Payback

62

Dean and Karr traveled downriver to a village where an international drilling company had set up a base camp. There they “borrowed” a larger boat, a rigid-hulled inflatable with a conventional engine. The engine propelled the little boat at a healthy clip. Dean sat in the bow, keeping an eye out for logs and shallow drafts. About two miles after setting out, they came to an area of rapids; the boat tipped slightly as they wormed through, but they made it past intact.

“That was a pretty wild ride,” yelled Karr. “There’s more about two miles ahead. Keep bird-dogging for me.”

Dean leaned forward against the gunwale, staring into the darkness. He spotted a thick log ahead, lurking like an alligator in the shadows. Karr made it around it, but as he steered back toward the channel, the river dropped through a jagged set of rock outcroppings.

“Left,” shouted Dean as the shadows metamorphosed into rocks. “Left!”

The next thing he knew he was flying over the gunwale as the boat pitched wildly beneath him. He managed to get his right hand hooked into the rope that ran along the top of the side of the hull; he hung about two-thirds out of the boat, water furling over him as the boat charged through the obstacle course, dragged along by the current despite Karr’s efforts to stop it. As he struggled to get his feet back in, the boat struck something and Dean found himself underwater. Waves twisted around him and the current grabbed him again, pulling him downstream into a pool of calmer water.

Karr bobbed to the surface nearby, cursing a red streak to heaven.

“I just lost it. I just lost it,” Karr complained. “You OK, Charlie?”

“Yeah, I’m OK.”

“I can’t believe I lost it.”

They struggled to shore. Dean lay on his stomach, coughing the water from his lungs.

“Stay here. I’m going to try and get our gear,” said Karr.

“Tommy, wait—”

“No, it’s all right. My mistake; I’ll fix it.”

Dean turned himself around and sat, still trying to gather his senses. He reached into his pockets and began inventorying what he had, but his mind seemed to be working in a different dimension and he handled the objects two or three times before their identities registered. He found his small flashlight and turned it on just as Karr lumbered up the shoreline to his left.

“Boat’s tangled in some branches downstream, in one piece. Motor snapped off,” said Karr. He dropped a pack at Dean’s feet. “Stinking A2s are gone. They’re supposed to be waterproof. I’d really like to see if that’s true. But I can’t find them.”

Dean, still in something of a daze, reached to make sure his pistols were strapped in his holsters.

“Your communications system working?” Karr asked.

Dean reached to the back of his belt and felt for the switch. It had turned off in the tumult.

“Charlie?” asked Rockman.

“I’m here.”

“You guys OK?”

“We just went for a swim,” said Karr, joining in. “We were getting bored.”

Dean’s legs had been battered by the rocks, and they ached as if he’d just run two marathons back-to-back. But otherwise he seemed intact.

“You all right?” Dean asked Karr.

“Yeah. I keep telling you: I’m still numb from all those painkillers they gave me in France. I figure I won’t feel anything for another year yet. You feel like walking?”

“No,” said Dean, opening the pack. “But it beats standing here.”

“Or swimming.”

Dean traded his sodden boots for a pair of dry walking shoes. After two miles through the rough terrain his ankles began to ache so badly he took some aspirin from the small first-aid kit in the pack.

Following directions from the Art Room, they headed toward a nearby village used by an ecotourist company as a jumping-off point for tours through the local jungle. They arrived about an hour before dawn and waited on a bench near the water for something to open. Small, modem wood buildings dotted the main area of the settlement, muscling out huts that seemed to have been left standing for atmosphere. There were signs in English as well as Spanish advertising everything from “native” handcrafts to AAA batteries and shaving gear. Karr joked that the handcrafts probably came from China; since they included coffee mugs and T-shirts, he might not have been far off.

Dean sat on a bench, resting his legs while Karr went to explore. Barely five minutes later, Karr returned with a ceramic mug filled with coffee.

“No Styrofoam,” said Karr, handing the cup to him gingerly. “Watch this stuff — it’ll burn holes in your throat going down.”

The smell alone was enough to wake the dead. Dean took a small sip and felt his sinuses loosening up.

“We can catch a ride in a half hour over to Iquitos,” said Karr. “Have the Art Room arrange a room for us there. We can use a generic cover as adventurers.”

“That’ll fool them,” said Dean sarcastically.

“No one there we have to fool,” said Karr. “And we won’t be there long anyway.”

“I’d like to get some sleep,” admitted Dean. “About twenty-four hours’ worth.”

“Yeah.”

Dean could tell from Karr’s answer that sleep was unlikely anytime soon. There were alternatives stronger than the coffee — the Deep Black ops had specially formulated “go” pills, supposedly high-tech stimulants that were non-addictive and had no adverse side effects. Dean didn’t trust them; he’d heard the same sort of bull in Vietnam and later in the first Gulf War. Anything artificial always came back to bite you somehow. At least the coffee was predictable.

“There’s a place we can wash up a bit,” Karr told him. “They even have these vending machines with little shaving kits in them. When we’re done we have to head over to what they call the south dock. It’s about a quarter mile from here.”

“Where are we meeting Lia?” asked Dean.

“In Nevas,” said Karr. “She should be there this afternoon. We’ll have to get an airplane or at least a boat — it’s pretty far from Iquitos.”

“She shouldn’t do the switch without backup.”

“I’m not saying she should, Charlie. Let’s go get a shave, all right? My chin gets cranky if I don’t shave off the peach fuzz every forty-eight hours or so.”