The boy looked up, then around nervously. Merc knew him. He was Pablo, the grandson of the woman he’d seen in town earlier. Even though it had been seven years since Merc last saw him, and he was no longer a little kid but a teenager, Merc knew it was him.
He allowed the kid to see him.
The boy’s mouth dropped, then he rushed over and gave Merc a hug. “It’s you! You’re here. I never thought I’d see you again.”
Merc set his hands on the boy’s shoulders and pushed him back a bit. “What are you doing here, Pablo? Surely your abuela worries about you.”
Pablo squared his shoulders and gave Merc a slight smile. “I am supporting her and my sister. What I earn here pays for their food and housing and Belén’s schooling.”
Merc sighed. He looked back at the little disturbances in the dirt, many of them as far as he could see. “Do you not remember how your mother died?”
Shadows darkened Pablo’s face. “Of course I remember.”
“Then how could you set out more landmines? And who would have a child do such a dangerous task?”
“These aren’t to hurt people. They are to protect us.”
“Landmines kill and maim—humans, animals, everything.”
“It is the everything we are after. Look, I show you.” The boy went over to the mine he’d just set and stepped on it. Merc jumped forward, but wasn’t fast enough to stop him. That terrible night, seven years ago, flashed through his mind. The blood, the tourniquet, Pablo’s mother’s screams of pain, Pablo’s chest-deep weeping, and the woman’s early labor brought on by the trauma.
But in this moment, nothing happened to the boy. He stood in the middle of a thick puff of smoke that streamed from the canister with a loud whistle. “See? It’s for la Tunda. Not people.”
“La Tunda?”
“The monsters. They come in the night. We set these so we know when to run for cover.”
“Can you describe these creatures?”
Merc didn’t know what a Tunda was, but he did know Omni ghouls. They used them to spread fear and enforce compliance. It was troubling that they’d brought their monsters here, but they clearly had a use for them.
Pablo shook his head vehemently and sent a frightened look around. “We should not be talking about them. Doing so summons them.” He stepped closer to Merc. “I have told my friends about you, about the man who saved me and my mom—my sister too.”
“I didn’t save your mom.”
“You got us home. You did save us. Will you come into camp to meet everyone?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“I’m an outsider. If you bring me in, you’ll lose their trust.”
Pablo considered that a moment. “Are you going to rat us out?”
“No.” Didn’t mean that Merc wasn’t going to end the coca op here; he just wasn’t going to use the authorities to do it.
“If you won’t come in with me, then you have to head back for town now so you can get there before dark.”
“The Tunda doesn’t exist.” The Tunda didn’t, but ghouls sure as fuck did. Merc was curious how much this kid had seen for himself.
“It does exist. It’s real.”
“Have you seen it?”
“No, but I’ve heard its screams. We’ve all seen the bodies of the people who’ve been attacked—or what’s left of them.” Pablo held his hand out, pointing toward a windowless shack down the hill. “Look. We even have hiding places if it comes out while we’re still working.”
The shack was too frail to keep a ghoul out. If anyone took shelter in one of those, and there were several that Merc could see, a ghoul would just rip it apart to get to whomever it was after. That made Merc realize that the ghouls, if they were indeed patrolling the compound, weren’t being sent after the workers inside so much as outsiders trying to get in. Maybe they were also there to deal with escaping workers.
Had the villagers who had disappeared come here to retrieve their loved ones and fallen victim to the ghouls? Perhaps there hadn’t been enough left of their remains to identify them. Conveniently.
Another thought struck Merc. The Legion believed that the ghouls were managed by Brett Flynn and possibly his handful of officers. So was Flynn himself here? Or whom had he put in place to manage the beasts they unleashed at night? He had to be local—the beasts couldn’t be managed from a distance, could they?
A man in a sweat-stained, dark green safari shirt, camp pants, and a wide-brimmed cotton hat hurried over to Pablo. He had a machete at his hip and a semiautomatic rifle slung over his shoulder. He sent an irritated look around, but couldn’t see Merc, who had been hiding his presence from anyone other than Pablo.
“What are you doing?” the bossman asked, irritated. “Who told you that you could take a break?”
Pablo looked around, but couldn’t see Merc either. “I needed one.”
“You tripped one of the alarms. It’s wasted now and has to be rebuilt. Give it to me.”
Pablo dug it out of the ground. He handed it to the man, receiving in exchange another bag of devices to put out.
“No break for you until these are all buried, every one of them. Get on it, boy. I’m watching you. We aren’t paying you to stand around.”
Merc pushed into Pablo’s mind the thought that he was leaving for now but would be back to talk to him later.
The boy sent a nervous look around, but obviously didn’t see Merc, which clearly didn’t sit well with him.
As Merc moved deeper into the compound, he reached out to Liege via their mental connections. I have questions, Liege. You heard what the boy said?
I did.
Tell me what I’m getting into here.
Acier’s been doing additional research, Liege said.
Nothing shows on current satellite images, Acier said, joining their telepathic convo. Historical images indicate there was once an illegal mine there. It had been in operation for years, but it now appears to have returned to jungle. What they were mining—gold, silver, or platinum—I don’t know. Or something else—rare earth minerals, maybe. I’m doing some more research to see what I can find out about it—who owned it, when it was shut down. Anything else.
I know the boy believes what he’s saying about la Tunda, Merc said. I’m not certain it’s actually ghouls—nor do I think it’s a mythical monster. Everyone here carries machetes. Could be there’s a more natural explanation for the manner in which villagers are disappearing.
If it’s ghouls enforcing border security, then we know we’re dealing with an Omni site, Liege said. Get in there and take a look around, see who’s running it. Could explain what Santo was doing there. And get us a ghoul sample, if you can. We need to see if the ones there have the same mutations as the ones up here do.
2
The compound of the illegal drug works was huge. It surrounded the mine and employed hundreds of workers. The coca shrubs were divided into three sections, each representing the three stages of harvest—those that were being cut back after a harvest, those that would be harvested next, and those currently being harvested. In the last section, tents were set up to protect the harvested leaves as they went through processing to turn them into paste. It was all done in makeshift field labs, using toxic chemicals to break the leaves down in vats that needed constant stirring.