Matt James, Nick Thacker
Empire Lost
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Chapter One
The abusive humidity hung to her strong frame, drenching her clothing in sweat. If she didn’t know any better, she would have thought she had just emerged from a body of rank pond water. It had become increasingly harder to catch her breath due to the hard-to-breathe air, and the distance she had covered.
She stopped at the peak of a modest incline and peeled a loose strand of dark hair away from her forehead. Slipping out of her backpack, she knelt and focused on the surrounding area and not what her hands were doing. Before her, in a remote slice of the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso, was a narrow waterfall. At its base was a perfectly round plunge pool. No outlet was visible. The water didn’t drain in a conventional manner. There was no river. The never-ending flow of water had to have emptied by some other means. The primal demonstration of power forced a steady spray into the air, coating every square inch of the terrain in additional moisture. It was a serene sight, one that relaxed her rising anxiety. The only time she took her eyes off the picturesque wonder was to check her position on her palm-sized GPS unit.
Zahra Kane read off her position, ticking off the latitude and longitude as she did. “Eleven degrees, forty-three minutes South. Check. And fifty-four degrees, thirty-five minutes West. Check, again.” Looking up, she took in the scene with new eyes. She had finally arrived. Zahra produced a camera from her pack, looked through its powerful zoom lens, and snapped a half-dozen pictures. Pulling the camera away from her face, she sighed. “So, this is the real Dead Horse Camp, huh?”
The area was treacherous from what she had heard. The stories were old and sounded quite outlandish. Still, Zahra understood that there were always nuggets of truth within the most absurd tales.
Few had stepped foot here in the last hundred years. Locals — people like her guide, Joe — were terrified of this place. It was said to consume anyone who entered. That intrigued a woman of Zahra’s background. She needed to know why it was so heavily avoided. Why had the locals made a pact to steer explorers clear of this particular section of the rainforest? The only reason Joe had agreed to bring her here in the first place was that Zahra had offered him more money than he could refuse. Plus, she had a sneaking suspicion that Joe owed a large sum of cash to some disreputable people and was in dire need of the funds.
Zahra could see why a man like Percy Fawcett had set up camp here in the past. It was the perfect spot to do so. It contained a never-ending freshwater source that would also yield food in the forms of fish and whatever thirsty terrestrial animal sauntered by. She was hungry, but it could wait. Zahra needed to use what little light she had left to her advantage before calling it a night and setting up camp in the egg-shaped depression.
“Camping at ‘Dead Horse Camp,’” she said. “How charming.”
The sound of crunching earth picked up behind her as Joe joined her at the crest. He knelt next to her and squinted, wiping the sweat from his brow with a yellowed handkerchief. He grumbled under his breath, not liking what he saw.
“Is something the matter?” Zahra asked, speaking fluent Spanish. It was one of many languages the American-born adventurer had mastered over the years while serving as a British Army Intelligence Linguist for nearly a decade.
Joe nodded. “Yes. Death surrounds this place.”
“Well,” she said, standing, “it is called ‘Dead Horse Camp’ for a reason.”
Zahra’s history was a complicated one. Her New Yorker father had moved Zahra and her brother to England after accepting a teaching job at Oxford following the death of Zahra’s mother. Professor George Kane had been behind the wheel that night. While Zahra understood that it wasn’t her father’s fault, her brother, Baahir, still, to this day, held their dad responsible. Baahir had even gone as far as legally changing his last name to their mom’s maiden name, Hassan, at eighteen and moving to Egypt. The Kane men had not spoken to one another since then.
That broke Zahra’s heart.
She didn’t bother wiping the muck from her slim, black 5.11 tactical pants. It’d be a waste of time. More filth was bound to follow. Before readorning her pack, Zahra grabbed the bottom of her, likewise, black thermal long-sleeve shirt and pulled upward, revealing the form-fitting tank top of the same color beneath it. Typically, she wouldn’t have removed the garment. The insects in the area were awful. She was just too damn hot and needed a break. The plunge pool was calling her name. A refreshing dip would be nice right about now.
Without looking at her guide, Zahra sighed and said, “Eyes on the prize, Joe, not me.”
She heard the man’s position shift, mentally picturing him snap his attention off her fit form and back on the landscape. Zahra reached down and adjusted her war belt. Her Glock 19 stayed in place, securely fastened to her right thigh thanks to a heavy-duty strap. Attached to her belt was Zahra’s other gear — her tools of the trade. They consisted of a spare fifteen-round magazine, a powerful SureFire flashlight, a SOG Seal Pup knife, and a four-bladed, foldable grappling hook with a seventy-foot-long nylon cord. And like her clothing, all of her equipment was black.
Zahra looked every bit the part of a global explorer. And she wasn’t the only person armed either. Joe carried a Baretta M92 pistol from the 1970s and an AK-47 built around the same time. Dangers lurked around every corner in places like this, and not just of the human variant.
She slipped back into her backpack and leaned out over the ledge. It wasn’t a far drop, but one that would likely break her legs and back if she jumped. She needed a way down without circumnavigating the entire area, which would add time to her trek. As a result, it would eliminate the rest of her light. Zahra could simply continue her search in the dark with her powerful LED flashlight, but she wasn’t stupid enough to explore a South American jungle after the last light. It would be a death sentence.
She reached around to her hip and unclipped her grappling hook. It contained plenty of cord for the descent. She leaned over the drop again and calculated it.
“What do think, Joe, twenty-five-feet?”
Her guide joined her and cautiously took a look. He swallowed hard, and his face fell.
Zahra sighed. She knew the look. “You’re afraid of heights, aren’t you?”
Joe nodded. “Yes, I—”
Zahra held up her hand. She didn’t need an explanation as to why the man feared heights. Her eyes found a thick tree limb growing out over the plunge pool, and she grinned. Joe noticed her change in expression.
“What is it?”
She tipped her chin to the tree limb. “I think I found us a way down.”
Joe looked back and forth between Zahra and the tree. It took him a second to understand what she was planning. Instead of putting on a mask of bravery, Joe shrank away from Zahra and the ledge. She rolled her eyes and flicked her wrist. The piercing sound of the steel foldable grappling hook opening and locking into place made the already nervous local flinch.
She chuckled softly. “Time to man up, Joe.” She winked and let up a few feet of nylon cord. Then, as if he was about to lasso a horse, Zahra began to spin the hook in her right hand, increasing speed with every rotation.
After eight rotations, Zahra released the grappling hook with a grunt, heaving it toward her target. A heartbeat later, the four-bladed hook buzzed over the tree limb with little room to spare. Gravity did the rest, and the hook dipped behind the limb. Zahra yanked on the cord, pausing its trek across the drop. It settled into place, and its sharp blades dug in.