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hadn’t known until this afternoon that the company was finally giving up on logging the basin.
    “Yes, it’s true,” Marcel said, “Within a week there will be no trucks going in and out, no generator, and no freezer. We would have to work out of this place on our own, and it would take a lot of time to get started again. I’m not sure we could do it. We haven’t made enough money yet for more equipment.”
    “What about the next camp? Can’t we take everything with us and set up there?”
    Marcel stared at the ground. “No. The hunters would find the cages, and that would be the end of it. Here, most of them were afraid of the forest because of the fever, but anywhere else, they would follow our tracks just out of habit.”
    Back toward the clearing, something rustled. Marcel was calm but picked up his rifle, ready to fire into the air. The unseen creature shot through the trees maybe forty yards away. It sounded too small to worry about. A bush baby coming out to hunt crickets, or a monkey desperate to make it home before other things awoke.
    “I am sorry,” Marcel said. “I really am. But who could have guessed? I was afraid more people would die, so I begged the company to send help. For all I knew, it could have been as bad as those fevers they have to the east. By the time you showed me the truth, it was too late.”
    “I understand.” The old man sighed as though his last breath were leaving him.
     
     

 
    CHAPTER FOUR
     
     
    The sight of the machete in Tall Guard’s hand got Amy flailing again. Almost at once she managed to wriggle out of the unbuttoned shirt, and suddenly she was free. The floppy white sunhat still clung to her by the string under her chin, but now it covered half her face instead of her head, and partly blocked her sight.
    The barrel-shaped guard was between her and the drop-off. When she tried to get around him, he moved with surprising speed for his size, recovering her left arm with one sweep of his own. He calmly grabbed at the air in pursuit of her right, like a sleepy bear shooing away flies. Amy kept moving and twisting enough to prevent him from retaking the fugitive right arm, but could not free her left again.
    Tall Guard stopped a few paces away, maybe waiting for Barrel Guard to hold his prey still.
    “I’ve got money,” Amy shouted in English, trying anything that might slow down whatever was going on.
    No response. She quickly glanced at Tall Guard again and saw that he’d set down the machete and was fumbling in his pants pocket. He pulled out a transparent plastic bag that held what looked like a miniature liquor bottle, the kind served on airplanes.
    Amy had no idea what he was doing and no time to puzzle over it. She concentrated on keeping her right arm as far as possible from Barrel Guard. The effort kept her squatting, with the free arm sticking straight into the air as though she were trying to fly.
    She shouted her offer again, this time in French, and now the guards exchanged a look. She was right; Barrel Guard had only been feigning incomprehension earlier.
    “I can get money from a bank in the capital,” she said. “You can be rich by tomorrow morning.”
    That seemed to get Tall Guard thinking. He stood still and looked again at Barrel Guard, who only barked angrily in a language that Amy could not even identify.
    “You’ll have the money by morning,” she repeated, and continued spitting out her offer in telegraphic bursts as she struggled: “Cent mille euro! Argent liquide!”
    This time Tall Guard spoke at length, but Barrel Guard only snapped at him again, with more words and greater venom. Barrel Guard also looked away from Amy while he scolded the other man, giving her time to try something new.
    She leapt a couple of feet off the ground and pulled her knees up against her chest. The huge man kept his grip, but didn’t realize how far Amy’s body would drop this time. The sudden downward force on his arm was enough to pull him a