The last thing Ruiz wanted was to spend the night in this province with a naive American and a crew full of street thugs. They might not even be in Brazil anymore. They were far beyond the reach of civilization, and Ruiz knew that besides the wildlife there were other dangers that lurked in the jungle. Harrison was looking for a legendary white tribe, but Ruiz knew for a fact there were other lost tribes of headhunters and cannibals in this part of the world.
“The river will turn into a stream soon,” Ruiz said. “The land will go up. There will be rapids. We must go back.”
Harrison stared ahead. “I feel we are on the right path.”
“It will be dark in a few hours,” Ruiz said. “We should go back.”
“We go forward as far as we can,” Harrison said. He took the map. He slid his finger from the location Ruiz had them plotted to the west. “I think the Aymara are here somewhere.”
Ruiz bit the inside of his lip but he said nothing, letting the purring of the two engines be answer enough as the boat continued upstream.
A half hour later, they turned a corner in the stream and the helmsman cut the engines. Ruiz reacted instinctively to the tangle of fallen trees that blocked the stream ahead, pulling his pistol out. He knelt behind the small wall, pointing his weapon ahead, searching for the ambush he expected to leap out of the foliage all around as he yelled for the men on the deck to be ready.
Nervous eyes scanned the jungle all around them, waiting for the darts and arrows of the headhunters to come flicking out. But nothing happened.
Harrison was kneeling next to him. “What do you think?”
If there were any headhunters about, there was no doubt in Ruiz’s mind that the boat’s presence had long been detected and whispering was not needed, but he played along. “I do not know, senor.” He peered at the trees. They’d been hacked down and pulled across the stream. Beyond he could see some smoke, maybe from a cooking fire. There was a small patch of thatched roof visible above the fallen trees. “There is a village there.”
“An Aymara village?” Harrison asked.
This was headhunter territory, and Ruiz doubted it would be the Aymara. “I do not know.”
“Can we get through the trees?” Harrison asked.
Ruiz took a deep breath. The stream had been blocked for a reason. Any fool could see that. “I will look, senor.”
He stood and signaled for a couple of men to accompany him. He walked up to the front of the boat, then looked down. The water below was dark brown. He knew from the sounding it was about four feet deep. Ruiz slid over the side of the boat, the warm water embracing him.
The two men he had chosen looked nervous, and he didn’t blame them. Death was all around them in the form of the jungle. The bottom under his feet was muddy. Ruiz pushed forward, holding his pistol above the water, as did the other two men.
They reached the block. Ruiz climbed up the tangled limbs and looked. A small village of about ten or twelve huts was in a clearing on the gentle bank that led down to the stream. There was no one moving about. A pile of smoldering logs on the right side of the village was the source of the smoke. There were also the remains of several huts that had been burned to the ground.
Ruiz frowned. The stream was also blocked on the far side of the village. What had the villagers wanted to stop? And where were they? Who had destroyed the huts?
He signaled for the two men to follow. He climbed along the logs until he was on the same shore as the village. He pushed through the undergrowth until he reached the clearing. Then he caught a scent in the air and stopped in midstep. He didn’t recognize the smell, but it was terrible. He continued on.
Reaching the village, Ruiz first looked more closely at the pile of logs. He gagged as he now saw the cause of the awful smell. They weren’t wood. They were bodies, piled four deep, smoldering.
He heard the two thugs begin praying to the Virgin Mother, and he felt like joining them. Ruiz went to the first hut and used the muzzle of his pistol to push aside the cloth that hung in the doorway. The stench that greeted his nostrils there was even worse than that of the burning flesh. The walls were spattered with blood. There was a body on the floor.
Ruiz had seen many bodies in his time, but this one did not look as if it had been killed by an explosion. However, that was the only thing he could think of that would cause the mangled flesh and the amount of blood splattered all around the interior.
Ruiz moved to the next hut, but paused as he heard Harrison’s voice. “What is going on, Ruiz?”
“I do not know, senor.” He looked back. Harrison was on the shore, walking toward him.
Harrison wrinkled his nose. “What is that stink?”
Ruiz pointed. “Bodies. Burning.”
The American’s eyes narrowed. “What has happened here?”
Ruiz felt fear now, an icy trickle running down his spine and curling into his stomach. He cared nothing for legends right now. He pulled aside the curtain to the next hut.
A family lay huddled together. All dead. Covered in a layer of blood. Ruiz forced himself to stare and take notice. Blood had poured out of all of them. From their eyeballs, their nostrils, ears, mouth, every opening. Skin that wasn’t covered in blood had angry black welts crisscrossing it with open pustules.
Ruiz finally turned away. Harrison was staring. Ruiz grabbed his arm. “We must go, senor! Now!”
“We must look for survivors,” Harrison said.
Ruiz shook his head. “There are none.”
“We must check all the huts.”
Ruiz frowned. “All right. I will do it. Go back to the boat. We must go downriver as soon as I get back.”
Ruiz quickly ran to the next hut. It was empty. The next four held bodies, or what had once been bodies but were now just masses of rotting flesh and blood. In the next-to-last hut there was a person lying on the floor. A young woman. She turned her head as Ruiz opened the curtain. Her eyes were wide and red, a trickle of blood rolling like tears down her cheeks. Her skin was covered with black welts.
“Please!” she rasped. “Help me.”
Ruiz stepped in, every nerve in his body screaming for him to run away. He knelt next to the woman. Her face was swollen and her breathing was coming in labored gasps. From the smell, there was no doubt she was lying in her own feces.
Suddenly the woman’s hands darted forward and she grabbed the collar of Ruiz’s shirt. With amazing strength she half pulled herself off the fouled mat, toward Ruiz’s face. Her mouth opened as if she were going to speak, but a tide of black-red matter exploded out of her mouth into Ruiz’s face and chest. He screamed and slammed his arms up, but couldn’t break her grip. Struggling to his feet, he moved backward to the door, but the woman was still attached to him.
He jammed the muzzle of his pistol into her stomach and pulled the trigger until no more rounds fired. The bullets literally tore the woman in half, but even in death her hands held on. Ruiz threw his gun out the door, then pulled his bloodied shirt up and over his head and left it there, clutched in her dead fingers.
He staggered out into the clearing river, heading toward the block and the boat. “We must go back!” Ruiz screamed in the direction of the boat as he wiped at the blood and vomit on face. “We must go back!”
CHAPTER 4
Yakov was seated on a stone block, his flashlight wedged between his large feet, pointing straight ahead. He had a camera in his hands and he shot several pictures of the flat stone set into the wall in front of him. Satisfied, he put the camera away. Then he pulled out a notebook and a pad of paper.
The notebook held copies of high rune symbols — the language of the Airlia — and the translation of those symbols, at least those Section IV had been able to make over the last fifty years, which was to say less than 25 percent of those they had found.