LITMIR.BIZ

      “Where the hell is that tugboat!?” Catt Alborak paced up and down the old, weathered wooden dock that jutted fifty feet out into the muddy headwaters of the Amazon. To her right was the distant skyline of Manaus. To her left was jungle. She saw her assistant, Maria Sanchez, pick up the cellular phone. Standing for a moment, her fists jammed on her hips, Catt glared up and down the river. There were a number of docks scattered along the bank, and plenty of tugs and tugboat captains. But where was their tug? Arrangements had been made before they arrived. A tug was to meet them at dock six and take them downriver for five hours, to the affected Juma village, where people were dying from some unknown bacterial or viral epidemic. Damn! People were suffering, and she and her team were standing here like they didn’t have a better thing in the world to do. Frustration ate viciously at Catt. She was never in good humor when things went wrong. She didn’t get paid to sit back, smile and be passive. No, responsibility for the lives of her team and those they were racing to help rested squarely on her shoulders.

      Nostrils flaring, Catt started pacing again. Taking off her sunglasses, she stared out across the massive, slow-moving expanse of the Amazon. Two major rivers combined at Manaus, the largest city in northern Brazil. Once, there had been a very rich rubber trade here, which had made this city experience an economic boom for the first half the century. As the need for natural rubber died, so had the industry. Since then, Manaus had remade itself into a very profitable white-collar city, and with its high-tech computer companies, it was a leader in communications in South America.

      “I could scream,” Catt muttered as she moved back to her team waiting on the bank. All around them were portable trunks filled with dry ice and antibiotics, boxes of lab equipment and laptop computers. The software contained information on every possible epidemic. The database would help them as they collected information about symptoms that would, she hoped, help them identify the killer of the Juma people. All would be needed to fight this epidemic. If they got to the Juma village at all!

      “We’ve got to get a tug,” she said firmly to Maria, who had just gotten off the cell phone.

      “You aren’t going to like this, Catt. The man who was hired to take us said he won’t do it. He doesn’t care how much money is involved. Word’s gotten out that half the people in the Juma village have died in the last two days. He’s scared,” Maria said unhappily, “and he said he loves his wife and kids too much to take us out there.”

      “He’s afraid he’ll get infected and die,” Andy Foltz said. “Understandable, but that puts us in a hell of a fix.”

      Catt’s patience was rapidly thinning. She ran her fingers through her short red hair in an aggravated motion. Her eyes burned with anger. “Maria, you call the city of Manaus. Get the mayor on the line. I’ll talk to him. I’m not going to beat around the bush. We’ll go to the top and take ’em apart one at a time if that’s what we have to do in order to get down there to help those people.”

      Maria nodded sympathetically and rapidly punched in some numbers. She was of Hispanic blood and knew Spanish, which was a close cousin of Portuguese. Catt knew some Spanish because her father’s spread near Del Rio, Texas, was right across the border from Mexico. Still, Maria’s command of the language was stronger, and whether Catt liked it or not, Maria was her intercessor at the moment. Unfortunately, Maria wasn’t pushy like her, and Catt knew in order to get Manaus officials to help them, push was going to come to shove.

      None of the team spoke Brazil’s first language, and they were at a decided disadvantage because of it. Now, Catt wished fervently that OID had either sent along an interpreter or brought in someone with field experience who spoke the language. It was too late now.

      Catt saw a cab moving rapidly toward them, much like the one that had dropped off them and their medical supplies. This dock was out in the middle of nowhere. They’d been waiting for this tug for over an hour. A precious hour during which they could have been heading down the Amazon toward those suffering people.

      Andy Foltz and Steve Tucker sat on large olive-green metal lockers, looking glum. They were just as frustrated as she was at not being able to get to those dying people. Aggravated to the point of blowing her infamous temper, Catt moved quickly back onto the dock. Immune to the beauty surrounding her, she jammed her hands into the pockets of her beige slacks as she walked quickly, her head down and filled with the turmoil of how to get out of this jam. Hearing the squealing of brakes, she stopped, turned and looked to where the asphalt ended, about a tenth of a mile from where she stood. The cab was delivering a passenger to their dock. Who? The tugboat captain? An official envoy from Manaus to help them? The man who emerged from the cab was tall and well muscled. He wore a short-sleeved white shirt, jeans and work boots, from what she could tell at this distance.

      He looked vaguely familiar, Catt thought, then shrugged off the notion. Worried for the dying people downriver, she turned her attention back to them and their ongoing plight. She shouldn’t just be standing here! She and her team should be on their way downstream right now. She snarled unhappily under her breath, spun around and headed back toward her team again. Maybe this man really was an official come to help them, someone who could get them out of this miserable mess. Catt wasn’t sure, but he looked like he knew what he was doing just by his proud carriage and the confident way he walked toward them. Her heart skipped a beat. Who was he? She frowned and halted near her team, waiting impatiently for him.

      The way he walked reminded Catt of a lithe animal—a jaguar, perhaps. The man had dark brown hair, cut short and close to his skull. He wore sunglasses, so she couldn’t see his eyes, which to her were the most important feature in a person’s face. Catt knew from experience that looking into someone’s eyes told her everything she needed to know. What was this man hiding? Suddenly the sun was masked behind veils of misty clouds that moved sluggishly above them. The heat was oppressive and she was perspiring profusely beneath her white cotton shirt. Still, she couldn’t help but notice the way his own shirt clung to his upper body, shouting of his athletic shape. His chest was well sprung, his arms lean and tightly muscled, the dark hair thick upon them.

      It was his face, though, that drew her gaze—an oval face with a hard, uncompromising jaw. His mouth was pleasant to look at—full, with the corners tipped slightly upward, so she knew he smiled a lot. Maybe he was a joker, someone who liked to laugh. His brows were

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