So far, so good.
MacCready looked up and felt an instant rush of relief at the sight of the billowy, silk canopy. He checked the suspension lines. None of them appeared to be twisted.
Perfect. He pulled on his rucksack release tab and snapped into the prepare-to-land position.
But where the hell am I landing?
The opening shock had sent his body into a wide swinging arc, which made it difficult to get a good look at the ground. He’d hoped for a few seconds to scan for the village or better yet, the road, but the forest was rushing up even faster than he had expected.
Relax, he told himself. Don’t tense up. Don’t—
Before he could complete the thought, the giant was back, this time flinging him into the trees.
Can we try that again? MacCready thought, as he stared through the canopy and lengthening shadows at what was still a clear blue sky. But the only “aircraft” he would be seeing were mosquitoes, gnats, and pium flies. Richards and the C-47 were long gone.
He stood at the edge of a turgid brown stream, on a narrow tongue of silver sand—compass in one hand, and map in the other. MacCready looked at the map from four different angles, none of which provided him with the slightest information about his location.
Not far from Chapada, MacCready thought. Yeah, right. Make that miles away with two hours of sunlight left.
He used the compass and the last bright shafts of true afternoon daylight to estimate the direction to Chapada or at least the road that would supposedly lead him there. It was a frustrating task from where he stood, beneath a humid ceiling of greenery, next to a stream that no one had charted. Finally, he seemed satisfied, until he looked up from the compass to his projected path, across the stream.
“Shit,” MacCready muttered, as he waded into the murky water. It’s going to take some real thought and a whole lot of creativity to pay Hendry back for this one.
Slogging into swampy terrain, Mac tried to keep his mind from focusing too much on the impossibility of his mission. Just two weeks earlier he had been on leave, eating hot dogs at Nathan’s, and now he was deep in the Brazilian interior looking for a needle in a haystack—a group of Japs and Nazis who implausibly had submarined their way deep into the middle of nowhere, and whose unknown pursuits had to be a threat, in ways he and Hendry could not yet fathom. Mac hoped he would get some important clues from Bob Thorne and his native buddies. A happier thought. Bob is alive. That too seemed impossible—as impossible as his cabin mate Richard’s directions to Chapada. He checked his compass, tried out a colorful curse on the Texan, and charted a new course to hopefully bypass the mud. Maybe this route will be easier.
Two hours later, filthy, wet, and mumbling about “Conquistadors and gold-filled intestines,” MacCready pushed his way out of the dense undergrowth into a clearing. He felt like a moth that had just escaped a jam jar. He was also wondering if that young pan tuner in Trinidad needed an assistant.
Okay, everybody off, MacCready thought, certain in the knowledge that his hump through the dense brush had attracted a variety of bloodsuckers, from ticks to terrestrial leeches, each of them now swelling to hundreds of times their unfed body weight, gorging on his blood.
You guys should just drop off now and save yourselves some tr—
He froze.
At the center of the clearing lay an Indian village. There were four rectangular huts—each one a framework of poles draped with palm fronds. The huts were supported ten feet above the ground on wooden stilts. The surroundings looked fairly typical: There were pots and baskets scattered about and a rack that held several dried skins—capybara and coati, by the look of them.
“Avoid the village,” Richards had said. A little late for that, MacCready thought, but nevertheless he began to back quickly and stealthily out of the clearing. Get on the road.
Yet just as he was about to turn his back on the village, he stopped.
Something’s wrong.
MacCready scanned the area again.
No people. No dogs. No fire. No movement at all.
With my luck, the remnants of a Xavante raid. He drew his Colt .45 from its holster, then stepped out of the brush and into the open.
The silence was strange and unnerving. Even the insects were quiet.
“Bom dia,” he said, softly. “Hello.”
There was no reply.
The forest seemed to have crept in closer and the light was going fast.
He checked his watch. It’ll be pitch black in ten minutes, he thought. And that’s gonna be fun.