Blue & Gold Page 12

  “Perhaps, as a by-product,” Arnaud said. “It is no secret the next cure for cancer may be growing in the wondrous biological treasure house above our heads.” He tapped his long nose, then his lips. “We are here primarily seeking fragrances for perfumes and essences, tastes for the food industry. If we come across medicinal extracts, so much the better. We have the permission of the Venezuelan government, and our operation is entirely legitimate.”

  Paul let his gaze drift over the ferocious-looking painted savages, the leveled guns, and the patently terrified Dieter. He didn’t believe for an instant that these jungle thugs were doing anything legitimate. He didn’t want to set Arnaud off by being too inquisitive, but he knew it would seem peculiar if he didn’t show curiosity.

  “You’ll hardly be surprised if I observe that you’re quite heavily armed for a scientific party,” Paul said.

  “Of course,” Arnaud said, taking the comment in stride. “Ramirez’s fears were not without foundation. You can see how dangerous the forest is. You yourself have seen a dead man.” His mouth curved in an ironic smile. “You must wonder what our relationship is with this wretched creature,” he said, speaking of Dieter. “He has given us the men of this village to help in our search for biological specimens. They know the forest better than anyone. He is paid handsomely, I might add.”

  Paul grinned. “Looks as if you’re about to fire Mr. von Hoff man from his job.”

  “And for good reason. Even if what you have to say about yourselves is true, that you are not couriers, this does not change the fact that Dieter here tried to steal from us. We had been looking for an extremely valuable plant that could be worth mil lions, billions possibly, to the pharmaceutical, food, and perfume industry. It’s quite a wonder. We were going to take samples to Europe for analysis. The natives have been using it for decades, although not for perfume, unfortunately.”

  “You seem to have solved your problem,” Gamay said. “You have both Dieter and the specimens.”

  “I wish it were as simple as that,” Arnaud said with an edge in his voice. “True, we have this pig, but our valuable plant samples seem to have disappeared.”

  “I’m afraid I don’t understand.”

  “We had heard of this amazing plant from the natives, but none of them was able to locate it. We had gone far beyond our original area of operations into uncharted parts of the forest which is where we came across the Indian you were later to find dead. He had samples of the plant in his possession. We offered to pay him to show us where he got the specimens, but he re fused. We made him our guest in the hopes we could persuade him to change his mind.”

  Paul remembered the welts on the Indian’s body. “So when he wouldn’t talk, you shot him.”

  “Oh, no, nothing so simple as that. In fact we were doing our best to keep him alive. Dieter was in charge of providing hospitality and safeguarding the specimens. He got drunk one night and let him escape. The poor devil was shot stealing a canoe. We assumed he got away with the specimens. In which case he would have had them when you found him.”

  “What did these specimens look like?” Paul asked.

  “Quite unimpressive, really. Small tapered leaves with red veins which give the plant its local name, blood leaf.”

  “We examined the contents of the Indian’s bag,” Paul said.

  “There was a medicinal pouch full of folk medicine herbs. Nothing like you described.”

  “So,” Arnaud said. He turned a scornful eye back to Dieter. “You said the Indian left with the plant in his possession. Who is telling the truth?”

  “I don’t know what they’re talking about,” Dieter countered. “The Indian took his bag and everything in it.”

  “I don’t think so,” Arnaud said quietly. “If they had the plant specimens, they would not have come back and acted so stupidly. I think you have what we want.” He cocked his revolver. “And if you don’t tell me where it is, I shall kill you.”

  “Then you’d never find it, Arnaud,” the Dutchman said, dredging up a shred of defiance. It was bad timing. Arnaud was clearly in no mood to dally.

  “True, but before I Killed you I’d turn you over to my painted friends here. They would have no compunction against skinning you like a monkey.”

  Color drained from Dieter’s florid face. “I did not mean I would not tell you. I only meant there must be room to negotiate.”

  “All opportunity for negotiation has passed, regretfully. I’m tired of this affair. I’m tired of you.” He raised the pistol to Dieter’s lips. “I’m tired of your lying mouth.”

  There was a tremendous boom, and the lower half of the Dutchman’s face disappeared in an explosion of crimson from the point-blank shot. The monocle popped from his unbelieving eye, and his body toppled over backward like a tree felled by a chainsaw.

  The Frenchman turned the smoking gun on Paul. “As for you, I don’t know if you are telling the truth or not. My instinct tells me that you are. It’s very unfortunate that you happened to visit this pig. Nothing personal, but I can’t let you carry away news of what has been going on.” He shook his head sadly. “I assure you, I will make it quick for your beautiful wife.”

  Paul was light-years ahead of the Frenchman. He’d been

  shocked by Dieter’s summary execution, but he knew immediately what Arnaud’s move meant for Gamay and him. No wit nesses. Trout’s lanky body and normally languorous movements were deceptive. He could move quickly when he had to. He tensed his arms, ready to grab Arnaud’s wrist and twist him to the ground. He knew that at the best he would take the bullet, but Gamay might get away in the confusion. At the worst, they would both be killed.

  As Arnaud’s finger tightened on the trigger and Trout pre pared to make his last-ditch move, there was a sound, half grunt, half cough, from the Indian wearing the Yankees baseball cap. He had dropped the shotgun, and now he looked down in terror at the brown wooden shaft of an oversized arrow that protruded at least two feet from the front of his chest. Its barbed point glistened with red. He made a motion to grab onto the arrow, but the tremendous hemorrhaging from the projectile took its toll, and he crumpled to the ground near Dieter’s body.

  Another Indian cried out. “Chulo!” A giant arrow cut him down as soon as the shout left his lips.

  His companions took up the horrified chant.

  “Chulo! Chulo!”

  There was a strange ululating cry, and a ghastly blue-and white face appeared in the bushes. Then another, and within seconds the masklike faces seemed to be everywhere. More arrows filled the air. More Indians fell. Torches dropped or were thrown to the ground in panic.

  In the darkness and confusion Paul’s long arm reached over and grabbed Gamay by the wrist, shocking her out of her trance. Ducking low, they ran toward the river with the same thought. Get to the boat. In their frantic haste they almost bowled over the slender figure who stepped out of the shadows and stood in their way.

  “Stop!” she said firmly.

  It was Dieter’s wife, Tessa.

  “We’re going to the boat,” Gamay said. “Come with us.”

  “No,” she said, and pointed to the river. “Look!”

  In the light of the torches they carried, dozens of blue-faced men could be seen swarming ashore from large canoes.

  The woman tugged at Gamay’s arm. “This way is safer.”

  She led the Trouts out of the clearing, and they plunged into the dark forest. Bushes and thorns whipped at their legs and faces. The ululation grew fainter. They could have been at the center of the earth as far as they knew. It was just as hot and dark.

  “Where are you taking us?” Gamay said, stopping to catch her breath.

  “Can’t stop now. Chulo come soon.”

  Sure enough, the strange war cry began to increase in strength. They kept moving until Dieter’s wife stopped after several minutes. They were in a grove of trees, dwarfed by the huge, misshapen trunks that soared for more than a hundred feet. Tessa was barely visible in t
he moonlight streaming down from openings in the tree canopy. She had raised her hand. The Trouts lifted their eyes to the treetops. They saw only darkness broken here and there by the silver-gray night sky.

  The woman detected their confusion, and like a teacher working with blind children, she opened their hands and placed something in them that felt like dead snakes. Thick nylon ropes. Paul remembered the belts Arnaud and his pal wore and Dieter’s comment about the zeppelin. He quickly fashioned a loop around Gamay’s thin waist. She hauled on the other end of the line and began to rise above the ground. Paul looked around. Dieter’s wife had vanished. They were on their own.

  “Keep going,” he said. “I’m right behind you.” He rigged an other rope around his own waist and with several strong pulls was yards off the ground. By the hard sound of breathing, Gamay was just ahead.

  From below came a burst of the strange warbling cry. The torches of the Chulos appeared. The Indians threw the torches into the air, where they arced and fell like exhausted comets.

  Gamay and Paul expected to be skewered by oversized arrows that could easily reach them, but they kept pulling.

  Just as they thought they were out of range they looked down and saw two of the Indians lift off the ground. Of course, Paul thought. If there were two hauling ropes, there would be others as well.

  Gamay yelled from above his head. “I’m at the top!”

  Paul kept climbing and felt his wife’s hand reach down to help him clamber onto a branch thicker than a man’s waist. Grunting with effort, he pulled himself onto the limb and reached for another branch. His hand touched a smooth, rubbery surface. The pewter light from a half moon was diffused by a mist that hung over the trees, but he could see a large plat form of mesh and tubing draped like a giant spider’s web over the canopy. It was an ingenious working platform, Trout thought, but he would have to save his admiration for later. Heavy breathing was coming from under their feet. Paul grabbed for his hunting knife and remembered that one of the Indians had taken it from him at the same time he was relieved of the Colt.

  Gamay yelled and pointed at the rotund silhouette of a small blimp floating above their heads. There was a crack of twigs from just under their feet. The Chulos were seconds away. Paul detached himself from the lifting line and walked with some difficulty across the spongy mesh until he reached a mooring rope. He gripped the line and used his weight to pull the blimp down to where Gamay could clamber into the seat hanging under the gas bag. With her weight holding the blimp down, he climbed in next to her.

  “Do you know how to operate one of these things?” Gamay said.

  “Can’t be too hard. Think of it as a boat. First thing you do is cast off.”

  Gamay had sailed the Great Lakes as a child, so the comparison was reassuring even if she didn’t believe it. They quickly untied the other mooring lines. The blimp hesitated, then made

  up its mind and rose slowly above the trees. They looked down and saw shadows leaping to grab the dangling lines, but the blimp was safely out of reach.

  They rose high above the fog-filled valleys that stretched off in every direction and began to drift like a milkweed seed, wondering if they had simply exchanged one set of dangers for an other.

  Chapter 11

  “Senor? Senor?”

  Austin’s eyes blinked open to see a white stubble of whiskers covering leathery cheeks and a gap-toothed mouth stretched wide in a jack-o’-lantern grin. It was the face of the Mexican fisherman he and Joe had met on the cliffs the day before. Austin lay on his back in an open wooden boat, his head cushioned by a coil of rope. He was still in his wet suit, but his scuba gear was gone. He pushed himself upright with his hands, a task of no small difficulty because his joints were sore and he was sprawled on a slimy pile of fish.

  A fisherman who strongly resembled the first man, right down to the cleft in his dental work, sat at the other end of the boat keeping watch over Zavala. Joe’s hair, normally so neatly combed, sprouted in a hundred different directions, and his shorts and T-shirt were dripping wet. He looked dazed but awake.

  “You okay?” Austin called out.

  A fish flopped onto Zavala’s lap. He carefully picked up the creature by the tail and tossed it with the others. “No broken bones. Now I know what it’s like to be shot out of a cannon. How about you?”

  “A few aches and pains.” Austin rubbed the throbbing muscles of his shoulder, then went to work on his legs. “I feel like I’ve gone through a car wash and a telephone keeps ringing in my ear.”

  “Your voice sounds like it’s still coming over an underwater communicator. Do you know what happened? I was coming to get you in the Brogan when all hell broke loose.”

  “There was an underwater explosion.” Austin glanced at the mirror-flat sea. The boat lay off the cove entrance. The Sea Robin was nowhere in sight. Austin couldn’t figure it. Contos and his crew would have heard the blast. Why hadn’t they come out to investigate?

  He turned his attention back to their own predicament. “Would you ask our friends how we got here?”

  Zavala questioned the fishermen in Spanish. One of them did most of the talking, speaking in rapid fire as his brother nodded in agreement. Zavala thanked him and translated the ex change.

  “This man’s name is Juan,” Zavala said. “He remembers us from yesterday up on the cliffs. The other guy is his brother Pedro. They were fishing when they heard a big muffled roar and the water bubbled and foamed in the inlet.”

  “Si, si, la bufadora,” Juan said. He threw his hands expansively into the air like an orchestra conductor calling for a crescendo.

  “What’s with the theatrics?” Austin asked

  “He says the noise was like the blowhole outside Ensenada where the sea comes into a cleft in the rocks and makes a big boom. Only it was many times louder. The cliff split away be hind the tortilla factory. There were big swells, and the boat al most capsized. Then we popped out of the water. They pulled us in like a couple of overgrown sardines, and here we are.”

  Austin scanned the sea again. “Did they mention seeing the Sea Robin?”

  “They saw a ship earlier. From their description it must have been the Robin. It went around to the other side of the headland, and they haven’t seen it since.”

  Austin was starting to worry about Contos and his crew. “Please thank our benefactors for their kindness and ask if they would mind taking us around the point.”

  Zavala relayed Austin’s request, and the fishermen started the old Mercury outboard in a cloud of blue smoke. Coughing like an asthmatic corn popper, the motor effortlessly moved the boat through the silken sea. With Juan manning the tiller, they rounded the headland and immediately saw why the Sea Robin hadn’t left its mooring. The NUMA ship wasn’t going anywhere for a while.

  The deck was covered with a small mountain of dirt and boulders, and the vessel listed heavily to the starboard. The A-frame at the stern and the free-standing cranes on the aft deck had been twisted as easily as pretzels by the debris. Above the boat, the steep cliff face was layered with yellow strata exposed by the rockslide. Crew members were attacking the rubble with shovels and crowbars, tossing what debris they could manage over the side. A forklift was moving the bigger rocks.

  Juan maneuvered the fishing boat alongside the NUMA vessel. Contos came to the rail and leaned over. His hands and face were caked with dirt, and he looked as if he had crawled out of a mine.

  Austin cupped his hands and called out, “Anyone hurt?”

  “A few cuts and bruises,” Contos yelled back. “Luckily the aft deck was clear. We had heard a loud boom from the cove and were about to check it out. Then the whole side of the cliff came down before we could weigh anchor. Where the hell have you two been?”

  “I like your new makeup,” Austin said.

  Joe chimed in, “Is it Estee Lauder?”

  Contos’s attempt to rub the dirt off his nose only made it worse. “It’s evident from your wise-ass comment that you’re hale
and hearty. When you’re through being obnoxious, would you mind telling me what happened?”

  “That boom you heard was an underwater explosion,” Joe said.

  Contos shook his head in disbelief. “I don’t know of any volcanic activity along here. What caused it?”

  “Best we can say for sure is that it was centered in the under water installation,” Austin said.

  He gave Austin a blank look.

  “We’ll explain later.” Austin surveyed the yellowed “The explosion shook the slide loose.”

  Contos furrowed his brow. “Hey,” he said as a thought struck him. “What did you do with the Brogan?”

  Austin and Zavala looked at each other like guilty children who had broken the cookie jar. Austin was beginning to wonder if he were a Jonah, the name mariners give a seaman who at tracts calamity. This was the second craft he had lost in as many days.

  “We lost her,” Austin said. “Sorry. It couldn’t be helped. Juan and Pedro here hauled us out of the water.”

  “Pleased to meet you,” Contos said to the smiling fishermen. “Not much we can do about it now. NUMA will simply have to build me a new one.”

  Austin swept his eyes over the tilted hull of the Sea Robin. “Your vessel has quite a list. Are you in any danger of sinking?”

  “I think we’ll be okay. No leaks detected so far. We’ll see what happens once we get under way. Most of the damage is to the deck and superstructure. The cranes are useless, as you can see. The forklift can move the big stuff. We haven’t called for help because we don’t want to have to explain what we’re doing in Mexican waters.”

  “Do we have time to check out the cove?”

  Contos looked over his shoulder at the rubble still to be re moved. “Be my guest. We’ll get under way as soon as we’re able.”

  Zavala asked the fishermen to take them back to the inlet. The request started an animated argument between the brothers. Pedro had had enough of the cursed place with its strange explosions and stranger mermen popping out of the sea. He clearly wanted to go home, but his brother prevailed.

  The boat made its way around the headland. As they entered the cove they could see smoke coming from the tortilla factory. Like the cliff above the Sea Robin, the sheer face behind the factory was layered yellow where the outer rock cover had been dislodged by the explosion. The rock slide had taken with it all traces of the monorail elevator.