Blood Sun

13

Sayid twisted and turned through the labyrinth that lay before him. He had written new code and created new trapdoors for anyone following him. Anyone, that is, who had realized that he had hacked into their system.

He had had no word from Max, but Mr. Jackson had relayed the information to him that Max had not been heading for South America after all but had made his way to Miami. Sayid knew all this, of course, but stayed silent under Mr. Jackson’s inquiring gaze. What bothered him was that no one had mentioned Max going on to Central America, as had been his plan. Sayid did not know that Mr. Jackson had kept the bad news from him: that Max’s belongings had been found in the downtown room but that there was no sign of Max.

Sayid’s mother had moaned at him for staying in his room and absorbing himself with whatever he was doing on his computer.

Helping Max was what he was doing. His friend had asked him to find out as much as possible about Danny Maguire’s final hours, and the best place to start was in the Underground station where he had died. For the better part of twenty-four hours, he had concentrated on finding the visual evidence of Danny jumping onto the tracks.

It was easy enough to get the ball rolling. By typing in an inurl code on his browser, Sayid accessed hundreds of CCTV cameras. After hours of changing the search threads, he found the cameras he wanted. He scanned the platforms, determining which camera angle would give him the best view. He could alter these angles on-screen, and he watched, like a fly on the wall, as people scrambled in and out of the Underground carriages. This was real time. What Sayid needed was the past. He had to find out if the images of Danny Maguire on that day had been stored. The police would have viewed the tapes, but they would have already been examined and archived. Where?

Just as Max would wipe out his tracks if he did not want to be caught on one of his outdoor adventure tests, Sayid also had to cover his digital footprints as he weaved his way through the government security network. With everyone on permanent alert because of potential terrorist threats, he knew that the systems were far more sophisticated than they had been. Sayid had sent out word to those who knew of his skills in the hacking community, but he had learned to exercise caution. He had once been drawn into a Black Hat group, who were commonly known as “crackers.” Their intent was often the destruction, manipulation and sometimes blackmail of their victims as they clawed into people’s websites and security networks. Thankfully, there were experienced senior members in Sayid’s own international computer community, White Hat hackers, who helped him out of the mess.

Sayid turned to them for the intricate code that would allow him to view the stored images of Danny Maguire. Finally, he had written a program using open-source software, which lessened the chance of being traced, and Perl, software optimized for scanning and extracting information. The one thing a good hacker should always do is write in clear, concise, correctly spelled English. Sayid was always grateful for what at times seemed a grueling regime in Mr. Dolby’s English class.

He scanned the video images of the platforms on that fateful day. The picture quality was poor, and he strained to see the faces in the crowds. But then, as a train departed and the platform emptied, a figure came into view. He was running; his long hair was pulled back, revealing his face. Sayid froze the image and tried to enhance it. He felt sure this was Danny Maguire, and when he hit the Resume button, he could see that the young man running flat out did not hesitate as he jumped off the platform and ran into the tunnel. Minutes later, two men appeared to be in pursuit, but within those minutes, other passengers had moved onto the platform, and Sayid could see that if they had been chasing Danny Maguire, they would not have been able to follow him. There were too many witnesses. Another train arrived, a lot more people got off and the two men became mixed up, almost unidentifiably, in the crush. Sayid concentrated and isolated their images. They were the two men from the Range Rover that had almost run him down on the moor.

Sayid was convinced that Danny Maguire had been chased to his death like a hunted animal. He pressed the Fast-Forward button and watched as police arrived, the platform was cleared and one of the men pointed down the tunnel into which Danny had run. The firefighters and paramedics squeezed onto the end of the platform, but then something more frightening came on-screen. The police ushered through two new arrivals. Like lumbering astronauts, they were dressed in cumbersome protective clothing. They looked like bomb-disposal experts. Clambering down onto the track, they disappeared into the tunnel carrying a stretcher between them. This was no bomb-disposal team, Sayid realized-these people were wearing biohazard suits.

He felt the pulse of nervous excitement. There was something down that tunnel that clearly frightened everybody.

The crocodile ripped and tore at the carcass. Max was almost in the water. The slimy branch slipped through his fingers, but he jammed his knee into a twisted bough as the water churned and pieces of flesh bobbed to the surface. A carcass had been wedged under the mangrove root, and the low tide had exposed the decomposing body. It was this that the crocodile had smelled. For a horrifying moment, Max thought it might have been one of the bodies from the boat, but he saw the hind leg and hoof of a deer, which must have fallen into the river and been carried away and drowned. No wonder there was such a stink by the tree. As the crocodile thrashed in the water, Max hung on for dear life; if he fell now, he would be down there in that horrifying turmoil.

With a huge splash of its tail, the crocodile pulled the carcass below the surface. Within moments, the muddy water was still again. Max gripped the branch with such force it felt as though the bones in his hands were going to break. He had to steady his nerves and control his breathing. His heart was banging so loudly he felt sure the submerged crocodile would hear it vibrating down the tree into the water.

There had been a swirl of ripples, like a small eddy, as the beast had dived and swum away with its prey. The last thing Max wanted to do was to jump back in and swim to the beach. He took a little comfort from the fact that only one crocodile had attacked the carcass. Had there been more about, there would have been an even greater feeding frenzy.

He studied the water. It was time to go. He pushed the white leather seat down onto the surface, where it bobbed for a moment and then began to drift slowly away. Don’t think about it. Keep your eyes open. Ease down, find your footing. It’ll be only chest-deep. You’ll be OK. There’s nothing down there; nothing’s going to hurt you. Feet onto the bottom and you’ll be back on the beach in no time at all. That’s all you’ve got to do. Into the water. Find your footing. Get back to the beach. Do it.

Which was worse? Slowly but surely lowering yourself into that squelchy, smelly water, or just dropping down and going for it? If he was lucky, he wouldn’t make a splash, and if he was really lucky, that crocodile had taken the carcass to its underwater lair. Enough was enough: he was torturing himself. Left to its own devices, his mind would freeze him in terror. He had to get past his fear. Sliding off the branch, he let himself fall into the chest-deep water. He stretched out his legs and pulled his hands above his head, gripping the metal-tipped shaft of wood as tightly as he could, wanting to be as slender as a knife blade when he entered the water. He clamped his mouth shut. That water was laden with bacteria, and he did not want to swallow a drop.

His feet touched the bottom. Glancing rapidly, he looked left and right, then pushed himself forward, reaching out to grab the floating leather seat. River boulders twisted his ankles. His knees took the strain, and he used the seat at his side, leaning on it almost like a crutch to help keep him stable.

He was still trembling from the crocodile attack. It was an unreal scenario: wading back across a fast-flowing river, ferocious attacks by man and beast, with jungle and mangroves behind and to his front, while a drug runner was relying on him to get them through. When Max had left London, he had been in control, as much as he could be, and now he was alone and vulnerable. The odds against survival seemed stacked too high. But he had got this far. He focused on getting back to Xavier, who stood on the small strip of sand, waving as if greeting a long-lost friend arriving on the Queen Mary 2, pride of the seas. Here comes Max Gordon, half swimming, half stumbling, clutching his own pride of the sea-a seat cushion.

Suddenly the water seemed to boil next to him. Bubbles broke the surface. Max froze. The crocodile! In a belching, smelly bubble, the water bottle popped to the surface. Max laughed, releasing his pent-up emotion.

Xavier ran into the shallows and grabbed the bulky seat from Max as he sank to his knees in the sand. “I tried to warn you,” he said.

Max upended the water bottle and guzzled greedily. To the victor the spoils. Xavier waited, desperately watching the water spill over Max’s chin, but Max left more than half and handed him the bottle.

Max flopped over onto his back. The wet sand smelled of salt, and the sea breeze cooled him under the burning sun. He cackled exhaustedly. “I thought you were dancing,” he said.

Xavier guzzled, gasped for breath and belched with satisfaction. “Yeah? That’s not how I dance.”

He suddenly started moving like an electrified snake. He clapped his hands and shuffled his feet, accompanying himself with a raucous salsa tune. Max laughed, got onto his knees and watched the crazy kid cavort.

“You alive, man! You alive!” Xavier shouted.

He reached out and took Max’s hands, making him stand up. Xavier jigged him around until Max also sang aloud. It was gibberish, but it was fun. Finally they collapsed, laughing. Xavier put his hands on Max’s shoulders. “You some kinda strange fella. You got angels on your shoulders. Me? I’m with you. You say, I do.”

Max nodded. Held out his hand. “It’s a deal.”

Xavier spat into the palm of his hand and clasped Max’s. “It’s a deal, gringo!” And he laughed again.

Max knew he had to grasp every positive thing that happened in circumstances like this, so he allowed a sigh of satisfaction. He had managed to get to the other side of the river and back, avoided a horrific death and gathered a few bits and pieces that would help them escape from this place. So the day hadn’t been all bad. Max was determined never to lose hope. And he’d never have to spike his hair with gel again-he’d been so scared it would probably stand on end permanently.

Riga had an energy that frightened people. It was not that he flaunted it; it was something that anyone close to him could sense. Nor did he use his physical strength and endurance simply to impress anyone. He had supreme confidence in his ability to survive and preferred, at every turn of his life, to be alone.

From a young age, he had been trained as a destroyer of life and property and had been taught to get close to his enemy so he might understand him better. He held a deep sense of pride in his skills. It was his profession, just as a doctor was attracted to medicine or an attorney to law. It was a calling. He had no sympathy for his victims and was a confirmed sociopath by the age of fourteen. A perfect killer.

Chasing down Danny Maguire had been part of a bigger picture, so Riga’s status had not been diminished because his target was young. Cazamind and the people he worked for dealt only with issues at an international level, so when Maguire ran into the tunnel and fell onto the high-voltage rail, it ended one part of Riga’s brief. The follow-up, checking on Max Gordon, was like a full stop at the end of a sentence. It was all supposed to end there. Find out if Gordon had received anything from Maguire. He hadn’t, as far as Riga knew. End of story.

Not quite.

Cazamind had sounded worried-even, Riga suspected, scared. There were enormous implications for Cazamind’s “people.” Tendrils of corruption squirmed through the corridors of power in America and the UK, and national interests were at stake. All because a fifteen-year-old boy had outwitted them all. It seemed obvious Max Gordon had learned something.

Extreme caution had to be employed. A swift and low-key operation to remove the problem had been sanctioned, and the job had to be done by one man. The money was already in Riga’s Swiss bank account. It was more than generous, and he was to have anything he needed-weapons, transport and information.

A private Learjet with long-range tanks was a more luxurious way to travel across the Atlantic, and unlike Charlie Morgan, who had sat cramped in the back of an overcrowded commercial flight, Riga had unlimited resources at his disposal. He was already in Central America in a place of Cazamind’s choosing. From his vantage point deep in the rain forest-clad mountains, Riga could strike at Max should he ever reach this inhospitable area.

Riga was not waiting in luxury, however. The palm-leaf roof of the long hut kept the scorching sun off him, but the stifling jungle humidity enveloped everyone like a blanket soaked in hot water.

A decrepit air conditioner whirred noisily, the tatty piece of ribbon tied to the front grille fluttering pathetically, showing that the ancient cooler should have been replaced years ago. But the killer had learned to ignore any personal discomfort. This apparently abandoned airfield cut out of the limestone hillside deep in the forest was used years ago by the CIA for arms shipments to insurgents in Cuba and Central America. Those days were long gone, but secret airfields were still used by the people Riga worked for, as well as by the drug cartels, who needed to move shipments across vast areas of jungle.

Riga’s satellite phone beeped. It was Cazamind.

“The boat has been dealt with. They recovered two bodies; the others would have disintegrated when it exploded.”

“Was Gordon’s body found?”

“No. Two men.”

“Then we can’t be sure.”

“No one would have survived.”

“I want to double-check.”

There was a pause. “All right, Riga. As soon as it’s possible, I’ll have the attack helicopter’s video surveillance tape downloaded to you. But I think it’s over.”

Riga liked certainties. It was how he earned his reputation. It was how he stayed alive.

“I’ll wait,” Riga said.

Xavier followed Max’s instructions, just as he had promised, though he thought he was being asked to do girl’s work. He sat under the shade of a palm tree plaiting together strips of palm frond into a circle, like a crown. He had seen young girls at village weddings wearing things like that on their heads. It was a decoration! He wanted to protest but did not. It was of no consequence. He would keep his word to este chico y sus angeles-this boy and his angels.

Max used his teeth to tear apart some of the cotton pieces he had fished out of the water. They still stank of the fetid mangrove swamp, and he hoped he was not inviting every lethal germ under the sun to invade his body. He tore them into a roughly circular shape and then began ripping strips round the edge. This was going to help them survive the intense sunlight and the flies and mosquitoes. Xavier was muttering under his breath as he painstakingly braided the palm strips. He was clumsy and made a mess of it once or twice, but with grim determination, a tight smile and a shrug, he had continued the task.

It was only a small point, but Max had not told him of the palm crown’s use. If Max could get the boy to help without him needing to question and challenge him, so much the better; then the end result would be self-explanatory. Get on; do the job. Save time; save energy.

So far, so good.

Max knew he had to be organized. Tasks had to be performed, one of which was to make the raft. He could have used the animal tracks to help find their way out of this jungle and get inland, but that would be asking for trouble sooner or later. They certainly didn’t have any effective means of cutting their way through the dense undergrowth. They might not be able to stay on course; they would make less than a kilometer a day and would be vulnerable to the jungle predators. Max had considered the options and was convinced the river offered the best chance of escape. Sooner or later, he felt certain it would take them to a settlement or a town where he hoped the people might have heard of his mother or Danny Maguire. Then he might have a chance of tracking her journey. But he and Xavier needed food and water, much more than the slender vines offered; otherwise they were not going to be strong enough for what was bound to be an arduous journey.

Following Max’s lead, Xavier pulled down thin, twisting creepers that snaked up tree trunks and grubbed up ground roots to bind together the wood that they had gathered. Then Max put a layer of palm leaves on top, which he secured with the fibrous string Xavier had made earlier.

Max pointed. “You should let me see that wound.”

Xavier pulled back. “It’s OK. I don’ want you messin’ with it. What? Now you a doctor or somethin’?”

“OK. If it’s infected, it’s infected. You want to die of blood poisoning, that’s your business.”

Xavier looked worried. He eased up the damp T-shirt and looked at the wound for himself. “You think it’s infected?”

“You don’t let me look-I can’t tell.”

“You won’ touch it? Promise?”

“I promise. But you let your brother’s men fix you up; you never whimpered then.”

“What is ‘whimpered’?”

“Moaning like a baby.”

“Me? Hey, you look all you like. Here!” And Xavier pulled up his T-shirt and knelt next to Max.

The dressing had long since disappeared, and one of the butterfly clips had torn loose from the skin, which was puckered and looked clean. The salt water might have even aided the wound’s healing, but one edge of the wound was discolored, and that blemish was creeping round the boy’s side. It looked to Max as if there was some festering underneath the broken skin, which meant that in a couple of days, exposed to the river water, the infection could go right through the boy’s body.

“Does that hurt?” Max asked as he pressed very gently on the affected part.

Xavier yelped. “You said you weren’t gonna touch!”

Max looked at him. He needed Xavier to feel good-especially for what Max was going to propose. “You’re tougher than I thought,” he said.

“Yeah? I mean, yeah. I’m tough.” And then he thought about it. “Why?”

“It’s infected-it must hurt. You didn’t say anything.”

Xavier wasn’t in much pain, but he pulled a face. It was good to let Max think he could handle it. “It don’ hurt so much.”

“But if that infection gets worse …” Max paused and shook his head sadly, turning away from the boy’s gaze.

“What? Is bad? You think is bad?”

“I wouldn’t be able to get you out of here. I’d have to leave you.”

“What!”

“I’ll send help as soon as I find it.”

“No way! You go, I go. That’s the deal. That’s what I said. I’m with you.”

Max put his arm on the boy’s shoulder. “Good, I was hoping you’d say that. Then you’ll let me fix it?”

Xavier wasn’t certain, but he had talked himself into a corner. Or rather Max had. “OK,” he said.

Max turned over a rotten log. Poking it with his steel-tipped piece of wood, he made sure there were no snakes curled beneath it. Then, skimming away the desiccated wood with his new ax, he found what he was looking for. He carefully lifted the wriggling maggots from the trunk and laid them on a palm leaf. Food and medicine.

Xavier lay on his side, his arm covering his eyes. Max had just explained that you could eat maggots for protein, providing you didn’t take them from a rotting carcass of an animal. Xavier had squirmed almost as much as the maggots, and the reason he had covered his eyes was because Max had popped two or three of the maggots into his own mouth and crunched, not so happily, away. Max grimaced.

“They’re not that bad,” he lied. “They’d be much better cooked, I suppose, but beggars can’t be choosers.”

“I am not going to eat those things. I will puke if you put those squirmy things into my mouth. Puke more than you have ever seen in your life. I would rather die.”

“I didn’t think you’d want to eat them-I brought these for your wound; I’ll find us some food later.”

“And you’re gonna do what?”

Max knelt next to him, took three or four maggots from the leaf and laid them gently on the festering wound. “Don’t look, Xavier. These things could save your life.”

Xavier muttered a private mantra-which sounded like a prayer-to keep his mind off the things that were eating into his flesh. He could barely feel anything other than a soft tickle as they dug into his wound. But he refused to look at it and decided to stay somewhere in his head until this crazy English kid told him it was all OK. He should have been in Miami or New Orleans or anywhere else in the big U.S. with a new name and a new identity, money in the bank and he and Alejandro driving open-top sports cars. It would have been a good life, a safe life, and they would have been legal. But it had all gone horribly wrong, and now he lay in the jungle with maggots eating into him. The devil must be laughing somewhere, getting his own back for all the bad things Alejandro and his men-and Xavier-had done.

“I’m going to forage for food,” Max said, interrupting his thoughts.

Xavier propped himself up and looked toward the dense undergrowth. “You forgettin’ what’s in there? How many lives you think you got? Just ’cause that big cat killed somethin’ las’ night, you think he still ain’t hungry? Maybe he has a friend and say to him, ‘Hey, amigo, you hear about those two kids down near the beach? They got no water; they got no food. They’re just two dumb chicos stranded in the middle of nowhere. They got meat on their bones, and they got nothing to fight with.’ ”

“Jaguars hunt alone and at night.”

“So how come you know everything?”

“I read books and my dad told me.”

“Uh-huh. Your daddy lets you come all the way out to Miami where you help a drug smuggler from gettin’ whacked?”

“I didn’t know you were a drug smuggler.”

“So? If you’d known, you’d have let that crazy guy kill me!”

“If I had, I wouldn’t be in this mess,” Max said.

“Hey, chico, I saved your ass from Mr. Happy Snappy Crocodile.”

“I don’t think so. You didn’t shout loud enough.”

“You got all that mud and water in your ears-tha’s not my fault. OK. I tried to warn you. Don’ you ever say thank you for nothin’?”

“Thank you, Xavier Morera Escobodo Garcia, for trying to shout loud enough.”

“You’re welcome. But you get into trouble again, you on your own.”

Max left him in the shade of the palm trees. He knew he wouldn’t move. The jungle was one place Max did not want to be injured or ill; it was bad enough being fit and strong and having to cope with the energy-sapping heat, which was why he had some sympathy for Xavier.

Max scoured the jungle for any berries, seeds or nuts that he thought were safe to eat. Some he was uncertain of and let them rest on his tongue before spitting out the acid taste. He found three fruits he recognized-light yellow guavas from a tree with white flowers and a nice dark clump of finger bananas. Green-encased coconuts that had fallen from the palm trees had stubbornly resisted being smashed against a rock outcrop, but Max wedged his spearlike shaft into a twisted tree trunk and slammed the coconuts onto the metal tip. They split, revealing the brown hairy coconut inside. He pierced a coconut’s eyes and sucked the white liquid. Now that he had supplies, their chances for survival grew every moment. Cutting and splicing palm leaves together, he made an efficient bag to carry the food he’d foraged.

Max bent down, scuffed aside fallen leaves and dug his fingers into the earth. There was moisture in it, which wasn’t unusual-jungles were usually damp-but he knew rain squalls often hit this part of Central America. One of the noises that came out of the jungle was a creaking groan. It had taken Max some time to remember where he had heard those sounds before-it had been in a bamboo garden his dad had once taken him to. And bamboo held water. There was no choice: Max had to penetrate the darkened jungle, locate the bamboo, then find his way out again.

Flashes of color dipped and swirled through the branches as screeching birds clattered their way into the high canopy. Max moved carefully, listening to the rustling footfalls from unknown creatures around him. The pictures of his mother were still safe and dry in the wallet in his breast pocket. He saw her smiling face in his mind’s eye, felt the warmth in his chest and imagined the melodic song of a jungle bird was that of his mum gently calling him.

Max eased aside the low branches and stepped inside a claustrophobic world that soon engulfed him.