Thief (43 page)

“One by one?” Timbo asked.

“With her last,” Dokken said. “I want her to witness the tangible consequences of her actions. I want her to fully understand that while it's an inconvenience for us to hunt down these Neanderthals, for the money we will do it, and we will do it well.”

*   *   *

Through the waterfall, Monarch could hear muffled voices, and see the blurred outline of people in the clearing where the Ayafal held their full moon ritual. The closest person was the geologist still in the water. He was standing sideways and close to where the cascade met the surface of the pool. The thief saw him turn his back to the waterfall just before he heard people screaming, and then a gunshot and more screams.

No time for subtleties. No time for thoughts. Just action and reaction.

Monarch rejected swimming under the waterfall. Instead he bowed his head, and walked into it. Stopping when barely an inch of water ran like film down his face and body, the thief threw out his good right arm, hooked it around the man's neck, and dragged him back and down into the raging water before he could yell out in alarm.

The second they were both submerged behind the waterfall, the thief's left hand slashed the Ka-Bar's blade across the man's throat. As the frothy water all around him turned pink, the geologist struggled, and then surrendered.

Monarch dragged him to the surface, yanked off the mask, put it on, and then relieved the man of a Glock 21 in a nylon holster on his hip. Monarch went to check the magazine, but then heard a woman scream, followed by another gunshot.

No time. He ducked back into the waterfall. This time he came all the way out, and stood there as the dead guy had stood, facing the clearing, taking it all in.

Timbo and Panic were standing about forty yards in front of him, looking down on the corpses of the two research assistants. Rousseau, Carson, and Kiki were no more than ten yards from Dokken's men. About forty yards to the thief's left at two o'clock, Correa and the other geologist watched without expression. Behind them, the smaller chopper was starting up and Pearl was almost to the construction helicopter.

Santos was on her knees to Monarch's right at eleven o'clock, weeping again. Dokken had the muzzle of his pistol pressed to the back of her head.

“Who's next?” Panic asked, sounding amused by his gruesome task as he moved his gun back and forth between Carson and Rousseau. “Eenie, meenie, miney, Frenchy.”

“I'm Canadian,” Rousseau sobbed.

“Who gives a flying fuck?” Panic said, and made to shoot the botanist.

He never got the chance.

Monarch had ducked into the water, slithered forward, and was now crouched behind the rock ledge that defined the pool with the Glock aimed over the top. He opened up rapid fire.

The first shot took off a chunk of Panic's head. The second shattered Timbo's wrist, and blew his rifle from his hand. He swung for Dokken, trying to get a bullet into him before he could execute Santos.

But instincts and reflexes almost as sharp as Monarch's had taken over. Dokken was rolling away from the scientist. The thief tried to track him, but then another gun went off. A shot from Correa's scattergun pinged off the ledge at the front of the pool.

Monarch threw himself sideways, twisted and fired at Correa and the other geologist who were now sprinting toward the helicopters. He hit the geologist square in the spine and dropped him. Correa fired the shotgun again. The thief almost got turned before the birdshot stung his face, head, and right flank like scores of angry hornets.

He felt the blood spraying and dripping before catching sight of the second helicopter pilot trying to aim a rifle at him. Monarch shot him in the throat, and then tried to shoot Correa again. But the huge white guy was already in the smaller chopper, and it was lifting off.

Where the fuck was Dokken?

Monarch's attention swung again, trying to find him, seeing Rousseau, Carson, and Kiki running for the jungle. Timbo tried to get his gun up with one hand. Santos was still there on her knees, bewildered by the whirl of violence around her.

Ignoring the blood dripping in his right eye and the flaming pain everywhere the birdshot had penetrated his skin, Monarch aimed and fired. Dokken's last remaining ally acted like someone had tickled him. He hunched up, looked down at his stomach, and then keeled over.

The action of Monarch's Glock locked open. He was out of ammunition. Overhead the smaller chopper was arcing away when Monarch leaped from the pool, ran toward the dead geologist, spotted his pistol lying beside—

“Drop the gun, you fucking cat!” Dokken bellowed behind and to his left. “I'll blow every life out of you! Nine of them. Ten, I don't give a shit.”

Monarch glanced over his shoulder, saw his old nemesis had gone into the jungle, flanked, and was now kneeling at the edge of the vegetation, his rifle shouldered, his enraged face welded to the stock. They were no more than fifty yards apart. Dokken wouldn't miss at that range. Monarch dropped the Glock, and looked at Santos who was gaping at him as if he'd risen from the dead.

Dokken got up, and marched to within ten feet of Monarch, gun still up, finger quivering on the trigger as he screamed, “You turn now. Look right at
me,
Robin! I want you to be looking right in my eyes. Last thing you ever see.”

The thief nodded to Santos, and then turned to face his destiny, seeing Dokken's glassy, bloodshot, and vengeful eyes staring down the sights of his rifle.

“That's nice,” Dokken chuckled. “Smile for me now. Kiss the bullet that's coming down your—”

Dokken jerked upright before he dropped his weapon, and looked down dumbly at a bulge beneath his T-shirt, off center right and slightly high.

“Fuck is that?” Dokken croaked.

Blood sprayed from his lips before he stumbled and tumbled forward, his body slamming the ground less than two feet from the thief. The long shaft of an Ayafal spear stuck up out of Dokken's back.

Monarch gazed in shock past the man who had been about to kill him, finding Gotek creeping from the jungle with a terrible smile on his face.

The thief grabbed Dokken's head, turned it, and found him barely alive.

“Where is she?” Monarch demanded. “Where have they got Sister Rachel?”

“Piss off, Monarch,” Dokken said, half laughed, choked on the blood pouring from his mouth, and died.

 

57

“I HAD NO IDEA
this was what they had in mind,” Pearl complained. “Seriously, she heard me. I was against it all.”

“I don't give a shit,” Monarch said, training a gun on him from the copilot's seat in the construction helicopter. “Just fly us to Manaus.”

“We don't have enough gas.”

“Then fly us to Tefé, refuel, and then fly us to Manaus.”

“What are you going to do to me?”

“Depends on your level of cooperation,” Monarch said, glancing behind him into the hold. Rousseau and Carson were loading the last of their equipment and samples. Santos crouched by Fal-até's side. The shaman woman's leg was in a tourniquet, and she was gazing around in sleepy wonder courtesy of several narcotic painkillers from a first-aid kit Monarch had found aboard the helicopter.

“We good?” he said.

“I think so,” Santos said, looking at her fellow scientists.

Carson nodded. “I took the pictures with Dokken's phone, just like you said.”

“Fly,” Monarch said, and nudged Pearl in the ribs.

The pilot flipped a switch. The rotors spun. The chopper shuddered when he gave power and they lifted off. Hundreds of feet below, Gotek and his people were gathering wood for the biers that would consume the bodies of the dead.

As they flew over the top, Monarch glanced down, hoping to see some of the howler monkeys that had, in effect, saved his life. But the notch and the trees were already cast in deep shadow.

“How far to Tefé?” Monarch demanded.

“Hundred and twenty air miles,” Pearl said.

“Tell me about Barbosa.”

The pilot's face constricted. “That is not a man you want to fuck with.”

“Actually, I do,” Monarch said. “Very much.”

Pearl said he'd seen Barbosa, but never met the man formally, only his underlings and thugs like Correa.

“I'm just a pilot,” he said. “I pick people up. I drop them off.”

“Where's Barbosa live?”

“Rio.”

“What's his weakness?”

He shrugged. “I don't know much about him other than he owns the company, and he's a big guy, likes his gourmet food.”

Night fell. The moon rose over the rain forest. Back in the hold Monarch heard the old shaman woman start to babble, and then to sob. Santos was talking to her in their language. The thief didn't understand a word, but felt her soothing tone. It wasn't working. Fal-até seemed to be growing more agitated and then began to cry out in pain.

“Give her another painkiller,” Monarch called back. “But keep a close watch on her heart rate and have adrenaline ready.”

Within minutes the shaman woman's agitation had lessened, and she was softly singing what sounded like a children's song that Santos sang along with her. Fal-até's voice gradually faded, and so did the scientist's.

Santos came up to the cockpit.

“She okay?” Monarch asked.

The scientist looked drawn down. “She got worked up when she saw the moon out the hold door. She thought she'd been swallowed by the flying demon, who was taking her away from the moon.”

“About sums it up,” Monarch said.

“I know,” Santos said, and she began to cry. “Fal-até said you would be the end of the Ayafal, but she saw it wrong.
It was me.
I was the end of the Ayafal. I went looking to prove Vovo's story at any cost, and that contact destroyed their way of life. Rousseau was right. We never should have gone in. Finding Kiki should have been enough.”

She hung her head, crushed.

“It doesn't have to be that way,” Monarch said. “You can be the person who fights to protect them, or to protect their interests because people like Barbosa
will
go into the forbidden zone unless you stop them.”

“What about Augus and Naspec? They died because of me.”

“They died because of Dokken,” he said. “You couldn't control him. I couldn't control him. I know that doesn't help right now, but with time you'll come around to that perspective and see I'm right.”

She sniffled, blew her nose, and then looked over at him.

“Who are you? Really?”

“Robin Monarch,” he said.

“Are you a thief?”

“Among other things.”

“Is there a missionary? A Rachel? Is your mom sick? Or was it all just made up.”

“It's all true, and Sister Rachel, the missionary doctor, and my mother are one in the same,” Monarch replied, and then explained how she'd been kidnapped in order to leverage him into stealing the secret of the Ayafal's longevity.

Santos thought about that. “So who was Dokken working for?”

“I don't know yet,” he replied. “But I'm going to find out.”

The scientist fell into another silence, before saying, “I've got something that belongs to you.”

Monarch looked over and saw his satellite phone in her hand.

“Thanks,” the thief said. “That will help.”

“We have to go straight to the authorities,” Santos said, sounding morose.

“Why's that?”

“Why's that?” she shot back indignantly. “Maybe because eight people died, including two research assistants on my expedition!”

“So what are you going to do, have the Brazilian national police go into the Canyon of the Moon? That
will
end the Ayafal culture. For good.”

Santos struggled, said, “So what do we do? What do we say at the hospital? I mean, Fal-até is suffering from a shotgun wound.”

Monarch thought a few moments, said, “You came in contact with her along the river, and were interviewing her as part of your research. Somehow she found the shotgun and there was an accident. Pearl happened to be flying back from dropping a team of geologists, and you shot a flare. He landed and offered to fly us Manaus.”

“That'll work,” Pearl said.

The scientist chewed on that. “The dead miners? And Edouard and Graciella?”

“They're still back there in the jungle,” Monarch replied. “Waiting for you and Pearl to return. When you do go back, they're gone. No trace of them. But lots of jaguar tracks in the area, which there are. End of story. An unsolved mystery. The other deaths, at least as far as you're concerned, are something that happened in a very bad dream.”

“Do you ever tell the truth?”

“Sometimes,” Monarch said. “But I've found that twisting the facts to suit my purposes is more useful.”

Before she could reply, he turned on his phone, and punched in Barnett's number.

She answered, “My God, Robin, haven't you been getting our messages?”

The thief's heart beat faster. “You found her?”

“We think so,” she said. “I pulled some strings at the agency and we've got a drone with a thermal imaging system on our way to make sure.”

Barnett explained how they'd tracked Vargas's half sister to a leased farm south of Córdoba. Earlier in the day Chavez and Claudio had seen the sister and her husband drive into the farmyard in a four-door pickup. When the backdoors opened, Tito Gonzalez and Alonzo Miguel climbed out.

“No shit.”

“No shit.”

“Hector?”

“We still haven't put eyes on him or Sister Rachel, but Galena, Tito, and Alonzo went into the farmhouse with supplies,” she said. “An hour later, four pros with AKs arrived. They've been patrolling ever since.”

“She's got to be there,” Monarch said.