Ted Bell - Spy

He managed to stagger a few steps through the deep mud and once more he was safely under the green umbrella. Gathering strength from some resource deep inside, he moved quickly through the tall thicket. He could see the bend in the river curving away. He had an eye peeled for a lone dugout, the inevitable Xucuru scout traveling in advance of the war party searching for him.

He made his plans for the possibility of survival. He would hide by day. He would fashion some kind of torch and travel by night. He would track and kill his tapir and eat its flesh. With its skin, he would build his canoe. When the sun fell, he’d return to the river and civilization.

That, at least, was the plan.

BY MIDDAY, with the sweat pouring off of him, and the subsequent chills, Alex Hawke had accomplished most of his objectives. He had eaten raw tapir with gusto. He’d built a respectable canoe, light and easy to portage. He desperately wanted to keep moving while there was still some light but he found he was completely spent and could do no more. The fever had overtaken him again.

The green world was spinning and he feared he might fall or slip into unconsciousness in an exposed or unprotected location. He quickly found a spot where he could remain hidden but still see the river. There he made himself as comfortable as he could under the shade of his newly built canoe. He needed rest, now, sleep.

As he drifted off, he imagined, or perhaps heard, the drumbeat mounting steadily in the jungle. It came to him as a repeating two-syllable beat, high-low, high-low. Slipping down to an uneasy slumber, he thought it sounded like kill you…kill you…kill you…

HIS REST was cut short by disturbing sounds on the river. His eyes popped open to see the sun was still burning high above. He hadn’t slept long. Someone was coming. He sat bolt upright, instantly aware of the danger. He groped for his spear but couldn’t find it. Had he left it leaning against the base of the tree where he’d collapsed for a moment? No? He must have done so. He must have—

It wasn’t a lone scout in a dugout canoe.

It was a sleek black jet boat from one of the camps with a fifty-caliber machine gun mounted atop a squat tower at the stern. The twin jet drives were bubbling beneath the transom, moving the patrol boat forward at little more than idle speed. Besides the skipper at the helm and the gunner on the stern, there were two men in jungle camo on the bow, one sweeping a submachine gun from side-to-side and the other with a bullhorn.

The bullhorn was calling his name.

Hawke! Hawke! Hawke!

So. They had somehow learned his name.

He had no time to ponder that. From the jungle upriver, came an even more dreadful sound. It was the sound of fierce wild howling he’d heard late at night in the camps whenever someone tried to escape. It was the sound of the fighting dogs the guards kept for their protection and amusement.

They’d loosed the damned dogs on him, the dogs and the dark hooded ones who came in the middle of the night. Stood like ghosts above your pit.

“Las Medianoches,” Hawke said, whispering the name of every Brazilian child’s nightmare, and then he climbed to his feet and ran for his life. Medianoches…the word meant “middle of the night.” For that’s when the real monsters came out to play.

He ran in wild desperation. He ran well past the frontiers of exhaustion, deep into uncharted territories of pain. He knew he could not run much longer. The howling dogs were on his heels and he drove himself blindly through the dense jungle, tripping, falling, knowing it was useless even as he pumped his knees and tore through the thick undergrowth and looping vines.

Creepers reached out for his bare and bloodied feet, thorny vines lacerated his face and shoulders and arms. His mouth was a ragged hole from which no sound issued but hoarse breathing and an occasional curse when he stumbled.

Hawke knew he was already a dead man, down to pure instinct alone. He was running now simply to stave off the inevitable; he was running blindly and without hope, running to gain a few more moments of his short precious life before he would trip and fall and the dogs would be upon him, ripping the flesh from his bones.

This was no way for a man with a future to die.

Suddenly drenched in sunshine, he splashed through a clearing bisected by a small stream that meandered toward the river. Slipping on the mossy rocks, he steadied himself, trying desperately to get reoriented. Then, he hurtled forward once more, racing back into the dark world beneath the canopy that towered overhead.

He could hear the Xucuru warriors chanting behind him, ever closer; and yet closer, the vicious snapping and growling wild dogs that were leading them to their quarry. They were gaining, getting closer now. They were well fed, well rested, and strong. They were relentless trackers who knew the ways of the jungle. Hawke was lost, hungry, and afraid.

The Xucuru wanted blood: his blood, the poor diminished feverish stuff now coursing through his veins; and he knew they wanted to see it flow almost as desperately as he wanted to keep it flowing.

Running, he burst into yet another patch of sunshine. This sunshine had wings, diaphanous wings, brushing his cheeks ever so lightly, like cobwebs. Another illusion? Light with wings? He imagined the fever had finally sent his mind reeling, that he’d slipped over into spiralling madness. A second later he snapped back. He realized the circular clearing was filled with countless swirling yellow butterflies lit by the sun above.

He raised his hands and cupped a few of the shimmering mariposas, bringing them right up to his eyes. He wanted to inspect these tiny diaphanous creatures more carefully, each one an individual miracle of nature. He looked up. A swarming tower of these yellow beings rose all the way to the sky above. It was a miracle. He waded into dense but yielding clouds, walking as if in a dream. And stumbling into a sinkhole that sucked at his feet.

Cursing and finally freeing himself from the sucking muck of the muddy hole, he again plunged forward through the gossamer yellow insects, batting their delicate bodies and filmy wings away from his eyes, searching for the far side of the clearing.

He could only hope this mirage of yellow and the quicksand underfoot might slow the dogs and he used this hope to keep moving. He ran hard for a few more minutes. And then, he slammed into an immovable wall and all hope vanished from his mind.

It was a canebrake that finally spelt the end.

The towering wall of green bamboo rose sixty feet above his head. The profusion of stalks grew so closely as to appear almost solid. He sprinted along the wall in both directions, looking and feeling for some kind of a crack or narrow opening. Nothing. No prayer of an opening anywhere, no way to shinny upward either. He slammed against the barrier again and again in a rage of frustration but it was useless. The stalks were thick, every bit as thick as a man’s wrist and the bamboo curtain would not yield.

There would be no escape.

It was over.

No admittance, Mr. Hawke.

You’re dead.

3

H awke clung to the bamboo stalks, waiting for the inevitable. Letting his arms take his full weight, he hung his head, looking like a beaten man. His lungs were afire, his legs trembling and shaking uncontrollably. He had no idea how long he let himself hang there, but he knew that any second he would feel the sharp punch of an arrow or a spear between his shoulder blades.

Thunk.

The steel tip of a spear embedded itself deeply in the bamboo a few centimeters above his head.

It parted my bloody hair, he thought, with a mixture of dread and admiration for the chucker’s skills. He could feel the spear’s impact thrumming in his bones, the vibrations traveling down to his forearms to his hands. So this is how it would end.