Hawker’s march of just more than an hour would take three or four, or maybe five—and most of that in the dark. As McCarter spoke, the others followed his gaze, and he hoped his thoughts as well.
“If we walk out of here now,” he said, “we leave knowing we’ve killed off an entire race of people, brought this curse down on them and then just left them here to die. Men, women and children—an entire village. But if we stay, we can hold the high ground, morally and physically. We can fight those things on our own terms and maybe keep them away from this place long enough for the Chollokwan to recover, long enough for them to get the upper hand.
“We can’t reseal the temple,” he said. “But we can keep those things from getting back inside, at least for a while. Who knows how much that could help?”
McCarter truly didn’t believe they would make it through the jungle if they left and he wasn’t sure they had the right to leave anyway. “Maybe it’s not about living and dying anymore. But what we live for and, if necessary, what we die for.”
When McCarter finished a heavy silence lingered. Some of them looked off into the distance, others at the dusty ground, anywhere but right at him.
Danielle had listened to McCarter closely, her own thoughts heavy with all that had occurred. She remembered Hawker’s words, his prediction that she would regret staying, that there would be a price to pay for what they’d done. Now she felt it with all her heart.
To her it seemed unlikely that any of them would make it out alive, but as she stared at Brazos, the only survivor from the group of porters she’d hired, she knew it would be almost impossible for him.
In fact, as she saw it, there was probably no way out. If they stayed, the animals would soon overwhelm them and retake the temple. And if they left, then the animals would reclaim their nest with ease and then branch back out into the jungle, foraging for food once again. They would find the NRI group quickly, long before the stumbling humans reached the nearest stream, and that would be the end of them.
Good people, she thought. Her people. And in a few hours they would all be dead.
Unless there was another way.
She’d come here and stayed because she finished things, that’s who she was. But for all her efforts, there had been nothing there to find. The only thing left to do now, the only job left to finish, was to get her team home. She guessed it would take everything she had.
She turned back to McCarter. “I brought you all here,” she said. “I lied about the reasons and the danger. The explanations don’t really matter, but you have to believe me when I tell you I’m sorry.”
She looked at McCarter. “More than that, I understand why you want to stay … but you can’t. You have to leave,” she looked around, “all of you. This is my responsibility. I’ll stay and I’ll hold those things off as long as I can. If you can help Brazos while Hawker and Verhoven cover the flanks, you’ll be able to move faster. I’ll stay behind and make life difficult for those animals while you make your way. Perhaps they’ll be distracted long enough for you to reach the stream. You never know, a couple of hours might make all the difference.”
McCarter smiled at the gesture. “That’s brave,” he said. “But it doesn’t change things for me. I’m not going anywhere. Not this time.”
Susan said. “I’ll stay too, if that’s what we all decide.”
Brazos nodded as if he knew he would not make it through the forest. “Maybe the helicopter will come?”
Devers cursed and complained, careful to stay out of Verhoven’s reach. And then all eyes turned toward Hawker.
All Hawker wanted to do—all he’d wanted to do since everything blew up—was get them the hell out of there. Take Susan, Brazos and McCarter back to Manaus, where they’d be safe, where their blood wouldn’t be on his hands. Apparently McCarter felt the same way, only in his mind, the arc of responsibility cut a wider swath. And Danielle … Hawker turned to her, gazing at her face, her sweaty, dirty, beautiful face. Apparently she agreed with McCarter. He hadn’t expected that.
“You know we can’t win this,” he told them. “You understand that, right?”
McCarter shrugged.
Danielle allowed a smile. “Sounds like your kind of fight.”
Hawker looked around him, and then out at the approach of dusk. He would have chosen to leave, out of his own survival instinct as much as anything else, but he understood better than the others just exactly what McCarter and Danielle felt, exactly why they would make this choice. To McCarter it meant living for something that mattered, dying for it if necessary, an act that gave life meaning in the process. For Danielle it was penance, a chance to make amends for past choices and mistakes. For Hawker, it might be both.
He looked at the two of them, almost thanked them. “We’re going to need fire,” he said, thinking about the Chollokwan village. “As much as we can build.”
Across from them, Pik Verhoven shook his head in disgust. He didn’t give a damn about the Chollokwan or the ecosystem or anything else on McCarter’s long, drawn-out list, but he believed in the soldier’s code: you never let your brothers down. Hawker had come back for them and even though Verhoven might have made it to the river by himself, he would not leave now. He glared at Hawker. “So that’s it, then. Another damn crusade?”
The two stared at each other for a long moment and then Verhoven turned to the others. “Well, you heard the man,” he said. “Let’s get him some damned fire.”
Over the next hour they built a small network of fires using splashes of fuel on bundles of cloth, dry brush and wood. Soon, thirty small blazes were burning around the perimeter, with others surrounding their cluster of foxholes. Bathed in the flickering glow, they waited as the shadows deepened and night fell.
CHAPTER 47
That night, Danielle Laidlaw saw herself in a dream. She lay asleep and unmoving, even as three great birds dove toward her from the midnight sky. Two owls and a falcon locked in combat, slashing and tearing at one another, falling headlong toward the jungle floor.
At the last moment they separated, peeling off in different directions and racing across the grass, before soaring back up into the gloom above the temple to renew the battle once again.
As they fell a second time, the trees began to shake and the Zipacna charged from the forest. In the dream, she could not run, or move, or even shout a warning to the others as they slumbered.
She woke with a start, her heart pounding, her shirt soaked with sweat. But as she looked around, the night was quiet and calm. A soft, humid breeze gently caressed her face.
Despite the dream and its unresolved battle, Danielle awoke feeling surprisingly refreshed. Perhaps a few hours of rest had done more good than she would have believed, or perhaps it was the feeling that she’d finally made the right decision in all the waves of madness.
Exhaling slowly, she eased back against the sloping wall of her foxhole and noticed Hawker on watch a few feet away. She couldn’t be sure but in the flickering firelight he seemed to be smiling.
“What are you up to?” she asked.
“Just watching you sleep,” he said.
“Don’t you have better things to do?”
“Yeah,” he said. “But none as entertaining.”