battery of tests on the ring of motion sensors they’d placed around the clearing and made sure the laptop on which their inputs displayed was close at hand.
For his part Verhoven had positioned his men at various points in the clearing and had brought one of the German shepherds to sit beside him at the table. As the eerie chanting wafted through the air, the canine stiffened and put itself between Verhoven and the source of the call.
Danielle watched as Verhoven patted the dog proudly and glanced her way. She turned back to the laptop. The motion sensors had yet to register an alarm.
When a wailing cry drifted in on the night air, Verhoven put his mug down and grabbed a walkie-talkie. “What do you see?”
“Nothing out here,” came one reply.
“Clear on this side,” came a second report.
“Well, open your damn eyes,” he said, “because you’re missing something.”
Danielle had heard enough. “I’m waking the camp.”
There was no need. Stirred by the chanting, the other members of the team were already in motion, peering out of their tents or making their way to spots beside the fire, near her and Verhoven.
Polaski was one of the first to reach her. “What is that?”
“Sounds like a cat in heat,” Devers said.
The porters gathered together. McCarter and Susan arrived by the fire with Hawker right behind them.
Danielle stepped nearer to Devers. “Is that the Chollokwan?”
He did not reply immediately, seeming startled by the echoing voice.
“Of course it is,” Verhoven replied.
She wanted confirmation. “Come on, yes or no?”
“I think it is,” Devers said. “It sounds like their language but …”
As Devers strained to listen, Hawker stepped past, taking a seat on a wooden crate. “Time to see if this plan of yours works.”
The plan was simple: they’d create a secure area at the center of the camp in case of attack. The area was ringed with smoke canisters and a group of tripods holding metal halide flood lamps, like those used in the Olympic stadiums.
If they faced a daylight raid, the smoke canisters would pump out thick volumes of dark smoke, obscuring the group in seconds from any onrushing attackers. But the smoke would not interfere with the infrared scopes attached to Verhoven’s rifles and they could fire at will from this hidden spot.
If the attack came at night, like the one that seemed imminent, the floodlights would do the same thing, blinding anyone and anything that came at them, while the NRI team disappeared into the dark void at the center, firing out of it if necessary.
Danielle scanned the clearing. For now they were alone.
“Anything on the screen?” Verhoven asked.
Danielle looked at the laptop. “Not yet,” she said. “They must be too far out.”
“I see them now,” said one of Verhoven’s men over the radio. “A few in the trees to the south.”
As he spoke, the laptop began to beep softly. Targets popped up on the screen: little red dots on a field of gray, some to the south and a few more on the west side.
Verhoven picked up his radio. “Fall back. No need getting all strung out if we’re going to have ourselves a tussle.”
Verhoven calmly unslung the rifle on his shoulder. “It’s going to be an interesting night,” he said. He sounded more aggravated than concerned, like a man being forced to perform a chore he’d put off far too long.
Danielle looked his way. “We’d better get out the extra rifles,” she said.
Verhoven tossed a key to one of the porters. “Move quick, now.”
The rifles were in a long crate near Verhoven’s tent, but as a precaution the box was locked. It would take the man a minute to reach it and retrieve the rifles inside.
As he dashed off, the voices came around again, louder this time, a chant of several joined together. “This isn’t good,” Polaski said. “I really don’t see how this can be good.”
“What are they saying?” Danielle asked.
“It’s hard to tell,” Devers said. The voices rose, then fell away, then rose again. “It’s almost a song of some kind, not really a—”
A second native voice interrupted Devers, breaking in over the top of the chorus with a shout from the western edge. It was quickly answered by one from the east and then one from the north and finally the south.
Danielle turned in each direction, looking for the source of the cries even as they died away, replaced once again by the low, rhythmic chanting.
Polaski mumbled something unintelligible at this latest development and McCarter put his hand on Susan’s shoulder, glancing around.
“What do they want?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” he said.
Civilians in danger, exactly the situation Danielle had hoped to avoid. She turned to Devers. “What the hell are they saying?”
“It’s hard to make out.”
“Come on,” she snapped. “You’re useless right now.”
“It’s not that easy,” Devers insisted. “Their language isn’t like ours, it’s not completely linear.” He strained to hear. “They’re calling on the spirits,” he said. “Asking them to wipe the forest clean of the plague and infestation that we’ve brought to it. Or maybe we are the plague and infestation. Either way, we seem to be the problem.”
Verhoven laughed. “Of course we are.” He racked the slide on his rifle and stepped forward. “Well, they’d better bring more than spirits if they want to get rid of us.”
As the wave of chanting grew again, Danielle had the distinct impression of a situation spinning out of control. She was afraid the Chollokwan would attack en masse, and almost as afraid that Verhoven wanted them to, just to prove what he could do.