Quinn nodded downriver, actively ignoring the boat. Aleksandra ran past, slowing the little Nissan only when they were a hundred meters beyond the sunken vessel. Cranking the tiller hard over, she turned in a wide arc, slicing a deep V in the chocolate-brown water. Twenty meters out, Aleksandra killed the engine and let momentum carry them in. A startled caiman greeted them with a splash of his knotted tail as the boat nosed up against the muddy bank, groaning as it rubbed a submerged stone.
Quinn stepped over the gunnel and onto the spongy bank. He carried the pack in his left hand but left the 1911 holstered, reasoning that if someone was going to shoot him, they’d have done it already.
Beyond the sunken boat the bank was a trampled mess. Quinn found a square of mud about a yard long, and counted fifteen separate footprints. Splitting that number in half and rounding up, he estimated Borregos had eight men including himself. Two sets of boots had pressed more deeply into the mud. They would be carrying the weight of the bomb. He didn’t waste time trying to age the tracks. Even accounting for the time he’d spent talking to the dying Indian girl and then dropping off Bo and Jacques, the cartel couldn’t have been more than a half hour ahead.
Aleksandra stood facing the humming wall of black jungle, her back to Quinn. Sweat darkened her khaki shirt along the spine. “Apologies do not come easy to my lips,” she said.
Quinn checked to make certain his pistol was fastened in the holster, then slid Severance from the sheath at his belt. He said nothing.
Aleksandra plowed ahead. “I should not have abandoned you to go after Monagas.”
“You are correct there,” Quinn said, checking the bowknot connecting the boat to the gnarled root snaking out of the cutbank.
“Perhaps your brother would not have been shot if I would have stayed.”
“Or perhaps he would have,” Quinn said, knowing such after-action quarterbacking did little good.
“Have you never had a friend you would kill for?”
“I left two of them back there along the river,” Quinn said without hesitation. He looked west, shielding his eyes from the low, afternoon sun above an endless ocean of green forest canopy. “Now let’s focus on finding the bomb before they make it to the airstrip.”
“Very well,” Aleksandra said. “If we move quickly we can catch them before nightfall.”
“That should be easy enough.” Quinn turned, pushing aside a vine the size of his wrist with the tip of his blade. “It’s easy to move fast when you’re not weighed down with unnecessary things like ammunition.”
CHAPTER 63
Yazid Nazif swung his machete as if wielding a baseball bat. He’d never seen so much vegetation in his life and felt as if it was closing in around him. The intensity of the moist heat and droning hum in the surrounding trees caused his heart to pound out of control. He found it difficult to breathe, but consoled himself with the knowledge that he was at last in possession of Baba Yaga. Soon, all of the decadent West would bow to the white-hot power of a new al-Qaeda. He would be the leader of the most feared organization on earth — if Borregos didn’t kill him first. With Zamora gone, he realized that was a very distinct possibility.
They walked in a single-file line, each man giving the next room to swing his own blade should he find it necessary to hack a vine or push a troublesome spiderweb out of the way. One of Borregos’s men was in front, doing the lion’s share of the work, followed by the cartel leader himself. Nazif was next in line with another two Yemenis behind him. The bearded professor stayed with the bomb, which was now carried by two of Borregos’s men farther back in the line. He was the only one who seemed unafraid of the thing. Everyone else kept a little distance away from the simple footlocker, as if a few feet would save them when such a bomb went off. A Yemeni and two Colombians brought up the rear.
Strange and colorful birds flitted through the dark canopy of trees overhead, shrieking frightened warnings at the little parade. A troop of monkeys screamed from the shadows, pelting them with bits of wood. Here and there a snake coiled around a low-hanging branch like some sort of prop in an American horror film.
A cloud of mosquitoes buzzed around Nazif’s face. Sweat rolled down this back.
“Why do you not take the bomb for yourself?” the Yemeni suddenly asked, preferring to know his fate up front rather than fret over it. If Allah willed his death, there was nothing he could do about it.
Ahead, the Colombian used a long machete to hack his way through a dense stand of bamboo and tresses of hanging vines as thick as his wrist.
He stopped, turning to catch his breath.
“My mother used to read me the Bible when I was a child. I was particularly fond of the Old Testament because it contained wonderful stories of violent men.” His eyes gleamed with the memory. “Do you know of David and Saul?”
Nazif nodded. “Of course. The writings of Moses and David were once pure, but corrupted by men.”
“Ah, I see,” the Colombian said. “Well, they say Saul killed his thousands and David his ten thousands. Unlike Saul, I am happy with my thousands. I find the reputation of a narcotics dealer makes me less of a target for government manhunts than that of a terrorist.” He pointed the tip of his machete at the footlocker. A sinister smile crept slowly across his face. “Though I must admit, it does not displease me that you plan to use this to kill your ten thousands. Despair, after all, turns out to be very good for business.”
“Oh,” Nazif said. “There will be plenty of despair. I can assure you.”
Borregos turned and nodded at the lead man, who began to hack away at the wall of jungle before them. The lush rainforest had all but obliterated the vague trail, but thanks to the swinging machetes, they moved quickly, stepping over mossy deadfall and skirting stands of bamboo packed as tight as the bars of a prison.
The leader stopped abruptly by a moss-covered log. Resting on the jungle floor, it was even with the man’s waist. He stooped to study something on the ground. Bin Ali, the youngest of Nazif’s men at twenty-three, moved up the trail to investigate. His white shirt was stained as if he’d been wearing it for months. His machete hung limply at his side as he stooped in the green gloom to study the five-inch track of a jaguar pressed deep in the jungle floor beside a steaming pile of scat.
“Relax,” Borregos roared with a great belly laugh. “Jaguars rarely develop a taste for human flesh. On the other hand, there are dozens of venomous snakes and spiders that will kill you very dead.”
Branches snapped and groaned in the gloom behind them, causing the entire group to spin, searching their back trail.
“Probably a tapir,” Borregos chuckled. “Fleeing the scent of the cat.”
“Maybe.” Nazif nodded. Fear was contagious, especially when a bomb worth nearly a half a billion dollars was at stake. “Or perhaps someone is following us. We should pick up our speed.”
The Colombian scratched the back of his neck with the dull side of his machete, thinking. “Our load is heavy and the jungle is full of surprises to trip us up if we do not move carefully.” He pulled a length of twine from his pocket, then plucked a M67 hand grenade, green and roughly the size of a baseball, from a camouflage pouch on his belt. “We could go faster — or we could leave behind us a nasty surprise.”
CHAPTER 64
Quinn’s survival instructors had called it “Jungle Eye”—the ability to see the various details of the undergrowth and pick out a safe trail without being overwhelmed by the dense tangle of it all. It was much like the Magic Eye books Mattie liked so much. If he stared at it too hard, the way before melted into a glob of shadowed green.