Part 59 (1/2)

”Everyone head down!” the sergeant yelled. ”Move quickly, but when I holler, everyone drop and hold on tight:”

Dakii remained with Sergeant Kostos to guide his own people.

Kouwe helped Nate with his father. They scrambled as well as they could down the stairs, balancing between haste and caution. They hurried as the others followed.

Nate saw Kostos wave Camera down the stairs, then followed.

Behind them emerged the two cats. The jaguars hurried out of the opening and onto the stair, clearly glad to be free of the confining tunnels. Nate wished he had their claws. ”One minute,” Kouwe said, hobbling under Carl's weight.

They hurried. The bottom was still a good four stories down. A deadly fall.

Then a sharp call broke through the water's rush. ”Now! Down! Down!”

Nate helped his father to the steps, then dropped himself. He glanced up and saw the entire group flattened to the stone. He lowered his face and prayed.

The explosion, when it came, was as if h.e.l.l had come to earth. The noise was minimal-no worse than the dramatic end of a Fourth of July fireworks show-but the effect was anything but insignificant.

Over the top of the cliff's edge, a wall of flame shot half a mile out, and flumed three times that distance into the sky. Currents of rising air buf-feted them, swirling eddies of fire moving with them. If it wasn't for the waterfall's insulation, they would've been fried on the stairs. But the water-fall was a mixed blessing.

Its flow, shaken by the blast, cast vast amounts of water over them. But everyone held tight.

Soon bits of flaming debris began to tumble over the edge and down the fall. Luckily the swift current cast most of the large pieces of trunk and branch beyond their perch. But it was still terrifying to see entire trees, cracked and blown into the stream, tumble past, on fire.

As the heat welled up and away from them, Kostos yelled down. ”Keep moving, but watch for falling debris:”

Nate crouched up. Everyone began to climb to their feet, dazed.

They had made it!

As the others started down, he reached for his father. ”C'mon, Dad. Let's get out of here:”

With his father's hand held in his own, Nate felt the ground vibrate, a tremoring rumble. He instinctively knew this was bad.Oh, s.h.i.+t . . .

He dove atop his father, a scream on his lips. ”Down! Everyone back down!”

The second explosion deafened them. Nate screamed from the pain. It blew with such force that he was sure the cliff would fall atop them.

From the mouth of the tunnel above, a jet of fire belched out, blasting into the fall of water. Scalding steam rolled down over them.

Nate craned upward and watched a second belch of fire blow from the tunnel, then a third. Smaller flames shot out of tinier crevices in the cliff face all around, like a hundred flickering fiery tongues. All of them an eerie blue.

All the while, the ground continued to shake and rumble.

Nate kept his father pinned under him. Rocks and dirt shattered outward. Entire uprooted trees shot like flaming missiles through the sky to crash down into the lower valley.

Then this too died down.

No one moved as smaller rocks tumbled past. Again the waterfall pro-tected them, deflecting most of the debris, or reducing their speed to bruising rather than deadly velocities.

After several minutes, Nate raised his head enough to view the damage.

He spotted Kouwe a step above his father. The professor looked dazed and sickened. He stared back at Nate, face pale with shock. ”Anna . . . when you yelled. . . I was too slow . . . the explosion . . . I couldn't catch her in time.” His eyes flicked to the long tumble below. ”She fell.”

Nate closed his eyes. ”Oh, G.o.d.”

He heard mournful cries flow up around them. Anna had not been alone in falling to her death. Nate pushed to his knees. His father coughed and rolled onto his side, looking ashen.

After a time, the group crawled down the stairs, beaten, b.l.o.o.d.y, and in shock.

They gathered at the foot of the falls, bathed in cool spray. Three Ban-ali tribesmen had also met their deaths on the stair.

”What was that second explosion?” Sergeant Kostos asked.

Nate remembered the strange blue flame. He asked for one of the can-teens with the Yagga sap. He poured out a grape-sized drop and used Car-rera's lighter to ignite it. A tall blue flame flared up from the dollop of sap. ”Like copal,” Nate said. ”Combustible. The entire tree went up like a roman candle. Roots and all, I imagine, from the way the ground shook.”

A deep mournful silence spread over the smaller camp.

Finally Carrera spoke. ”What now?”

Nate answered, his voice fierce. ”We make that b.a.s.t.a.r.d pay. For Manny, for Olin, for Anna, for all the Ban-ali tribespeople”

”They have guns,” Sergeant Kostos said. ”We have one Bailey. They outnumber us more than two to one.”

”To h.e.l.l with that.” Nate kept his voice cold. ”We have a card that trumps all that.”

”What's that?” Kostos asked.

”They think we're dead.”

CHAPTER NINETEEN.

Midnight Raid.

1 1:48 PM.

AMAZON JUNGLE.

Kelly's eyes still stung with tears. With her hands bound behind her back, she couldn't even wipe them away. She was secured to a stake under a lean-to of woven palm leaves that deflected the gentle rain that now fell. The clouds had rolled in as full night had set, which had suited her kidnappers just fine. ”The darker the better,” Favre had exulted. They made good time andwere now enveloped in thick jungle cover well south of the swamp.

Butdespite the darkness and the distance, the northern skies glowed a fiery red, as if the sunwere trying to rise from that direction. The explo-sions that had lit up the night had been spectacular, shooting a fireball high into the sky, followed by a scattering of flaming debris.

The sight had burned all hope from her. The otherswere dead .