Cannibal Ravine

The noon heat punched straight through the thick rainforest canopy, splashing mottled sunlight across the wet leaf mold.

Ethan dropped to one knee, rubbing a handful of crushed black dirt onto his cheeks to mask his scent. He held a wide-bladed hunting knife low by his thigh, his eyes sweeping the quiet green around him like a hawk working a clear-cut. Behind him, five gear-laden expedition members were leaning against the buttress roots, panting heavily into the damp air.

"How much farther, Ethan?" Frank, the expedition leader, pushed his fogged specs back up his nose and wiped the sweat off his chin. He had the linen shirts and soft hands of a university biologist, but there was a sharp, calculating look in his eyes that didn’t fit the academic act.

"We’re right on the lip of Cannibal Ravine," Ethan said softly. He pointed his blade at a dark, deep blaze cut into the trunk of a hard rubber tree. "Past this line, the old village stories say nobody walks back out. That bird we were in didn't just drop out of the sky because of bad weather."

Their official quarry was a rare local flora called the "Blood Orchid"—supposedly carrying a complex alkaloid capable of repairing damaged cellular structures.

The party pushed deeper. The air grew thick, hot, and heavy enough to choke on.

Without warning, the rear packer let out a short, wet grunt. Ethan spun round just in time to see the man drop onto his face, a short black dart pinned into the side of his neck. His skin was already turning purple before his knees hit the dirt.

"Ambusher! Down!" Ethan bellowed, unslinging his composite bow as he dove behind the roots of a giant fig.

Whip! Whip! Whip!

Blowpipe darts hummed through the mist. The attackers moved like ghosts in the upper boughs, swinging through the vines without making a sound. But Ethan had spent eight years working reconnaissance in these basins; he tracked the sway of the foliage, drew to his ear, and dropped one of the runners straight out of a mahogany tree.

The body hit the mud with a heavy thud. Ethan broke cover and lunged forward, using his knife to slice open the attacker’s hand-sewn leather tunic.

Underneath the cured hide sat a black tactical vest and a high-end night-vision rig.

Ethan pulled the face mask down, his eyes narrowing. "Mercenaries. Private security. These aren't locals."

He turned on his heel, bringing his hunting knife up until the steel touched the soft skin under Frank’s jaw.

"Talk, Frank," Ethan rasped.

Frank stared down at the dead man on the ground. The meek, tired academic act melted off his face, replaced by a thin, ugly sneer.

Around them, a dozen heavy-set operators armed with suppressed carbines stepped out from behind the tree trunks, their barrels trained on Ethan’s ribs.

"You really are as good as advertised, Ethan," Frank said, clapping his soft hands together twice. "There is no orchid. There’s just my synthetic processing lab three miles up-river. I didn't hire a wilderness guide—I hired a shepherd to lead these board representatives into a dark corner so they could have a nice, tragic wilderness accident."

Frank tipped his chin to the gunners. "Drop him."

Tak-tak-tak-tak!

Sub-caliber rounds chewed through the underbrush. But a fraction of a second before the triggers pulled, Ethan threw himself backward over the lip of the ravine, plunging toward the white water sixty feet below.

"Get down there!" Frank roared over the noise of the falls. "I want a body!"

Ethan broke the surface of the pool at the bottom of the gorge, spitting out a mouthful of bloody foam. His right arm was furrowed by a near-miss, but the cold fire in his chest had taken over.

This was deep brush. This was his territory.

Over the next twelve hours, the hunt inverted. Ethan used the thick river mud and sulfur-clay from the cave walls to turn himself invisible against the banks. He strung spring-traps out of wild rotan vine, tipped handmade wooden stakes with poison-dart frog residue, and waited in the dark.

One by one, the heavily armed contractors vanished from the line. A shooter snagged by a ankle-loop and yanked thirty feet into the branches; a point man taking a thorn through his collar; two sweepers caught in a mud-slide that came out of nowhere. Panic spread through the remaining crew like rot in wet timber.

By the time the evening rain turned into a full tropical squall, washing out the smuggler’s camp, Frank was stumbling alone toward the mouth of the lower canyon.

The gunfire had stopped completely.

A mud-stained figure emerged from the curtain of gray rain, blocking the narrow track between the rocks.

"Ethan! Wait! Don't do this!" Frank tripped over his own boots, scrambling backward through the red mud. "I have offshore accounts! Millions, Ethan! Name a number!"

Ethan tossed a dry, empty carbine onto the gravel and pulled his hunting knife.

"Some things don't carry a price tag, Professor."

"You stupid bastard!" Frank suddenly screamed, pulling a small derringer from his sleeve and aiming it straight at Ethan’s head. "You kill me and you’ll starve out here! You don't have the satellite receiver! You'll never find your way out of this ravine!"

Thwip.

A bone-tipped dart split the air. Frank’s wrist burst open in a spray of red, the small pistol dropping harmlessly into the mud.

Out from the mist behind the rocks stepped thirty hunters, their skin painted in ash and red ochre, heavy bamboo spears held low. They looked down at Frank with flat, yellow-tinged eyes.

An old man with silvered hair stepped out from the main group, passing Frank like he was a fallen log, and stopped two paces from Ethan. He pressed his palm to his sternum and bowed his head slightly.

"Good to see you breathing, Hawkeye," the old man said in the local dialect.

Frank’s jaw dropped, his eyes wild with confusion. "What... you know these savages?!"

Ethan crouched down, looking into the pale, ruined face of the man in the dirt.

"I lived with them for two years after my unit pulled out," Ethan said quietly. "I didn't bring you out here to find your flower, Frank. I brought you here to stand trial."

The hunters moved forward without a word. Over Frank’s high, thin shriek, they dragged the man back into the thick, dark wall of the rainforest, where the rain washed away the tracks before the night was even out.