Burial Ground

I

Andes Mountains, Peru

October 27^th

10:39 a.m. PET

Merritt had passed the point of exhaustion long ago, and they'd only been on the move for five hours. Again he found himself asking what in the name of God he was doing here. He could have been back at his plane, preparing to head anywhere in the world he wanted to go. Instead, here he was, lugging nearly everything he owned in the pack on his back, while the ever-present cloud of mosquitoes made a human pincushion out of him. He had long since abandoned the worry of vector-borne diseases, and now feared he might not have enough blood in his body to simultaneously feed the humming masses and sustain his life. And the more he sweated with the exertion, the more insects he seemed to draw to him. His shirt was already drenched, and rivulets traced the line of his spine to his waistband and rolled down his legs. He could even smell himself over the stench of the rotting detritus. Worst of all was the claustrophobia caused by the low ceiling of branches that admitted precious little sunlight and airflow, and closed in from either side as though constricting. Ever since Afghanistan, the sensation of an impending panic attack was never far behind. His heart raced, his fingertips tingled, and he suddenly couldn't draw enough air. He had to pause to focus on regulating his heartbeat and breathing, and used the momentary respite to steal a glance back over his shoulder at the rest of the party.

The birdman, with the fancy net over his Panama Jack hat and head, appeared blissfully unaware as he continued to annoy Merritt from behind with his need to bludgeon them with his knowledge of every avian species they passed. The other men had fallen a dozen paces behind. They conversed in whispers, which only served to make Merritt nervous. It wasn't the subject of their conversation that worried him as much as the grim expressions on their faces. He was going to have to keep a closer eye on them. Sam remained toward the front, where she walked behind the birdman. She looked frustratingly comfortable in her tank top with her flannel shirt tied around her cargo shorts, and somehow had found the eye of the mosquito tornado. She neither swatted nor slapped, and had developed only a thin sheen of sweat on her brow.

The documentary crew chattered excitedly as they filmed everyone and everything. Merritt made sure to keep his back to them. He had thought the risk had ended when the caiman stole their camera, but he should have known they would have brought several in case of such an eventuality. They had to have nearly twenty-four hours of footage already, and must have catalogued every species of animal and tree they encountered. He tried to ignore them and, in turn, hoped they would return the favor. The last thing he wanted was for his face to appear on the silver screen.

Gearhardt's son's path had remained relatively clear at first; however the deeper they pressed into the jungle, the more the vines and branches encroached. Merritt was taking his turn swinging the machete, which had looked easy enough when the others were wielding it in the morning. The reality was entirely different. The weapon was far heavier than he had imagined, and the muscles required to slash it with enough force to part the sea of foliage weren't the kind he exercised on a regular basis. Both shoulders burned and his arms had begun to tremble. Maybe it was a guy thing, or perhaps the unwillingness to show weakness in front of the men who thought they had him by the short-and-curlies, but he wasn't about to be the one to call for a reprieve. So he continued to swing, refusing to think about his aching appendages, or about how few miles they had actually traveled, or about what the men in the rear were plotting.

With a ferocious hack, a mess of branches crashed down around his feet, and a flood of light flowed onto the path. After so long traveling in relative darkness, the sunlight was blinding. Merritt shielded his eyes and stepped warily into the clearing. It was a light gap, an area where one of the massive kapok trees had fallen and taken a cluster of smaller trees with it, allowing the sun to reach ground unaccustomed to its golden touch. The four-foot-wide trunk sprawled diagonally across the gap, pinning broken trunks and shrubs under limbs that sagged with dying leaves. Saplings that would otherwise have withered and died in the shadows now stood taller than Merritt. Scampering sounds raced away from their approach and a flock of birds, black against the sudden suffusion of light, took to wing.

The oppressive humidity relented for a few precious seconds as a gentle breeze reached the forest floor. Merritt enjoyed the sensation while his eyes adjusted before starting forward. With all of the abrupt changes at once, he didn't immediately notice the stench.

"Ugh," he groaned. "What the hell is that?"

"You mean was," Sam said. She slipped past him and approached the fallen tree. Some kind of film glistened on her forehead and cheeks.

Merritt caught up with her and had to ask, "What's all over your face?"

"A combination of ground up lemon verbena and pennyroyal leaves," she said. The tone in her voice suggested she thought the answer self-evident. He waited for her to elaborate, but she turned back to the tree and scaled the smooth bark.

"So you're going to make me ask, huh? Why did you smear plant sludge all over your face?"

"And arms and legs." He could tell she was enjoying this. "Isn't it obvious?"

"I guess not." He mounted the tree and crawled over behind her. Santos and Naldo scurried past him and dropped down into a cluster of ferns. "Enlighten me."

"Have you seen any mosquitoes on me?"

Merritt hopped down into the weeds. Something fast and green slithered away from his feet. A buzzing sound drew his attention to the far side of the clearing, where a black cloud roiled behind a gnarled ceiba trunk.

"So are you going to hook me up with some of that magic concoction of yours or what?"

"I already told you which flowers to look for. Verbena triphylla, lemon verbena, has lancet-shaped leaves with little purple and white flowers, and Mentha pulegium, pennyroyal, looks like a mint plant with columns of purple dandelion flowers. Surely even you can figure it out from there."

He grabbed her by the elbow and turned her around to face him. "Why are you riding me so hard? What did I ever do to you?"

"You called me a grave robber and attempted to tarnish the memory of a dear friend," she snapped. Her face flushed. "I'm one of the world's foremost experts on Chachapoya culture, and I've undoubtedly spent more time in the jungles of Peru than you. I've helped excavate two of the most fascinating and scientifically important ruins, which draw thousands of tourists every year and help stimulate the local economy. Every artifact I discovered at those sites is now displayed in the Chachapoya Museum in Leymebamba. Every single one of them. And you have the nerve to call me a grave robber?"

Merritt released her arm and took a step in reverse.

"I'm sorry," he said with a shrug. "I obviously misjudged you, but can you blame me? No sooner do I give the headdress to the Consulate than you guys show up with all your digging gear. Like you, I tend to get a little defensive when it comes to defiling the heritage of the people of this country."

A faint smile crossed her lips, but it vanished as quickly as it appeared.

It was a start.

"What do you say?" Merritt asked. "Can we start again from scratch?"

He proffered his hand. Her eyes met his. Even the touch of her skin and the weak reciprocal shake made his heart race. With a curt nod, she released his hand and turned back to where Santos and Naldo now stood, appraising the angry swarm of black flies.

Santos muttered something in Quechua as they approached. He kissed his fingertips and made the sign of the cross, then backed slowly away. He had paled considerably. Naldo aped the older man's movements and headed back toward the trail.

"Supay," he gasped, and nearly bowled right through Merritt in his hurry.

Merritt was unfamiliar with the word, but Sam wasn't.

"Demon," she translated. A crinkle formed in her forehead between her brows.

"What's that supposed to mean?" Merritt asked, but a moment later he had his answer. Were it not for the tufts of golden fur hanging from the branches of the ceiba and scattered through the ferns, the animal would have been unidentifiable. Broken and disarticulated bones littered the ground, the white calcium stained brown with blood. The flies fought for space on the vegetation, which was crusted with what looked like rust. With the exception of the knots of tendons on the ends of the long bones, there wasn't a single scrap of flesh to be seen. It looked like the animal had struck the ground at high velocity like a meteorite, spreading its remains in a shotgun-pattern that covered close to thirty feet, at the end of which were the shattered bones of the skull.

"What could have done this to a jaguar?" Sam asked.

"Probably poachers," the birdman said from behind them. "And this is all that's left after the scavengers were finished with the carcass." He stooped, plucked a feather from a clump of grasses, and studied it for a moment before he stuffed it into his backpack.

"I didn't see any even remotely fresh tracks," Merritt said. "Those vines we were hacking through would have taken weeks to obscure the path, and this mess can't be more than a couple days old."

"They could have come from another direction."

"Then they would have had to have been natives since we're thirty-some miles into the heart of the rainforest and that river is the only way in or out of this valley from the east. And I don't see natives being this careless or destructive. They would have carefully skinned the animal and utilized every inch of it, right down to the bones."

"And most native South American cultures revere, if not outright worship, the jaguar," Sam added.

"Well then, you tell me," the birdman said, puffing out his chest and focusing on Merritt. "With your vast knowledge of the animals of the Amazon and the cultures of the hidden tribes, what happened to this jaguar?"

Merritt crouched beside the broken remnants of the skull. Teeth surrounded the fragments of the mandible. A hairy black spider scuttled out of one of the eye sockets where it had funneled a web. He heard the crunch of footsteps as the rest of their group arrived. Brushing aside a cascade of fern fronds, he exposed the round cap of the animal's cranium.

"I have absolutely no idea," Merritt said. He held up the crown of bone. A ragged hole had been punched squarely through the middle, from which lightning-bolt factures radiated to the very edges. "But I can't imagine it was a pleasant way to die."