Free The Last Place God Made by Jack Higgins

Hayley and got to hell out of there. Needless to say, Alberto didn't consider that for a second. He stood at the end of the jetty peering into the ram, a machine-gun cradled in his left arm.
     
     
"Don't tell me you're thinking of going across?" Hannah demanded.
     
     
"I have no choice. I must find out what the situation is over there. There could be survivors."
     
     
"You've got to be joking," Hannah exploded angrily. "Do I have to spell it out for you? It's finally happened, just as every-one knew it would if they didn't get out of there."
     
     
Colonel Alberto ignored him and said, without turning round, "I would take it as a favour if you would accompany me Senhor Mallory. Sergeant Lima can stay here with Senhor Hannah."
     
     
Hannah jumped in with both feet, his ego, I suppose, unable to accept the fact of being left behind. "To hell with that for a game of soldiers. If he goes, I go."
     
     
I don't know if it was the result Alberto had intended, but he certainly didn't argue. Sergeant Lima was left to hold the fort with his revolver, I took the other machine-gun and Han-nah had the automatic shotgun he habitually carried in the Hayley.
     
     
There was water in the canoe. It swirled about in the bottom breaking over my feet in little waves as I sat in the stern and paddled. Hannah was in the centre, also paddling and Alberto crouched in the prow, his machine-gun at the ready.
     
     
An old log, drifting by, turned into an alligator by flicking his tail and moving lazily out of the way. The jungle was quiet in the rain, the distant cough of a jaguar the only sound. On the far side of the river, sandbanks lifted out of the water, covered withibis and as we approached, thousands of them lifted into the rain in a great, red cloud.
     
     
The sandbanks appeared and disappeared at intervals for most of the way, finally rising in a shoal a good two hundred yards long in the centre of the river opposite the mission jetty.
     
     
"I landed and took off from there twice last year during the summer when the river was low," Hannah said.
     
     
I suspected he had made the remark for something to say more than anything else for we were drifting in towards the jetty now and the silence was uncanny.
     
     
We tied up alongside an old steam launch and climbed up on to the jetty. A couple of wild dogs were fighting over some-tiling on the ground at the far end. They cleared off as we approached. When we got close, we saw it was another nunslying face-down, hands hooked into the dirt.
     
     
Flies rose in clouds at our approach and the smell was fright-ful. Alberto held a handkerchief to his face and dropped to one knee to examine the body. He slid his hand underneath, groped around for a while and finlly came up with the identity disc he was seeking on its chain. He stood up and moved away hurriedly to breathe fresh air.
     
     
"Back of her skull crushed, probably by a war club."
     
     
"How long?" Hannah asked him.
     
     
"Two days - three at the most. If there has been a general massacre then we couldn't be safer. They believe the spirits of those killed violently linger in the vicinity for seven days. There isn't a Huna alive who'd come anywhere near this place."
     
     
I don't know whether his words were supposed to reassure, but they certainly didn't do much for me. I slipped the safety catch off the machine-gun and held it at the ready as we went forward.
     
     
The mission itself was perhaps a hundred yards from the jetty. One large single-storeyed building that was the medical centre and hospital, four simple bungalows with thatched roofs, and a small church on a rise at the edge of the jungle and close to the river, a bell hanging from a frame above the door.
     
     
We found two more nuns before we reached the mission, both virtually hacked to pieces, but the most appalling sight was at the edge of the clearing at the end of the medical centre where we discovered the body of a man suspended by his ankles