He knew he had better get to the surface, but he wasn't going to do it without Zavala. One more try. He spun slowly around. Without the mask his vision was blurred, but he thought he saw a spot of purple and swam toward it. Zavala was floating a few feet off the bottom. Bubbles were coming from his mouth.

Austin pushed the regulator toward Zavala's face, not sure if it ever found its mark, because the willpower he had been using to operate on was eaten away by the black angry surf crashing against his brain. He reached down and let the quick-release buckle go on his weight belt and groped for the inflation valve of his buoyancy compensator. He thought he heard another explosion. Then he blacked out completely.

NUMA 2 - Blue Gold

CHAPTER 10

Trout stood at the door of the hut as motionless as a totem pole, watching and listening. He had been at his post for hours, staring into the darkness, his every sense alert to catch any change in the rhythms of the night. He had watched the day wind down and seen the shadows mix with the false dusk created by smoldering cook fires. The last few natives had disappeared into their huts like sullen phantoms, and the village went silent except for the brief muffled cry of a baby. Trout was thinking what an unhealthy place this was. It was as if he and Gamay had stumbled into a plague ward.

The Dutchman had kicked the family out of the hut closest to his and with a sweep of his hand ushered the Trouts through the door like the doorman at the Ritz. Slivers of light filtered through the grass walls into the dim interior. Hardly a breath of fresh air entered the close confines. The floor was dirt, a couple of hammocks were slung from support poles, and the furniture consisted of two crude stools and a cutting board fashioned out of stumps. The stifling heat and primitive accommodations didn't faze Trout. He was more bothered by the feeling he and Gamay were trapped.

He wrinkled his nose, a gesture he'd picked up from his father, a Cape Cod fisherman. Trout could picture his father walking to the end of the pier in the predawn darkness and sniffing the air like an old hound dog. Most days he'd say, “Finest kind, cap. Let's go fishing.” But some mornings he would wrinkle his nose and head for the coffee shop without another word. Any doubts about the elder Trout's olfactory prowess disappeared one beautiful morning when he stayed in port and six fishermen were lost in an unpredicted offshore storm. Things hadn't smelled right, his father explained later.

Trout had the same feeling although he was far from the sea in the heart of the Venezuelan rain forest. It was simply too quiet. There were no voices, no coughing, nothing to indicate human habitation of any kind. While it was still light Trout had committed every detail of the village to his near-photographic memory. He began to imagine that the population of the village must have silently vanished in the night. He backed away from the doorway and bent over the still form lying in a hammock. Gamay reached up and felt his face with a light touch of her fingers.