“Christ,” muttered Chase. “Apocalypse Now time.” They were now inside the search area, looking for somewhere to make landfall-but being hampered by a dense mist. Even though the banks were barely twenty feet apart, the roiling fog was sometimes thick enough to obscure the trees.
The temperature had dropped noticeably. Nina had thought she would be glad of the relief from the oppressive, muggy heat, but instead found herself feeling uneasy. Even the constant shrieking and whooping of birds and animals had died away.
Di Salvo and Chase apparently felt the same, both men watching the banks intently, something about their postures suggesting that they were poised for action.
“What is it?” she asked Chase as the boat rounded another turn.
“I think we might have company.” No trace of his usual levity; he was all business.
“Eddie,” said di Salvo quietly, pointing off to the left. Nina followed Chase’s gaze, but saw nothing.
“Yeah, I see it,” Chase replied.
All Nina could see were trees. “What?”
Chase pointed. “Footprint in the mud.” She still couldn’t make it out even with his help.
“This is excellent,” Hamilton said, talking in his normal overloud voice and earning annoyed glares from Chase and di Salvo. “This is everything I hoped for! We’ll be the first people to meet this tribe, won’t we, Agnaldo?”
“Other people have met them before,” di Salvo said in a low, ominous tone. “They just didn’t come back to tell anyone.”
“Hugo,” Chase hissed, making a throat-cutting gesture. Castille immediately switched off the outboard.
“What is it?” Nina whispered. In reply, Chase pointed ahead.
Something emerged from the mist as the Zodiac drifted forward. Objects seemingly floating above the water… until the fog thinned enough to reveal that they were tied to bamboo poles.
Not tied to them. Impaled on them.
Nina cringed when she realized what the objects were. Corpses. The skeletal remains of people, most of the flesh long since rotted away and consumed by wildlife. All that remained were bones, shreds of clothing…
The blunt nose of the boat bumped gently against the first bamboo pole. Chase gestured to di Salvo, who tossed him an oar before picking one up for himself. “How long’s it been there, do you reckon?”
Di Salvo stared up at the body. “A long time. Years. The last time anyone was reported missing in this area was about seven years ago.”
“Looks like we found him.” Chase used the oar to push the boat sideways, then started rowing, easing it past the first poles. More of the awful markers came into view ahead.
“Amazing,” said Hamilton, watching the first corpse go by with an expression that blended awe with disgust. “A genuine lost tribe, completely isolated from civilization.”
Nina’s own expression was nothing but disgust. “I get the feeling they want to keep it that way. This is obviously a warning-keep the hell out.”
“We just need to show them that we’re no threat,” Hamilton breathed. “Think of all the anthropological data we can learn from them.”
“This is why I prefer archaeology,” Nina muttered. “All my finds are dead, they can’t stick you on a pole-Oh my God!” She jumped to her feet, rocking the boat, and tugged insistently at Chase’s jacket. “Eddie, Eddie! Stop the boat! Stop!”
Chase snatched his Wildey from its holster before realizing that Nina was excited, not scared. “Jesus, give me a heart attack, why don’t you?” he complained as he used the oar to stop the boat. “What is it?”
“That body…”
“What about it?”
She pointed up at one of the corpses. Even less of it remained than the first one they had encountered, the jawbone and one arm missing, all the connecting tissue eaten away. Its clothing was similarly rotted-but even through the accumulated filth and mold of decades, a glint of metal was still visible.
An insignia.
Just the sight of it made Nina shiver. It should have been incongruous, its impact diluted by time… but it still had the power to chill. An icon of evil.
The death’s-head insignia of the Schutzstaffel. Hitler’s SS.
“What the bloody hell’s that doing here?” Chase wondered aloud. “Nazis? Here?”
“It must have been one of the Ahnenerbe expeditions,” said Nina. “The Ahnenerbe was the archaeological arm of the SS,” she added, in response to Chase’s puzzled look. “The Nazis sent teams all over the world hunting for artifacts connected to Atlantean mythology-they believed that the Aryan race was descended from the ancient rulers of the world, all part of their “master race” crap. But their expeditions were focused on Asia, not South America…”
“Something brought them here,” said Kari. She gestured at Nina’s pack, and the sextant arm within. “Maybe the same thing as us.”
“No, that doesn’t make sense,” Philby said, frowning in thought. “At the time of the Nazis, the Glozel Tablets were considered fakes, they’d been discredited. They wouldn’t have been able to translate the inscriptions. It must have been something else, something we haven’t seen…”
Kari examined the neighboring bodies, more curious than repulsed. “From the state of these other corpses, they seem to have died at the same time. But there’s only four of them? That seems small for an expedition. The Ahnenerbe would send dozens of men on such a mission.”
“Maybe this lot didn’t run fast enough,” said Chase, with gallows humor. “So what’re we going to do? Whoever’s out there, they don’t want us around.”
“We have to go on,” Kari said, determined. “We haven’t come all this way just to be frightened off by a tribe of savages and their… scarecrows.”
“Ah, ah, you see?” said Hamilton, waving an admonishing finger at her. “You’re betraying your dominator culture prejudices there with your choice of words. These people have been living in perfect harmony with their environment for thousands of years-isn’t it possible that by comparison, we’re the real savages?”
Kari looked as irritated as Nina had ever seen her. “Oh, shut up, you stupid little man.” Di Salvo barely contained a laugh at Hamilton ’s affronted gawp. “Mr. Chase, can you see anywhere we can get ashore?”
Chase peered into the drifting mist. “Hard to tell… there might be something on the right bank.” He started rowing again, di Salvo joining in to propel the boat away from the grisly warning signs.
There was indeed a gap in the dense vegetation along the bank, and a few minutes later the Zodiac was tied up. Once everyone was on solid ground, the equipment was unloaded-and weapons handed out, to Nina’s discomfort and Hamilton ’s outrage.
“You’re seriously proposing that we make first contact with these people at gunpoint?” he shrilled as Chase passed compact automatic rifles to Castille and di Salvo.
“From the state of those bodies, I’d say they were met at spearpoint, so yeah,” Chase replied. There was another rifle in the pack: after a moment’s consideration, he took it out and offered it to Kari. “Do you know how…”
She took it from him. “Colt Commando M4A15.56-millimeter assault rifle, magazine load thirty rounds, maximum effective range three hundred and sixty meters.” Keeping her eyes fixed on his, she ejected the magazine, pushed down on the exposed bullet with her thumb to check that it was fully loaded, reinserted it and chambered the first round, never once looking down at the weapon.
Chase was impressed. “Okay, I’m adding that to my list of things I want in a woman…”
“You don’t want me anymore? I’m heartbroken,” Nina told him.
“Heh. Okay, we’ve got…” he checked his watch, “three and a half hours to sunset, so no matter what happens, whatever we find, we’re back here at the boat in three. Until we find out more about our pole-up-the-jacksie friends out there, we’re not going to be doing any camping. Me and Agnaldo, we’ll take point, Hugo’ll watch our arses. Everyone else, keep between us-stay close, but don’t bunch up too tight. Nina, you stick with Ms. Frost. It’s funny, but I’m starting to think she could have a decent second career as a bodyguard.” Kari smiled and adopted a military pose, making Nina giggle. “All right! Let’s go find this lost city!”