Sure enough, movement, whispers, as two men came low and fast through the shadows at the base of the forest. Even with the sun up, the canopy blocked out light here, made the air cooler. There was less surface vegetation. Vegetation was thicker by the river. You needed a machete to get through there. But here the shadowy figures emerging from mist were clear, forty yards away… stop and go… stop and listen. One man gave the other a hand signal.
Izabel and I opened up at the same moment with our seized AK-47s. The guards had no chance. Both went down. One was screaming in pain, and I saw ferns waving wildly where he’d fallen. There was no sound from the second man, who’d flown backward and lay still. That made four guards down, five if I included the one in New Extrema.
Abruptly, with a cough, the screaming and fern waving stopped.
Both corpses were thickly bearded and had worn skullcaps. This place must be exactly what Ray Havlicek had sent us to find. At that moment if he had been present I would have rammed my weapon into his belly. He’d sent Eddie and me here and denied us help. He’d asked us to look for something and we had found it but then Ray had disappeared. Do us a favor… You can call me anytime.
I pushed Ray from my mind and into my future. We started moving again, recalling Cizinio’s advice. Stay in the same direction, follow the slope. The forest will end and there will be a lawn and the doctor’s house and medical building where he used to treat us and give us medicines.
A man’s voice called out, from ahead, “Nasser?”
From behind us, from the dock, I heard three quick gunshots, snap-snap-snap. A handgun. Nelson. I heard the rapid fire of an AK-47 shooting back. I could only hope that whoever was exchanging fire with Nelson had gotten close enough for Nelson’s shots to find their mark. But had they found their mark, there would have been no return fire.
Still, the man ahead of us seemed to lose heart at the sound of more gunfire. I saw ferns waving, but this time in retreat. Whoever was there had panicked, or been ordered back. He was running to the houses. Izabel and I surged forward.
A sudden thump ahead sounded like a grenade going off. But the explosion was nowhere near us.
Suddenly there were no more trees, just a sloping lawn that led, fifty yards up, to reveal what Cizinio had drawn. The one-story ranch house lay exactly as depicted, and thirty feet from it, the dorm/clinic and exam room. Cizinio’s proportions were perfect. I heard another thump from the main house as the front windows blew out. I heard AK bursts inside. Who the hell were they shooting at, if not us? Gray smoke billowed out. I heard quick two-round shots, and they brought terror into my throat for Eddie, because suddenly I knew what was happening in there.
They’re destroying things. They’re executing people. They’re getting rid of evidence.
In drills in the Virginia forest at Quantico, Eddie and I had assaulted hidden “biolabs” while other Marines playing “enemy” triggered smoke traps, smashed computers, “murdered” witnesses as they retreated, employing a scorched-earth policy that the Soviets would have envied in World War Two.
If they’re panicking, there must be only one or two guards left, I thought.
“Labs” on fire, “prisoners” shot. That was all I could think as I propelled myself across that lawn, with Captain Santo screaming something at my back in Portuguese, probably, Don’t do it!
The flowers to my right blew apart. Petals flew in the air with shrub bits. I ducked and hit the lawn and rolled into a bush, fired, and kept going, at a fast crawl. My right ankle was on fire. I’d been shot. No, I haven’t been shot, because something small is running up my leg toward my crotch. I’ve been stung!
I rolled sideways and slammed my palm into my pants at whatever the hell was in there. The sensation of burning was getting worse. I saw an inch-long flattened insect drop onto the ground. Bullet ants lived in shrubs. Eddie and I had been warned about them. A half dozen bites can kill a large human. The single bite will produce pain that increases for up to twenty-four hours. The inch-long creatures inject a neurotoxin in victims that tops the list of Amazon dangers. Bullet ants, not jaguars, not snakes, not piranhas, cause more human deaths each year than any of those other things.
I could only hope that the strength of the poison inside me had crested. I was limping as I rose, and the pure, intense stabs of pain were getting worse. I thought, gritting my teeth, You’re stronger than a fucking ant.
A shadow appeared at the window, rising flames behind it. I fired and raked the side of the building. The shadow ducked sideways. The snout of a weapon jutted out, and a line of bullets stitched the lawn. But suddenly the AK-47 fell out of the window. Izabel was coming low and fast from the left. She’d hit whoever was in there.
Eddie…
I ran toward the main house while she laid down cover fire. Because now I heard screams in there, multiple voices, pleading. Shot/pause/shot. My heart seized up. An explosion sounded in the main building. Another window shattered, and gray smoke billowed out. At least six guards were down now and as many as eight, so who was in there, destroying evidence? How many guards were there in this hellish place?
I burst through the door.
A guard lay inside, still alive, but blood pumped from his mouth. The man wore a white khet partug, a long body shirt ending at the knees. His skullcap was still on. I kicked the AK away from his spasming hand.
“Sa-aidnee! Sa-aidnee!” he begged. Please help me! Skinny guy. Dark skinned. He had the fear of death in his face.
I shot him in the head.
Cizinio was wrong about the number of guards. And if there are this many guards, this place is really important.
The heat was extreme and the air convoluted. The fire was intense, mahogany dining table on fire, tropical wood stairs on fire, curtains and velvet couches and Oriental rug burning, the whole world hot. If they’re burning evidence, find it, seize it, remember it. I screamed Eddie’s name and got no answer. There was no way to get up the stairs without an asbestos suit. I could only hope, as the last scream died away, that whoever had been alive up there, it was not Eddie.
The pain in my ankle had now grown into a searing mass.
Captain Santo and I moved toward the low, one-story medical building. It was on fire, too, but this fire wasn’t that bad yet. The lawn was a mass of choking smoke. The pain in my leg had radiated up toward my thigh. All around us fire consumed wood, oxygen, and roasting vegetation. Marine assault teams in Afghanistan had always been made up of at least five attackers. Not two against nine or more.
There was no time to get into that building slowly. I burst in and found myself in a medical ward. And in it, a horror: two rows of single beds, containing men and women, in hospital gowns, like patients, but these patients were handcuffed to iron bedposts, and all of them shot in the head. The blood was still soaking their bedding, fresh on their faces. I’d heard the executions. These must be the kidnapped miners.
“Jesus Cristo,” whispered Izabel, coming up beside me. “Is one of these people your friend?”
I ran from bed to bed, looking for Eddie, coughing. This place was the negative image of a hospital ward; same layout, but it existed to inflict pain, not alleviate it. Hell’s clinic. I saw surgical instruments collecting soot inside smashed-up glass cabinets. Normally the instruments look benign to me. Here they were implements of torture.