“Okay…” He gave Juanita a smile and a salute and moved past her, with Taylor behind him. He said, “No good deed goes unpunished.”
“Every good deed is recorded by the angels.”
“I’ll check on that when I get there.”
They continued down the path and Brodie glimpsed the river ahead. As they got closer, he could also see the mudflat they’d seen from their boat—the mudflat where Carmen had disembarked when she and Mercer had come from Kavak. Brodie had his bearings now, and he quickened his pace toward the river—their jungle highway out of there. Or their path to glory, if Kyle Mercer was still on the fishing platform downriver.
Taylor was right behind him, monitoring the walkie and urging him to move faster.
As they neared the mudflat, he slowed down as he’d been trained to do when approaching a river, stream, road, clearing, or structure. He stopped, motioned Taylor down, and dropped to his knee. They both looked and listened; then Brodie stood and continued.
They reached the natural clearing around the mudflat and did an eye-recon. There didn’t seem to be anyone in the area except a few howler monkeys in the trees who didn’t react well to the intrusion of two other primates. Brodie wanted to tell them to shut the fuck up, but they probably only understood Spanish.
There were a lot of footprints in the mud, probably Pemón, but also boot prints. He moved cautiously toward the river, about thirty feet away, and noticed a large snake slithering into the water.
Taylor whispered, “Scott—over here.”
He turned and saw Taylor pointing to a pair of boats—similar to their flat-sterned canoe—lying in a thick patch of vines. Both boats had oars in them and outboard motors. He nodded, then moved slowly across the mud to the riverbank. He looked both ways, then motioned for Taylor to join him.
She crossed the mud and looked where he was pointing.
About three hundred meters downriver was the fishing platform, also known as the observation post. A man was standing on the platform. It was Kyle Mercer. He seemed to be talking on a walkie—or maybe abusing Worley again on the sat phone. Hard to tell at that distance.
Taylor held her walkie to her ear and scanned the channels. “I hear him… he’s asking… he wants everyone to report to the… salón… the dining hall. He will speak to them there.” She kept listening, then clipped the walkie to her T-shirt.
Brodie said, “He’s probably going to announce the move. The good news is that they’ll all be in one place. The bad news is that Emilio is someplace else.”
Taylor nodded, then glanced at the two motorized canoes. “We scuttle one and take the other.”
“Right.” Brodie walked to the canoes and checked out their fuel tanks, finding them both half-full—or half-empty if you weren’t having a good day. He pulled the starter cord a few inches on one of the motors and cut it with the KA-BAR, throwing the starter handle into the brush. Taylor also cut off the bow line and wrapped it around her waist in case they needed extra rope for something—like hog-tying Kyle Mercer. Brodie said, “Okay… ready to launch?”
“Where are we going, Scott?”
“Upriver, downriver, or across the river and into the woods toward Brazil. Whatever way will put distance between us and Camp Tombstone.”
“I thought we agreed to try to take Mercer.” She reminded him, “The whole enchilada.”
“Now that we’re here and we have this boat, I’ll settle for half an enchilada.” He added, “We’re almost out of here.”
She didn’t reply, and they both grabbed the bow line and dragged the boat the short distance across the mud to the river.
Taylor looked downriver and said, “He’s still there, Scott.” She reminded him, “We have a weapon, and we didn’t see a weapon on him.”
Brodie looked at the fishing platform and could make out the lone figure of Kyle Mercer, his back to them. Tempting, but… “Doesn’t mean he doesn’t have one. We need to wait here until he’s gone.”
“No. We need to go get him while he’s there.”
She was starting to sound like Scott Brodie, and he wasn’t sure he liked that. “He could turn around any minute. He doesn’t need his binoculars to see two gringos coming toward him in a boat.”
“Those bastards captured us there, and we’re going to capture him there.”
Really? “I think upriver would be a good way to go.”
“We don’t know what’s upriver except for that landing strip, and we don’t