Code of Honor

56

As if the concussion and broken wrist weren’t enough, Chavez and Adara ran afoul of Japanese giant hornets near the top of the mountain.

Completely absorbed with listening for anyone behind them, Adara grabbed the limb of a beech tree to haul herself upward, shaking it in the process. The gray paper nest was the size of a basketball and surely filled with hundreds of venomous insects. It didn’t move much, but it was enough to bring a half-dozen guard hornets out to investigate. They were huge, an inch in length, with angry yellow eyes — which Chavez had no time to see, but clearly imagined — and daggerlike stingers that injected a massive amount of a potent venom that attacked the nervous system of the victim.

Adara sidestepped away from the nest and sank to the ground in a ball, covering her head. Chavez, who hadn’t seen what was happening, thought they were under fire and wheeled to defend their six o’clock, earning himself a mind-numbing sting in the back of the neck. It felt as if someone had driven a red-hot nail into the base of his skull.

“Don’t move,” Adara hissed, stifling a scream as she, too, found herself on the receiving end of the quarter-inch stinger of the hornet that had names like “great sparrow bee,” “yak killer,” or “bee of the terrible stinging death.”

Chavez followed her example and made himself as small as possible, covering the spot on his neck where he’d been stung with the flat of his hand. He knew from experience with bees and more normal-sized wasps that they secreted a pheromone with each sting that signaled other wasps or bees to concentrate their attack on that same spot. Fewer than a dozen stings from these giant hornets could hospitalize a healthy man — and Chavez was far from healthy.

Adara was stung twice more before the hornets lost interest and returned to their nest. Chavez had personally seen her take a full-force kick to the groin without crying, but tears streamed down her cheeks when they were able to slink away. She had to work hard to keep from hyperventilating by the time they’d gone a hundred yards.

“If childbirth feels at all close to this,” she said, “then Mr. Caruso is shit outta luck…” Squinting, she used the back of her forearm to wipe the tears from her face. Chavez had been stung only once, but that was enough to understand how she felt. The venom had to be some kind of acid. If anything, the torturous pain was growing worse.

Chavez pointed upward with a none-too-steady hand. “We got an hour and a half to get to the rally point.”

“We’re going to need all of that,” Adara said, gasping. The hornets had tagged her twice under her right eye, and once in the V above her collarbone. More divots of missing flesh than sting welts, the angry red wounds looked remarkably like bullet holes. She’d taken a Benadryl from her pack, but her face and neck were swelling noticeably.

The jungle thinned some as they neared the top. Sunlight filtered through the canopy, dappling the ground. Chavez leaned against a sapling, checking it first for hornets’ nests. Sweat poured into his eyes. Bits of leaf and jungle litter flecked his face.

“I don’t know about you, but I’m counting on a hell of a lot of downhill on the other side.”

“Amen to that,” Adara said. She peered at him, swallowing hard, as if it was difficult to speak. “You think this is one of those times we’ll tell our kids about someday?”

“I do,” Chavez said, moving again, dragging himself toward the crest of the hill, less than a hundred feet away. “The little shits will love stories about how we got our ass kicked by bees.” He began to laugh, in spite of the situation. “Yeah, this is definitely one of those times. My head’s busted, I’ve got a break in my wing, and you look like somebody’s been stabbing you with a hot poker.”

Chavez fell silent. Who was he kidding? JP was busy with his own life. He wouldn’t be interested in the jungle tales of his old man.

Adara suddenly froze, her foot hovering in the air mid-step. Dread and terror washed over Chavez when he thought it might be another hornets’ nest. Then Adara drew the Smith & Wesson from her belt, pivoting slowly to her right.

The dark figure of a man came into focus, seeming to materialize out of the jungle duff. He carried what looked like a steel pipe. On closer examination, Chavez realized it was a homemade shotgun.

The man placed the weapon on the ground before raising both hands. He had the dark mahogany skin and broad nose of the Melanesians who inhabited Papua farther to the east. Coarse hair, naturally black, but bleached by the sun, stuck out in all directions from beneath a faded Coca-Cola baseball cap. An iridescent blue feather, more than a foot long, curled from the bill of the cap. He wore cotton shorts, stained from living in them for weeks or even months, and a holey T-shirt that matched his hat. A large silver cross hung from a braided string around his neck and a wicked-looking bone dagger was tied to his waist.

“Englich?” he asked, eyes wide.

Adara nodded. “You speak English?”

A nervous half-smile perked the man’s face. He had scars there, lots of scars that looked to be ceremonial. He put the flat of his right hand on the center of his chest. “Me’s Konner. Konner Toba.” He pointed at Adara, and for the first time, Chavez saw he was missing the pinkie and ring fingers of his left hand.

The people of western Papua, especially these islands, were predominately Ambonese and Chavez was surprised to see someone of Melanesian descent alone at the top of this mountain.

Adara put her left hand to her chest. The pistol was still in the other, though she pointed it at the ground.

“Adara,” she said.

Chavez introduced himself as Ding.

“Bad men,” Konner Toba said. “They is after you.”

“Yes,” Adara said.

“Me help you,” Konner said, tapping the dagger on his side, which, he explained, he’d made from his grandfather’s thighbone.

Adara pointed up, toward the crest of the hill. “How long to the water?”

Konner smiled, showing a mouthful of teeth, happy to be able to communicate. “Small stream over the hill,” he said. “Good water.”

Adara shook her head, spreading her hands wide apart. “I mean the ocean. The sea.”

“Ah,” Konner said. “You wanna go to da beach.”

“Yes,” Adara said. “To the beach.”

The man’s chin fell to his chest. “You got some medicines? My wife sick. She gots the debil in her. That’s why we run here. People in my billage, they say she is witch. Try kill her ’cause she got debil in her. I say all womin got debil, you know. I going to village down there ’cause she need medicine.” He brightened. “You help me, me help you go to beach.”

“What’s wrong with her?” Adara asked. “How is she sick?”

Konner shrugged. “She not pass water too easy,” he said. “She need medicine.”

It would have been easy to write off this guy as slow-witted, given his use of pidgin, but he spoke more English than Chavez spoke of any Papuan tribal language.

“I’m not sure, but it sounds like she might have a urinary tract infection,” Adara said to Ding. “Might even be her kidneys.” She turned toward Konner, patting her medic bag. “I have medicine that might help her, depending on what’s wrong. I can’t promise, though.”

“She screams a lot,” Konner said. “Make me sad. I been prayin’ the debil every day to help her out.”

Chavez nodded toward the silver cross on the man’s neck. “You mean you pray to God.”

“No,” Konner said matter-of-factly. “God love me already. I don’t gotta convince Him to help. Me prays to the debil so him change his mind and stop makin’ my wife sick.”

“Okay…” Chavez said, thinking his head hurt so bad that this made more sense than it should have. “We need to move.”

Konner cast around the hillside until he found a shrubby tree that was covered with white flowers. Chavez recognized it from a recent trip to Hawaii as plumeria or frangipani. The man broke off two of the succulent magnolia-like leaves at the base and held them up for Chavez and Adara. A droplet of white sap formed at the base of the stem where the leaves had been pulled away.

“Make sting feel better,” Konner said. He picked up the homemade shotgun, which was essentially a piece of plumbing pipe and a spring set into a roughed-out two-by-four. “You follow. Me show you the short road to the beach, you give medicine make my wife not scream so much.”

Adara leaned in closer to Chavez as they fell in behind the lanky Papuan and began to climb again uphill.

“This is amazing,” she whispered. “Is it wrong to hope that someday my granddaughter makes a dagger out of my thighbone?”

Chavez stifled a laugh, unwilling to put up with the pain. A few paces ahead, Konner Toba stopped in his tracks and turned to stare at the foliage behind them.

“Bad men close by,” he whispered. “We go beach now. Go fast.”