Hell's Gate(34)
“But how do they—?”
“Bats echolocate, right? Well, I think this species can do something more, much more. These creatures were scanning me, and I’m betting those scans can trigger the release of specific—”
“—neurotransmitters.” Thorne finished the thought for him.
“Bingo.”
“And what are those?” Yanni asked.
“Chemicals in your brain, Yanni,” her husband answered. “Some of them cause emotions.”
“Like fear or a sense of calm,” Mac added. “In this case, I think the bats have found a way to use these emotions, as a tool—a hunting technique.”
“The chupacabra . . .” Yanni turned to her husband. “They e-volved this, right?”
“You got it, Yanni!” Thorne replied. Then, flashing his proudest shit-eating grin, he addressed his friend. “So last night in that Brazil nut tree, is this what they did to you?”
“Yeah,” MacCready replied, shifting his stance to suppress a shudder. “They tried to set me up by making me remember things.”
“Like the people you lost?” Yanni asked, quietly.
Mac let out a sigh. “Like the people I lost.”
Twenty minutes later, having shown the Thornes how to operate the Russian weapon, MacCready stood with them on the outskirts of Chapada. Although the sun had been up for nearly an hour, there was little activity in the village. The pigs and poultry were nowhere to be seen, and even the dogs were quiet.
“And speaking of careful,” Thorne said, “having to speak at your funeral would cause me no little embarrassment. So let’s avoid that scene—if you catch my drift.”
“I catch it,” Mac said, as the friends embraced. “Just remember, Bob. Two things. One, tell Hendry about the rocket and the coordinates. And two, get the hell away from here, at least until this shit blows over.”
“Of course, Redundzel, although I also heard you the first sixteen times.”
Mac laughed at the reference to his old nickname. He did have a tendency to repeat what he considered to be important concepts.
“And don’t make me and Yanni have to come in there to rescue your skinny ass.”
“Gotcha,” Mac said, throwing his pal a salute.
Mac never used the word goodbye. In his family, and at this kind of time, goodbye was considered bad luck.
“See you soon, Yanni,” he said. “Maybe at Ebbets Field.”
As the woman approached him, Mac thought he was about to be kissed on the cheek. Instead, Yanni produced a strange-looking necklace and placed it over his head.
“Wear this, Mac,” she said.
The thin band of leather was attached to a tiny, stoppered bottle, sealed with something rubbery. More local juju, MacCready supposed.
Yanni spoke two or three sentences in her native tongue and Thorne translated: “She says, if you go into the swamp, be sure to rub this stuff on yourself first. It will keep you from getting bitten.”
Mac gave her a slight bow. “You got it, sister!” he said.
Then the friends exchanged nods and Mac turned away, setting off at a brisk pace for the tree line. He knew there was a canyon somewhere beyond those distant trees, a canyon they called Hell’s Gate.
CHAPTER 10
Predator
We hang the petty thieves and appoint the great ones to public office.
—AESOP, GREEK SLAVE AND AUTHOR
Chapada dos Guimar?es
10 A.M. the next day, January 24, 1944
Jesus Raza belched as he reached for a half-empty bottle of pinga, nearly knocking it off the table—again. “You should have seen that gringo,” he slurred to his wife.
Maria was sixteen—some forty years younger than her husband—and although she had not told Raza yet, she was two months pregnant with his child. She had been forced to marry the jefe for one reason only. It certainly wasn’t his manners (there were none) or the fact that even on his best days Raza was a drunken bully. He was simply the most powerful man in Chapada dos Guimar?es. Everyone feared him.
Maria sometimes wondered how Raza had become so important. She remembered him bragging about a youth spent in a place called Mexico where he had ridden with someone named Zapata. But Maria, who, in her entire life had not traveled more than five miles from her village, had never heard that name before.
And he bragged about so many other things, she thought. It seemed he had made a career inventing imaginary friendships with famous people, none of whom she had ever heard of.
What she was certain about was that Raza was a killer. His victims were strangers, mostly. Some were unlucky enough to have crossed him, while others had simply wandered into Chapada at the wrong time. She also knew that with the recent livestock killings, this was definitely one of those “wrong times.”
“The gringo nearly wet himself when he saw me,” Raza said, between swigs of cane liquor, proudly regaling Maria with yet another rendition of his encounter in the church courtyard. He would have killed the stranger, Maria knew, but that other gringo, Thorne, had promised him two tubs of liquor if he’d go away. And if there was one thing Raza liked better than bullying, it was drinking. She also knew that he didn’t want Thorne’s witch of a wife to cast a spell on him.