What the braves needed was a good set of walkie-talkies. Lacking that, Blaine would have to make do with what was available. He glanced at the tribal chief, still seated in the center of the valley, a small fire burning before him. McCracken smiled.
Thirty minutes later fourteen fires were going around the rim of the valley. Every three minutes the braves tending them would drop a special ash made from tree bark into the flames to produce a noxious white smoke. The white smoke would serve as the all’s-well signal to the spotters in the valley. A missed interval would spell trouble, and the tribe would know where to concentrate their forces.
Wareagle paced into the black hours of the morning. The jungle was louder then; animal and bird sounds seemed to travel farther in the darkness. Blaine approached him with the pump action propped on his shoulder. Johnny regarded the weapon with apparent disdain.
“Come on, Indian, whatever this Spirit of the Dead turns out to be, it’s not bulletproof.”
“But neither does it fear that bullets can stop it.”
McCracken sniffed the air. Maybe, just maybe, a new scent sifted through. The beginnings of something rancid and spoiled. He shook his imagination away.
“We’ve been through this before.”
“Not the hellfire, Blainey.”
“Why not? Guns didn’t always work against Charlie, either. Waving that big M-16 made you feel invincible until you stepped on a mine or a trap or got hit when one of them popped out of a tunnel.”
“The Black Hearts did what they had to. What we are facing here does what it likes.”
McCracken had to bring up what had forced its way into his mind. “You felt something else back where we found those boys, Indian. You didn’t say anything about it, but I could tell.”
Wareagle smiled. “Perhaps it is you the spirits have chosen to speak through this time.”
“I’d welcome anything that helps get us out of here alive, including the whole truth of what you know.”
“Feel, Blainey.”
“Same thing, Indian.”
Bursts of white smoke filled the air along the rim of the valley as another three-minute interval passed.
“The Spirit of the Dead enjoys what it does,” Wareagle told him softly. “It is propelled by a need to kill like an animal that will starve if it doesn’t hunt. The pain and suffering of its victims are its food.”
“Then we’d better find it before it finds us.”
“The daytime belongs to us.”
“So long as we make it through the night.”
McCracken half expected Wareagle to return from a sweep of the perimeter at dawn with a report that all the Tupi braves had been killed during the final three-minute interval. But the look on the big Indian’s face told him all was well.
“The night passed without incident,” he reported. “No sign of the Spirit of the Dead, Blainey, but evidence of the Green Coats was found to the south of us.”
“Norseman?”
“Still seven men, heavily weighed down by equipment and gear. They could have entered the valley at anytime, but chose not to, almost as if, as if…”
“As if what?”
“They saw the valley as a trap.”
“To catch what, Indian? Seems pretty obvious now they’re after the same thing we are. The question is why.”
“The answer may lie only in following the trail they have left us.”
For the better part of the morning, Johnny followed the trail the soldiers had taken from the north through the jungle. The sticky heat of the afternoon sun was just beginning to make itself felt when Johnny stopped and stood pole straight. Blaine could feel the Indian’s energy emanating outward like a strobe light, pins and needles dancing about his flesh and turning into daggers as they took to the air.
“What’s wrong, Johnny?”
No reply.
“Johnny?”
Silence.
“Johnny…”
Wareagle turned. “We’re close, Blainey. There’s something up there, beyond those trees.”
They started on again, Johnny moving like a big jungle cat. Where he walked, Blaine figured, there would be no trail, either. Johnny parted a huge thicket of overbrush and waited for Blaine to draw even. McCracken looked where Johnny was pointing and found himself gazing at the impossible.
There, in the thick of the jungle, was a massive building!
Just as quickly as his eyes had focused on the structure, it fluttered from his vision like a mirage in the desert, thanks to its sloping construction and shading. The lines and colors flowed perfectly with the jungle, as if construction had been carried out without disturbing a single tree or bush. Johnny led the way closer; a tall steel-link fence came into focus, camouflaged with brush that virtually swallowed it. None of this belonged here, yet here, undeniably, it was. Perhaps it held the answer to whatever was happening in the jungle.
McCracken looked at Wareagle. “What is this place, Indian?”
“I feel death, Blainey — more terrible than even you and I have experienced. We lived in the hellfire, and it lived in us. The land retained its life in spite of the death we brought to it. But what lies before us is nothing but black, a charred symbol on the crest of man.”
“You’re saying this is some kind of scientific installation?”
Wareagle looked at him. “The birthplace of the Spirit of the Dead.”
Blaine could feel Wareagle’s tension growing. “What’s wrong, Johnny?”
“No one is watching for us. There should be guards, but there are none anywhere.”
“If Norseman’s down here, he’s in charge. We’ll ask him about the oversight when we get the chance.”
Johnny stepped through the parted overbrush. “Walk lightly, Blainey. Follow my every step.”
McCracken did just that. They reached the steel fence; Johnny followed until he came to a gate. The lock was missing. The gate shifted slightly in the breeze. McCracken steadied his Remington pump.
They slid into a courtyard. On the uphill grade that led to the building, McCracken expected guards to lunge out at every turn. But Johnny’s stoic stance ahead of him proved no one was on patrol in the area.
The courtyard ended at a set of rock steps chiseled into the hillside. The structure itself had been painted a bland shade of olive and was totally absorbed by the tangle of flora growing about and partially enveloping it. Finding such a perfect spot must have been difficult.
At the installation’s main entrance, Blaine’s eyes were drawn immediately to the dual cameras mounted over the door. The cameras did not move as they should have to follow their progress. The big Indian worked the latch. It gave, but the door resisted opening. A hefty shove forced it in far enough for them to enter.
Halfway inside it became clear what had been blocking then-way. A guard’s body had been propped against the door. His dead hand still gripped a machine gun. Blood drenched his midsection and the floor beneath him.
“Dead about eighteen hours,” Blaine said after inspecting the body. “A day at the outside.”
“He died barring the door, Blainey.”
Blaine observed the trail of blood that ran down a dimly lit corridor. “But he was killed inside.”
“Let’s head on,” Johnny said.
They walked side by side. The first door they came to was a monitoring station that served as the broadcast point for the many video cameras placed inside and out. Beneath the darkened monitors lay the bodies of three men in the same olive uniforms as the guard. They weren’t armed, but had been killed in a similarly messy fashion. McCracken had the same feeling here that had struck him the day before when he and Johnny had come upon the bodies of the two Tupi boys. He backed out of the monitoring room ahead of Wareagle.