The engine cut off, and silence fell. Ben felt his muscles tighten as he pictured the unknown boat drifting closer and closer. He whispered another command, and caught the edge of the covering tarp with his left hand, holding the shotgun steady in his right. He didn’t want to let the newcomers get too close, but he wanted them within range of the shotgun’s lethal power. Steady, steady . . .
“Now!” he barked, and the five of them simultaneously threw the tarps up and trained their weapons on the black bulk of the silently approaching boat. His eyes well adjusted to the dark, Ben could plainly see the dark figures poised on deck, as if ready to jump aboard the instant the hulls touched. A startled shout came from the unknown vessel as the dark figures scrambled into action.
An instant later, a flashlight clicked on from behind and to Ben’s left, pinning the scurrying strangers in a beam of light and plainly revealing the weapons in their hands.
Jillian! The realization flashed in his brain at the same time one of the pirates halted, brought a rifle to his shoulder, and jerkily fired in the direction of the flashlight beam.
“Get down, damn it!” Ben roared at her as the night erupted in gunfire. The pirate craft was only twenty feet away. He pulled the trigger on the shotgun, hitting the shooter and slamming him backwards. Ben pumped another shell into the chamber and fired again, this time splintering the top edge of the hull and sending long slivers of wood flying.
The flashlight beam still hadn’t wavered.
Combat was an almost purely physical experience, without room for much thought or reason as instinct and learned technique kicked in. He felt the shotgun bucking in his hands, the heat of it like something alive. He felt the power of the gunpowder exploding, smelled the acrid tang of it hanging in the night air, heard the thunder of it. He also heard the screams and curses, the yells, the groans of pain. All of his senses were painfully acute, time slowing and stretching out so that seconds were like minutes, everything happening in slow motion. He saw and felt and heard everything, was aware of everything. He knew that the men on their second boat were also firing, their attack splitting the pirates’ efforts at defense. He felt the hot rush of a bullet close to his head and instinctively fired again even as he dodged to the side, so they couldn’t zero in on his muzzle flash.
Then, even through all of the noise, he heard the deep cough as the pirates started their engine and threw it into reverse, slowly backing the vessel away from the riverbank. Ben fired the shotgun a few more times to speed them on their way. When the pirates had enough maneuvering room, they swung the boat around and headed out at full speed. The wake washed against the two moored craft, setting them to bobbing.
Ben shouted at Pepe to check for any wounded. Then he whirled back to Jillian and grabbed that damn flashlight, but to his horror there was no hand holding it. “Jillian!” he said hoarsely.
“Here.”
Her voice was amazingly calm, and came all the way from the stern of the boat. He turned the flashlight around so that the beam shone full on her face, making her blink as she crawled out from behind her shelter.
Confused, he looked down at the flashlight in his hand. If she hadn’t been holding it, who had? “Are you all right?” he finally asked.
“Not a scratch. How about you?”
“I’m fine.” Damn if they didn’t sound as if they were about to sit down to tea.
Then she held out her hand. “May I have my flashlight back?”
He didn’t release it, but instead kept it shining in her face. He was beginning to do a slow burn. “This is your flashlight?”
“Yes, and you’re running the batteries down.”
He clicked it off. “I told you to stay down,” he said in a very level voice. “Instead you got up and flashed a light right in their faces. Goddammit, you made a perfect target of yourself.”
“I did not,” she shot back. “I braced the flashlight on some boxes, then reached up and turned it on. I was behind cover the entire time.”
He thought about covering her behind with his hand and then maybe she would get some idea of just how serious he was. She didn’t seem the least bit excited, as if she got shot at by pirates every day of the week.
“Don’t you ever—” he began, his voice low and tight, but she coolly interrupted.
“The flashlight trick works every time as well as letting you see what you’re shooting at. I’ve used it on grave robbers before.”
He stopped. “Grave robbers?”
“Sure. Any new site is a target for grave robbers. Humans tend to bury a dead person’s valuables with the body.”
He had a mental picture of her crouching in an open grave, flashlight in one hand and pistol in the other. He rubbed his face and gave up. “Shit.”
Pepe approached with a report. Floriano had been hit in the arm, but the wound wasn’t serious. Everyone else was okay. The pirates had been firing wildly, their attack plan thrown into total confusion when they had, in effect, been attacked first. Both boats had taken some rounds, but the damage was slight. All in all, they had escaped very lightly.
Excitement made the men jumpy and they were slow to settle down, chattering excitedly between the two boats and rehashing the events over and over. Eulogio, as Ben had hoped, had also heard the pirates approaching and had the men on the second boat ready, so they had all been in on it from the beginning. After a while, though, when it became apparent that the pirates weren’t coming back, they began to settle down. As a safety precaution, Ben set a guard, scheduling a change every hour so everyone would have a chance to sleep. The short watch time also ensured that the guard would be alert, just in case the pirates were stupid enough to double back for a second go at them.
Once the lanterns were out and everyone quieted down, the snoring began surprisingly soon. Ben wondered if they would have been as lucky if that thunderstorm hadn’t roused them. Probably, since both he and Pepe slept like cats, awakening at the slightest unusual noise. But if the pirates had been smarter, if they had cut their engines a lot sooner and paddled in, things could have been a lot nastier. This time, chance had been on their side.
Jillian had settled down in her previous position on the boxes, and had dropped off as easily as the others. When he thought she was sleeping soundly, Ben moved closer to her and stretched out beside her, straightening his long legs. He wasn’t actually touching her—not quite—but he was close enough to hear her breathing, and that let his taut nerves finally relax.
The damn boxes were fairly comfortable, he thought drowsily. Or maybe he was sleepier than he’d thought. He dozed, and woke up half an hour later to listen carefully. Everything was calm, the night denizens carrying on undisturbed. Jillian was soft and warm beside him. Instinctively he turned on his side and draped his arm across her waist, cuddling her closer to him. She made an incoherent noise of protest at being disturbed, but didn’t awaken. Instead she adjusted her position against his warmth and then the deep breathing rhythm of sleep resumed.
Jillian woke up just before dawn, only minutes before the howler monkeys would begin their daily uproar. They were such effective alarm clocks that, after the first morning, she had invariably woken before the noise started, evidently in self-defense against being startled out of her skin.
Her first rational thought was that she was stiff and cramped from sleeping on the boxes; the second was that, regardless, she didn’t want to move. There was something so comforting about waking up in a man’s arms—
Whoa.
That conniving rat.
She didn’t doubt for a minute that he’d waited until she was asleep, then slipped over next to her so as to give credence to his lie about their sleeping together. It was also a sneaky way to cop a few feels, if he was so inclined, and nothing she had seen about him yet made her believe that he wasn’t inclined. The man was a walking hormone.
His arm was lying heavily across her rib cage, his wrist snuggled between her breasts, his hand tucked into the little pocket betwee
n her neck and shoulders, but he was utterly still and she thought he must still be asleep. The strong, even movements of his chest as he breathed were so soothing that, even considering everything, she was a little reluctant to move. But she had to; it was time to get up.
Then she felt a definite movement that wasn’t soothing at all, and she realized that she wasn’t the only thing getting up. Ben was definitely awake. He thrust his hips firmly against her bottom, tightening his arm to hold her still.
She didn’t waste time trying to tug his arm away, because he was far too strong for that. Instead she reached up and back, closed her fingers in his thick, tousled hair, and pulled with all her might.
“Ouch! Hey!” he yelped. “Hey!” He was up on his knees, trying to relieve the pressure on his scalp.
Jillian released him and rolled away, getting to her feet with a lithe bound. She gave him a pleasant smile. “Good morning. Did you sleep well?”
He rubbed his head and scowled at her. “The sleeping was fine. Waking up was hell, though.”
“Then you’ll learn to behave.”
“It’s not something I can control, damn it. Every man I know wakes up with a hard-on.”
“Maybe so, but they do not—repeat, do not—rub it on me.”
“ ‘Every man I know’ wasn’t rubbing it on you! It was just me!”
“And it was just your hair that I pulled, wasn’t it?” she asked sweetly.
He growled something under his breath and turned away. Pleased with the exchange, Jillian turned around and saw four pairs of dark eyes regarding her with expressions varying from complete puzzlement to shock to amusement. Pepe was the puzzled one, while Jorge looked as if he might laugh aloud. Not knowing what else to do, she shrugged in a questioning manner as if it were all Ben’s fault and she didn’t understand any more than they did, and picked her way to the rear of the boat where the tiny closet of a toilet was.
The howlers began their serenade, and as if on cue everyone swung into action. While breakfast was being cooked, Kates came over to the lead boat, with Rick right on his heels.
“That was some firefight last night,” Rick said excitedly, still caught up in the rehashing of the event.
Ben sighed. He tended to take it personally when someone shot at him, but Rick had obviously built the skirmish up in his head until it was on the same level as the Battle of the Bulge. Ben wasn’t in the mood to listen to it again. His head was still hurting where Jillian had pulled his hair, and frankly he was pissed.
“It was minor,” he growled. “Except to the bastard I shot. With a wound like that in this climate, he might not make it back to Manaus to see a doctor, even if there is one willing to treat scum like him.”
“Will you have trouble about that when we get back?” Kates asked with a concern that Ben didn’t believe for a minute.
He gave him an incredulous look. “For shooting a river pirate? This isn’t the first time it’s happened and won’t be the last.” Irritated, he turned away. “Breakfast is almost ready. Let’s get moving.”
Kates smirked as he and Rick went back to the second boat. “The bastard’s worried,” he half whispered, “and trying not to let us see it. That’s why he’s so touchy this morning. He probably killed that man, river pirate or not.”
Rick paused and looked at Lewis standing in the bow of the lead boat, studying the river. “I don’t think that’s it. Joaquim said last night that Lewis is famous on the river for handling these problems, and that the authorities steer clients to him because he’ll take care of ’em. That don’t sound like he gets in trouble for it.”
Kates’s cold eyes flicked at him. “You’re spending a lot of time with the greasers,” he said. “They’re filling you full of hot air.” He boarded the boat, blond hair gleaming in the soft morning light. He couldn’t tolerate it when an idiot like Sherwood contradicted him.
They were soon continuing upriver. Ben was satisfyingly surly, and Jillian knew he was still smarting. It served him right. If she hadn’t pulled his hair, he probably would have done something extremely embarrassing.
He was in such a fit of pique that she hadn’t properly appreciated his gesture of admiration that he scarcely spoke for the next several days. Ben, she decided, was a sulker. He would instantly turn sunny again if she approached him and cuddled up to show how sexy she found him, but for now he was behaving as if he had offered her his favorite toy—come to think of it, he had—and she had spurned it. She bit her lip so often to keep from snickering that it became sore.
But even though he was pouting, he was still protective of her. She thought some of it was show for Kates’s benefit. He wasn’t always around, but the men talked to one another whenever they halted, so presumably those on the second boat knew that Ben kept a sharp eye on her. He always warned her away from the railing well before they hit any even slightly rough spots in the water, he slept between her and the other men at night, and he made certain none of them bothered her when she was bathing or attending to other functions in the closet-sized toilet cubicle.
She knew the interpretation the others would put on his behavior, but her own view was more cynical. She was the only one who knew how to get to the Stone City; Ben would take very good care of her for that reason alone.
By the tenth day on the river, Jillian began paying very close attention to the passing jungle and studying the course of the river. Sometimes she retired to a corner by herself, pulled out some papers, and worked at her indecipherable notes. They had to be getting close to the place where they should put ashore. It might take them another two to four days to reach it, but she wanted to make certain they didn’t pass it by due to carelessness on her part.
“Tell me if you want to slow down so you can study a particular place,” Ben said, abandoning his sulk in favor of taking care of business. He had immediately noticed the change in her behavior now that they were so far upriver. They had to be getting close to the point where they would leave the boats and continue by land. It had been two days since they had passed the last settlement, and they had seen only one raft in the same length of time. The jungle was pressing in closer as the river narrowed, and the air, if anything, was even hotter and more humid. At noon it was almost impossible to breathe. By his reckoning, they were dead on the equator.
They were also heading toward the mountains. The great Amazon basin was mostly flat, but the Rio Negro rose out of mountains that extended into Colombia and Venezuela. Green, mysterious mountains, largely unexplored. The Yanomami tribe had been discovered in those mountains not so many years ago, after living isolated for centuries in Stone Age conditions.
Jillian didn’t look away from the jungle. “The river forks again not too far from here, doesn’t it?”
He laughed. “According to the aerial maps. I’ve never been this far up, sweetcakes. Nothing up here except isolated Indian tribes, who may or may not have ever seen a white man before and who may or may not be headhunters.”
She ignored that last comment. “Take the left fork.”
“Yes, ma’am. And then what?”
“I’ll tell you when I see it.”
When he thought about it, he realized that she hadn’t been exactly straight with him when she indicated on the map the area that they would be going into, the distrustful little wench. But she was smart; he had to give her that. With the information she had given him, he had laid in sufficient supplies to get them to where they really were going.
An hour later they reached the fork, and Ben took the left one. Navigation was trickier now that the river was getting shallower and narrower with every passing mile, and he cut the engines back until they were barely making headway. Jillian stood in the bow, leaning over the rail in mingled anxiety and eagerness, searching for the landmark. Ben said sharply, “Don’t lean over like that. If we hit a snag you’ll go overboard.”
Obediently she moved back, but it was difficult to restrain herself. She was afraid she would miss the sign, afraid she hadn?
??t decoded the professor’s notes correctly, even though she had repeated the process several different times to check herself.
Ben appeared beside her, and she looked back to see that Pepe had taken the wheel. Immediately she jerked her head back around. What if she had missed it, in that split second when she looked at Pepe?
“Tell me something,” Ben drawled. “If Carvajal went up the Amazon and found the Anzar, why are we going up the Rio Negro? I realize you haven’t told me the truth about anything so far, but there’s no reason now not to tell me, is there?”
“I just didn’t go into all the detail when I was telling you about Carvajal’s journal. Orellana and the men on his expedition had a brief skirmish with the Tapua tribe, and the Indian women fought alongside their men. Carvajal called them Amazons.”
He sighed. “So you made up all of that about the Anzar?”
“No. There are more sources for it than just Carvajal. There’s the incident with the Tapua, which most people think is how the name came about. But there were other sources, other tales, about a separate tribe of warrior women deep in the interior. The Anzar. The names, Anzar and Amazon, are similar. It’s easy to see how the tales about the Anzar would be discounted as Amazonian myth.”
“It’s still pretty damn easy to discount them,” he muttered.
She smiled, her eyes on the horizon. “Don’t you see? It doesn’t matter. What matters is that if the Stone City exists, then I’ve proven Dad right. It doesn’t matter if the tribe was made up of warrior women or a normal mix of male and female. What’s important is that I’ll have found proof of a lost city, a lost civilization.”
“So an army of one-eyed bandits could have lived there for all you care?”
“Exactly, though that would bring to mind the old myths about Cyclopes.”
“I think I have all the myths I can handle here. Forget about the one-eyed bandits.”