“But Pat—”
“And that’s an order. I’m sending you back with the first convoy to Cuiabá,” Hendry announced. “You need a break.”
“Pat, you don’t understand. I’ve got to go up there.”
“No, you don’t understand. If any of these assholes survived, and if they’ve gotten back to that cave—let ’em blow it and God bless ’em. You are not going up there alone.”
“But what about an antidote, and what if they’re trying to capture another one?”
Hendry held up his hand. “Hold the bullshit, Mac. I can read German just as well as you. Wolff’s entire plan was to get those rockets away and to make sure nobody on this side of the Pond ever got access to those microbes again. Ever!”
MacCready knew his friend’s argument made perfect sense, and yet he had to go back.
Everything was turning upside down in MacCready’s head. It seemed that the voices of his mother and little sister had already decided his course. Last time, he hadn’t been around to prevent the deaths of an innocent mother and child. There was no choice in the matter. This time, without taking pause to question the sanity of his decision, Mac would do everything in his power to prevent the extinction of the innocent. In his mind, Amelia, Brigitte, and the draculae were becoming hopelessly entangled.
And why do I want to go back there?
The elders who drove Yanni into the forest years before could have answered him. “Once the chupacabra have been allowed to live inside your skull, you are never the same again.”
Bob and Yanni Thorne watched a commotion begin near one of the spare rocket engines, while nearby a group of Hendry’s men had mounted what was left of the monorail track and were taking measurements.
“Ants,” Thorne said. “Just like ants.” And in his scientist’s mind there was no doubt now, that a new day, a new era had begun. “I am seeing the world to come, Yanni. And it ain’t pretty.”
“And speaking of ain’t pretty.” Yanni gestured toward MacCready, who was striding toward them at a brisk clip.
“So on a scale of one to ten, how much shit is he bringing this time?”
“Thirteen?” Yanni said.
Once Mac laid out the plan, Thorne realized that Yanni had underestimated. “You want to go where?” he said. “Well, this time you’ve gone too far. And we are not going with you. In fact, I may rat out your plan to Hendry, just to keep your ass off that plateau.”
“No, Bob, you will not tell Hendry,” Yanni countered quickly. “And you are not going. I am.”
Thorne looked like someone who had been punched in the stomach. “But—”
“We belong to the chupacabra, Mac. And we will save them,” Yanni said.
Bob was suddenly agitated. “What’s with this ‘we belong’ shit? Who belongs to what chupacabra?”
MacCready, who was no less dumbfounded than Thorne, paused for a moment. Although her statement seemed as distant from all prior reality as space-planes and sentient vampire bats, he knew she was right. Deeply intrusive and frightful, there was an intensely personal quality about the song of the draculae. Once received, one was apt to obsess.
“Then I am going, too,” Thorne announced. “It’s settled.”
“Well,” Mac said, “Hendry did order me not to go up there alone.”
His friend managed a laugh. “So it seems that now you are only following orders.”
MacCready knew that if any of Wolff’s men had survived to tie up loose ends, now that the rockets were away, they had at least a full day’s lead. So, to shave off several hours, Mac led Bob and Yanni up the same path he had taken during his escape from the draculae lair.
The first thing MacCready discovered as they stood atop the forest-capped Mato Grosso Plateau was that he’d been correct about the source of the winds in the caverns below. It’s as if the plateau itself is breathing.
He encountered the first fissure by accident. A downward gust nearly sucked a map from his hands, even before he saw the deep slash in the ground. The fig trees around its edge had been deformed by the downdraft; trunks leaning into the crevice, while roots clawed in the opposite direction, seeking to anchor the plants against the tug from below.
The second thing MacCready discovered was that Wolff and his mapmakers had done their homework. Underfoot, the tabletop formation was cobwebbed with vertical fissures. The map led him to a second crevice, and in what appeared to be just the right place, someone had planted an explosive device.
“Shit, I knew it. It’s a fucking shaped charge.”
“Which is?” Thorne asked.
“It’s designed to channel explosive energy in one direction. So that even a small blast can have a big effect.”
“And what direction is this so-called shaped charge pointing?”
MacCready pointed downward. “We’re standing on a diamond.”