Alex Hunter – 03 – This Green Hell – Beck, Greig

PROLOGUE

 

 

t had travelled for a billion years.

 

Exploded from its cold, black world by a massive meteor strike and scattered in a spray of diamond-hard matter throughout the universe.

 

Different-sized fragments would arrive at different times; some many millions of years before others. Some were folded deep below the primordial earth; others perished under a toxic sunlight.

 

It didn’t matter. It had travelled for a billion years. It could wait a billion more.

 

* * * *

 

ONE

 

 

North-east Paraguay River, 1617

 

ather Juan de Castillo looked up from his journal, his eyes drawn once again to the small church being erected in the clearing. Only months ago the local Indians had cut the land from the jungle, and already the building’s foundations were laid. A deep and solid basement had been sunk into the black loamy soil and now the workers were dragging heavy stones into place from one of the few quarries on the banks of the Rio de Paraguay. At this rate the church would be finished in a matter of weeks — days even.

 

Father Castillo smiled as a small girl ran up to drop an exotic flower on his table, scampering off before he could thank her. She stopped at the edge of the clearing and stood on one leg just under an enormous fern frond, watching the young Jesuit with large chocolate-coloured eyes. The priest picked up the flower and twirled it between his thumb and forefinger – it looked like a large blue star with a triple stamen of the brightest vermilion.

 

‘Bello — beautiful,’ he said, loud enough so she’d hear.

 

He lifted the flower to his nose and recoiled with disgust; it smelled like rotting flesh. The girl giggled, clapped her stubby little brown fingers and disappeared into the deep green of the jungle behind her.

 

The Jesuit went back to his notes, describing the flower, its odour and characteristics, and then drawing the face of the girl, spending considerable time shading in her large dark eyes as best he could with his charcoals and ink. He used a sleeve to wipe his face, which was covered in insect bites. It was only mid-morning and already his body was slick with perspiration beneath the heavy black cloth of his robes.

 

He squinted through the rising morning steam to the clearing where his travelling companion, Father Alonso González, was on his knees polishing the huge bronze bell that awaited its home in a church tower that, so far, existed only in the Jesuits’ imaginations. Father González was in his sixties but still tall and vigorous, the only sign of his age visible in his thick, square beard, which had a swathe of grey at his jawline.

 

Castillo slid his eyes from the senior Jesuit to a small group of elderly men sitting half-hidden, in the shade. One sat like a stone and stared back at the him through rheumy, smoke-damaged eyes. If not for an occasional tic in his left eye, the shrunken, teak-brown body would have been invisible among the jungle’s dark shadows. It seemed that not all the Guarani Indians were happy to see the Jesuits — Nezu had arrived a few weeks back — a powerful medicine man from the upper Paraguay River. He locked eyes with the Jesuit and lifted a small gourd with the plumage of a dozen different colourful feathers tied to one end and shook it twice, making a rattling sound, before pointing it at Father Castillo.

 

‘And God bless you too,’ said Castillo softly. He closed his journal, put two fingers to his lips and then touched them to the ornate gilt crucifix pressed into the cover of the leather-bound book.

 

He looked up with a smile when he heard a small boy trying to speak in Spanish to his older friend.

 

‘Com . . . uhhh, como bello . . .flor de oro, padre!’

 

‘Si, una fior de oro gigante,’ Father González responded.

 

Castillo nodded; the boy was right: the bell the older Jesuit was polishing did look a bit like a flower — a giant golden flower waiting to bloom high in a holy tree, he thought.

 

He wrinkled his brow and turned his head slightly — there was a faint noise, a whistling, little more than a whisper, just audible above the sounds of the surrounding jungle.

 

‘Alia! Mire, padre! One of the children with Father González was pointing a small finger up at the sky.

 

Castillo craned his neck to see beyond the foliage that was shading his table. Cutting across the heavens were flaming orange streaks, like long lines of fire, all heading down towards the jungle. More appeared, until eventually they filled the entire sky.

 

The faint whistling had become a scream. The young Jesuit stood and walked a few paces out into the middle of the clearing; he placed one hand over his brow and squinted upwards. Children were laughing and hopping around him in excitement at the strange spectacle, but many of the adults were shouting in alarm, and mothers ran to gather their babies into their arms.

 

Castillo could hear the grating voice of Nezu as he rattled his gourd at the sky; he was yelling something about the fingers of Tau reaching down for them. The priest knew that Tau was the local people’s word for the Devil.

 

Just as Father Castillo was about to call out to his older colleague for advice, the gleaming bell rang with a loud, deep bong. Everyone froze and looked towards the golden dome.

 

Castillo was wondering how the bell could have tolled by itself when the high-pitched whistling ended and something thudded into the ground. Another crash came from one of the huts, a hole appearing in its roof. Seconds later, it burst into flames. A further object smashed into a tree trunk at the edge of the clearing.

 

‘It’s raining stones!’ Castillo yelled to Father González.

 

More whistling, this time at a volume that startled birds from the green maze all around them. He saw Father González look up at the noise — in time to catch one of the speeding projectiles in his left eye.

 

The old priest fell flat on his back, blood and jellied optical fluid spraying the children who stood nearby. Castillo ran to his friend, gagging as he saw smoke curling from the ragged hole in his face. Father González gasped in agony as steaming fluid pulsed out of the wound and oozed down his cheek; then, thankfully, he shuddered and lay still.

 

The fiery streaks across the sky seemed to evaporate, and the strange whistling ceased. All that remained was the sweet smell of burnt meat filling the air.

 

* * * *

 

Father Castillo sat next to his colleague, watching a girl fan the old man’s face with a large, broad leaf. The slow strokes were almost hypnotic in their pace and tenderness. It had been two weeks and, though Father González continued to draw ragged breaths, he hadn’t woken from his death-like sleep. His once-robust frame had fallen in on itself and his grey face and shrunken cheeks looked incongruous among the bright piles of sweet-smelling flowers heaped around him. The Indians replaced the blossoms daily, but Father Castillo knew they weren’t delivered just as a sign of respect for the old man. From his position next to the bed he could smell the strange odour coming from Father González’s open mouth — raw and rancid. It disgusted him.

 

He turned his head at the sound of breaking pottery. The Guarani had been sun-curing the hundreds of flat clay plates that would be used as roof tiles on the church. They were only days away from having a completed structure ready for furnishing and blessing. The massive stone altar had been carved and hauled into position, a task that had taken a full day. A previous block of granite sat discarded — a shallow face, perhaps of Jesu Christi had been started on the stone, but the block had proven far too hard and heavy for the stonemason’s tools so it had been abandoned. It would take nearly every man in the village to remove it. Other priorities now, he thought.

 

‘Padre …’

 

Castillo flinched as the girl touched his arm, then placed a pile of clean cloths and a bowl of water on the table beside the bed. It was time to change the dressing over the old priest’s eye. It was strange how he thought of González as an old man now — a few weeks ago he had seemed anything but — however, the damage to his head had seemed to absorb his life force and left him a foul smelling skeleton.

 

He carefully unwrapped the damp, discoloured bandage from around the patient’s head. In the noon light, Father González’s tight, grey skin looked almost reptilian. Up close, the vile odour wafting from his open lips was stomach-turning, even for a Jesuit who had endured more hardships than many men had seen in a dozen lifetimes. Father Castillo pulled back the old priest’s top lip — the gums were black and also seemed to be shrinking. His teeth looked strange…longer perhaps, and the tongue behind them lay like a fat, dead worm in the back of his mouth. He couldn’t help secretly wishing that the Lord would take González and free him from his rotting bonds.

 

He soaked one of the clean rags in the water and wiped away the sticky fluid that was still leaking from around González’s eye socket. The ruined eye seemed lumpy and uneven behind its closed lid. He gently bathed the mucus-smeared lashes, then reached with his thumb to pull back the lid to check for further infection. As he lifted the delicate skin, he felt a movement behind it. He leapt back, landing on his rump and sending the small clay water bowl flying. He grabbed for it, too late, and managed to cut the skin between his thumb and forefinger on the broken shards.

 

There was something in there. Something small and grey that had wriggled and shifted from the light as he lifted the eyelid. Perhaps some strange parasitic vermin had managed to worm its way into the wound. Bile rose in the young man’s throat.

 

After a few seconds he gathered himself and approached Father González again. His heart hammered and his hand shook as he lifted the eyelid once more, steeling himself to make a grab for whatever creature had invaded his mentor and friend. There was nothing. He leaned forward over the wound, peering closer; still nothing. Perhaps it had just been the light, or his fatigue and anxiety for the old man had made him see something that wasn’t there.

 

He was about to gently probe the empty socket for anything foreign in the wound when the old priest dragged in a large breath and slowly opened his other eye. Its once clear brown iris was now indistinct, as though a layer of slime had grown across it. The muddy orb fixed on Father Castillo, then on the bleeding cut on his hand. The nostrils in the cadaverous face flared as the older priest inhaled again, and his lips turned up slightly in a brush of a smile. Then the expression vanished and the eye closed again.

 

Father Castillo should have been elated at this sign of consciousness from his holy colleague. Instead, he felt a terrible coldness spread from his stomach through his entire body. He hadn’t recognised the man who had stared up at him.

 

* * * *

 

The church was finished, but there were no celebrations.

 

The previous night, all the animals in the village had been slaughtered. Their bodies had been found shredded, as though whatever had attacked them had rent them to pieces in search of their precious fluids. Some of the animals had been taken while tethered close to the villagers’ huts — yet no one had heard a thing. It worried Father Castillo that whatever had attacked the animals so viciously had crept silently among them while they slept — and was clever enough to untie knots.

 

When he went to check on Father González, he found the old man had colour in his face again and his cheeks seemed fuller than they had in weeks, which was amazing as he had been given nothing but water dripped into his open mouth.

 

Father Castillo peeled back the eyelid of the ruined eye, steeling himself as he remembered his last experience of cleaning the wound. It was a miracle: there was once again an eye in the socket. Still shrunken and a milky grey colour, but an eye nonetheless.

 

Father Castillo leaned closer and placed his hand on the old priest’s cheek but Father González didn’t wake. The younger man noticed the smell from his mouth had changed. Now it was rawly metallic and musky; and unsettling.

 

* * * *

 

Father Castillo felt he had aged a decade in the last few hours. They had woken to find they had been visited again in the night — but this time several children had been taken. The sleeping infants had been silently pulled from their mats and spirited away in the dark.

 

The villagers had been frightened following the killing of the animals, but now, with the children missing, their fear turned to panic and anger. The children had to be located quickly, and alive.

 

By mid-morning, a single child had been found wandering incoherent through the deep green maze of the jungle. The small boy had turned his red-veined eyes on Father Castillo’s black robes, screamed the Guarani word for devil, and sobbed until bloody tears ran down his face. Father Castillo did what he could but the child had lapsed into a deathly blankness and had never woken again.

 

Now, the young priest exhaled wearily and looked at the faces surrounding him. Not since he and Father González had first arrived had he seen such mistrust among the Guarani. And now there was something more in their eyes — fear . . . fear of him.

 

A dry rattling behind him caught his attention and he turned to see the medicine man, Nezu, shaking his gourd and pointing it at him, his creased lips moving in a chant and his eyes full of hatred. A small crowd had gathered, and this time they listened to his every word.

 

* * * *

 

Father Castillo decided to move Father González into the church. It was cooler within the stone structure, and far more secure. The tribe’s superstition was like a river that ran strongest just beneath the surface, and now that undercurrent was bubbling upwards in a surge of panic. It would not be long before it turned into savage action.

 

Father González groaned as he was carried across the clearing. Steam seemed to rise from his sweat-damp skin wherever the dappled sunlight touched it. Despite the way the old man’s body shivered, Father Castillo thought it looked fuller, more fleshed out.

 

The faces of the men carrying the stretcher were twisted in disgust. None of the Guarani wanted to be near the old priest, or even look at him. It was if they believed he was somehow responsible for the turning fortunes of the village.

 

Garbled words bubbled up from deep inside the man and Castillo leaned close to his lips to hear. ‘La estrella nos quema.’ Castillo frowned: the star burns us — the words didn’t make any sense.

 

The old man’s mouth hung open behind his damp beard and strange squeaks and half-words continued to tumble out.

 

‘What is it, Father? I am here.’

 

Castillo wiped the man’s brow and whispered a silent prayer when he felt how cold his flesh was. He held his hand over González’s face to shield him from the sunlight.

 

‘Nos libre . . . Nos alimente . . .’ Then more soft squeals and liquid-sounding moans.

 

Free us, feed us. Castillo was confused. ’Are you hungry, Father?’

 

Castillo grimaced as the man’s face blistered in the light and he tried to keep his hand over the steaming skin as his body writhed and squirmed.

 

The old Jesuit’s mouth closed with an audible clack, then slowly opened again like a trap being reset. More words came forth although his lips behind his beard did not seem to move. ‘La piel de este mundo debe estar abrirse para que seamos libres.’

 

Castillo turned away from the smell emanating from González’s mouth as he tried to decipher his meaning. This world’s skin must be opened for us to be free.

 

He shook his head. ‘I don’t understand, Father — we are free.’

 

The men placed the cot at the base of the massive stone altar and Castillo sat on the ground beside it. He should have been thanking God for the miracle that had restored the old priest, but now he wasn’t so sure it was God’s hand at work. González was almost glowing with vitality … which should have been impossible considering he had survived on nothing but water dripped between his flaking lips.

 

Father Castillo made the sign of the cross over his old friend, closed his eyes and said a silent prayer. As he opened them, a tear ran down his cheek. Placing one hand on the priest’s forehead, he said, ‘What is happening to you, Father? Is it really your soul still in there?’

 

* * * *

 

The screams ripped him from his sleep, leaving him disorientated with a pounding headache. Father Castillo sat silently in the dark, listening for a few seconds, feeling the perspiration running down his face as the night heat of the jungle steamed his skin. His fingers clutched at the damp bedding, hoping the sounds had just been a fever-dream — a dreadful remnant from his exhausted and overworked imagination.

 

A shout and the sound of running came from just outside his hut, and his hope that it had been a dream fell to pieces. He swung his legs out from under the clinging sheet and wiped his face with his hands. The clamour was now rising all over the camp, and he could hear only Guarani words — no one spoke Spanish anymore. In among the shouts of terror and confusion, he could make out that the remaining children had been taken — some from within the arms of their mothers. He went outside and tried to ask some of the Indians questions, but they shrugged him off or just hissed angrily at him.

 

The village fire was relit and flaming torches spread out quickly through the jungle, looking like flaming birds as they darted from tree to ground to fern and then flew on again.

 

Father Castillo saw the medicine man, Nezu, standing in the clearing. His was the only face that didn’t contain fear, anger or confusion; instead, he looked triumphant. It was clear he was blaming the Jesuits for the missing children. Castillo groaned as he noticed the harmless gourd in Nezu’s hand had been replaced by a war club — two feet of fire-hardened wood, sharpened on one side so it looked like a cross between an axe and a paddle.

 

Castillo grabbed a torch and headed quickly for the church. Pushing open the large wooden doors, he crossed himself, then walked to the centre of the solid stone room. He felt an immediate sense of dread: Father González was gone.

 

He held the torch higher and saw that the basement trapdoor was open. He crept lightly towards the black pit. Passing the altar, he snatched up the brass crucifix and clutched it to his chest as he stared down into the stygian darkness. A smell rose from the opening like nothing he had ever encountered before, ranging from sharply metallic to thickly corrupt. He shuddered and gripped the crucifix a little tighter.

 

‘Father González? Padre … are you down there?’

 

He crossed himself again, drew in a breath and straightened his back; he would be safe in the house of God. He leaned across and lit one of the lanterns beside the altar, then dropped his burning torch into the pit. Instead of the sound of it hitting dry packed earth at the base of the steps as he expected, it splashed thickly, as though falling into mud, then fizzled and went out.

 

‘Mierda !’ He cursed, then quickly crossed himself for profaning in a house of God.

 

‘Father González, are you hurt?’

 

He paused for a few seconds, looking up towards the altar and the face of the Saviour carved above it. He knew he didn’t have a choice.

 

He licked his lips and spoke softly into the mephitic darkness. ’I’m coming down, padre!

 

Father Castillo descended the rough stone steps on stiff legs, concentrating on his foot placement and breathing through his mouth so he wouldn’t have to taste the fetid air. It was a difficult descent as he refused to relinquish his grasp on the items he carried: in one hand he held up the brass crucifix; in the other, a shaking lantern, grasped so tightly his knuckles stood out like white knobs. He prayed softly, his lips moving rapidly with the words and also because of the trembling of his chin.

 

His first foot left the steps and he felt himself sink into a soft rubbery wetness that slid from under his feet and oozed up between his toes. He lowered the lantern and looked down; a sob escaped his lips as he beheld the ruination beneath him. He had stepped into a pile of ropy tendons, fat, tissue and fragments of bone.

 

He put the hand holding the crucifix across his mouth to stifle any sound, but still a combination of strangled gurgle and execration leaked out. He had found the missing children – or what was left of them. He was in a charnel house of humanity: all around him were strewn arms, legs, bodies with their skin rent from their bones, chewed or drained and discarded like leftovers from some mad demon’s banquet.

 

Among the mutilation, a small lifeless face stood out, its beautiful dark brown eyes still open – little jewels that had flashed with such gaiety and mischief when the child had given him the flower. That moment seemed a lifetime ago.

 

Above the sound of his frantically beating heart, Father Castillo heard a vile sucking coming from a darkened corner. He lifted the lantern. ‘Ay, Dios mio, Dios mio.’ Bile rose in his mouth and he fell to his knees, holding the cross to his forehead as he prayed with lips cold and wet from fear and the tears that streamed down his face.

 

A darker shadow loomed over him and he crushed his eyes shut as the crucifix was torn roughly from his fingers. In his head came a voice he recognised: We need you. He opened his eyes one last time and couldn’t hold back the shriek that burst from his lungs to bounce around the small stone-lined basement.

 

There was a deep grunt, the sound of something moist being roughly torn, and silence for a few seconds — then the vile sucking began again.

 

* * * *

 

TWO

 

 

Mining Base Camp, Paraguayan Northern Jungle; Present Day

 

imee Weir squinted up at the supply helicopters buzzing through the air like prehistoric dragonflies. From her pocket she pulled a damp handkerchief and used it to mop her brow and cheeks, wincing as the material passed over the rash of red lumps dotting her skin. The gallons of bug repellent that needed to be applied twenty-four hours a day were playing hell with her complexion. Great choice, she thought, either I get little itchy lumps from the poison I’m covering myself in, or Heave off the bug spray and get eaten alive resulting in big itchy lumps. Welcome to tropical paradise.

 

Truth was, she had lotion to apply to the rash, but couldn’t be bothered. Besides, who cared how she looked down here. She blew strands of her dark hair out of her blue eyes and leaned back against the doorframe. The distant clank and whirr of the drilling machinery had fallen quiet days ago, to be replaced by the living buzz and thrum of the jungle. Drilling had been shut down for forty-eight hours now, with the men refusing to travel out to the drill site because of the bandits that had been raiding the platform. At first, they had just stolen equipment, but then several workers had been shot and one killed. And just last week, explosives had been discovered on the rig itself.

 

But now the US cavalry had arrived: six Green Berets, each man twice as big as the local Paraguayans. They were preparing to leave the camp for the drill site, and Aimee watched them as they got their gear together. Each man wore black and green camouflage fatigues and a green flat cap pulled down on his head. The soldier leading them out had removed the sleeves from his uniform — either due to the heat, or to give an enormous pair of biceps more room to move. Aimee noticed a blue crucifix tattooed on one upper arm and a grinning devil’s head on the other. Covering all bases, she thought.

 

Bringing up the rear was their fireteam’s leader, Captain Michaels. He turned and gave her a thumbs-up. He had short dark hair and an easy smile, and, for a brief moment, in the right light, he reminded her of someone.

 

She kept her gaze flat and uninterested. Out of the side of her mouth she blew more hair up out of her eyes and ignored him, and he gave up with a shrug and turned back to his comrades. Aimee shook her head as if to clear away an annoying irritation; no more army guys for me, she thought.

 

* * * *

 

‘But why do I need to be down here?’

 

Aimee had the phone wedged between her shoulder and ear as she talked to Alfred Beadman, the elderly chairman of the company she worked for.

 

While she listened to his response, she picked up mud-stained pieces of clothing, rolled them into a ball and flung them into the corner of the small pre-built cabin, pulling a face at their dampness and smell. She hmm-hmmd every now and then, nodding as she listened to the avuncular chairman’s words before cutting him off when she caught sight of movement below one of her particularly soiled T-shirts.

 

‘Hang on, Alfred.’

 

She put the phone on speaker and placed it down on the small folding table, then lifted the T-shirt with the toe of her boot and bent to pick up an ugly brown bug the size of a matchbox that lurked underneath. It hissed and vibrated its abdomen as she held it between thumb and forefinger and she curled her lip in disgust as she opened the door and flung the heavy insect outside. She stuck out her tongue and blew a raspberry as it opened large translucent wings and fluttered away with a sound like a deck of cards being shuffled. She watched as it alighted on the trouser leg of one of the drill workers standing in the mud. Oops, Aimee mouthed and silently closed the door.

 

‘Aimee, are you there, my dear?’

 

Alfred’s cultivated baritone sprang from the phone, sounding way too civilised in the hot cramped room in the middle of the Paraguayan jungle.

 

‘I’m back, Alfred. Just had to see someone out…Yes, you’re right, the gas is in a very impure state and will need a lot of scrubbing, but I could have told them that from my lab at home if they’d just sent me a small sample.’

 

Beadman sighed with good humour. ‘My dear, your petro-biological arm of the company leads the field internationally. You came highly recommended to the Paraguayan energy minister and, well, who were we to refuse such an important request from a friendly neighbour? Believe me, America can do with all the friends it can get right now. You’re doing your country a great service, you know.’

 

Aimee pulled a face. She picked up a bottle of water, sipped and swallowed, and was about to respond when Alfred continued.

 

‘You know it’s exactly what you’ve been waiting for: a young gas — there could be viable bacterial DNA — it could be the key to your synthesis tests. A sample might have decomposed in transit. Much better to get it fresh, as it were.’

 

Aimee expelled a long breath and dropped into the clothing-covered chair beside the small table. Alfred was right. Most gases were created over millions to hundreds of millions of years, but this deposit was young and very dirty – it was perfect. It contained everything: mercury, butane, ground water and all sorts of other base impurities, which meant it wasn’t yet fully cooked. There could still be evidence of bacterial methanogenesis occurring – her holy grail for energy synthesis. Carbon-hungry bacteria in the rock digested the trace hydrocarbons, leaving behind pockets of natural gases. She had worked for years with older samples from the Powder River Basin in Wyoming and Antrim shale deposit in Michigan, but these had been mature samples. The bacteria had long degraded down to nothing more than gases themselves. For years, her company had proposed the idea that if they could extract viable DNA from these specialised bacteria they could actually bioengineer them to digest polymers and return clean natural gas. In effect, it would be possible to create a cheap fuel source from waste plastics. All she needed were some deep-rock samples from the gas pocket with living bacteria, or at least with identifiable DNA strands. So far, no one had ever found any living microorganisms or even any complete DNA strands — the methanogenesis process was still a mystery.

 

Aimee sighed and rubbed softly at a smudge on the table with her thumb. They had almost broken through into the subsurface chamber when the drill site had been closed down; and it still hadn’t reopened, even though it had been a week now since the Green Berets had headed off into the jungle to see off the bandits.

 

She stopped rubbing as she felt a tickling vibration run from the soles of her boots to her stomach. Aimee shook her head and got to her feet — another small tremor. More drilling complications she needed to worry about.

 

She kept the phone on speaker and carried it with her to the door. As she opened it, a thick wave of air that smelled like decomposing flowers washed into the cabin. She wrinkled her nose; it had rained again last night and the red mud throughout the camp was ankle deep in some places. A warm mist hung over the ground and everything that wriggled, jumped or crawled was heading towards the gathering of humans for a free meal. Aimee took a long swill of water, then pursed her lips and directed the stream at a small red and black snake that was slithering towards her across the muddy ground. It changed course under the bombardment and headed back towards the dense green jungle.

 

‘Aimee, I understand the drill site is not yet open and you’re all still confined to the camp. Am I correct?’

 

Alfred’s tone suggested that he already knew the answer.

 

‘Yep, Camp Boggy’s still home. By the way, did you know it’s the start of the rainy season down here? Or that we seem to be having ground tremors daily? Alfred, I knew the Nazca Plate was close, but never thought its movement might actually affect us. A week ago there was a 5.2 shock in Chile, and it broke a shitload of stuff even over here – we get one like that just a little bigger or closer, and the gas bed will be gone for good . . . So, hot, wet and shaky; you should really come for a visit, Alfred, you’d love it.’ Aimee paced in a small circle, before turning to stare back out the open doorway. ‘And no, before you ask, I don’t know where the GBs are — still out playing soldiers in the jungle, I guess.’

 

They ended the call but, despite Aimee’s light tone, she was concerned. She knew a little about Green Berets and they shouldn’t have had any trouble with a few South American mercenaries, no matter how well armed.

 

* * * *

 

Aimee’s camp was over a mile from the drilling site, and, like the drill-rig infrastructure, the pre-built cabins and tents, equipment and nearly one hundred men had all been choppered in. It was a large upfront investment but it cut set-up time by seventy-five per cent and also ensured there were no roads left behind to be reused by loggers or settlers. This way, when they finished, all that remained was a small scar and a pristine jungle — much better for public relations.

 

Aimee squelched across the muddy camp to the manager’s hut. The groups of men standing around stopped talking to watch her pass. Most of the workers had come from a scattering of local villages, with the mining and engineering specialists from the capital, Asunción.

 

She spotted Francisco Herrera, the camp doctor, and waved — he returned the salutation, looking impeccable in a linen suit and manicured silver goatee. She smiled back and stepped around another group of idle men. When the drilling stopped, the men got bored. The clearing for the camp wasn’t huge for the number of men on site, and was only slightly larger than half a dozen football fields. Its size, combined with the period between nightly rains becoming shorter, meant the time spent out in the open was shrinking. Beyond the camp, a hundred foot wall of the almost impenetrable jungle presented little alternative to days spent watching the sporting channels on satellite television, smoking cigarettes that smelled like burning underwear, or playing a card game whose rules, so it seemed to Aimee, appeared to change at every single hand. Some of the men had resisted the enforced idleness by hunting for fresh meat for their barbacoa. Now, none even bothered with that; it seemed all the animals had disappeared.

 

Aimee joined Alfraedo Desouza, the mining manager, and Francisco, for a satellite link-up with the Paraguayan government officials who had recommended the shutdown. They needed to discuss the impact of the delays and the potential risks of restarting the rigs.

 

The city bureaucrats were sympathetic at first, acknowledging that the mining company was spending millions of dollars on ‘sit-down money’, but it soon became clear that they had little intention of cooperating. They were co-funders of the venture and subject to public scrutiny, they said; they felt their hands were tied. At least until they had proof that their investment was safe and the bandits were out of the area.

 

Aimee could understand their position, but she was also bored and homesick. The sooner she could get a sample of deep rock and help the engineers clean up and compress their gas, the sooner she’d be going home. Besides, with a bunch of Green Berets patrolling the jungle, she figured they were safe. She decided to create a little political competitive tension over the satellite link . . .just to move things along.

 

‘What concerns me is that your neighbouring states know of your gas discovery,’ she said with a sigh. ‘The stratigraphic imaging of the vast underground chamber showed it resided completely on Paraguayan territory. However, its northern-most chamber is very close to the Bolivian border.’ She let the information hang for a moment in the air. ’Gentlemen, are you aware of the advancements in directional slant drilling? An amazing technique — it is now possible to drill for many miles at angles of up to ninety degrees. Be a real shame if you found your energy source of the future was being bled away from across the border while we sat on our hands down here.’

 

She grinned at Francisco, who nodded and raised his silver eyebrows at her. There was a muffled discussion on the other end of the phone, then Alfraedo cleared his throat.

 

‘Señors, there have been no attacks for days, no sign of any bandit activity in the area, and we have a team of American Green Berets patrolling the jungle. I think to wait any longer brings a risk of losing more than we gain. Don’t you agree?’

 

He sat back and folded his hands across his enormous belly. The unanimous decision to restart drilling was made within another three minutes.

 

* * * *

 

Aimee pulled on a pair of khaki pants, still stiff with traces of red mud up to the thighs, and tucked a grey T-shirt into them. Thick socks and damp work boots were next, the boots lacing over the pants and halfway up her calves to seal her off from anything that decided to hitch a ride. Last to go on was a belt with a black holster. Their small security contingent had machetes for the jungle, but only Alfraedo, Francisco and Aimee had sidearms. Aimee hoped Alfraedo never needed to reach for his in a hurry as it was almost fully obscured by the paunch that hung over it. For that matter she hoped he never had to reach for anything down there in a hurry. Errk, she thought briefly.

 

They set off just after eight in the morning, along a walking track the men had cleared through the jungle. Once outside the camp perimeter, Aimee was reminded why they didn’t bother bringing vehicles — the wetter it got, the deeper the mud. Eventually the trucks would sink to a point where they would need to be dug out. Best just to use leg power.

 

The small army of twenty riggers, half a dozen security men, manager, supervisors and Francisco and Aimee plodded along without speaking. The jungle was waking around them and the squelch of their footsteps seemed unnaturally loud in the dark green tunnel. As the sun rose, it lifted the moisture from every tree, bush and blade of grass, forming a thick, hot blanket that resettled over the jungle for the rest of the day. Aimee was breathing heavily and aching from knee to groin — the thick, viscous mud fought to steal their boots with every step. A single mile had never felt so draining, and when the rig superstructure came into view she almost whooped with delight.

 

The framework of the rig had been dropped into place by giant helicopters and pieced together on the ground. It stood like the skeleton of a blue and white ship in a sea of red mud, its hundred-foot mast the core of a metal framework over a central pipe that ended in a conventional rotary drill, that with all its spikes and knobs, it looked like a colossal insect’s feeding apparatus, ready to puncture the earth’s skin and suck out its blood.

 

Aimee sighed with relief as she stepped up out of the mud. She scraped what felt like pounds of the stuff from her boots against the steel grid platform that extended all around the machinery, then stamped her feet and stretched her back.

 

While the riggers set about checking the equipment in preparation for restarting the drilling, Alfraedo ordered the security team to make a sweep of the surrounding jungle—just to be sure there were no bandits waiting to place a bullet between someone’s shoulder blades. Aimee could tell by his relaxed manner that he wasn’t expecting any trouble; after all, it’d been quiet for days now

 

With a whine of the generators and a deep thump, the machinery restarted and the drill began its descent once again. Due to the depth at which they were drilling and the dense matrix they were encountering, speed of penetration had slowed to around a dozen feet per day. At the time they had been ordered to stop drilling, they were already a mile down and not far from their target depth. Their seismography readings had shown they were within a few dozen feet of the gas chamber. Unless they encountered any deep-mass obstruction, they should be into the gas pocket by the early evening. Once there, they would withdraw the penetration drill tip and replace it with a drill head dotted with unlockable perforations that would enable the gas to flow into the pipe.

 

Alfraedo had promised that the final penetration drill bit was to be brought to Aimee, untouched and uncontaminated, before the gas began to fully flow. She needed a sample of the rock from the inner skin of the chamber, away from its centre, or floor, where the more mature and heavier gases would have settled over the millennia. She knew that if she were to find a viable sample of living microorganisms, it would be in the thin crust at the roof of the cavern where, theoretically, methanogenesis would have last occurred. Or, if she was really lucky, was still occurring.

 

Aimee had set up her equipment under a sheet of canvas stretched between metal poles at the outer edge of the rig. A table and single chair completed her South American office. Soon, after weeks of advising, she would finally be hands-on. First, she would need to ascertain how much gas scrubbing was required to bring the natural product up to international standards, and then she would need to supervise the compaction work. The gas had to be compressed 600 times to a liquefied state for shipping — a process that was extremely dangerous, but necessary to get any sort of economy on cost of transportation.

 

‘I’ve got something for you, Dr Weir,’ said Francisco Herrera.

 

She hadn’t noticed him approaching and jumped at the sound of his voice. He bowed slightly and Aimee wondered how he managed to stay so spotless. She only had to walk twenty feet outside her door to have red mud splattered up to her knees and perspiration stains like a football player. She looked down: his boots were only slightly reddened by the mud; and his crisp white shirt was as dry as if he had been on a gentle stroll through a Boston park in springtime. Aimee, on the other hand, felt and looked a wreck.

 

From behind his back Francisco produced a cream-coloured woven fedora with dangling seedpods strung around its brim. He placed it on her head and touched the pods so they swung back and forth, creating a nearly impenetrable barrier for the insect hordes.

 

‘I hear it works for the Australians,’ he said, giving her a smile that wrinkled his perfect little silver moustache.

 

Aimee laughed. ‘I love it, and thank you.’

 

The elderly doctor, from the tiny town of Rosario, was the only person she really spent any time with in the camp. His olive skin was an indication of his local Indian heritage, and she had enjoyed hearing the stories he told her about his people and their culture. Despite their friendship, however, he just couldn’t help being inordinately formal all the time, to the extent of refusing to call her by her first name. But rather than making him seem stuffy, it just made him more likeable.

 

She flopped back down onto her chair, her arms flung out at her sides and exhaled slowly. She pulled off the hat and pushed more of her stray hair back under the brim before replacing it and looking up at him.

 

Francisco looked at her for a moment longer and then became serious, leaning forward as if about to tell her a secret. ‘Something troubles you, Ms Weir?’

 

‘It’s nothing. I’m tired and homesick, and thoughts of old friends keep whirling around in my head. Aimee gave him a crooked smile.

 

Francisco’s eyes twinkled. ‘Hmm, something tells me this friend is a man, and not so old, yes?’

 

Aimee’s eyes slid away from the small dapper man, and though she seemed to look out at the jungle her vision was focused on something a lot further away. ‘Yes, a man, and no, not so old.’

 

A yell from the edge of the jungle and the sound of sloshing feet brought Aimee’s head around quickly, causing the seed pods strung around her face to clack together. It was the security detail, yelling in rapid Spanish to the foreman and Francisco. Even from a hundred or so feet away from where she sat, she could see their faces were pale and their eyes were as wide as those of startled horses.

 

Francisco walked across the gantry to meet the men, holding up one hand to slow them down. Though Aimee had undertaken a crash course in basic Spanish before departing, all she could make out was something that sounded like jaguar muerto’. A dead jaguar? she thought. What’s the big deal? She got to her feet, and strained to hear more.

 

After a few minutes, Francisco returned and explained that the security detail had found something at the edge of the jungle that they believed might be the result of an attack by a jaguar.

 

‘It would be best if you stayed here for a while, Dr Weir. Just until we make sure the animal is not still in the vicinity.’

 

Francisco seemed slightly embarrassed to be so solicitous towards her, especially as Aimee was nearly half a head taller than most of the Paraguayan site workers and taller again than himself.

 

Aimee smiled and put a hand on his shoulder. ’Francisco, an old friend taught me how to shoot, throw a knife and a good punch. He also took me to places a lot more dangerous than a jungle with a few big pussycats hanging from trees. I’ll be fine, you’ll see. I may even be able to help.’

 

There’s that old friend again, she thought and couldn’t help a lurch deep inside as she recalled the times she had spent together with Alex Hunter. Even if they were over, the memories, and the skills he had taught her, would stay with her forever.

 

Francisco shrugged. ‘Somehow, I knew you would want to come. Just be aware that this area of the jungle is very dense and very dark. People rarely venture into its depths; for that reason it has been known for hundreds of years as La oscuridad verde . . . the Dark Green.’

 

Aimee pulled a comic spooky face. ‘I’m not afraid of the dark, so lead on.’

 

Her face grew serious again as she followed the small doctor off the platform and into the red mud. And believe me, I know dark. Despite the intense humidity, she shivered as she recalled the dangers she and Alex Hunter had faced deep under the ice of Antarctica.

 

Alfraedo’s security men led the way through the dense jungle to a clearing. Even before pushing through the last of the foliage, Aimee could hear the mad zum of millions of insects in the open area. The security men stood back to allow her, Francisco and Alfraedo to enter first — and she noticed none of them looked in a hurry to follow.

 

The clearing, little more than twenty feet across, was a riot of colour and movement: the ground crawled and the air seethed with an insect horde in a feeding frenzy.

 

Aimee almost gagged. What she smelled wasn’t just decomposition, it was also the smell of torn-apart bodies, viscera, urine and faeces. In the humidity of the jungle, odours got trapped and concentrated in small areas — like this clearing. She couldn’t just smell the stench; she almost tasted it.

 

‘Jesucristo!’ Francisco crossed himself, then turned to one of the men and spoke in hurried Spanish before pulling an immaculate handkerchief from his pocket and folding it over his nose and mouth. The man nodded and raced back along the trail.

 

In a few moments, he returned with a small chemical fire extinguisher and sent a freezing white cloud into the clearing. The insects disappeared instantly, even the scavengers on the ground heading for the cover of the underbrush.

 

With the insects gone, the raw carnage was laid out before them. To call it a massacre would imply some force had overcome these humans, beaten them into submission and then to death. But this went beyond anything one human could possibly inflict on another, Aimee thought; it was complete physical annihilation. The bodies had been obliterated in a mad frenzy.

 

Francisco was the first to step forward. As he did so, his boot squelched, not in the ever-present mud but in a carpet of shredded flesh and bone.

 

‘Dios Padre Todopoderoso — oh my.’

 

He looked around, obviously unsure of where to start — there was no single body left intact to examine. It was impossible to tell if there were two or ten bodies in the mess. Even the skulls had been cracked and opened, pieces of cranial bone thrown around like shards of broken pottery. Francisco used a stick to lift a lump of flesh, his eyes narrowing at the strange marks at its edges.

 

Whoever the men were, they had been armed. Aimee could see guns flung around the clearing; several were bent nearly in half. Her eyes traced a line of bullet holes up the trunk of a particularly broad tree — and stopped at a pale flap plastered against the wood about ten feet up from the ground. She frowned and stepped a little closer. It was a square piece of flesh, still streaked with blood, but intact, and showing a tattoo of a crude blue crucifix. Aimee felt acidic liquid rise at the back of her throat. She knew that tattoo — she had seen it on the bicep of the big Green Beret. She remembered the self-assured Captain Michaels and the almost cocky thumbs-up he had given her. Was he here too? Had he also been reduced to … this mess? She closed her eyes and held her breath for a moment.

 

When she opened them, Francisco was beside her. His eyes had found the scrap of skin in the tree too, and when he looked into her face again, Aimee could tell he was probably thinking the same thing she was. That fragment and its placement was no accident. It was . . . what? A warning, a trophy? She shuddered.

 

‘Could your Green Berets be this savage, Dr Weir?’

 

Aimee backed up a step as the insects started to descend once again. She shook her head. ‘No, Francisco, this is the Green Berets. And I don’t think any human being could inflict this…this insanity on another.’

 

Francisco looked back at the chaos, his pallor telling her that he was finally seeing it for what, and who, it was.

 

Together, they backed out of the clearing, the doctor’s eyes bulging slightly above the handkerchief that he held over his nose and mouth as a barricade against the returning swarms of insects. For the first time, Aimee noticed that his permanently immaculate trousers were stained red to the knees.

 

* * * *

 

The short trek back to the rig was made in silence. Aimee pushed her new hat to the back of her head so she could dab at the greasy perspiration on her forehead. The deep background thrum of machinery reminded her of the hurricane of insects that had boiled over the pile of flesh in the small clearing. She felt sick, and a long, long way from Connecticut.

 

Francisco appeared beside her and held a silver flask under her nose, the top already unscrewed. The peaty smell of whisky rose up and Aimee took the ornate little bottle from his hand with a whispered ‘Thank you’. She took two good gulps of the fiery liquid, feeling it burn a path down her throat to settle in her stomach with a warm, pleasant bloom.

 

She handed the flask back. ‘What could have done that to those men, Francisco? I don’t believe it was a jaguar.’

 

Francisco took a small sip of whisky himself and carefully screwed the crested lid back into place. He pursed his lips before responding, his perfectly trimmed silver moustache bunching at its centre.

 

‘I’ve never seen, or even heard of, such butchery, Dr Weir, and I also find it hard to believe sane men were responsible. Even brutal torture could not inflict such damage. I also do not think a jaguar was responsible.’ He paused. ’It is known that some of the drug dealers from the north keep tigers and bears as pets, and sometimes free them into the jungle when they tire of them. Even so, the creatures would have had to find their way through a lot of jungle; and besides, I think there was too much…anger in the attack for it to be an animal.’ He sighed and rubbed the silver lid of the flask with his thumb before holding it out to her again.

 

‘Will you send the men’s remains home?’Aimee asked after taking another sip.

 

He shook his head without looking at her. ’Impossible — little will remain in a day or so. The jungle is very good at cleaning up after itself.’

 

* * * *