When they stopped to rest, her eyes drifted to Ronin’s sleeve, at something she spotted earlier. “What do you have on your arm?”
He glanced down and pulled the sleeve back. Attached to his right forearm was a long band of silver metal, covered in what looked to be faint etchings of circuitry.
Caesare studied the device. “What is that?”
Ronin paused, thinking. “It is hard to explain. It is part of my… equipment, as you would say.”
“What does it do?”
This time Ronin frowned. “That is harder to explain. It is my energy source.”
Caesare raised his eyebrows at Clay. “Nifty.”
Clay looked as though he was about to say something but instead checked his watch, stepping past them just as Ronin lowered his sleeve. He marched forward through the knee-high bushes, toward a widening in the trees, and peered down at the slope below them. He then looked back at Caesare and DeeAnn. “Any idea how close we are?”
“From the directions I read in the journal, we should be very close.”
Caesare removed Borger’s photographs from a large pocket and checked his GPS unit. “Same here. Shouldn’t be more than another half mile, tops. That way.” He pointed in the same direction down the slope.
Clay nodded wittingly and turned back toward the trees. “Take a look at this.”
Pushing forward one by one, they all stopped next to him. Through the widening, a small valley lay below. Bathed briefly in the sunlight, below the mountain’s cloud cover, groups of many large plants could be seen. What was unusual was that, unlike the rest of the mountain, this small pocketed area was packed wall-to-wall with what appeared to be the same plant. Perhaps a half mile in width, the sea of giant green plants interspersed with millions of small dots of red.
DeeAnn squinted in bewilderment. “What is that?!”
Before anyone could answer, Ronin stepped forward and made a small wave with his right arm. The air in front of them began to waver, and the distant image suddenly grew larger.
“What the hell was that?!”
“A closer view.”
“That’s not what I meant,” Caesare said incredulously. He stared again at Ronin’s covered armband. “How did you do that?”
The shorter Ronin looked back at the image shimmering before them. “Manipulating energy holds more potential than any other technology. You will find this as well.”
“No kidding.”
Clay turned back to the shimmering air before them and looked closer at the image. “I think those are poppy plants.”
“You mean poppy plants… as in narcotics?” DeeAnn asked.
“As in opium and heroin.” Clay stepped to the right, looking through the air and further up the mountain. “There’s a lot more up there. And those plants are big. Bigger than they should be.”
The air suddenly began to vibrate, and the magnified image proceeded to evaporate.
“It does not last long,” Ronin offered.
Clay nodded and looked back to DeeAnn whose expression conveyed that she had already grasped what they had just found. “My God. This is it. This is what Dian Fossey found.”
“I think so.”
“A valley of drugs,” she whispered.
“Not just any drugs. The most addictive and deadly.”
Caesare shook his head. “Just like Afghanistan.”
“But these plants are bigger than they should be. Much bigger.”
“Which probably means they’ve had help.”
Clay nodded. “Like the plants in Guyana.”
“So there’s something in the water here too,” DeeAnn said.
“It looks that way. Likely leaking out of the second vault and someone else discovered it, like this Ngeze person—”
“Then this is what he’s been protecting,” Caesare finished. “The biggest, and maybe the most powerful, poppy plants in existence.”
“A drug trade that no one else in Africa could match.”
“This is why?” DeeAnn placed a hand over her mouth. “This is why Dian Fossey was really killed, because of drugs?”
“Probably. If it is in the water, then this is a place that would probably grow anything Ngeze planted here. And why he kills anyone who comes near it.”
“But if that’s true—” All of a sudden, DeeAnn was interrupted by Dexter unexpectedly leaping and scrambling up a nearby tree trunk. She stopped and watched as he neared the top and looked out over the other trees. And began screaming!
She immediately covered her ears as protection from the high-pitched screeches and whirled around to Dulce, clearly concerned. “What? What is he saying?!”
Dulce studied him in the tree. He say humans here. Many humans.
105
It was all Clay and Caesare needed to hear.
“Get down!” they yelled together over Dexter’s screaming, pushing DeeAnn and Dulce forcefully to the ground.
In a flash, Ronin jumped over them and faced the same direction the small monkey was looking. He waved his arm again, causing the air to waver before another magnified image appeared. At least a dozen figures, highlighted in red thermal silhouettes, could be seen above them. Together they formed a half circle around the area.
“Son of a bitch!” Caesare growled, crouching down. He looked to Ronin. “How far?”
“Perhaps a few hundred yards.”
Clay faced Caesare gravely. “Maybe within earshot.”
Small explosions suddenly hit the trees around them as bullets ripped into the bark. Others zipped by and tore through the foliage behind them, barely preceding the sounds of gunfire.
All three men hit the ground. “And clearly within shooting range!”
The noise quickly escalated into a barrage of gunfire from dozens of rifles, all shooting together.
Instantly, Ronin moved again, waving at a much larger area in front of him. This time the air exploded in flash of bright light and the shots became muffled. The wide expanse of air seemed to solidify, and several clusters of bullets appeared frozen before them in midair — stopped as though in a thick, invisible glass.
“It won’t last!” Ronin yelled. “Run!”
Clay and Caesare were immediately on their feet, pulling DeeAnn and Dulce off the ground like rag dolls. Dexter screamed and jumped to the ground where Caesare scooped him up with his free hand. Lowering his head and surging headlong into the wall of thick bushes, Caesare quickly plowed a path for the others to follow.
They made it almost fifty yards before Ronin’s wall evaporated, and the thunder of shots returned. A fresh hail of bullets continued zipping through the forest, destroying everything in their path, searching for the Americans who were now blindly running as fast as they could.
106
Above them on a small ridge, Amir Ngeze watched as the trees and vegetation below shook wildly under the heavy barrage, trunks splintering and branches falling violently to the ground.
Finally, Ngeze held up his hand, halting the attack. He waited while the last of the echoes faded in the distance.
There was no movement beyond the few trees left swaying after the bombardment. There was no return fire. Nor any screams or cries for help.
Ngeze couldn’t keep himself from grinning. They had caught the Americans completely off guard. He motioned several of his men forward to check the area and watched them descend slowly down the embankment. The small group headed through a sparse swath of trees before disappearing again into heavy foliage.
Ngeze waited impatiently for confirmation. He didn’t know why the Americans were here, and frankly, did not care. They’d gotten close enough to his poppies to tell him that they were interested in more than the Fossey woman after all. He had to expect they were after his secret.