She frowned at him, then pasted a smile back on her face and turned to Tony. "Good. I like having big, strong men around to eat my cooking."

"How about little girls, Mama Chloe? Do you like them to eat your cooking, too?" Little Bits pulled on Scott's mother's long skirt, an eager smile on her face.

She pulled the little girl into her arms for a tickle and a hug and stared over the girl's dark curls at Scott. "I like little girls most of all, 'cher'. We're gonna all get along just fine..."

Mentally, Scott filled in her unspoken words ... "'until that son of mine gets home to stay where he belongs."'

PART TWO.

The conquest of the earth, which mostly means taking it away from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look into it.

-Heart of Darkness, ch. 1, Joseph Conrad (1857-1924).

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE.

'October 1st, San Jacinto fazenda in Brazil, One World Base Camp.'

Scott's trip to the San Jacinto 'fazenda,' the ranch which Dr. Lopez had bought to house One World staff and anchor his base camp, was an eye-opening education.

After a commercial flight from New Orleans to Miami, then another to San Paulo, he took a smaller plane to Cuiaba, where he transferred to an even smaller plane owned by One World.

Scott soon became aware that a plane was the most efficient -- and safest -way into the southern region of the Pantanal where the San Jacinto 'fazenda' was located. The only other possible route out of San Paulo -- a slow boat to Porto Jofre, then a bus ride down the Trans-Panataneira highway to Cuiaba, then another even slower boat trip to San Jacinto -- meant weeks of travel, exacerbated by the inherent dangers of the jungle, swamp and mountainous regions the route traversed.

San Jacinto gave a new meaning to being located in the back of the beyond.

Scott concluded that he and his contact had better maintain their covers, because he didn't see One World offering to fly them safely out to spread the word of its crimes. If the worst happened, he'd improvise. He'd plotted a route to Brasilia by water and it was slightly more treacherous than the one from San Paulo to San Jacinto. With luck, they wouldn't have to use it.

As he had since the day he'd arrived, Scott set out after lunch for his daily walk around the border of the base camp. He nodded to the armed guards, most of them imported thugs from Central America's endless supply of mercenaries. Ostensibly they were there to protect the One World staff from hostile natives and eco-terrorists. From the briefing Scott had received from the CIA, there were no hostile natives in this particular region of the Pantanal and the eco-terrorists hadn't discovered the unspoilt area yet. They worked farther north in the Amazon. But the guards didn't know he knew that.

"'Hola', Dr. Fontenot."

The comely young woman who'd hailed him rose from the bench in the shade of the hangar building and strolled toward him. Her hips gently swayed under her gauzy skirt.

The hanger guards laughed and poked one another.

Scott presumed the joke was at his expense. The word had gotten around the camp that the crazy Norte Americano was stupid to walk in the hottest, most humid part of the day. Or, maybe they were sharing the most current piece of gossip. That he and Rosalie, his DEA contact, were once again meeting to fuck each others brains out during siesta.

Scott didn't care which rumor they laughed over, just as long as they believed he and the woman approaching him were harmless.

'"Hola,"' he replied as he hurried to meet her.

As he approached Rosalie, he observed the way the guards handled the Russian-made automatic rifles. For all their rough edges, the men handled the guns with ease. Their patterns of patrol and hand-offs had convinced Scott that Lopez had bought himself a highly trained, mercenary army.

The thought didn't do much to ease the tightness in Scott's throat and the itchy feeling on the back of his neck, feelings he'd had from the day he arrived and realized how isolated he and Rosalie were.

No wonder the other DEA plant hadn't survived.

Yeah, better the guards thought him stupid or randy.

Rosalie and he had agreed to this daily walk as a way of exchanging information. The fact that the guards and half the camp were now used to them meeting would help if the couple had to leave suddenly. They'd be just another couple running off to have hot sex on a little river voyage up to Porto Jofre.

Or, at least that's what they hoped the camp would think. If not, they'd be running for their lives.

He was glad Jeannie didn't know about his comely DEA contact, or he would lose the ground he'd gained with her. He hoped his love had realized that thoughts of finding the evidence to protect her were the only thing that kept him in this hell hole.

Besides being isolated in the middle of proverbial nowhere, San Jacinto sat in the middle of an alluvial plane on one of the rivers which regularly escaped its banks during the wet season and made the area into a full-fledged swamp -bigger and more dangerous than Manchac or even some of the other swamps Uncle Sam had dropped him into during his stint in the Marines. Beyond the swampy land were vast areas of grass lands, forests, and mountains. The Pantanal was one of the last, basically undiscovered and protected eco-regions of the world. Mostly, because no one could get there to ruin it.

It still amazed him that Lopez had been able to build an air strip capable of handling the One World hospital plane. It was this plane in which Scott and the other medical personnel flew to reach other medical 'fazendas', even further into the swamps and plateaus of the outer reaches of the Pantanal. There, they treated locals who had only recently come into contact with the white man.

Scott grimaced. He wasn't sure that the indigenous population was better off.

Only two days ago he'd gone out on his first mission of mercy to one of the more far-flung camps. The fury at what he'd observed still lingered.

'"Jesus Christ."'

'Scott had been shocked. He'd turned and glared at Rosalie who from his first day at One World had attached herself as his nurse assistant and translator to ease their investigation. "Who'd they turn loose on these poor people? The Marquis de Sade masquerading as a surgeon?"'

'"Shhh." Rosalie had looked around quickly to see who might have overheard his outburst. "Some understand English. Don't risk our cover over something you will be seeing quite a lot of."'

'Scott lowered his voice. "You mean we're going to see more of this -- this butchery?"'

'He waved his hand at the line of people outside the fazenda. The small group of people looked like extras in a Stephen King horror movie. The first man in line had only one eye, as did the second and third behind him. The good eyes they had left glared at him. They muttered words at him which Rosalie had later told him meant "devil doctor."'

'The patient he'd just treated and released for an infection in a surgical incision had been someone's kidney donor. He recalled the child's heart back in New Orleans, and shuddered to think of where the body of that unwitting donor might be buried.'

'Rosalie touched his arm and moved closer, using the chart he had in his hands as a cover for the conversation.'

'"There's more than maiming and killing going on, doctor," she whispered. "Lopez and his partners are also raising marijuana and poppies. The drug trade is just as deadly -- and that is what Julio -- Dr. Calabria -- died for. I want these bastards caught and convicted -- so we're not anywhere near through with our mission here. Don't you forget what you signed on for."'

While Rosalie flirted with the leering guards, another little daily routine to throw the killers off the scent, Scott cursed at his feelings of helplessness. He wanted to kill the One World butchers for what they were doing to these innocent, trusting people. They had no right to call themselves doctors. But he kept his feelings to himself. As Rosalie had so succinctly reminded him, he'd signed on for the long haul, and they didn't have enough evidence to convict anyone of anything -- yet.

The irony of it was that the bastards would probably spend more time in jail for the illegal farming of drug crops and smuggling of the by-products, than for the mutilating and maiming of native populations. So far neither Scott nor Rosalie had found any concrete evidence which would hold up in court to tie One World to murder for harvesting organs. Rosalie said Dr. Calabria had begun to gather that kind of evidence, but he died before he could complete his mission.

Again, Scott wondered just how she knew that. No one in the DEA briefing had mentioned any details. Maybe he would ask Rosalie about it today. He suspected there was more to his cohort than met the eye.

"Scott, good afternoon." Rosalie waved one last time to the hanger guards. "Did you have a good lunch?"

"Yes, and you?" Scott nodded to some mechanics. Like the guards, they hung around the hanger doors and grinned at the sight of Rosalie and him "accidentally" meeting for the eighth time in eight days. The rumor mill would have a hey-day.

Rosalie's next words mirrored his thoughts. "You think they take bets on how many times we make love?"

Scott glared at the leering faces of the men congregated in front of the hanger. To a man, they ignored him as they stripped Rosalie naked with their eyes. His nostrils flared. He could almost smell the testosterone coming from the men lusting after the woman at his side. Almost hear their thoughts that he should share her, one of the few white women in the area, with them.

Like hell.

"Probably. I've been thinking -- maybe you should move into my room." At her gasp of shock, Scott rushed to add, "Of course, I'd sleep in the hammock. You could have the bed. I have a girl friend."

"Sorry. You're right. It would make sense, especially if we had to get away quickly, but..."

"But what?"

"I haven't even thought of being so close to another man since my lover died." Rosalie blinked away a tear, then sniffed.

Rosalie followed his eyes to where the men stood. She shivered. She knew.

"Yes, let's feed the rumor mill some more. I'll move into your room tomorrow during siesta," said Rosalie. "It will make our job easier. Maybe then we can eliminate these daily walks. Neither of us can afford to sweat off anymore water weight."

They moved away from the hanger at a brisker pace than the weather called for.

Scott broached the topic of the dead Dr. Calabria. He could add two and two, but wanted to see if Rosalie would admit the answer was four.

"Julio. Dr. Calabria."

Rosalie stiffened at the sound of the dead doctor's name.

"He was your lover."

It wasn't a question, but Rosalie answered anyway. "'Si'. We lived together in Miami. We were to be married after he finished his residency."

"So the reason you know what evidence he'd found on the murders of the organ donors was because...?"

"Because he sent me e-mails written in a code we'd arranged for our love notes."

Rosalie slowed her pace, then stopped, forcing Scott to stop. She looked up at him.

"Both Customs and DEA have the transcripts of his e-mails, but without Julio's first-hand testimony and the doctors' notes, files, and yes, even specific written requests he'd copied for certain organs right down to the blood-type, they had no case. And then there was the drug operations he'd stumbled across. We suspect that is what really got him killed. One World was afraid they would lose all that lovely drug money." Rosalie spat in disgust. "I could kill them all."

"And we're going to try to reconstruct all that evidence?"

Rosalie nodded. "We have to. What else can we do?"

"Well, do you have any idea how we are going to do that? I mean, the mutilated natives are easy to document. We can take pictures. I'm already making duplicate copies of my notes on the cases we've treated."

"Where are you hiding the papers?"

Rosalie urged him to start walking once more. One of the patrolling guards had stopped to stare at them. They couldn't take the chance that someone might overhear and understand their conversation.

"I'm not." Scott grinned. "I'm transcribing them onto my laptop at night and saving to a diskette only. The disks are easier to hide."

Rosalie matched his long-legged pace for about fifty yards before she spoke. "That will do for confirmation, but it isn't evidence. We need to have copies of the original charts with the doctors' signatures. Julio told me the surgeons had documented the harvesting procedures. Those records are somewhere in camp. Plus, we need copies of the organ orders."

"I agree. But we only need a representative sample of those kinds of original written documents. My transcriptions will just add to the enormity of the crimes and be corroborating. Besides I'm an expert and the medical records are exempt from hearsay. I can testify using the transcripts as a refresher to my memory. It'll be legal and conclusive."

Rosalie cast him a curious glance. "Are you a lawyer, also?"

"No. Another person killed by one of Lopez's partners advised me what needed to be found. He told me how I could get around the hearsay rules."

"He was a friend, this lawyer?"

"Yes -- he was a friend. Charles ... Charles died in place of the woman I love. So I, too, have a taste for revenge." Scott took Rosalie's hand and squeezed it. "We'll get them. Don't worry."

Rosalie returned the gentle squeeze and dropped his hand. "Why don't I move into your room tonight after dinner? I can help transcribe the notes. And we can plan on what else we need to look for."

"Good idea. Your typing is probably better than mine anyway."

"That sounds sexist, doctor."

Rosalie smiled and winked at him.

Scott's answering shout of laughter startled a macaw into flight from his perch high in the forest canopy. The brilliant beauty of the bird streaked skyward like a moving rainbow. Scott recalled the memory of another rainbow and a bird welcoming Jeannie to safety in a swamp in Louisiana.

He took the macaw's flight as an auspicious note for his mission in Brazil.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO.

'October 8th, Manchac, Louisiana'

"Why doesn't he call?"

Jeanette paced Mama Chloe's small kitchen as she kept one eye on the phone and the other on her daughter playing in the tree house that Tony and Mama Chloe's male friend, Frenchy, had built.

"Sit down, child, before you wear a hole in my floor." Mamma Chloe picked up the bread dough she was kneading, then vigorously slapped it down on the marble top counter. "Scott will call when he is able. Remember, he told us there were too many ears in the camp. He doesn't want to chance using the satellite phone Tony got him too often."

"I know." Jeanette stopped her nervous pacing, then picked up a dish towel and started drying the dishes sitting in the drainer. "But he needs to know that the killer from the VooDoo Exhibit was found dead."

The New Orleans detectives had wanted her to identify the morgue photos of a man called Eric Matthews. Tony had refused to take her into New Orleans and forced the NOPD to choose what he termed "safe territory" for a meeting. Jeanette would never forget the ordeal of traveling to the Slidell police station to meet the New Orleans detectives. The trip back to Manchac had been a blur. She could still recall the photos depicting the dead man. He hadn't died easy.

She wanted, no needed to talk to Scott about it. Once she had, the images would fade. She'd gotten so used to taking her worries and problems to Scott over the years since Paul's death. Now that Scott was gone and unreachable, she felt lost.

Mama Chloe asked, "You like that boy of mine, 'cher'?"

Was Scott's mother a mind-reader?

The older woman concentrated on the dough she was attacking with solid punches and not on Jeanette. But she had a feeling that Scott's mother was waiting intently for her answer.