The vine jerked her head against the wooden stake. Sweat soaked her clothes as blood trickled down her cheek from a scalp laceration, but from the brandished bows and spears, things were only going to get worse.
Suddenly the chief jumped in front of her, landing so close that his tattooed face was within an inch of hers. He bared a set of filed teeth. Rebecca tried to pull away, but had nowhere to go. She turned her face to the side, but found the forked tongue of an anaconda.
Its huge triangular head filled her vision.
Genus: Eunectes. Species: murinus.
The chief waved the snake's head wildly in the air as the other warriors supported its twenty-foot-long body. Already struggling to breathe, she writhed as they wrapped the smooth tail around her feet. She shivered at its cold touch. Painfully, slowly, they coiled the beast around her legs, then her waist, then her chest. Finally they let the snake encircle her neck, ending with the anaconda cheek-to-cheek with her. Its tongue flickered along her bloody temple, trying to get a taste of what was to come.
Flailing, Rebecca fought panic as the monstrous reptile followed its evolutionary instincts. Coils tightened, constricting her chest, squeezing her breath down to a desperate wheeze-then even that died. How Rebecca wished she didn't know that an anaconda had enough muscular strength to break a jaguar's rib cage within five minutes.
Rebecca's only comfort was that the end must be near.
The first poisoned dart bounced off Sergeant Vincent Brandt's body armor. The second nearly penetrated his Kevlar vest.
So much for stealth.
With their presence discovered, it was time to crank up the beat.
"Double time!" he shouted.
Released from their painstakingly slow pace, Brandt heard the rest of his team burst forward, charging through the tangle of vines, ferns, and bushes, heedless of the noise. The natives responded with Stone Age reflexes. Dozens of poisoned darts spat toward them in deadly puffs of air.
Brandt kept his weapon aimed as he crashed through the undergrowth, but the warriors knew this forest and slid effortlessly between shadows, never allowing him to get a bead on them. Davidson, Lopez, and Svengurd spread out to either side, hurling toward their specified coordinates.
A burst of gunfire to the left.
"Non-lethal only!" Brandt shouted into the dark undergrowth.
Like it or not, he had his orders. Stinger bullets and beanbag grenades, only. Not exactly the stuff a swift covert operation was made.
A monkey screeched overhead, jumping through the canopy, raining debris down upon him. Batting away fronds, he lunged into the clearing-then stumbled to a halt.
What the-?
Awash in crackling torchlight, a woman, his extraction target, writhed on a stake. Desperate, struggling with blue-tinged lips. A massive snake, as thick around as his thigh, wrapped her in a death coil, shifting, constricting-its tongue flickering at her cheek.
A scream to the right.
He twisted. A tribesman attacked with a long stick. Swinging up his weapon, Brandt squeezed off two rounds. Rubber bullets struck the native in the forehead, knocking him back, stunning the stick from his grip. Another two rounds in the back sent the native packing into the damp forest.
Brandt trusted his team to scatter the rest of the villagers as he rushed to the panicked woman. Grabbing the snake's head, he pried the huge reptile from her neck. The woman gasped like a fish flopping on the deck of a boat. The snake had a death grip around her chest. Still clutched in his hands, the serpent hissed. Hot, foul breath blasted Brandt's face.
Fuck you too, buddy, the sergeant thought as he struggled to unwind its length, but the beast was just too damn strong.
"Lopez!" he yelled.
"On it, Sarge!" The stocky private ran over, shouldering his weapon.
Between the two of them, they wrestled the coil from around her chest. She took in a long, rattling breath. Then the snake slithered from Lopez's grasp, retightening its hold. The woman had just enough air left to cry out.
"Svengurd, here!" Brandt hollered. "Davidson, set the perimeter!"
It was dangerous to leave only one man to protect their flank, but if his target died, then their entire mission would be a bust.
With Svengurd's aid they gained traction, pulling the snake from her mid-region. Brandt handed off the reptile's head to Lopez and the body to Svengurd, as the sergeant ripped away the vines that bound her neck. Once loose, he brushed the bloody hair from her face.
"You're safe, Dr. Monroe. We have you." She croaked out a whisper. "I didn't hear that." He brought her face level with his.
"Are you... a..." Monroe coughed and gagged, but then quite clearly choked out, "Are you a moron?"
Rebecca's coughing fit prevented her from finishing her diatribe. "You... You almost got me killed!"
The hulking soldier backed away as his face clouded. "Pardon me, ma'am, but we just saved your life."
The snake, removed from her body, slinked away into the underbrush.
"Saved? You shot the men who were protecting me."
"They tied you to a stake and then set a python on you." His cheeks blushed red. Obviously, he just didn't get it.
"It was an anaconda." She reflexively corrected his inaccurate identification of the reptile, and then got pissed off all over again. "Do you have any idea, any idea at all, how long it took to convince them to allow me to participate in that ritual?"
"Ritual?" The man's eyes narrowed.
With a sigh, Rebecca explained. "I needed the tribe's cooperation to collect DNA samples to test my hypothesis. In order to get those samples, I had to be proven worthy. Hence the stake and the snake. Five more seconds, and I would've had the keys to the kingdom, but no, you had to barge in."
Turning her back on the soldier, Rebecca gathered her gear. She had to hurry if she were going to catch up with the villagers. Perhaps she could salvage weeks of tracking natives who didn't wish to be found.
The man's tone wavered, sounding confused. "But we had reports from your grad students that you were in danger."
She snorted. "Students? More like the biggest bunch of wimps ever assembled at a university."
Where was the pack with her GPS equipment? She tried to cut across the clearing to retrieve it, but the soldier stepped in front of her.
"We found your guide..." His voice didn't have a hint of confusion anymore. "Dead."
Her throat constricted as tightly as it had with the snake wrapped around her neck. All those unshed tears threatened to make an appearance, but she refused to give them permission. The tribe would be on the move, fleeing deeper and deeper into the jungle until their trail was lost. Rebecca had come too far and sacrificed too much to lose them to her grief.
She went to push past him, but the soldier grabbed her arm. "These new friends of yours murdered that tracker."
Rebecca tried to jerk away, but his grip was unyielding. Her instinct was to yell something juvenile like "get your hands off me," but his gaze stopped her. His blue-gray eyes were devoid of arrogance or even anger. They held only concern. Even his grip, which was firm, didn't hurt.
The soldier had found one man dead and her staked in the middle of the rain forest with an anaconda crushing the life from her. Those worried eyes weren't letting her go until he had some answers.
As much as she didn't want to ever talk about that horrible, horrible moment along the riverbank, Rebecca took a deep breath, steadying her voice before she spoke. "It was an accident."
"You didn't see the body, Doctor. It was-"
Those damn tears spilled over, and she had to choke out the words. "It was my fault..." Embarrassed, Rebecca steeled herself. "The tribe did surround us, but Yerato wasn't worried. It was a gesture signaling that the tribe was receptive to introductions. Then... And..."
As hard as she tried, Rebecca just couldn't finish. The soldier's hold transformed from restraining her to supporting her. Sick of being the weepy girl, Rebecca used the back of her hand to brush away the tears.
Whenever in trouble, go clinical.
Continuing, she almost sounded like she was lecturing. "A startled Tayassu tajacu." From the soldier's confused look, she used the animal's common name. "A peccary charged out of the brush and knocked my feet out from under me. I would have been the one to fall down the bank if it hadn't been for Yerato. He..."
Not even professional detachment could force her throat to work.
The soldier's tone softened. "But the wounds on his torso and legs."
Regaining her composure, Rebecca went back to packing. "A crocodile dragged him under. We lost them to the current."
He didn't seem to have an answer for that. Who did? Finding her GPS equipment, she tucked it into her bag. Now where was her laptop?
"Dr. Monroe, let's start over." The man offered his hand. "I'm Sergeant Brandt of the-"
"Special Forces, Special Ops, Special Seals, whatever." She'd spent enough time in enough third-world countries to spot a covert operative a mile away. This wouldn't be the first time the State Department had tried to pull her from the field after the host country had complained of her presence. Her research was just too politically incorrect. Someone in the Ecuadorian government must have caught wind of her project and demanded her immediate removal.
"Yeah, yeah, yeah. My university sent you-"
"No, they didn't-"
Rebecca knew full well that this soldier was in no way responsible for her anger, but all the fear and pain over the last few days came to a head.
"Don't lie to me," she hissed.
Brandt's posture stiffened. Usually he didn't let spoiled academicians get under his skin, but this one had gone too far.
"Ma'am, I am many things, but a liar is not one of them."
He held the doctor's gaze without flinching. Finally she lowered her head, sighing as she went back to stowing her gear. That was about the best apology he could expect under the circumstances.
"All I know is your extraction order came through the State Department's Antiterrorism division."
Rebecca looked over her shoulder. "Antiterrorism? That makes no sense. I'm a genetic anthropologist."
Insect noises returned to the quiet rain forest as Brandt explained. "There was a bombing in Paris. Skeletons were discovered under the Eiffel Tower's foundation, so your expertise has been requested."
Monroe slung another pack over her shoulder. "You don't understand. I'm a paleo-computational biologist. I study ancient human migrational pathways through haplo-gene DNA analysis." She turned toward him. "I'm completely useless after the Bronze Age."
Brandt's hand went to his gun as monkeys chattered in the distance. "Regardless, somebody far above my pay grade wants you in France, so we're going to France. If you could just follow us to the airfield..."
Not only did the good doctor ignore him, she hefted another pack on top of the three she was already carrying. The sergeant understood the basic instinct of those extracted to enter into a state of denial, but their childish stubbornness got old quickly.
Forget that they were deep in a hostile forest filled with skittish, superstitious natives. His CO had made the time sensitivity of this mission abundantly clear. If his team was scrambled to do a HALO jump from thirty thousand feet into the tangled canopy, whatever happened in Paris had the brass shook up.
"I'm afraid I am going to have to insist, Dr. Monroe."
The tall biologist slowly turned to him. He expected a blast of anger, but she just tucked a stray lock of hair back into its braid. "Dude, I'm not sure if you're in a position to insist on anything."
He was confused until Davidson called out, "Um, Sarge..."
Brandt spun around to find the clearing encircled by natives-men, women, and children. How did they sneak up on them?
He swung back to Monroe. "Tell them to back the fuck off."
The clearing suddenly seemed so much smaller. The thick vegetation leaned over them, reminding him that a foreign jungle surrounded them. Even the humidity became oppressive, ominous.
Yet the doctor looked perfectly comfortable, even calm, as she spoke. "We both know you're using non-lethals, so you obviously don't have extreme prejudice authority here."
"I have discretion," he said, clench-jawed. They were outnumbered twenty to one. And the kids. Why the hell did the tribe bring them back?
A little boy, no more than five, entered the clearing, oblivious of the four extremely well-armed men. Monroe took the child's hand. A smile even graced her lips. She looked like the beautiful woman she must be when she wasn't being squeezed to death.
"Discretion to do what, Sergeant? Shoot innocent women and children?" Her smile deepened, this time for him, as she headed to the jungle's edge. "We both know that you don't have it in you."
"Really? Because I've got a dozen Black Ops missions to say otherwise."
Their gaze locked. Brandt was pretty much used to his stare getting the job done, but the doctor's eyes just twinkled in the torchlight. Her laugh was hearty, calling his bluff. "Come on, you didn't even shoot the snake! Like you're really going to open fire here."
And goddamn it, if she wasn't right. Exhaling hard, he gave the all-clear signal as he lowered his gun. She might have won the battle, but Brandt intended to win the war, and he had just the secret weapon to do it. He was under orders to only reveal the information in private, but what else could he do? His men couldn't care less about the name he was about to utter, and who the hell were the natives going to tell?
"Professor Lochum made the request personally."
Monroe stopped just shy of exiting the clearing. "No way."
"Afraid so." Brandt didn't know why the name held so much power over the doctor, but thankfully it did.
When the woman didn't follow, the little boy tugged on her hand. Monroe hugged him, and then turned to one of the natives. Besides the two red marks on his forehead where Brandt had shot him earlier, the old man wore a brilliant parrot-feathered necklace that clearly marked him as the chief.
A series of clicks were exchanged. Finally the older man took the child's hand from hers. The chief smiled kindly at Monroe, but his eyes bored into Brandt, clearly upset that they weren't allowed a rematch.
As the doctor walked toward Brandt's team, she tossed one of her packs to Svengurd. Startled, the corporal nearly dropped his assault rifle to catch it. Monroe tossed one at Lopez, then another to Davidson.
"At least I won't have to..." She shoved the last pack into Brandt's arms as she passed him, "carry these anymore."
Unburdened, she walked to the forest edge as the warriors silently parted for her, then melted into the forest.
The pack was impressively heavy as Brandt threw it over his shoulder.
Dr. Monroe was much stronger than she looked.