War From The Clouds Page 5

I got, up, ignoring the pain and weakness as much as was humanly possible — which wasn't much — and stumbled along for another two hundred yards, then started straight downhill. I was giving them a hell of a lot of jungle to search. I just hoped I didn't get lost in the process.

  Within an hour, I was lost, and didn't care. The pain was a steady rasping throughout all of me, no longer concentrated in my ankle and side. Weakness was also constant, and building with galloping speed. I could tell that my mind was flirting with delerium and I tried to keep clear thoughts, make clear decisions.

  But one trail looked like another. All streams seemed to be the same stream that I had already crossed, and re-crossed. All rocks in my path seemed like rocks I had fallen over miles back. I went on and on, up and down the hill. Sometimes, I rambled over high ranges where the trees were sparse and the going easy. Sometimes, I plunged down steep ravines and found myself in thick jungle where the going was all but impossible.

  I kept on, knowing that it was necessary to lose myself in order to lose the enemy. I knew also that I had to stop the bleeding in my side or I would simply phase myself out in that thick jungle. I stopped at a stream beside a mossy bank. I took off my shirt, with painful exactitude, and looked at the wound. It was ragged. The bullet must have been in the process of breaking up when it struck me. There were at least three punctures, one large and two small. Blood was streaming from each of them.

  I tore off a piece of my shirttail, having the presence of mind to make a small mental pun about tearing off a piece of tail, and gathered up some wet moss. I wrapped the moss in the fragment of shirt material and, using the tape that had held Wilhelmina in place, I stuck the soggy bandage against the wound and taped it into place.

  New pain shot through me, threatening to black me out. I took deep breaths and remember thinking how nice it would be to crawl inside that mossy bank and to go to sleep, only to awaken as a carefree and unhunted insect or worm. What sweet bliss that would be.

  Strangely, the memory of Elicia's farewell kiss was what brought a sense of reality to my mind. I remembered that dark night on the dirt road near her cousin's hut when she had stood on tiptoe to kiss me, sweetly, firmly. I hadn't been kissed in so innocent and pleasant a fashion since I was a teenager in high school. Perhaps my fond recollection of that kiss had something to do with the fact that Elicia, if she were in the United States, would be a relatively carefree teenager in high school. Instead, she was a peasant girl on this tormented island, open prey to the two-legged animals from another island, destined to grow old, abused, wornout and desolate by the time her teen years had barely gone by. My God, I thought, we Americans really have it soft.

  And then I mentally crossed out the "we." At the moment, I was one American who didn't qualify for the soft life.

  I moved on then, and the pain strangely abated in my side. My ankle continued to make its presence known, though, so the going was still difficult. By mid-afternoon, I had just about had it. My thoughts were weird and detached and I knew that I was getting delirious by leaps and bounds.

  I saw myself running naked on a Caribbean beach, pursued by a flock of naked beauties. Even as I was considering turning to face them, and my delicious fate, the image shattered and I was sliding down a mountain of hot lava, feeling my body actually being cooked by the intense heat. I went suddenly cold and aroused to find myself submerged in a cold, fast-running creek. The water was loosening the bandage over my wound and I crawled from the creek to dry myself on leaves and to re-apply the bandage.

  Hunger rose again in my stomach with a great rumbling. I couldn't be starving. It had been just over twenty four hours since I had eaten, but I had been burning up a lot of calories in that time. And losing a lot of blood.

  After an hour or so resting on the creek bank where I failed to build up energy, as hoped, I struck off up a worn path that led up over a slight rise. It wasn't a steep rise, but climbing it was like trying to scale the south wall of Mount Everest. I reached the top, saw that the path disappeared into a wooded ravine, and decided to go down and see where the path led.

  I took two steps, my ankle twisted on a rock and sent a searing pain through all my joints. I felt myself passing out and looked skyward for a point in reality. Nothing was real up there. Clouds floated in an azure sky, but they were no longer real to me. They could have been marshmallows in blue jello for all I knew.

  The sky suddenly began to race before my eyes. I didn't know that I was falling until I hit the ground and felt stones scraping my face and hands. I was sliding down into the ravine where, something in my demented mind told me, great nests of jungle snakes waited to devour me after filling me with their painful poison.

  * * *

  I awoke and was on my back. There was no cloud-filled blue sky above me. There was a network of vines, expertly thatched into a roof. Around me were walls of the same jungle material, showing the hand of man. To my left was a door, open, showing a small clearing and then green jungle beyond. It seemed to be dusk out there. Or dawn.

  The weakness was still with me, but my mind seemed to be functioning clearly. I couldn't feel any pain in my side or my ankle, yet I didn't feel as though I'd been drugged.

  The room formed by the thatched walls and roof was small, as though designed for keeping a man or an animal in captivity. It reminded me of a hut used in an African prison camp in which I once spent a few months before Hawk found me and rescued me. But it wasn't hot in this room, the way it had been in the African version.

  I started to sit up, to get my bearings a bit better. Something held me and I realized then that I was tied securely. My hands and arms were outspread and tied to stakes driven into the clay earth. Even my head was tied, with soft vines wrapped around it and attached to a stake somewhere behind me. Beneath my torso was a soft pallet of thatched jungle growth.

  Strangely, I felt no fear at being tied up in this small, low-ceilinged hut. It was the drugs that made me feel safe, the same drugs that had taken away my pain. But I didn't know that yet.

  In place of fear was the whimsical, almost comical, feeling that I was Gulliver reincarnated, that a jungle version of the Lilliputians had tied me in this small hut. I half expected to see tiny, six-inch Indians tippy-toeing into the hut to laugh at me, to point with triumph at the giant they had captured and tied with their little vines.

  My first impulse, then, was to call out, to find out if tiny creatures had really brought me here — and why. I thought better of it, knowing that small creatures like the Lilliputians existed only in literature and in the minds of demented people. Something large and real had done this to me. My last memories had been of scudding down a path into a ravine. Yet, I felt no pain in my face and hands that must have been abraded badly in that fall.

  Although natural fear didn't build in me — again because of the drugs — I did have a natural suspicion that no sane man, or no friend, would have brought me to this hut and staked me to the ground. Why I hadn't been killed, I didn't know. My mind began to conjure up all sorts of grisly plans my captor might have for me.

  I was once again toying with the idea of calling out, to get to the bottom of this mystery if only to satisfy my curiosity and get the atrocities over with, when a shadow fell across the open door. I heard a scuffling footstep outside.

  And then a huge, hulking figure appeared in the doorway. It was so tall that I could see only its legs. The figure knelt, and kept on kneeling. I guessed the man's height at around seven feet.

  He was staring at me from the open doorway. The light behind him kept me from seeing his face and clothes clearly. But it was obvious that he was a giant and, in that dim light of dusk (it was growing darker, so I knew it wasn't dawn), I could see his eyes sparkling and shiny.

  With a sharp drawing in of my breath, I remembered the description I'd been given of Don Carlos Italla. I could hear old Jorge Cortez's words as though he were in the hut with me:

  A giant of seven feet, a mountainous specimen of three hundred
pounds, eyes like ingots of burning phosphorus, hands that could shred stainless steel slabs. A fury of a monster with a booming voice like the rumble of thunder.

  In that moment I knew that Don Carlos Italla's men had found me in that ravine, had brought me here to this hut and staked me down. They had also drugged me to keep me docile.

  I knew this for a fact. But I felt no real fear. My only regret, as I peered back at the giant with the massive hands and red, sparkling eyes, was that I hadn't given in to my earlier urges to buy and operate a truck garden along a quiet highway in Ohio.

  Soon, there wouldn't be any quiet highways. And no Nick Carter either.

  Chapter Four

  "Good evening, Don Carlos," I said, trying to sound flip even though my heart was pounding with a renewal of fear. "Are you doing your own surgery these days?"

  The giant said nothing. He had something in his right hand, but I couldn't see what it was. Gun? Knife? Scalpel? He began to crawl into the hut, moving slowly toward me. The thing in his hand got scraped along the clay floor.

  Even before the giant reached me, I could smell the overpowering odor of him. It was body odor to the Nth Degree, and it filled the small hut to overflowing. Was Don Carlos Italla soap-shy, along with his other talents?

  "Eat, my friend," the giant said in excellent Spanish. "Eat and sleep again. Night comes and I do not talk at night."

  He said nothing more. The thing in his hand was a bowl. In the bowl were vegetables cooked in a kind of savory broth that was not from an animal. The giant fed me the gruel with his massive fingers, poking tidbits through my lips. I was too hungry to consider the fact that those hands probably hadn't been washed in a year. And the gruel was excellent. It was also drugged.

  In five minutes after eating, I was sound asleep again. When I awoke, sunlight had turned the clearing outside into a bright, shiny avenue. I could even make out flies and spiders on the walls and ceiling of the low hut.

  And the giant came again to kneel in the doorway and peer at me.

  It was not Don Carlos. I could see his face more clearly now and it was an old face, full of wrinkles, with a scraggly, undernourished beard. His eyes, though, seemed young and sparkled like agates. He also was not as big as I had thought last night. His bulk came mainly from several layers of coarse clothing that looked as though he might have woven the fabric himself.

  "Who are you?" I asked.

  "The question, Senor, is who are you? I found you on the trail, lying with your head in a bush and your body burning up with fever. I found nothing on you to say who you are."

  "Well, I'm hardly someone to be staked out like an animal," I said, jangling the vine ropes that still held my arms, legs and head.

  "There is no law," he said, "that says only the good and the friendly can be wounded and lost in the jungle. You could be one from the mountain. Your wound could have come from one of his enemies. Until I know who you are, you remain tied, as you say, like an animal."

  I began to breathe easier then. He was obviously referring to Alto Arete and Don Carlos. Just as obviously, he was an enemy of Don Carlos. Even more obvious, he was a highly educated and articulate man. His Spanish was of the academic class.

  I saw no reason to lie to this man. I told him who I was and described my mission to him. I told him about the Cortez family and how I had saved Elicia and Antonio, only to see Antonio's friends killed in an ambush while following my directions. The old man listened patiently, fixing his attention on each word, regarding me with those glowing eyes. The glow, however, seemed to become warmer as I talked. When I was finished, he remained in his crouch just inside the doorway. I hardly noticed the odor of his body now; I was becoming accustomed to it.

  "So I am not an enemy," I continued. "I need your help. The people of Nicarxa need your help. We have only six days to stop Don Carlos from virtually setting the country on fire."

  "Four days," he said. "You have slept for two days."

  "I was afraid of that," I said. "Why did you drug me?"

  He smiled through his wrinkles. "For the healing," he said. "I made a poultice of herbs for your wound, but you were thrashing about in your fever. You would have offset the good of the herbs. I gave you peyote to make your muscles calm themselves."

  I didn't ask him how he got the peyote into me when I was unconscious. I had seen Indians in other jungles use primitive bamboo needles to inject themselves with medicines and drugs. I didn't even want to think of the contraption this man might have used to inject peyote into my veins.

  "All right," I said, gazing from him to the vines tied to my wrists. "Will you help me? Do you trust me? Do you know that I'm a friend and not an enemy?"

  "I will help by keeping you tied for yet another day. If you move now, you will open the wound. Next time, you might die on the trail."

  I was starting to feel panicky. Two precious days had already slipped by. I had only four days to reach Alto Arete and stop Don Carlos. I needed time to organize Antonio and his remaining friends, enlist more loyal supporters and find a way through the impregnable defenses of Mount Toro and Alto Arete.

  "I must move around a little," I said, pleading with the old man, "or my whole body will become useless. If I promise to stay here with you, to get my body in shape gradually and leave tomorrow, will you untie me?"

  He considered the request, apparently saw the logic of it and leaned forward to untie the vines. I sat up slowly, feeling woozy and weak, fighting the dizziness that threatened consciousness. I sat there for a long time, pumping my arms and legs to restore circulation. One more day in that position and I wouldn't have been able to blink my eyes without making plans for it first.

  Outside the hut, I couldn't open my eyes to the brightness. I squinted and moved around the clearing, inspecting my new home'. We were near the top of a mountain, on a level plateau. The old man, whose name was Pico, had come to this place thirty years ago and had cleared away the trees and brush to make a home for himself, a home that could not be seen from above or below, and was accessible only by a narrow trail that he took pains to conceal each day with fresh brush.

  "I found you," he explained, "when I went to the bottom of my trail to gather bananas, coconuts, mangos and vegetables. Nothing edible grows at this height."

  We ate another bowl of gruel and I found in it pieces of coconut and mango. As with last night, it was delicious. As we ate, the old man told his story.

  He had been a professor of anthropology at Nicarxa University in his earlier years and had risen to the head of the department of Indian Culture, then had become involved in a plot to unseat a tyrannical leader. For his efforts, he was severely wounded, his family was killed and he was disgraced. He was also unemployed. He fled to the jungle and was captured by the Nincas who lived in the hills not too many miles from this clearing. He lived with the Indians for a time and became friendly with a young warrior who said he detested fighting and wanted to become a monk.

  "Our friendship was short-lived," the old man said. "My friend, whose name was Ancio, became more fanatic as the days went by. I heard from others that he and a group of his followers were involved in some kind of sacrificial rites on Mount Toro. No one lived on Alto Arete then. There was no trail to the top of that magnificent column of rock in those days. But Ancio and his followers had found an ancient cave and were using it to make sacrifices to this new gow they had found."

  "What were they using as sacrificial victims?" I asked. "Goats? Pigs? Sheep?"

  Old Pico's face darkened and he closed his eyes. "The rumors said that they were using children from the Ninca tribe. Their own tribe."

  The story didn't shock me because it didn't surprise me. History books are loaded with stories about human sacrifices, most of them children or young girls.

  "The story goes that Ancio and his friends would take the children to the cave and burn them there on an altar of stone," Pico went on, opening his eyes and letting them glow like embers at me. "I learned certain truths about this
when my own child was taken in the night."

  "I thought you said your family was wiped out in the revolution."

  He almost smiled. "My first family. When I lived with the Indians, I took a wife and she bore me a daughter. When the daughter was eleven years old, she disappeared. I asked Ancio about her and he said he knew nothing. I could tell by his eyes that he was lying. That was when I followed him and his friends and learned that he had indeed lied, and I came away a broken man. I had heard the rumors about him, about the sacrifices, but I had no proofs." He stopped, unable to go on.

  "And you found those proofs," I said.

  Ancio's head dropped, like a reluctant nod of assent. "The night I followed Ancio and his friends, they went up Mount Toro, along a difficult trail, and came to a deep place in the ground. I followed them down stone steps into a kind of well that had no water. I remember crawling then through a hole and coming out into a huge cavern deep inside the mountain. What I saw there has all but obliterated my memories of that night."

  "What was it you saw there?" I asked. I was sitting forward, my skin tingling as I anticipated the horror of his story.

  "It was over," he said. "There was nothing I could do. My daughter had been dead several days, yet they continued to ravage her lifeless body. As I watched, they poured oils over the bodies of several lifeless and ravaged young girls and set the torch…"

  He stopped, his eyes glowing readily. He closed his eyes. I waited, but there was nothing more to be said. After a brutal death, his eleven-year-old daughter had been sacrificed to Ancio's new and vicious god. She had been burned in that cavern. Ancio raised his head and opened his eyes. He went on, intoning like a ghost:

  "My fury was great, perhaps too great. A kind of shock overcame me. I crawled out of that cavern and went up the stone steps of the dry well. I rambled aimlessly on the trail through the whole long night. When daylight came, my fury was still great and so was my shock. It was then that I decided to leave the company of man. Before I left, though, I sought to close up that wicked cavern to prevent further sacrifices, further tortures of the innocent. I sought no revenge against Ancio. His god — or my god — would tend to Ancio's guilt and bring suitable punishment. But I did seek the cavern. I found nothing. In time, I came to this place and built my home. You are the first human I have spoken to in thirty years."