On the same morning MacCready and Bob Thorne examined dead animals, pasted into drying pools of their own blood, Voorhees had watched the bright glow of his latest test sled rapidly diminish, then vanish into the mist. Proper flight test analysis required that the rocket sled, despite being designed as a throwaway booster stage, had to be brought back for study. Recovery would have been a simple affair if only Voorhees had been permitted to attach a radio transponder to the sled. But more than a year’s work had gone into planning and preparing the base for the arrival of the two space-planes. And even without the greater chance of discovery arising from the grounding of the Demeter, the base commander had insisted that the fog-shrouded compound remain radio silent. Because of this, more primitive methods were required for the search and recovery: A team of four would locate the sled and helicopter it back to base for a final examination.
It had gone like clockwork the first time around. The recovery team for the earlier test rocket launch had located the sled’s landing spot in less than a day, sending back a runner to report that it was being prepared for airlift. Hanna Reitsch flew Dragon I four kilometers north to the spot indicated on the runner’s map—zeroing in on a tethered red balloon that suddenly appeared through the fog as she hovered. Reitsch lowered the helicopter’s payload cable, the terminal end of which had been modified with a set of heavy-duty straps. Minutes later, when the female pilot took her craft higher, Voorhees’s rocket sled came with her.
Although examination of the sled led to slight design modifications, in concept the intricate launch vehicle worked perfectly. Despite the purpose to which he knew this great new science was being applied, Voorhees was able to draw some small consolation from the knowledge that the door to space had been kicked wide open. For a fleeting moment he had wanted to shout about it, but he knew that there were people around him who did not want to hear of such dreams.
Now, though, the nightmares were taking over.
After the next sled test, things did not go according to plan. Two days passed without word from the recovery team, then two more, then a week. It was as if the forest had simply reached out and snatched them. Three nights ago, two more men had gone out in search of cameras from one of S?nger’s stage separation tests. They were two days overdue when a local tribesman found their bodies—drained of blood.
“Phantoms.” That’s what the German and Japanese crew members began calling the unseen enemies that had descended upon their men. The native workers had their own name for the attackers: chupacabra.
“Phantoms” or chupacabra—the names made no difference. The Axis workers were becoming as downcast as the locals. First, the river had reached out and wrecked the Demeter. Now the forest itself was reaching out, causing men to do what Voorhees was beginning to suppose humans did best: bleed and die. During the very same seconds in which R. J. MacCready and Bob Thorne watched the last test sled scratching fire straight up into the sky, Maurice Voorhees, in a rare metaphysical moment—the kind of moment he would more have expected of Lisl than of himself—started to wonder if it was possible that nature, aroused by the ravages of techno-violence, was beginning to lash back consciously, with her own very strange style of violence.
CHAPTER 8
Whistling in the Dark
In nature there are neither rewards, nor punishments;
There are only consequences.
—ROBERT B. INGERSOLL (1833–1899)
Chapada dos Guimar?es, Brazil
January 22, 1944
The rocket launch, as Bob Thorne would have put it, was somewhat less than a good sign. What it had done was to remove from R. J. MacCready’s mind even the slightest doubt that the enemy force he had been seeking was large and well equipped. The nature of their mission remained unclear, but whatever it was, the bad guys had been at it for a while. Even worse was their proximity to the American mainland. Close. Too close.
They were testing something. Mac had watched it blaze a nearly vertical path, trailing a clear thread of smoke back to the launch site. By comparing notes and using basic geometry, he and Thorne had been able to narrow down the launch site to a degree that Hendry’s Rangers could not have known previously. It was at most, only thirty miles away.
There’s no time to waste.
MacCready mapped out a simple plan. First, he’d send Thorne and Yanni to contact Hendry with the approximate coordinates of the launch point.
“Let Hendry’s bomber boys take it from there.”
Unfortunately, it would take days for the news to reach relevant parties and for the brass to mobilize a response. In the meantime, Mac would head into Hell’s Gate, find the Axis fireworks squad, and attempt to better pinpoint their launch sites. Of course he’d look for signs of the missing Rangers along the way, although he considered their prospects to be poor at best.
What Mac needed first, but somehow knew he’d never get, was a good night’s sleep. For as much as he abhorred the possibility of blundering bleary-eyed into “enemy territory,” what he hated even more was the idea of leaving a good mystery unsolved—especially a zoological mystery.
“I want to check this out tonight,” he told Bob Thorne.
“What, mangos? We got them.”
“Yeah right, mangos or maybe what killed those animals. I’m going to set up a little observation post tonight and try to catch our messy friends in the act.”
“Now, Mac, you know I love a dead donkey crusted in shit and blood as much as the next guy but you cannot be serious about this so-called plan. You need to bunk in tonight, pally.”