Zahra shrugged. “That depends on what you need. And since you haven’t killed me yet, I figure you’re here for something other than my death.”
Please don’t say, “me,” Zahra thought. She’d rather die than be these assclowns’ pet.
“See,” Joe said, speaking to his men, “I told you this one was smart.” He turned his attention back to his trapped quarry. “You are correct, Ms. Kane. We are here for a sizeable increase in payment.”
Zahra reckoned as much. It was easy to see that Joe wasn’t just a guide. He was also a mercenary.
And this is his crew.
“And if I refuse your offer?”
She knew what would happen, but Zahra needed to keep the man talking while she thought of a way out. Her eyes found the pool. It was only ten feet in front of her and looked fairly deep. If she could make it beneath its surface, she’d be safe from gunfire.
And drown, she thought.
Zahra was up Shit’s Creek right now.
She didn’t listen to Joe’s reply. She was too locked on to not dying. The only other option was the river heading out into the unknown, though she would still run into the problem of oxygen. And once she surfaced, she’d be turned to Swiss cheese.
“Is this why you brought me here?” she asked. “Is this even the real Dead Horse Camp?”
Joe didn’t answer right away, but when he did, she was honestly shocked by what he said. “Yes, it is, but you would never have survived its entry point.”
Zahra stood still, using her eyes to survey her surroundings once again. She didn’t understand what he meant. Why wouldn’t she have survived entering Fawcett’s camp? Also, entrances led to places. There was no doorway here.
Once more, her eyes found the plunge pool.
“Hmmm… It can’t be,” she said, staring.
“What?” Joe shouted.
Zahra didn’t return her attention to her former guide. She decided on a course of action and acted on it. “Sorry, Joe, but you can stick your offer up your ass.”
Chapter Two
She took off at a dead sprint, leaving the backpack containing most of her supplies. Her target was the plunge pool. Zahra leaped into the air, feeling a painful heat radiate from her left arm. Zahra pushed the discomfort aside and ducked her head, piercing the water’s surface like an aerodynamic dolphin, all while realizing what had happened.
Zahra had been shot.
The water was cooler than she thought it would be, which was great! But it was also shocking. Her body reacted by letting out a portion of her valuable held air. As soon as she entered, Zahra kicked for the bottom. Each time she reached forward and stroked for the bottom, she felt an agonizing pinch in her arm.
The submerged world was deafening. The waterfall’s torrent was intense, threatening to pull her closer to the rear, directly under the falls. If that happened, Zahra would be trapped in an undertow-like current and never escape. But as hard as she tried to avoid its liquid tractor beam, the more it latched onto her, and before she knew it, Zahra was yanked back.
Interestingly, she didn’t find the rocky bottom. Zahra was slurped into an opening in the plunge pool floor. The tunnel reminded her of a more violent tube slide at a water park. Zahra collided multiple times with the sides, feeling a jagged rock jab her in between the ribs in her back. She nearly lost the rest of her air in the process. A strong swimmer, Zahra had zero control of her direction. At this moment, Mother Nature was at the wheel.
Zahra’s lungs were about to explode. She couldn’t hold her breath any longer. A burst of bubbles exploded from her mouth, and her body instinctively tried to breathe in. It worked, but instead of taking in a lungful of oxygen, she took in water.
And that’s how you drown, Zahra.
She panicked and retched as her head broke the surface. The combination of her brain and body needing air and the water exiting her chest cavity was nearly enough to cause her to black out. Luckily for Zahra, the fluid cleared just before it happened. With each inhalation, her vision cleared. Not that she could tell. An inky darkness had swallowed the world around her.
Zahra was in a cave, though she couldn’t tell its breadth.
She continued to tread water until she felt somewhat back to normal. Her arm was killing her, but her thoughts were racing. The split focus kept the pain from vaulting to the forefront of her mind. Also, Zahra’s adrenaline spiked, acting as a natural painkiller. The cooler water helped soothe the wound too.
With her lungs satisfied and her breathing under control, Zahra reached down to her gun belt and fished for her SureFire G2X LED flashlight. It was positioned on her hip at the four o’clock position in a custom Kydex holster. Pulling it free, Zahra cringed from the blow she had taken to her back and almost dropped the light. If she had, she would have been royally screwed. Happily, she had brought along her palm-sized light, and it was easy to readjust her grip. Paddling with her right arm and legs, Zahra carefully lifted her injured left arm, clicked on the light, and played the intense 600-lumen beam around the space. The brilliance stung her eyes, and she was quickly forced to click the switch on the tail cap again, cutting down the output significantly.
Zahra blinked away the spots and shook her head.
Ouch…
There wasn’t much to see in the immediate vicinity. The cavern had been naturally formed thousands of years ago. Hellish stalactites hung from the domed ceiling — some of them nearly reaching the water’s surface. This hollow was ancient based on the formation’s size. It typically took one thousand years for a stalactite to grow ten centimeters.
Zahra slowly paddled in a circle, stopping 180 degrees later. The pool of water met with a rocky shoreline off in the distance of her powerful light. Zahra moved toward it, awkwardly kicking like a three-legged dog. The only auditory sounds in the cavern were the splashing of swimming and the huffs of her heavy breaths. Reaching the shoreline, Zahra pulled herself and rolled onto her back. Before she went any further, she took stock of her arm.
She drew her SOG knife and cut away her left shirt sleeve at the shoulder. The gunshot wound wasn’t all that bad, but it still caused her great pain. Using her right hand and teeth, Zahra wrapped the cut sleeve high on her upper arm, tying it off tightly. She growled through her clenched jaw, concentrating on controlling her breathing. Standing, Zahra kept her injured arm tucked against her stomach for the time being. She’d need to limit its use until she received proper medical attention.
“Fat chance of that happening,” she snorted, sighing. Zahra would, undoubtedly, be forced to use the appendage shortly.
There was only one way out of the hollow — forward. Zahra pointed her light toward a large, perfectly cut archway. Her eyes opened wide. It was an engineered corridor and not naturally formed like the stalactites. Maybe it had been natural at one point, but it had been altered into something magnificent. The entire archway was decorated with an ancient Amazonian script. It represented a language that Zahra had never seen before.
She thought back to why Percy Fawcett had last come to the region. He had been in search of a legendary ancient Amazonian civilization.
“The Lost City of Z,” Zahra mumbled. Percy Fawcett believed the old city to be somewhere deep within the Mato Grosso state of Brazil and that the indigenous peoples there had constructed an elaborate, architecturally modern city complex.
She craned her neck, following the semi-circular path of the archway with the beam of her flashlight, hoping she’d at least recognize something — anything. But it was all an enigma to her.
Zahra walked through the archway, taking each step with care. This was uncharted, possibly treacherous, territory. Only the people that built this place would know what to expect. Fifty yards later, Zahra came to an impasse. The twenty-foot gap in the rock used to contain a rope bridge, but it had long ago rotted away. Only the support posts still existed. Each pair had been fitted into the stone ground on either side of the expanse.