Wilson stared around. “But mining of what? This is about the last place in the world I’d look for anything more valuable than monkey fur.”
“When we find it — if we find it — I hope that Jack here can tell us what it is. Right now the problem is to find it.” He ran his eye over the surrounding jungle and then grinned at Wilson. “Since you chose to join us, we might as well use you. If the three of us split up, each taking a different direction—”
“Split up?” Wilson looked at him incredulously. “You mean each go off on our own? Into that? I don’t want to argue when I’m only a hitchhiker, but are you sure you’re sober?”
“Whatever we’re looking for has to be fairly close to the field,” Da Silva said stubbornly. “My guess is no more than a few hundred yards at the most. If I’m right, whatever was found here was taken out by plane, and by one man working alone. I’m damned sure he didn’t pack anything heavy very far through that jungle. And what we’re looking for should be readily visible as a clearing of some sort.”
“But even so—”
“There isn’t any great danger of animals. The bigger ones probably left this part of the country during the building of the bridge, and the smaller ones will run from you, don’t worry.” Da Silva shook his head. “If the three of us stick together, it’ll take that much longer, and we won’t see any more than one of us would.”
He waited; the other two remained silent, watching him owlishly.
“Good. Then I suggest you each take a section along the river, Wilson to the north, Jack to the south. I’ll take the in between. We all have guns. Let’s make it one shot if we find what we’re looking for or anything that resembles it, and two shots if we need help for any reason at all.”
Crandall grinned. “How many shots if we just get lost?”
Da Silva chose to take him seriously. “It shouldn’t be necessary to go in any deeper than a few hundred yards — three hundred at the most. You each have a compass. If you think you’re in any trouble with direction, locate the riverbank and follow it back. We’ll meet back here say, in an hour.” He checked his wristwatch automatically, and then looked up. “If we don’t find anything the first time around, we’ll talk it over then. O.K.?”
The others nodded. Da Silva ducked under the wing, coming erect.
“All right, then. Let’s go.”
From his position in the doorway of the plane the young pilot watched the three men split up, each one tramping across the field in a different direction. They paused at the edge of the forest, turned to wave a hand at one another, and then disappeared into the thick foliage. The pilot shrugged and fished in his shirt pocket for a cigarette. Boy scouts, he thought with disdain; I’ve been assigned to be a fly-boy for a bunch of nutty bandeirantezinhos!
In the damp shadows of the section to which Wilson had been assigned, the jungle seemed to be holding its breath, as if waiting for him to identify himself, to prove his right of presence in its domain. He paused, waiting, his eyesight accustoming itself to the dimness, his tenseness slowly evaporating as the familiar smell of the matted forest floor and the remembered scampering sounds from the woven boughs above lost their imagined terror. It was not his first time in the jungle with Da Silva, and the previous occasions had not provided them with a handy airplane only a few paces away to whisk them to civilization at their command. The thought relaxed him further; his hand fell away from its nerve-locked grip on his revolver and he began to pay attention to his task. If Da Silva was correct — and the swarthy Brazilian had a remarkable tendency to be just that — then somewhere in the thick mato about them lay the answer to the danger that had threatened his Jill and that would, if undiscovered, continue to threaten her. It was all the inducement he needed; he took a deep breath and moved forward, concentrating on his search.
Da Silva, in his sector, wasted less time on either familiarization or rationalization. An impatient delay occasioned by the sharp change in light, and then he plunged immediately into the depths of the forest, forcing his way past grasping tendrils of twisted liana and thick stands of young bamboo. A wide glade gave him pause, momentarily, but nothing suitable to his purpose presented itself in the heightened mottling from the greater light. He paused long enough to dig into his pocket for his compass; a moment for calculation, and he shoved on, hurrying.
Of the three, the jungle was least familiar to Jack Crandall, and he advanced the most gingerly, wondering what he was doing there at all. There had scarcely been any polite means of refusing Wilson’s request, but that did not necessarily mean he really had to plow through all that tangled vegetation. In fact, there wasn’t any basic reason to plow through it at all; it was ridiculous to search for a mining operation in this matted stuff! He pushed forward, sweating in the heat, looking for an open space in which to rest until he could, with all honor, return to the plane and await the next step in the charade.
The nearest thing to an open area was before him; a fallen tree beckoned, and he sank down upon it, dragging his revolver to a more available position should any man-eating monster decide to devour him. The steady humming of thousands of insects had a soporific effect on him; the friendly shadows and the oppressive heat aided the process. He felt his head beginning to nod, and then suddenly he was sitting erect, all sleepiness gone, listening intently. He was sure he had heard his name called. He swung around and then remained, his mouth partially open, staring incredulously at a figure standing only a few yards away, striated with the shadows striking through the trees.
The figure remained, graven, watching him, and then spoke again.
“Hello, Mr. Crandall.”
There was something muffled about the voice, something ghostly in the hollow tones, but there was nothing unfamiliar in the expressionless freckled face or in the mass of red hair topping it. Crandall’s jaw clenched painfully; he found himself on his feet, his revolver in his hand. His voice was choked.
“How in the hell did you ever live?”
In a dreamlike manner he found himself raising his revolver, firing once again at the red-haired figure before him and then doubling over almost instinctively, seeking protection in a fetal position; in some deep recess of his mind he was reliving an ancient incident and wondering if he would have to relive it over and over, always shooting and always having his victim return to be shot once again.
The lightning thought was barely complete when he felt the punch of the bullet in his chest and found himself unaccountably lying on his back, hearing the echo of the shot, staring upward at the maze of branches that partially blocked the sky. There was a weird ringing in his ears, a drowsiness behind his eyes. The freckled face was bending over him, still with that inhuman, wooden look. The pain had come with startling suddenness and was rising in a frenzied crescendo, the weaving boughs were growing dim and misty, the shadows colder; but still he forced himself to one last effort.
“How in hell—”
The blackness closed down completely; the balding head fell back. The man bending over him bent an ear to the opened mouth and then came slowly to his feet, his revolver dangling. There was the crash of brush; he swung about to find himself facing two men. The larger held a rifle pointed in his direction.
“Drop that gun!”
The silent figure inspected the two intruders almost in disbelief, and then from behind that expressionless face came the muffled sound of a harsh laugh. His arm came up, away from him, and released the revolver. The two men approached carefully, and then the younger man gasped in astonishment.