15
Panting, muscles stiff and burning, Eddie watched
from a high branch of a creeper-choked tree as the truck set off.
His run through the jungle, stopping every ten minutes to check his
bearing against the sun, had taken just over two hours. Tough
going, but the thought of what would happen to Nina and the others
if he didn’t make it had driven him on.
But he was too
late.
Even from outside the
perimeter fence he had picked out Nina’s red hair immediately in
the hot afternoon sun. She and Kit were being taken to the Mi-17. A
forklift hoisted the crate containing the sun disc into its cabin,
and it looked as though Stikes, recognisable by his beret, and
Callas were waiting to board the helicopter as well.
But his concern was
now for those left behind. The armed guards in the truck told him
that at least some of the prisoners were still alive . . . but they
wouldn’t be for long. Civilians held on a military base might
arouse questions. Corpses buried in the jungle would
not.
But how could he help
them? The truck was too far away for him to catch up. And he
couldn’t help Nina and Kit either; too many armed men around the
helipad for him to stand a chance of even getting
close.
The helipad . .
.
Part of his mind had
already subconsciously registered something wrong, and as the other
chopper’s rotors began to turn he realised what. A Hind? That
wasn’t unusual in itself, as the Russian flying tank had been sold
all over the world . . . but this one bore the red-and-white
roundel of Peru, not the Venezuelan tricolour. What was it doing
here?
He dismissed the
question when he saw something more important. On the far side of
the base was a small motor pool. A soldier climbed into a
Jeep.
His chance—
Eddie leapt down,
breaking into a run parallel to the boundary fence. He couldn’t
catch the truck – but if he was fast enough, he might be able to
intercept the Jeep.
The Hind roared into
the air and turned northwards. The Mil had been loaded, the
forklift backing away to let its passengers, willing and otherwise,
board. A flash of red: Nina being pushed inside.
He forced down a
surge of anger and kept running. The soldier in the Jeep waved
impatiently to another man. The deforested area was only about two
hundred metres across – once the 4×4 set off, it wouldn’t take long
to reach the gate.
A corner of the fence
ahead. He swung round it, angling away from the base. Another
glance—
The Jeep was on the
move.
Shit! Could he catch
it? It disappeared from view, blocked by trees, then reappeared.
Closer than he had expected. The driver was in a
hurry.
So was Eddie. He
forced himself on, aware that one stumble on the uneven ground
could cost the prisoners their lives. Dangling vines swatted at his
face. His heart pounded, leg muscles on fire, but he couldn’t
stop.
A scrape and clatter
of metal – the gate being opened. He heard the clash of gears as
the driver set off.
A shallow slope
ahead. The muddy road at the bottom came into view through the
undergrowth – as did the Jeep. Moving quickly.
Too quickly. Eddie knew he couldn’t reach it before
it passed.
His chance was
gone—
No!
He turned again,
aiming ahead of the Jeep, and leapt up, grabbing a clutch of
creepers hanging from a high tree. He swung down the slope,
reaching the bottom of his arc, rising higher . . .
And letting
go.
He fell, landing with
a bone-jarring crash in the Jeep’s open back as it passed. The two
soldiers had put their AK-103s on the rear seat, and it now felt as
though they were embedded in his spine.
The pain of his
touchdown was nothing compared to the soldiers’ shock, however. The
driver jumped halfway out of his seat in fright. The 4×4 swerved
almost into a ditch before he regained control.
Eddie pulled himself
upright. One of the AKs clattered into the footwell. But they were
too close to the base for him to use the weapon – the shots would
draw attention. Instead, he smashed an elbow into the driver’s face
as he looked round. The Venezuelan’s head snapped back, blood
spraying from his burst lip.
The other man twisted
in his seat, grabbing for the rifle. Eddie chopped at his throat.
He jerked away, the blow catching his jaw.
A retaliatory strike
lashed at Eddie’s eyes. He threw himself back – and banged his head
on the hard-edged bodywork.
The passenger took
advantage of his brief dizziness, pulling the AK from the footwell
by its barrel. He spun it round, about to empty the magazine into
the intruder’s chest at point-blank range—
Eddie reached between
the front seats and yanked the handbrake.
The 4×4 skidded. The
sudden deceleration caused the passenger to be thrown forward, and
his head thunked forcefully against the windscreen’s
frame.
Eddie used the same
inertia to fling himself upright. The dazed soldier was halfway out
of his seat, and Eddie shoved him with both hands to make the exit
complete. With a cry, the passenger tumbled out of the Jeep’s open
side, and hit a tree at the roadside head first, breaking his neck.
The AK bounced into the undergrowth.
One down – but the
driver had recovered. He released the handbrake and stamped down
hard on the accelerator.
The Jeep fishtailed,
kicking up a muddy spray. The sudden swerve hurled Eddie sideways.
He clutched desperately for a handhold to avoid following the dead
soldier out of the vehicle, but only caught the edge of the rear
seat. He hung over the Jeep’s side, mud splattering into his
face.
The driver jerked the
steering wheel. The Jeep swayed, tipping Eddie even further out.
The track blurred past beneath him. He tried to hook a foot under
the front seats, but couldn’t get a firm hold.
Green in his
peripheral vision—
He closed his eyes as
a plant at the roadside smacked into his cheek, at this speed even
mere leaves enough to draw blood. Stinging, he looked ahead again –
to see a tree coming up fast.
The driver saw it
too. He swerved to scrape off his uninvited passenger against its
thick trunk.
Eddie kicked,
searching for a foothold. His boot thumped against the hard
seatback. He strained to pull himself back into the Jeep, but
couldn’t get enough leverage.
The tree rushed
closer, filling his vision—
His groping foot
finally caught the seat’s underside, and he yanked himself back
inside as the tree whipped past, the leafy creepers dangling from
it swatting his head.
Other parasitic
growths concealed a danger of their own, though – a branch
protruding into the road—
The driver screamed
and braked hard – but too late.
The branch hit the
Jeep’s windscreen. The glass shattered, pieces showering into the
driver’s face. Chunks of broken wood bombarded both men. The
remaining AK fell off the rear seat, ending up beneath the
driver.
Eddie recovered
first. He grabbed a piece of smashed tree and swung it at the
soldier’s head, scoring a satisfyingly solid hit.
But the driver wasn’t
out of the fight, swerving the 4×4 sharply across the track. As
Eddie swayed, the Kalashnikov rattled into the front footwell –
giving the driver the chance to snatch it up.
With an angry leer of
victory, the Venezuelan swung round to shoot his
attacker—
Eddie was
gone.
The soldier was
bewildered by his apparent disappearance – until he realised the
Englishman had flattened himself across the rear seat.
He whirled
back—
The Jeep had angled
off the track – directly under a low, thick branch. There was a
crunching thud. Slowed by dense bushes, the 4×4 bounced to a stop
amidst the undergrowth. The engine rattled and
stalled.
Eddie cautiously
looked up. The driver was still in his seat . . . up to his neck.
His head was a hundred feet further back, a pulped mess beneath the
bough that had chopped it from his body.
‘Nice bit of tree
surgery,’ Eddie said, clambering into the front and kicking the
decapitated corpse from the Jeep. He recovered the AK-103, then
restarted the engine and backed the 4×4 on to the
road.
Now, he had to find
the truck.
Before it was too
late.
The new track was
even more narrow and overgrown than the one that had led to
Paititi, trees clawing at the military truck. Macy ducked a clawing
branch, then peered fearfully at her surroundings. The vehicle had
turned off the base’s access road on to the almost hidden path only
a few minutes earlier, but even over that short distance the jungle
had transformed into a dark, malevolent thicket. The trees were
gnarled, as if twisted by the wounds of physically battling each
other for the few scraps of daylight. Even the sun seemed to have
abandoned this place . . . or turned away in horror.
Because there was
something hanging in the air, permeating everything with foulness.
A stench, beyond the inescapable jungle odour of decaying
vegetation.
Osterhagen had caught
it too. ‘I did my civilian service in the Katastrophenschutz – disaster relief,’ he whispered
to Macy, his face grim. ‘I know that smell.’
The scent of
death.
They were at their
journey’s end.
Macy searched the
soldiers’ faces for any hint of mercy. She found none. The four
Venezuelans holding them at gunpoint were all cold, dispassionate.
They had done this before.
One last lurch over
some roots, and the truck clattered to a stop. The jungle canopy
was so thick it seemed like twilight beneath, all colour sapped
away. A soldier unlocked the tailgate and let it fall open with a
gunshot bang. ‘Muévete!’ he said,
pointing out of the truck with his AK.
Soto began to
shudder. ‘Oh, please no, please, don’t do this, please . . . ’ One
of the soldiers roughly dragged her to her feet. She wailed, a
keening mewl of helpless despair as he shoved her from the
truck.
Valero snarled, about
to leap up at him, but received a brutal kick to the head for his
trouble. Another soldier threw him out on to the
ground.
The two remaining men
gestured with their guns. Macy and Osterhagen picked up the
semi-conscious Becker and carried him from the vehicle. One of the
soldiers plucked the injured man’s hat from his head and put it on,
earning sarcastic laughs from his fellows.
The driver was
waiting, Kalashnikov in hand. He signalled for the prisoners to
advance. The guards pushed them forward. Macy could hardly breathe,
the stench of rot clogging her nostrils and fear tightening her
chest. She rounded the truck to see . . . the
hole.
It was aptly, bluntly
named: just a ragged opening in the earth, steep sides littered
with decomposing leaves. But as Macy got closer, she saw that it
was not empty.
Bodies were piled
inside it, a dozen, more. Most were rotted beyond recognition,
insects and animals having feasted on the rich flesh and organs.
Only the pair on top of the heap remained recognisably human, just
a day or two dead, but even these had already lost their eyes and
chunks of skin to the relentless scavengers. Insects swarmed from
the blackened bullet wounds in their chests. Cayo’s partners, the
drug smugglers.
Cayo himself soon
joined them. As the other soldiers held the prisoners at gunpoint,
two men pulled his corpse from the truck, carted it between them
like a sack to the pit, and tossed it in. Flies exploded from the
bodies as it thumped down on top of them.
The soldiers repeated
the process with Cuff. Macy looked away in horrified disgust.
Loretta’s pitiful cries became even louder at the sight of the dead
American splayed on the pile, his remaining eye staring dully back
at her.
‘Mother of God,’
grumbled one of the soldiers in Spanish, ‘that’s a noise I could
live without.’
‘We’ll do her first,’
said another man, before switching to English. ‘Okay, down! On your
knees!’
They forced the
explorers to kneel at the pit’s edge. Valero muttered a desperate
prayer. Macy realised she was crying, tears stinging as she started
to hyperventilate. Loretta gave her a pleading look as the soldier
stood behind her.
Macy wanted to keep
her eyes fixed on the helpless, innocent woman, but her fear forced
them shut. A last whimper escaped Loretta’s mouth—
A gunshot, shockingly
loud.
There was a soft
thump as her body slumped forward. The dull impact of a boot
against flesh, and with a slithering thud Loretta’s corpse dropped
into the hole.
The soldier moved
behind Macy.
She desperately tried
to open her eyes again, to take one last look at the world, but
they were locked shut by terror.
A rustle of cloth as
the soldier raised his gun . . .
And another sound,
rising fast—
An
engine!
She heard the man
behind her turn in surprise. ‘Who’s that?’ Macy opened her eyes and
looked back.
A military Jeep
charged past the truck. Its driver held the steering wheel with one
hand, an AK in the other—
Eddie !
‘Duck!’ he yelled,
yanking at the wheel—
The 4×4 skidded in
the mud as Eddie pointed the Kalashnikov out of its side and pulled
the trigger. He didn’t need to aim – the Jeep’s spinning turn swept
the bullets in a swathe above the kneeling prisoners’
heads.
Three soldiers took
hits to their chests and faces, dropping dead to the ground. The
man behind Macy was caught in the left shoulder, the impact sending
him reeling to the edge of the pit. With his good arm, he pointed
his AK-103 at the Jeep . . .
Macy sprang up and
barged him over the edge. He landed on the heaped corpses, rolling
down them into the rotting sludge at the bottom of the
hole.
One soldier was left
standing, though. Eddie’s wild fire had missed him. He raised his
gun—
The skidding Jeep had
made a half-turn, and was now pointing backwards. Eddie jammed it
into reverse and leaned low across the front seats, stamping hard
on the accelerator. Bullets clanged through the bodywork and
cracked against the seat backs. He yelled, but held his
course.
The Jeep hit the
soldier with a bang, scooping him up over its back end. Eddie
raised his head, seeing the man bent over the rear seat – still
very much alive. In reverse the 4×4 was only doing twenty miles per
hour.
The Venezuelan’s eyes
met Eddie’s, widening with anger. He swung the AK
round—
Eddie twitched the
wheel, and dropped again.
The Jeep smashed tail
first into a tree, throwing Eddie against the bullet-pocked seats –
and mashing the soldier into the wood.
Eddie pushed himself
upright. The Venezuelan was pinned against the trunk, mouth open in
a silent scream of agony. His gun had been thrown into the
undergrowth.
‘Eddie!’ Macy cried.
Not in thanks, but in warning. The soldier in the pit was still
alive, still armed, climbing up over the corpses.
Eddie restarted the
engine and put the battered Jeep into first gear, tearing free of
the tree. One of the soldier’s legs came with it, snared on twisted
metal. ‘Out of the way!’ he shouted. Valero and Osterhagen dragged
Becker away, Macy leaping aside as the Jeep surged
forward—
Eddie dived out of
the 4×4. It sailed over the edge of the pit - just as the soldier
reached the top of the piled bodies and aimed his weapon. The Jeep
hit like a giant hammer, pounding him back to the bottom of the
hole and crushing him into the ooze of his victims.
Macy ran to Eddie and
helped him up. ‘Oh my God! Eddie! Are you okay?’
‘Fucking top,’ he
groaned, seeing the three men nearby. ‘Where’s
Loretta?’
Macy’s tears
returned. ‘They – they killed her. Right before you got
here.’
‘Oh, shit,’ he
breathed, sagging. If he had arrived just a few seconds sooner. . .
‘I’m sorry. I’m sorry,’ he repeated, more loudly, to
Osterhagen.
The German’s lips
were tight as he struggled to hold his emotions in check. ‘You did
all you could. Thank you.’
‘How did you find
us?’ Macy asked. ‘How did you even get here?’
‘I ran,’ Eddie told
her, standing. ‘Got to the base just as they were driving you
away.’
‘You ran? Jesus. You’re . . . you’re amazing. Thank
you.’ She embraced him, her tears now of gratitude. ‘Thank
you.’
Valero, still
supporting Becker, limped over. ‘We have to warn the militia about
Callas.’
‘Yeah, we do,’ said
Eddie, ‘but then we’ve got to find Nina and Kit. I saw Stikes and
Callas put them in a chopper. Where are they taking
them?’
‘Stikes said
something about a clubhouse,’ Macy remembered.
‘A clubhouse?’ Eddie
echoed. ‘What, like a golf club?’
Unexpectedly, Valero
laughed, a bitter little bark. ‘Not a golf club – but near one.
The Clubhouse. It is the joke name of a
house in Caracas,’ he explained to his bewildered audience. ‘It
overlooks a golf course in one of the richest parts of the city.
The government confiscated it from a businessman who did not pay
his taxes. It was supposed to be given to the people, but the
military took it over – temporarily, so they said. But they are
still there.’
‘Callas is using it?’
Macy asked. Valero nodded.
‘Then that’s where
they’ve taken Nina and Kit,’ said Eddie. He frowned, thinking. ‘Is
that Peruvian Hind – the gunship – part of what Callas is
doing?’
‘A drug lord called
Pachac got it for him,’ said Valero. ‘We heard them talking about
it. I don’t know what Callas is planning, but it is why he has been
selling the treasures from Paititi – he needs millions of dollars,
tens of millions, to pay for it.’
‘He’s an army general
doing something he doesn’t want the President to know about, he’s
got a helicopter gunship, and he’s hired Stikes for some “conflict
resolution”. There’s only one thing this can be about.’ Eddie
looked grim. ‘Callas is planning a coup.’ He indicated the truck.
‘Sooner we get moving, the more chance we have of stopping
it.’
‘What . . . what
about Loretta?’ asked Osterhagen, glancing hesitantly towards the
pit. ‘I don’t want to leave her there.’
‘We’ll have to,’ said
Eddie. ‘Sorry, but we don’t have time to bury her properly. Once we
contact the militia we can tell them how to find this place, but
right now we’ve got to get out of here. We’re not far from the
base, so it won’t be long before this lot are missed.’
‘I understand,’
Osterhagen said with an unhappy nod. ‘Oscar, help me with
Ralf.’
‘Macy, see if there’s
a first aid kit in the truck,’ Eddie said as they took Becker to
the tailgate. He collected the dead soldiers’ rifles, then searched
the bodies, gathering a handful of Venezuelan
currency.
Even after the
horrors he had witnessed, Osterhagen was still shocked. ‘What are
you doing?’
‘Being practical,’
said Eddie. ‘We’ve got no money, and we might need some to make a
call. Besides, these bastards don’t need it. Okay, let’s
go.’
He retrieved Becker’s
fedora and handed it to Osterhagen, then climbed into the driving
seat, Macy beside him. The vehicle turned, then rattled away down
the path, leaving the dead in silence.