FLASH — BY WIRE FROM THE BOLIVIAN INTERIOR

Caduceus Foundation field radio confirms: AMBUSH in the jungle! Expedition leader Dr. Arturo Arsini cut down within arm’s reach of REX CALLOWAY, the Queensland Comet himself — who answered five gunmen with his fists, his revolver, and one battered phrase of Spanish, and walked away without a scratch!

The ambushers wore Bolivian uniforms. What lay beneath them did not. SHEN LIANG, scholar of Hangzhou, names them for what they are: the SERPENT PEOPLE, a race the earth was meant to keep buried. JEAN-PIERRE TORTEAU raised New York on a salvaged wireless with news grimmer still — a temple exposed by shellfire, a guardian loose, a mummy that must be carried home. R. DOBSON, agency man, already smells sabotage closer than the enemy.

New to the party: MATILDA, huntress and guide, whose rifle has spoken twice and missed nothing yet!

A map burned before it could be read. A festival held for something that should still be sleeping. And now, at a broken pillar deep in the Chaco, something vast and black comes on through the trees — unhurried, because it has all the time in the world.

THE TWO-HEADED SERPENT — coming to a Friday soon to a table near you.