Survival Reflex

“What am I looking for?” Herreira asked, resigned.

“Smart money says they’ve left Cuiabá. If we find out how they went, we also find out where they’ve gone. Get those coordinates, a drop-off point, and we can start to hunt for real.”

“All right,” Herreira said. “I’ll see what I can do.”

“And let me know, ASAP.”

“Of course.”

“Good man,” Downey said, smiling even as he broke the link.

THE FIRST HOUR on foot was the worst, Enriquez thought. It still surprised her, after all this time, that her body was forced to reacclimatize each time she returned to the jungle from a trip away. Even a weekend in Cuiabá, with its running water, fans and air-conditioning could tip the balance of her metabolism it seemed, and had her sweating like a rank tourist when she came back home.

Moving along the narrow, unmarked trail, she made a point of watching Cooper on the sly, quick glances from the corner of her eye or underneath an arm when she paused to wipe her brow. He seemed to bear up well, with both the heat and the equipment that he carried. He was cautious, yet almost casual about it, not like one of those big-city “sportsmen” who clutched his weapon as if danger waited behind every tree.

Though it might, she admitted.

They hadn’t left danger behind by escaping from the city and the men who hunted them through the streets. Those hunters would follow, or send others in their place, and still more peril waited on the trail ahead.

Marta hoped Matt Cooper was equal to the task, and for a moment she almost felt guilty for bringing him into the jungle.

Almost.

Dr. Weiss—her Nathan—needed help to stay alive. If that meant taking him away, so be it. She would either find some means of joining him, or she would stay behind and nurture fading memories of what they’d had together.

Either way, the most important thing was his survival and the good work he could still do elsewhere, if he lived.

He had such talent, such compassion, and it would be wasted if he died here, clinging to a futile hope that he could change the hearts and minds of common men.

“Within two hours,” she told Cooper, “we should reach the village.”

“Is it yours?” he asked.

“The people are Tehuelche and they welcome me,” she answered, “but it’s not my home. A smallpox epidemic killed most of my people years ago, while I was in the residential mission school. I’ve seen where they were heaped and burned together for the public good. My parents have no graves.”

“I buried mine,” he said. “The markers aren’t much help.”

“You may think I was lucky to be off at school.”

He shrugged beneath his heavy pack. “You’re still alive.”

“The residential schools were meant to break us, wipe out old beliefs and fill our heads with something new.”

“It looks like you outsmarted them,” Bolan said.

Grim-faced, Enriquez shook her head. “They broke me with the rest,” she answered. “Only in the past few years have I recovered what was lost.”

“Still, that’s a victory,” Bolan replied. “They knocked you down but couldn’t beat you.”

“Oh, they beat me,” she corrected him. “Nobody in the mission schools escaped beatings—and worse. You’ve heard the stories, I suppose.”

“From Canada,” he said. “Not so much from Brazil.”

“They’re much the same. It was a silent holocaust of torture, rape, indoctrination. No one who survived it was unscathed. Recovering the culture that was beaten out of us may take a lifetime, but the time is what we don’t have, Mr. Cooper. Even as we speak, the government and industry are finishing the slaughter that began more than a hundred years ago.”

“Is that what brought Bones to Brazil?”

“It may surprise you that we never talked about his motives. He is a very private man. I was too grateful for his help to question it.”

“Okay.”

“You don’t believe me?”

“I just want to understand what we’re all doing here,” he said.

“The doctor heals. You’re here to save his life.”

“And you?”

She frowned again and said, “I’m not sure, yet.”

They spoke little over the next hour, their silence broken only when Enriquez pointed out some animal or plant that posed a threat. On those occasions, Bolan listened, paid attention and moved on.

She smelled the village from a half mile out, wood smoke and food in preparation for the evening meal. Before she could alert Cooper, she realized that he had smelled it, too.

Clearly, he wasn’t just another handsome face.

They were two hundred yards from contact when the first shot made her jump. Two more immediately followed, wringing from her throat a strangled protest.

“Please, God, no!”

Bolan released his weapon from its shoulder sling and plunged into the jungle, following the sounds. Fearing what she would find, Marta Enriquez clenched her teeth and followed him.

A QUICK COUNT made it ten or fifteen shooters dressed in mismatched clothes, no military trappings other than their weapons. Bolan had no time to scout the village, making sure. The gunmen he could see were busy when he got there, herding unarmed Indians in the direction of a long house built from logs. Its thatch roof was already smoking. Bolan saw one of the raiders shoot a woman with a baby in her arms, a single bullet drilling both.

He fired instinctively, a 3-round burst dropping the shooter in his tracks. Most of the raiders were distracted, but a couple saw the dead man drop and spun to find out where the killing shots had come from.