Hawker turned to head back to the camp, but stopped as a pair of night birds whipped by, cawing as they flew overhead. The sound masked a second noise, a rustling in the trees, but both he and Verhoven sensed it.
Hawker dropped to one knee.
Verhoven scanned the jungle with the scope. He saw nothing, but again the branches were swaying. “Something moving to higher ground,” he said, trying in vain to track it.
A second later the sound of gunfire jolted the night. Shots fired to the south.
“Who’s down there?” Hawker asked.
“Bosch,” Verhoven replied. One of his men.
From that direction something was racing through the forest, coming toward them. Verhoven raised his rifle.
Two natives burst through the undergrowth, eyes wide with shock at running into Verhoven and Hawker.
Verhoven went to fire, but as he did Hawker shoved the barrel of his rifle aside. The shells tore into the loose earth.
The natives dashed off.
“Damn you,” Verhoven shouted.
Hawker was up and running, giving chase.
Furious, Verhoven followed, charging through the forest. “Where the hell are you going?”
“We need to talk to them,” Hawker shouted back.
Ducking around a tree, barely keeping Hawker in sight, Verhoven yelled, “What the hell for?”
Hawker again shouted to him but didn’t slow, and Verhoven couldn’t make out the words. He heard the natives ahead, crashing through the branches. He caught sight of Hawker for a second. And then he was gone.
Before he could stop, Verhoven met the same fate; the ground suddenly gone from underneath his feet, he fell through the darkness. He slammed into a musty wall of earth and then crashed backward with a splash, landing in three feet of mud and water.
He looked around but could see nothing; the blackness was complete. The only light he saw came from thirty feet above, a thin veil of a lighter black in the shape of a rectangle.
He’d fallen into a pit of some kind: a trap. He stood awkwardly, the mud squishing under his feet, the cold muck dripping off him. The fetid water stank, but it had probably saved his life.
“Hawk!” he shouted. “Are you down here?”
Sounding as if he was in a certain amount of pain, Hawker replied, “Unfortunately.”
Verhoven turned toward the sound of Hawker’s voice, the water swirling just above knees. “Better hope it stays dark, mate. Because if I see you I’m gonna kill you.”
“For what?”
“For bringing me down here.”
He heard the sound of water sloshing as Hawker moved around in the darkness. “If you hadn’t tried to shoot the son of bitch, we might have been able to talk to him.”
“A bloke charges you like that, you shoot first, ask questions later.”
“He wasn’t charging,” Hawker replied. “He was looking up in the trees, hunting something. He just found us by accident.”
Verhoven paused, realizing that Hawker was right. He moved to his right, bumping against something. He touched it with his hand, and realized it was the carcass of a dead animal. He pulled back. “Looks like we’re not the only ones to fall in this …”
The words died on Verhoven’s lips and he went still. He thought he’d heard something moving around in the pit, in the opposite direction from where Hawker’s voice came. He turned slightly, stirring the water.
“Don’t move,” he whispered. “There’s something else down here.”
Verhoven crouched, his nose close to the stinking muck, straining to see. The pit was clearly designed as a trap, and any animal that might have fallen down there with them could be dangerous. He moved slowly to one side, feeling for the wall of the pit, bumping against it.
A low, almost inaudible growl reached toward him, drifting out of the darkness, like the guttural rumble that comes from the back of a crocodile’s throat. The sound was labored, a deep heavy groan, a warning almost below the range of human hearing.
What made that sound? A caiman, a large snake, maybe—pythons were rumored to make low rumbles in their guts—or even a jaguar, wounded and weak in the bottom of a pit, it could still kill with a single claw.
Verhoven backed away from the sound, moving along the length of the trench.
“I have a flare,” Hawker said, his voice a whisper.
Verhoven paused, making sure his hands were ready. “Light it.”
Behind him the flare snapped and with the sizzle of the phosphorous it lit, flashing in the darkness. For an instant, Verhoven went blind. When his eyes adjusted, he saw nothing in front of him except filthy water and the muddy walls at the closed end of the rectangular pit. Something moved on his left, clinging to the wall. It lunged toward his face, hissing, with its jaws open.
Verhoven jumped backward, firing. He crashed into Hawker, knocking the flare into the muck. The light vanished as murky water swallowed the burning stick.
Scampering sounds came toward him. Verhoven fired from his fallen position.
Something clawed him and then pushed off, using him as a stepping stone to launch itself up the wall. The flare bobbed to the surface and Verhoven caught a glimpse of a shape clambering up the side of the pit. He fired as it went over the top, blasting it forward as its momentum carried it out into the jungle night. The thing shrieked in agony.
As Hawker plucked the flare from the water, the light improved. Verhoven dropped his gaze, checking the rest of the pit, side to side, up and down.
They were alone.
Hawker fell back, racked with laughter.
“What’s so damn funny?”
“Keystone Cops,” Hawker said, barely able to get the words out.
“You’re the chief, then.”
Hawker couldn’t stop chuckling. “And you’re having monkey for dinner.”
Verhoven hadn’t gotten a good enough look at the scrambling thing to know what it was, but the size was about right—thirty to forty pounds—and there was little else he could think of that could climb like that. For a moment he was almost embarrassed, blasting a little monkey with an AK-47. Then again, a starving, cornered monkey could have made a mess of them, even if it wasn’t a life-threatening situation.
“Better than him having us,” he replied.
As Hawker continued laughing, Verhoven fished out his radio. Fortunately, like everything else electronic they had brought along, it was waterproof. He clicked the switch, told one of his men what had happened and ordered him to bring a rescue party and some rope.
As Verhoven finished the conversation, Hawker tapped him on the shoulder and pointed to one of the walls, holding the flare up to give him more light.
The central part of the left wall appeared to be made of stone. It was covered in lumpy chunks of mud, but even in the flickering light, a large face could be seen beneath that mud. A face carved in the stone. Around it were other marks, hieroglyphics that looked remarkably similar to those Danielle had showed him.
As they studied it, the rescue party arrived and dropped down a rope. Hawker and Verhoven climbed out and the group shined their lights into the pit. Danielle nodded her approval. “We’ll show McCarter in the morning,” she said.
Weary and covered in muck, Verhoven began his walk back to the camp, ignoring the questions about what had happened and glad that the ridiculous situation was over.
Before he’d gone ten paces Hawker spoke, stopping him in his tracks.
“Where is it?” Hawker asked.
“Where’s what?” Danielle replied.
Hawker’s voice rang with suspicion. “Verhoven’s monkey.”
Danielle, and the men who’d helped with the rescue, only seemed more confused, but Verhoven understood. He looked around. There was no monkey carcass, no blood on the ground or a trail to indicate that something else had dragged it off into the woods. No sign of the thing he’d blasted.
“There was a monkey in the pit,” Verhoven explained. “I shot at the bugger as he went over the top of the wall. Looks like I missed.”