A half-hour later, Bear felt the sat-phone in his jacket pocket vibrate. He was riding copilot to Jinx, who was the team’s designated pilot for touchy low-altitude flying, though all members could fly the plane in an emergency.
Bear pushed a button on the side of the phone and put it to his ear. “Yeah?”
“The Indio boy and Mason and the woman from the college just headed into the jungle toward the boy’s village,” a static-filled voice said. “They are heading south-southwest from the dig site, and I managed to plant a GPS signaler on the boy. It will signal on four hundred and forty megahertz and you should be able to pick it up within about two to three miles, depending on the terrain.”
“Thanks, Janus.”
“Bear?”
“Yeah?”
“Try to get the boy and the samples without killing Mason, okay? I don’t give a shit one way or another about the woman, but I’d like Mason to make it through this if it’s possible.”
Bear’s gunmetal gray eyes widened. He’d never heard Janus be sentimental about anyone before. “I’ll see what I can do,” he said, without promising anything. After all, the boss had as much as ordered him to kill Janus, too, which kinda pissed him off since the spy had always been straight with him and his men.
He clicked off the phone and put it back in his pocket.
“What was that about?” Jinx asked, glancing sideways at him in the darkening gloom of the late afternoon.
“Nothing,” Bear grunted irritably, looking out the airplane’s windows and wondering for the first time if he was on the right side. He and his team had intercepted plenty of possible germ warfare agents before in the years they’d been working for Blackman, but this time it was different. Half the fucking world was dying and their orders were to take a possible cure and hand it over to the megalomaniac who employed them and hope he did the right thing with it.
He and his team had killed many times in the past, and their victims probably numbered in the dozens if not hundreds, but never before had the stakes been in the hundreds of millions, and Bear found himself in strange territory. He was suddenly thinking about things like morality and if being responsible for the deaths of hundreds of millions of innocents would wither his soul beyond redemption. Not that he necessarily believed in a soul, but still…
He shook his head and sighed deeply. He’d always been a man of action and was unused to indecision. Indecision and hesitation could get a man in his line of work killed faster than a speeding bullet.
He glanced over his shoulder into the rear seats of the plane and saw his men with their heads back against the seats dozing, and he envied them their lack of imagination.
They had no thought for the millions of people who may die in agony because of their actions. To them, this job was just another paycheck and another chance to kick some ass and take some names.
He turned back around and stared out the window at the dying embers of the sun off to their right and wondered what his final decision would be and whether he would ever be the same after this mission was over.
Hell, after this job maybe it was time to stake out a place on the beach in the Caymans and drown his memories in liquor and babes.
Chapter 25
At first, Lauren thought the trip through the jungle wasn’t so bad. Guatemotzi was in the lead with her behind him and Mason bringing up the rear.
The old growth forest trees were pretty well spaced out and the underbrush was manageable. The trees even provided shade, which kept the tropical heat at a bearable level, though the almost one hundred percent humidity made breathing feel like sucking air through a wet woolen blanket.
After a while, as the land became hillier and the mild breeze died down, Lauren knew it was time for a break.
“Hey, Guatemotzi, how about we stop for a water break?”
The young Indio smiled back over his shoulder at her. The little shit wasn’t even breathing hard and was barely sweating, she noticed.
“I’ll second that,” Mason called in a somewhat breathless voice from a few paces back.
As Lauren and Mason dropped their packs and he unslung the Armalite rifle from over his shoulder, Guatemotzi ambled a few feet off the animal trail they were following and fished around in a dry bush until he found a relatively straight branch and then he broke it off and returned to the group.
He slipped his pack off and sat on a large boulder and pulled a small pocketknife from his pack and began to whittle on the branch, making it into a small arrow for his tiny bow.
Between sips from her canteen, Lauren said, “I recognize that knife. It belonged to Professor Adams.”
Guatemotzi grinned and nodded. “Sí. The professor gave me this very fine knife for helping him around the camp.” After a moment his smile faded and he lowered his eyes. “He said my name was a very fine name but was too long for everyday use, so he used to call me ‘Motzi.’”
He raised his eyes to stare at Lauren. “When the other young ones began to get the bleeding sickness, he told me to run into the jungle and to not come back or I would die, too.”
“But you didn’t run… you stayed,” Lauren said.
“Sí. The old one was very good to Guatemotzi. I stayed and tried to make him better by giving him some of the plants that the curandera in our village uses to cure outsiders who come there and get the bleeding sickness.”
“Do you know of these plants?” Mason asked.
Guatemotzi shrugged. “Some of them only. They made the old one a little better, but soon he got sick again and finally he died.”
Tears formed in his eyes. “I should have listened better to the old woman when she showed me what to pick and the old one would still be alive.”
Lauren glanced at Mason. “That must be why Charles was the last one to die, even though the others were younger and stronger.”
He nodded. “Of course. The herbs Guatemotzi gave him must have slowed the progression of the disease significantly, but they weren’t strong enough for a complete cure.”
“Do you have any of those plants with you now?” Lauren asked.
“Sí.” He reached into his pack and pulled out a small deerskin pouch and removed five shriveled plants, two of them with flowers still attached. He handed them to Lauren, who passed them to Mason.
Mason quickly took the sat-phone off his belt and dialed Joel’s number at the camp.
When he answered, Mason said, “Joel, find Suzanne and put her on the phone, quickly.”
While he waited, he asked Guatemotzi, “How do you give these to a person with the sickness?”
Guatemotzi pulled a small round rock and a slightly larger flat rock from his pouch. He made a grinding motion using the round rock against the flat rock. “After this, put in hot water and make him drink it, once in morning and once at night.”
Mason nodded, and then he turned back to the phone. “Suzanne, the boy has told us about some of the plants the curandera uses to cure the illness. He only knows a few, not enough to cure the plague but enough to slow the progression of the disease significantly.”
He described the five plants Guatemotzi had given him, and then he said, “I’ll text you pictures of the plants from the sat-phone. As soon as you can, have the team spread out and try to locate as much of these as you can, then grind up one of each into a fine powder, mix them with hot water, and give the tea to Dr. Matos twice a day, approximately every twelve hours.”
He listened to the phone for a moment, and then he spoke. “I know it’s dangerous and unscientific, but from what I saw the last time I looked in on Matos, he doesn’t have much to lose, and if we can slow the progression of the disease it may give the antibiotics time to cure the disease.”