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.
Merc went through the coca area, heading toward the old mine. The boundary between the coca op and the mine was heavily guarded, and not by locals but by white men. Another thing that caught Merc’s interest was the strong energetic dome over the guts of the mine, making it difficult for him to get close. He walked around the whole thing, sending info back to Liege for processing. He got a good look at each of the guards so that the team could add them to their growing body of evidence concerning the Omnis. Did these men work for the Omni World Order itself, or were they employed by a subsection of it…one run by the Legion’s enemy, Brett Flynn?
Merc tried to penetrate the minds of the guards. As regular humans, they should have been open to his reading, but he could retrieve nothing about the mine itself. That topic had somehow been blocked. Between that and the energetic shield over the mine, Merc had part of his answer: this was, in fact, an Omni operation.
It was nearing dusk when Merc returned to the tent he’d identified as the one Pablo slept in. The boys in Pablo’s sleeping group were at the mess hall. Merc sat against a tree trunk as he waited for the boy to return. He’d gone without food for close to a day now, which wasn’t much of an issue as his body was optimized for endurance. He had managed to snag several bottles of water—it was safer to drink bottled water here. He didn’t want to consume the river water. Not because he was concerned with bio-infectants—those his body could easily neutralize—but because the water was contaminated with chemicals from the coca processing and the mine itself. Neither would take him down completely, but they could slow him down while his body purged the toxins.
Pablo came around to the back of the tent after dinner. He handed Merc a plate of beans and rice. Merc ate the entire serving, then set the plate aside and focused on the boy.
“Do you ever go to the mine?” Merc asked. He got to his feet.
“Never. They shoot people poking around there. Or worse, they push them outside the camp at night for la Tunda to get.”
“How often do you hear la Tunda? Nightly?”
“No. Once or twice a week. Or when it’s summoned.”
“I’m heading back tonight.”
Pablo’s eyes widened. “You can’t. It’s too dangerous to be out at night.”
He didn’t want to downplay the boy’s fear. Merc was capable of fighting the ghouls off, but Pablo wasn’t. “When did you last hear it?”