Blood Sun

14

Sayid watched as the people in biohazard suits carried a covered corpse out of the tunnel. They eased the orange-colored body bag onto a gurney and wheeled it to an isolation tent that had been set up on the platform, where another figure, also dressed in a biohazard suit, waited. Sayid could just make out what was happening inside. The body bag was lifted, slipped into yet another protective covering and replaced on the gurney. The side flaps of the tent were opened; regular paramedics took the stretcher and disappeared from view. For a moment, Sayid watched while the recovery team was washed down with what looked like a steam hose as they stood in a catchment tray. He was less interested in them than where Danny Maguire’s body was being taken.

Sayid quickly manipulated the keyboard, found the cameras he wanted and watched as the body was loaded into the back of an ambulance. The area had been cordoned off by police. He had lost sight of the two men who had initially run after Danny, but now he saw a police officer wave a silver Mercedes through the security area. Sayid froze the frame and zoomed in on the car’s window. It was the same two men.

A police motorcycle escort led the ambulance away from the station, and the Mercedes tucked in behind. The small convoy sped away into London traffic. Seconds later the tape went blank. Sayid keyed in a search for a London street map. He needed to work out which way the ambulance was going. And now that he had his program in place, he would be able to link into the CCTV street cameras that adorned almost every building and streetlamp in the city, watching like vultures.

Max followed the faint outline of an animal track through the undergrowth. He moved slowly and cautiously, always listening to the sounds of the jungle, muscles tensed, the length of the metal-tipped shaft in one hand, the crude ax in the other. The complaining bamboo was somewhere over to the right. Every twenty paces, he had tied a thin strip of salvaged cotton cloth on low-lying branches so he could find his way out. He tied the last piece round a branch exactly where he was to step off the animal track. It was so overgrown that unless he could take a mental picture of where he had walked, even the cotton strips could be lost from sight. The next dozen paces took him nearly fifteen minutes-pretty good going, given the density of the trees and vines. He bent leaf stems to help him find his way to the cotton strips but was wary of where he grabbed a handhold; some of those slender branches were armored with vicious, needlelike thorns. If they broke off in flesh, they would fester, and tropical fever could soon follow. Then he would be a helpless victim of the creatures of the jungle.

Finally, the dense thicket of bamboo was in front of him. Each shaft was thicker than his leg and soared up into the canopy. He tapped one of the poles. It sounded hollow, but the next ringed section gave him hope. Using his shaft of wood as a spear, he pressed the point against the bamboo and leaned with all his weight. A small crack appeared and moisture seeped out. Now that the bamboo had been split, he aimed carefully and cut away more of the wood with his ax. Water poured out; he went down quickly on one knee and sucked in the cool, clear liquid. He did this two or three more times, and once he’d drunk enough, he filled the water bottle.

He turned round, searching for the way he had come in, but nothing looked familiar. It was just a mishmash of trees, vines and undergrowth. His foot caught a root and he fell back; for a brief moment he felt a surge of panic as he went under the claustrophobic foliage. Something bit his shoulder. Like a scorpion sting, it broke skin. Twisting quickly, he saw that he had landed on one of those viciously spiked branches he had been so careful to avoid.

For a few seconds, it felt as though the jungle and its heat encircled him, making it impossible to move. Sweat stung his eyes. Then, as if someone had turned off the volume, the jungle went silent. All his instincts were heightened. Somewhere behind him, the bushes shuddered and he saw a shadow mottled with yellow and black markings appear and disappear just as quickly. It was as if there was a tunnel through the tangled undergrowth barely knee-high from the ground.

Max gazed down through the green light until he saw the face of the jaguar. His eyes were on the same level as the big cat’s. The jaguar made a small, snarling sound, baring its fangs, but it did not seem to be an overtly aggressive act. Max realized that he was nodding as if he understood-this was not his hunting ground; it belonged to the cat. A deep, almost unfathomable part of him recalled the time in Africa when a shaman had saved his life and endowed him the primal ability to project himself outside of his body and into the consciousness of other creatures. Like now.

There was another movement behind the big cat, and Max heard a softer snarl. It was a young jaguar, probably no more than a year old, still too young to provide for itself. It had to learn to survive in the jungle, but for now it was protected by its mother.

The burning pain in his shoulder snapped him back to reality.

He blinked. The tunnel was empty. The moment was gone.

Xavier made teeth-sucking noises as he squeezed out the thorns from Max’s shoulder and muttered as he applied himself to the task. Max grimaced and gasped as the boy’s nails dug into his flesh. A couple of thorns had broken off in his shoulder muscle. Max told Xavier how to get them out by using a flat piece of stone to drag the flesh upward until the ends appeared-squeezing embedded thorns could make them fester. But the stubborn thorns were in too deep; Xavier had to try forcing them out. All he got was blood that welled into the punctures.

Enough was enough. “OK, leave them, Xavier. We’ve got to push on.”

“You sure ’bout that? It don’ look too good.”

Max nodded. They had to finish the raft. The pain would have to be endured, but the injury worried him. How long did he have before the wound became infected and rendered him useless? Now, more than ever, he needed some luck on his side if he was to survive. Instinct demanded that he strike out and get as far as he could upriver. Somewhere in this impenetrable world was the place where his mother had died. He had to know the truth about her death. And why his father had, by his own confession, abandoned her.

Riga studied his laptop screen as he followed the surveillance video of the firefight between the attacking helicopter and Alejandro’s go-fast boat. It had taken the better part of the day for the secret report to reach him from Cazamind’s contacts in a U.S. intelligence agency. The silent film offered no indication of the power of the guns as they hammered the boat into submission, but as Riga’s analytical eye studied every movement of the desperate fight, he acknowledged an admiration for Alejandro’s skill and courage. The film showed no evidence of the boat running away from the fight; rather, it was taking the fight to the helicopter. He saw bodies fall and watched as the boat zigzagged across the reef. There were moments when the boat was out of view, and it was these missing fragments of time that held his attention. He played the download time and again. There were clearly six people on the boat at one stage, and from what he had been told, Max Gordon was one of them. The helicopter had obviously overshot the boat, and when the camera focused again on the fight seconds before the boat exploded, Riga counted the bodies. It was possible that the boat’s passengers had been killed and now lay out of sight or that they had fallen overboard in those missing moments, but Riga was not convinced. The boat had swerved for land, the angle had changed, the waves obscured an erratic maneuver and then, as the helicopter had gone past, turned and reengaged the men shooting from the speeding craft, there were only two men left standing. The exploding boat would have disintegrated them, or their bodies may have been thrown clear. The Coast Guard had reported recovering two bodies, both men in their early twenties.

Riga froze the frame where the boat had turned back from the shoreline, the angle the helicopter had as it turned to continue the attack. The shoreline disappeared. He zoomed in; there in the boat’s wake were two small black dots. He released another frame and watched as the boat jerked its way out of view, and for a fraction of a second, white foam highlighted movement that looked like someone swimming.

Riga smiled: what were the odds of a teenager surviving a gun battle like that? This Max Gordon was proving to be a challenge worthy of Riga’s skills, for he was convinced that if anyone had reached the shoreline, it would be the English boy. Riga picked up the satellite phone sitting next to his computer, pressed a button and heard Cazamind’s voice answer.

“I think the kid made it,” Riga said. “I’m going after him.”

Max and Xavier looked ridiculous. Precious minutes were wasted in laughing at each other. Max had pulled one of the pieces of cotton onto his head-the torn fringe would help keep the flies and mosquitoes away-and jammed down on top of that was the crownlike headgear that Xavier had laboriously made, which would shield their eyes from the sun. As a final safeguard, Max had dug his hands into the nearby riverbank and smeared them both with foul-smelling mud in an effort to keep the vicious mosquitoes at bay. They looked like warriors from a long-lost tribe.

After a thorough check of the area, Max was satisfied that there was no sign of them having been marooned on the spit of land. If anyone did fly over, they would see only a narrow, unspoiled beach and the dense jungle fringed with mangroves.

The inflowing tidal current pushed them along, but it was a smooth ride, and as Max stood at the back of the raft using a straight branch to pole them around protruding boulders, Xavier sat as if he was on a pleasure cruise. The raft seemed to be strong enough for both of them, but as a precautionary measure, Max kept the white seat loose so that if anything happened Xavier had a flotation device. Within an hour or so, they had left the low, dense vegetation of the mangroves and floated between limestone cliffs that rose up each side of the river. Max was ever vigilant, watching out for the deep places where the current swirled and sucked around exposed rocks. Water shivered as the river tumbled over a shallow stretch.

“Hold on,” Max warned as they bumped their way over the thirty-meter stretch. Xavier whooped with joy, like a kid on a small waterslide. But it was Max who was doing all the work, making sure the raft stayed as rigid as possible as he guided it over the broken water. He realized that anything more turbulent, like a real white-water ride, would tear them apart. Suddenly the river was deep again, running smoothly into calmer water. Max gazed up at the jungle that clawed its way across the forty-meter cliffs. Brightly colored birds swooped to catch insects; others sang, being answered by birds across the chasm. It was an unblemished paradise, wild in its majesty, untouched by man’s hand. Max felt a strange contentment.

Riga sat in the open door of the Bell 222 helicopter as it thundered through the sky at 175 kilometers per hour, thirty meters above the ground. His feet were braced on the helicopter’s skids, keeping him balanced precariously as he sat on the helicopter floor. It was an older model, but tough and serviceable, deliberately chosen by Riga because it was such a common aircraft and would not attract undue attention. Drug runners would have had the latest model with the most powerful engine, but this old 222 could travel at 240 kilometers per hour with a range of 600 kilometers, more than enough for the job at hand. Across his lap he gripped the wooden stock of an M14 sniper rifle. This, too, had been field-proven over the years and was still used by U.S. Special Forces, as the 7.62 mm round had enormous stopping power. He could have chosen any weapon, but Riga was, at heart, a simple man, who needed a simple, uncomplicated killing tool.

He mentally replayed the Coast Guard’s pursuit. He had given the pilot the coordinates, and they weaved along the coast. The pilot brought the helicopter down to sea level a hundred meters offshore, just as the mercenary had ordered. Riga did not want to disturb any evidence supporting his belief that Max had survived. Riga pointed, waving his hand slightly, telling the pilot to move slowly from right to left so that they could get a clear view of the small beach and tree line. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary; there were no footprints, no sign that anyone had been on that beach. The helicopter edged into the estuary. The tide had moved into the mangroves, half submerging them, but again there was no sign of life. And no sign of any wreckage from the boat. As there should have been.

Riga motioned the pilot forward, and when they were fifty meters off the beach, he signaled him to hover. The skids almost touched the surface of the water, and Riga stepped down into the warmth of the lagoon. He was in up to his chest and held the rifle clear of the water as the helicopter’s downdraft flattened the small waves. It banked away and held station a kilometer offshore, waiting for Riga’s command to return. Riga walked out till he was ankle-deep in the water and let his eyes move across the sand and into the trees, looking for anything out of place; if Max Gordon and a second person had had any chance of survival, this was exactly where they would have come ashore. The lapping water reached up and gently sucked back across the sand, never going higher than the line of seaweed. Riga put the rifle butt onto his shoulder and slipped off the safety catch, ready to kill.

He spent an hour searching the immediate vicinity and saw no sign of anyone being there until he came across scuff marks on a tree trunk-not the gouged scratch marks of a hunting jaguar, but possibly made by monkeys. He squatted down, listening to the jungle sounds, and let his eyes find a way into the tangled forest. He picked a spot close by, then moved his vision inward another couple of meters and then repeated the action again until he had penetrated the forest to about fifteen meters, which was about as far as anyone could expect to see. There, at knee height, was a stem, not broken but bent backward. He stepped cautiously in that direction. It would take time, but he knew he would find more evidence of someone or something moving into the jungle.

Slowly but surely, he followed the almost invisible trail that Max had left by bending and breaking branches. Max had taken away the pieces of cotton, but he could not alter a few broken sticks that told their own story. Riga reached the bamboo thicket and saw the signs of Max’s water-tapping. For a moment his guard was down as he knelt in front of the bamboo. A black mottled shadow unfurled itself from the jungle and crouched to attack.

The big cat had barely snarled its warning when Riga brought the rifle to his shoulder and fired two rapid shots. In the couple of seconds it took for the jaguar to fall, roaring in agony, Riga didn’t retreat but strode fearlessly toward the stricken animal and shot it once more, killing it instantly. He stood over the dead cat, whose breath still curled from its jaws. The amber eyes dimmed, and the muscle spasms stopped. Riga looked about him carefully-he had obviously stepped into the jaguar’s territory. So, too, had Max Gordon, and Riga wondered if the boy had come face to face with the jaguar. It didn’t matter-there was now only one hunter in this patch of jungle. Riga gazed down at his victim and felt neither sorrow nor exhilaration for the kill. It was what Riga did. Then he heard the softer and less threatening snarl of another jungle cat. He raised the rifle and aimed quickly at the young cub’s head. He hesitated, though unsure why he did so. He decided to let it live; maybe it would survive on its own. Everyone had to learn to do that at some stage of their lives.

Retracing his steps, Riga went back to the beach, but now he looked more carefully. He soon noticed that a tree’s fibers had been teased away from its trunk. Another had a shadow that curved upward, as if a clinging vine had been pulled away from it. Skirting the beach where the sand gave way to the jungle, his eye was caught by an oddly shaped clump of leaves in the undergrowth. He reached in and pulled out torn palm fronds. Someone had been trying to make something out of them, and their failures had been cast aside. So Max Gordon had found water and used a supple vine to tie or make something. The torn palm fronds gave him no clue, until he made a circle from one strand and saw that it could fit neatly over his head. Clever boy. Water and shade. But how would he have got away from this place? There was only one way and that was by river. That was what Max Gordon had done-he had made a raft and escaped.

Riga smiled. He had him. The boy was as good as dead.