Bruneseau opened the copilot door and jumped, followed by a spill of the others, Lieutenant Foch taking the last slot in the deployment. As soon as Foch cleared the helicopter, the pilot doused his light, increased power, and banked the chopper back into the night. The entire maneuver had taken twenty seconds.
The fall from the JetRanger drove Mercer deep underwater. His boots sank into the silt bottom for a frantic moment until he kicked himself free. He broke the surface and cleared lukewarm water from his eyes. Two of the Legionnaires had already rolled themselves into the rubber boat and the others were clinging to its bulbous freeboard. He swam to them and was helped in by a powerful grip on his arm. Bruneseau grinned. “Piece of cake.”
Mercer guessed the French operative was relieved to be finally doing something after so many weeks of simply watching the Hatcherly container port. His plan to flush out Liu Yousheng by involving Mercer hadn’t worked the way he’d wanted, but at least this new avenue of investigation had been salvaged from that debacle. He seemed grateful.
“Piece of cake,” Mercer agreed. The jungle sang with insects, birds, and dozens of unnamed night creatures. The moon was a pale sliver glimpsed only at the right angle through the thick canopy.
The waterproof bags were hauled aboard and equipment was distributed. The combat harnesses the Legionnaires used incorporated rappelling rigs as well as a rescue harness in case they needed to be pulled out by fast-ropes from the helo. Mercer didn’t recall if the JetRanger was equipped with them or not.
Lauren noticed his interest in the rigs and answered his unspoken question. “I saw them when we loaded. If the pilot leaves off the cargo doors, two ropes can be dropped from a push button in the cockpit.”
“Let’s hope we don’t need them,” Mercer said as he made sure his borrowed Beretta was snug against his hip. The camera with its long lens went into a padded pack he swung onto his back.
Foch took up a position in the bow with night-vision goggles clamped over his eyes and the two enlisted soldiers began to paddle the Zodiac against the sluggish current. They couldn’t risk using an outboard motor because the sound would carry far beyond Foch’s vision. Bruneseau was at the transom, watching their wake for any craft that might overtake them. The last of the daylight had long since faded, leaving only a strip of stars above them in the otherwise infinite darkness. If not for the screech of animals and the chirps of insects, it was easy to imagine they were paddling through outer space.
Five miles into their trek, Lieutenant Foch made a quick hand gesture and the paddlers reacted instantly. He’d seen something through his goggles. They’d been traveling close to the right bank and at Foch’s signal they angled the raft closer to shore, holding their paddles inches from the river so that any water dripping from the blades wouldn’t make a sound. A ripple of tension washed through the team.
A minute later, a piragua, a native dugout canoe, glided out of the gloom upstream with two natives working the paddles as silently as ghosts. The Indians never paused from their steady rhythm and never saw the six armed people less than twenty feet from them. As quickly as they appeared, the natives vanished downstream again and the raiders let out their breaths. They waited several minutes before starting out again, just to make sure the canoe didn’t double back.
For four hours they moved against the current, each team member taking turns at the paddles. As a point of pride when their turn came up, Mercer and Lauren managed to eke out a faster pace than any of the others without compromising their stealth. An hour after taking the paddles, Foch placed a hand on Mercer’s arm to stop him from going on. Lauren paused as well. The lieutenant silently pointed to their right, where a tiny stream fed into the river. Mercer and Lauren obediently rowed them to the brook. Like Venetian gondoliers they used their paddles to pole them up the shallow stream. Five hundred yards into the jungle, a three-foot waterfall blocked any further progress.
“Good enough.” Foch spoke so quietly that even just a few feet away his words were more of an impression than a noise. “We’ll stash the boat here and head out on foot at dawn.”
“Where are we?” Lauren asked.
“According to my map and this”—he held up a GPS receiver—“we’re five miles below where the River of Ruin joins the Rio Tuira. I believe this stream is fed from water coming off the back side of the volcano.” He and Mercer had fixed the route during their earlier conversation.
In the few minutes it took to rig a mosquito netting all six people had become smorgasbords to countless stinging insects. Only the one soldier ordered to remain awake on guard duty seemed to care. The others were asleep in seconds.
Dawn was a half hour away when they were woken by their picket. They took ten minutes to take care of their bodies’ needs, refill their canteens with purified water, and give their weapons a final check before their march up the stream. The soldier who’d stayed awake all night would remain hidden with the Zodiac, his stomach filled with caffeine pills. Foch took point and the other soldier, a German named Hauer, had the drag slot. Keeping to the stream bank allowed them to move easier through the jungle and maintain a constant fifteen-yard separation without getting lost in the dense undergrowth.
They hoped to be back at the boat in four or five hours, yet everyone carried enough equipment and food to sustain them for a few days. Neither Mercer nor Lauren was armed with anything heavier than their pistols.
Humidity rose with the sun. The air became so thick Mercer felt like he could drink it. Rather than refreshing his system, each breath seemed to suck away his strength. The stink of rotting vegetation clung to the back of his throat. And he had to discipline himself not to slap at the bugs that bit into his exposed hands and neck. The Legionnaires appeared immune to the discomfort, as did Lauren Vanik. Mercer suffered in silence.
Bruneseau was the oldest person on the patrol, carried twenty extra pounds in his gut and had a two-pack-a-day cigarette habit, yet when Mercer looked behind to check on the spy, he was moving with the suppleness of a jungle cat. He wasn’t even sweating that hard. In contrast, Mercer’s skin felt slick with perspiration and he had to wipe a continuous stream of salt water from his eyes.
The rain forest was too tangled for them to see more than fifty paces in any direction and dripping leaves hovered just feet over their heads. Sunlight was filtered by the greenery, making shadows more murky and ominous. Everything had an indistinct quality, as if viewed from underwater, like they were swimming through a tidal pool rather than walking through a jungle. Only occasionally would a shaft of light penetrate the canopy and beam against the forest floor.
For an hour they hiked along the stream, contorting their bodies around obstacle courses of fallen trees and bushes to avoid making the tiniest sound. Foch finally came to a halt, hunkering down to await the others. He pointed up the hill that had slowly emerged from the jungle. It was the lower flank of the volcano. Above them was the lake. He allowed the team twenty minutes to rest, moving to each person to pantomime questions about their physical condition. No one spoke. Liu Yousheng could very well have guards stationed on the mountain’s rim looming hundreds of feet above them.
Foch went out first, slithering through the jungle on his stomach, his FAMAS assault rifle clamped in his hands. After moving only five feet away, it was as if he’d been swallowed. Ten minutes later he returned, sliding backward with exaggerated slowness. He didn’t rustle a single branch and barely moved the grasses growing along the slope of the mountain.