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Two Uruente tribesmen had cut them off shortly after the women had entered the
jungle, and Mulrooney had shot and killed one of them. The girl who spoke
Greek killed the other with a spear. Fred picked up the bows and arrows of the
two dead Uruente warriors, took their knives Mulrooney was surprised that the
knives seemed perfectly modern albeit sort of flashy then slit their throats.
They had run on. And run and run and run.
From the sun being directly overhead, Mulrooney assumed it was about noon, but
as they were so close to the Equator, she wasn't sure.
She had not seen Sergio Celini, but once she had heard a rifle shot. He was
somewhere ahead. She had no words to ask the tall, muscular and very beautiful
girl where they were going or if they were just running. Logic dictated that
they head for the river. Were they doing that? Or were they doing that only if
Celini headed for the river? Was the Amazon girl on a blood hunt for Celini?
Mulrooney shook her head, her hat down low over her eyes to absorb the sweat
and shield her eyes from the blazing sun. Her khaki shorts were grass stained,
leaf stained and sweat stained, and the Uruente she had killed had been so
close that her shorts were bloodstained, too.
"Me-em-ef!"
Mulrooney looked up. Fred had stripped away the khaki bush jacket and had
somehow cut and tied it into a breechcloth, her breasts bare. Somehow it
looked perfectly natural.
"Yeah?"
"Uruente!"
Mulrooney jumped to her feet, her revolver in her right fist. She gestured
into the jungle. "Fred and Me-em-ef where do we run?" She had given up on
straightening out the girl regarding names.
"Fred Me-em-ef run." And the girl pointed in the direction they had been
going before Mulrooney had forced them to stop.
Fred started into her long-strided trot, Mulrooney running beside her, knowing
Fred was intentionally slowing the pace to avoid outdistancing her.
And now Mulrooney heard what Fred had heard moments before.
The Uruentes.
There was a blood-chilling scream, and arrows filled the air around them as
Fred wheeled, the bow in her hands, and shot an arrow into the sky.
Then Fred shoved her ahead and loosed another arrow. Mulrooney aimed her
little revolver into the jungle and fired at one of the cocoa-colored,
red-painted bodies, a blowgun at his lips. The body fell across the path.
Mulrooney ran for her life, Fred right behind her.
Chapter Twenty-Two
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The Ford Bronco skidded in the mud a little, Culhane jumping out before it
stopped, nearly slipping but stepping clear. He tossed the rifle across the
hood of the mud-spattered Bronco to Sebastiao, Sebastiao neatly catching it.
From the Norwegian army engineer's bag at his left side he took the compass,
opened it and let the dial settle to level. "Check your map."
"This is where the boat should meet us, senhor."
Culhane closed the compass. They were at roughly the same coordinates but
parallel to Celini's mine.
"Let's go." He secured the compass in the bag. Sebastiao handed back the
rifle, and Culhane shouldered into his pack. He had picked a distant peak
barely visible across the jungle canopy to shoot his azimuth on. He drew his
machete from across his back and pointed it out to Sebastiao. "We're about
parallel to the Uruente village if the captain knows his stuff. If we don't
intercept Fanny, we go there. If they capture her, they'd take her there if
they're like most other headhunters for the ritual murder."
"Sim, senhor."
Culhane looked into Sebastiao's eyes. He deeply respected the little man.
There was terror written there, and yet Sebastiao had not wanted to stay
behind.
Culhane started to run.
* * *
There were drums in the jungle. Mulrooney tried pretending that she was
starring in an old Hollywood B-movie: headhunting natives pursuing her through
the jungle, an Amazon warrior by her side, the jungle drums signaling death or
worse. Only this was no fantasy.
She kept running, not deluding herself that the Uruentes had been lost.
There was no choice but to follow Fred.
And then Fred stopped. She dropped to one bare knee and was examining a leaf.
Mulrooney saw red spots on it, the spots bright and wet looking. "Blood," she
whispered, and tapped the girl's shoulder. "Fred " She pointed to the blood on
the leaf. "Celini?"
"Celini!" And Fred was running, Mulrooney shouting after her, "No we can use
his help! Fred!"
The drums seemed louder now. Mulrooney told herself it was her heart pounding
in her chest.
Mulrooney kept running, leaves and branches slapping at her, tearing at her
shirt, at her flesh.
Fred was just visible turning a bend in the trail they had followed through
the jungle.
And then Mulrooney saw him as she herself rounded the bend. Celini was on his
knees, trying to raise his rifle to his hip from the ground beside him. His
left thigh was bleeding where the shaft of an arrow protruded, his left
shoulder soaked where Mulrooney had shot him in the cave.
Fred stood towering over him, her bow up, the arrow ready to fly.
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"Fred!" Mulrooney screamed.
Fred remained motionless, then twisted left, firing into the jungle. There was
a cry of pain, and a body tumbled from one of the higher branches: one of the
Uruente warriors.
Mulrooney swung her revolver on line into the trees to fire, but there was no
target.
Sergio Celini screamed and Mulrooney wheeled toward him.
His body looked like a pincushion. Tiny darts protruded from his chest and his
cheeks and his left eye, more thudding into him.
Blowguns.
And then she saw them. Uruente warriors stepped from the trees into the small
clearing, surrounding them.
Fred had another arrow ready. Mulrooney, her gun leveled at the Uruente, moved
slowly toward Fred.
"Fred?"
"Me-em-ef."
"Run?"
Fred shook her head.
Mulrooney closed her eyes for an instant and licked her dry lips. She needed
water. She needed rest.
Fred lowered her bow for an instant, drew one of the two knives she had taken
from the dead Uruente warriors, then aimed the bow again. The knife was in her
left hand beneath the tip of the arrow.
Mulrooney understood what Fred wanted her to do. She took the knife.
The knife in her balled left fist, the gun in her right, she placed herself
against Fred's back. The other woman towered over her.
"You're a good woman, Fred. You don't understand me, but you're a good woman."
"Fred Me-em-ef."
Mulrooney understood that Fred understood.
No blowguns were raised. No bows were drawn.
The Uruentes began to close the circle, spears held like quarterstaves out of
a Robin Hood movie.
There was the twang of a bow. Mulrooney didn't look. At that range, Fred could
not miss. Another twang. Another and another.
There was a shout from one of the Uruente warriors.
And Mulrooney noticed that the drums had stopped.
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A scream. A war cry. The Uruentes rushed forward.
Mulrooney's little revolver bucked in her hand once, then again and again and
again and again, and then it was clicking empty. The Uruente warriors were
clambering over the bodies of the men she had shot, and Mulrooney clubbed the
revolver into the face of one of them. He fell back. The gun was lost. She
rammed the knife forward blindly. There was a shriek of pain and the body fell
and then another hurtled at her.
Mulrooney turned. She was shoulder to shoulder with Fred now, who held her bow
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