Blood Sun

15

Charlie Morgan might have been MI5 with the FBI on her side, but she did not have Riga’s sources of inside information. She had scoured the town for any knowledge of an English boy who might have tried to rent any of the rooms available without any luck or word from the FBI. It seemed that Max had disappeared off the face of the earth. She could not know that Cazamind’s influence hid even the news of the Coast Guard cutter’s seek-and-destroy attack.

Charlie hated being inactive, and sat in her sweltering room beneath a creaking old fan with a map of Central America spread out on the floor. Beyond the small city were scattered settlements and the occasional speck of a town, but there were vast areas of dense forest and remote mountains where rivers cut through gorges and where it was probably impossible to survive for any length of time without proper equipment and supplies. Her finger traced the coast from Panama up across the isthmus-the major drug corridor from South America to Mexico and into the United States-and then continued her search along the coast, up to the desolate Yucatan Peninsula. Borders merged into each other, and she knew that some of the countries had endured horrendous civil wars. Kidnapping and murder were still commonplace in various parts of Central America, and she could not imagine how, if Max Gordon had survived, he had managed to get down there. He had no money, no passport and probably only the clothes he wore; that was a pretty desperate state to be in.

Morgan allowed herself an amusing indulgence-her mobile ring tone. The unmistakable theme tune from Mission Impossible broke the sound of the whirring fan. She recognized the number; it was her FBI contact.

“Charlie, it’s Tony. We’ve picked up something pretty strange from an intercept. One of our Coast Guard cutters in the Caribbean was involved in a firefight. We caught snatches of the pilot’s voice transmission as he attacked a drug runner’s boat. The whole thing is being locked down, and we don’t have direct access to the intel on it. There are other agencies involved, and we’re being told to ignore it.”

“You’re being kept out of the loop?” Charlie asked. “Is that normal?”

“Didn’t you say your MI-Six guys leaned on your boss?” he answered.

“Right, yeah. So what do we have, a foreign operation under way, keeping out intelligence agencies inside your own country?”

“It happens. But there’s more. Is it likely your boy Max Gordon could have any association with those drug runners who took him?”

“I don’t know. I doubt it,” she said.

“These guys run go-fast boats from Central America in and out of Miami. Maybe your boy wasn’t kidnapped, is all I’m saying. Maybe he had contacts. We’re just trying to figure it out.”

“Are these the people Max got involved with in Miami? Was he on the boat your Coast Guard shot up?” Her heart sank as she thought of the carnage that would have occurred and that Max might have been caught up in it. He was only a kid, for heaven’s sake.

“Could be. We don’t know why it’s being kept quiet. It must be something more than drug running. Anyway, the boat got taken out. There were no survivors. I’m sorry, Charlie, but if he was with those guys, I think your boy is dead.”

Charlie’s mind whirled. Was it that simple? Was what that simple? Max Gordon kidnapped by drug runners, or did he know them? Their boat attacked by the U.S. Coast Guard and all record of the operation, of the gun battle and the boat’s destruction, kept secret. That wasn’t simple-that was a complexity that needed unraveling and explaining. Ambitious as she was to be the one to bring the operation to a successful conclusion and take the credit that would enhance her career, she felt strangely protective of Max Gordon. This wasn’t over. If he was dead, she wanted to know why. He was her case, her boy.

“Can you find out more? Can you get the transcripts of the attack? I’d like to get the coordinates and see where all this happened.”

“We’ll do our best, Charlie, but let’s just say the impossible happened and your kid was dropped off on the mainland before these guys got taken out-where do you reckon he’d head for?”

That was the $64-million question. If Max’s evasive tactics were to do with the death of his mother, then no one knew where she had died, but maybe questions were where Charlie Morgan had to begin. She had to get into those jungle settlements and towns and start talking to people. “I don’t know,” she said. “I’ll try to figure something out. If my boy is on the mainland, I just can’t see how he could survive. Try to pinpoint the location where the boat was destroyed.”

“It’s all restricted access, Charlie. We’re not even supposed to have this. They just won’t let us get our hands on it. I think it’s a no-can-do.”

“You’re the FBI. And I always thought Americans had a can-do attitude. Or is that just a piece of Hollywood?”

She could imagine him smiling at the end of the phone. “You’re a cruel woman, Charlie. Can-do is what we do. Though I’ll probably lose my job.”

“That’s OK. Down here is a great place to retire. Find out what you can. I’m going on a bike ride.” She closed the phone and hovered her attention across the map. Then, without hesitation, she touched the name of a town with her fingertip. She had to start somewhere-it might as well be a place that sounded appropriate: Ciudad de las Almas Perdidas, the City of Lost Souls.

The Bell 222 hugged the contours of the river. Max and his companion had a day’s start on Riga, but the assassin calculated that they couldn’t have got far on a makeshift raft. The wind buffeted Riga’s face, and he could smell aviation fuel and exhaust. The clattering engine was an assault on his senses, and he enjoyed every moment of it. The helicopter’s body shuddered, its vibration going through Riga. It was as if the beast were alive and he a part of it. He still cradled the well-worn stock of the M14 across his lap, and he debated whether he would shoot Max on sight or go down when he spotted the boy to hunt him on the ground.

When this whole thing had started, Max Gordon had held no interest for him, but now the boy was beginning to fascinate him. Like every good hunter, he had learned what he could about his prey. Cazamind had sent him as much information as they could find on Max. The boy had survived in Africa, and he had been involved in an enormous conflict in the French Alps, where he had taken on a powerful opponent and won. And then there was Max Gordon’s father, whose reputation stuck in the throat of the people he had brought to justice, but he wasn’t a threat any longer. In Cazamind’s mind, everything now confirmed that Max’s mother was the eco-scientist who had died in Central America years ago. Riga had questioned Cazamind; if Cazamind’s clients had been involved, then Riga should know about them and to what extent they were implicated. Where exactly had Helen Gordon died? Cazamind had yielded little information. All he had been told was that Max Gordon should be stopped from proceeding any farther into the wilderness. Why not let the boy take his chances? Riga wanted to know.

Cazamind did not like the word chance; there was too much at stake. And now that they had discovered just what this boy was capable of, they should change their thinking. Max Gordon posed a threat-he was dangerous.

Riga felt a stab of resentment. All his life, since he was a boy, he had dealt with these faceless men who could change the course of people’s lives-and of history-by issuing a command from the safety of their anonymity. Over the years he had obeyed their orders, done their bidding and killed whomever they wished him to kill. Perhaps he understood Max Gordon more than he realized. Riga had come face to face with him in the British Museum and had seen the look of determination in the boy’s eyes. The English boy had given them all a good run for their money. There were times Riga thought that the likes of Cazamind should be dragged out and forced to face their victims so they could see and smell the fear and desperation of those being hunted, but he knew that their cowardice was entrenched. These men had no honor or courage, which was why they used people like Riga. It was a simple equation: money was power and power was control, and Riga was the instrument of their success.

At the end of the day, it did not matter what he thought of these men. His conviction was all that was important, and he was convinced of one thing: Max Gordon was no match for him.

Max heard the helicopter before he saw it, the blades’ reverberations flattening the air. There was nowhere to hide; the limestone cliffs rose on each side, and boulders forced the water into eddies, making steering almost impossible.

Xavier watched as Max furiously dug the pole into the water and tried to find some purchase, desperately wanting to push them closer to the bank.

“Is it the Yanquis?”

“I don’t know, but they’ll be on us in less than a minute.”

Max searched frantically for overhanging trees or anything that would give them cover. Xavier pointed. “Over there!”

There was a narrow cave on the other side of the river beneath an overhang, but it meant pushing across the current, which was running more strongly in that part of the river. They needed more power to get across.

“Take the pole!” Max shouted.

Xavier scrambled to his feet without question and took it from Max’s hands. “Push the raft as fast as you can,” Max told him, and slipped over the side into the water, kicking his legs and forcing the raft into the middle of the river. If he caught one of those swirling tongues of water, there was a risk of being stranded on the rocks, but if they could just get past them, he reckoned they would reach the cave in time. It was such a low, crevicelike slash on the waterline that they’d be lucky to get inside lying flat on the raft, but there was a good chance they would escape detection if they could reach it.

“Faster, Xavier!” he shouted. “C’mon!”

Max abandoned any thoughts of crocodiles being in the water. He reasoned, and hoped, that the swirling current and boulders would keep them at bay. His leg muscles felt as though they were being torn apart by the effort-the weight of the raft and Xavier together made it enormously difficult to push it across the current. The knot of fire in his shoulder felt like a hard-boiled egg beneath his skin, a small pocket of heat that would erupt at any moment. He kept kicking, shifting the angle of the raft, making it steer more easily. Xavier worked hard, trying to complement Max’s strength by controlling the direction, jabbing the pole against boulders and riverbed as desperation fueled their efforts.

Max angled himself between the raft and the opposite bank; one more shove would get them out of sight. The front of the raft found its way into the cave; Xavier ducked, then lay flat as it went beneath the overhang and nudged into the chill half-light. The current pushed the rear end of the raft away, threatening to suck it out of the hole and take it back into the main stream. Max yelled, urging strength to transfer from his legs to his chest and arms as he made one last desperate shove to get the raft under cover. No sooner were they in the cave than Xavier screamed. A flurry of small bats, like a swarm of starlings, squeaked out of the cave. Max reached up and grabbed Xavier’s shoulder. “Stay down! They won’t hurt you. They’re not vampire bats.”

He could hear Xavier’s smothered breathing as he buried his face in his arms. Max was less concerned about the bats and more worried about the swarm being spotted by whoever was in the helicopter, because now the thundering engine and whirring blades reverberated inside the cave as it drew level. Max saw the helicopter flash past, so low that the skids were less than a meter from the surface. Both doors were open, and he caught a glimpse of someone sitting on the other side, feet dangling over the edge. The aircraft was so close to the water that, had the man been facing the cliff wall where Max and Xavier were hiding, he would have seen them.

They listened as the helicopter noise receded and stopped echoing around the small cave. Finally, it went quiet. Now Max had to make a decision. They either stayed in the cave and waited a few hours, which meant they would be there all night, or they pushed back into the river and took their chances that the helicopter would not return.

Another five minutes, Max decided.

The tree-lined river edge blurred with speed, but Riga scanned everything. The helicopter had jigged ever so slightly to the left.

He pulled a headset and microphone off the bulkhead and spoke to the pilot: “What?”

“Nothing,” the pilot answered. “Bats. We must’ve spooked ’em.”

Riga thought for a moment. Maybe.

“Go back, half a click,” he ordered.

The pilot pulled the helicopter up, banking in a fast, curving turn, then dropped it down again to just above the river, going back downstream for half a kilometer. Riga peered ahead, looking for any caves that might give the boy refuge. There was nothing obvious, but then he saw the slab of low overhang and the dark shadows of water that reached under the rock face.

“See that overhang? Stand off that-I want to look.”

The cold air in the cave was welcoming at first, but now the water made Max shiver. Xavier still lay facedown as bats returned, seeking darkness. Then the unmistakable sound of the helicopter grew closer.

“Xavier. They’re coming back!”

They were trapped. The water merged into blackness a couple of meters farther in, but there the ceiling of the cave would be almost on top of the raft-certainly no room to stay on board.

“We have to get the raft farther in, right into this corner, as far as we can. You have to get into the water. Come on.”

Xavier shook his head. Going in the water was a fearful experience, but going into that inky darkness filled him with dread.

“You have to!” Max commanded, whispering as if his voice could be heard over the thundering racket of the helicopter that now hovered ten meters from the entrance. Then a searchlight danced beneath the overhang and lit the water.

Riga crouched low on the helicopter’s skids as the pilot controlled the powerful searchlight into the narrow slit.

“Lower!” Riga ordered.

“We’ll be in the water! There might be rotten trees and debris beneath the surface. We could get caught,” the pilot told him.

“Do it,” Riga said quietly.

Carefully the pilot lowered the helicopter so that Riga’s legs went below the surface. Now the killer could bend down and look into the cave. If the boys were in there, he would see them.

Reflections from the water skittered around the walls as the power from the whirring blades created a spray across the surface. The thundering noise was deafening. Xavier covered his ears and screamed again as another swarm of bats fled the sudden terror and scraped across his back, neck and head.

Max reached up, yanked him into the water, pulled him spluttering from beneath the surface and clamped one of the boy’s hands on to the raft. “Kick! We have to get in farther!”

Shocked and frightened, Xavier responded as Max took most of the weight of the raft, forcing himself to kick fiercely, ignoring the weight of his waterlogged cargo pants and boots.

Like a monster’s eye, the light sought them out, but Max and Xavier had managed to shove themselves right into the corner. Their heads were barely above the surface as the water whipped into their faces. Xavier was gasping; Max could barely open his eyes. Holding on to the raft with one hand, he reached out with his injured arm and grabbed the back of Xavier’s T-shirt, holding him up. “Hang on!” he yelled, but his voice was swallowed by the air-pummeling beat of the rotors.

Riga saw a swarm of bats escape the narrow gap. He stayed, eyes level, for another two minutes, knowing the pilot was struggling to keep the helicopter stable. The current was exerting pressure against the skids. Maybe they were pushing their luck. He didn’t want the helicopter to be pulled into the river. There was nothing beneath that slab of rock except bats.

“OK. Take her up,” he said.

The pilot eased the helicopter gently from the water and wished he had never been chosen for this journey.

The silence was as big a shock as the deafening noise. Their ears rang for a few moments, but then the darkness and still water settled over them. Max eased the raft out, still holding Xavier, until there was space for him to clamber back on board.

“OK? We made it,” Max said cheerfully, despite the inflammation in his shoulder stiffening the muscles.

Xavier seemed exhausted, but opened his eyes and nodded. “We made it,” he whispered. “Who were they?”

“I don’t know,” Max said. “Search and rescue, maybe Coast Guard. Maybe not.”

“Who else could it be?” Xavier said.

Max didn’t even want to think that it could be the people who’d been chasing him back in England. How could they know he was here? Right here, on this river, in this cave? He shook his head.

“We’ll give it another few minutes and then we go.”

“The bats will come back,” Xavier said.

“We’re the ones invading their home. How would you feel if you were fast asleep and some monsters came into your bedroom? You’d run outside screaming.”

“Yeah, amigo, but when I go to sleep, I don’ hang upside down in my bed. Let’s get out of here.”

The current, like a gatekeeper, rushed across the cave’s opening, making it difficult to push free and have any degree of maneuverability. It would be like jumping into a slipstream; the river could whip them away onto boulders, which would shatter the raft. If they didn’t get a big enough push into the river, into the deeper, slower-moving water, Max couldn’t see how they could control those first few vital moments.

“Roll onto your back,” he told Xavier, “use your feet against the ceiling and push us out. I’ll shove from here. The moment we hit that current, you’ve got to get up and push us away with the pole. I’ll get aboard soon as I can. OK?”

Xavier nodded. He didn’t mind Max telling him what to do; it took away the responsibility that had always scared him.

“One, two, three-go!” Max yelled.

Xavier pedaled against the ceiling, giving the raft momentum.

They were clear. Max felt the tug of the current. He was now at the back of the raft and, instead of pushing, was now being pulled. His hands were slipping, the wood too wet to hold. He curled his fingers under the thin vine that held the raft together, still trying to use his body as a rudder to shape the raft’s passage. Xavier was doing the best he could, but Max could see he was already losing control; he did not have the intuitive skill to nurse it into the best part of the river. The current pushed Max’s body against the back of the raft, and he used it to help him clamber aboard.

“You OK?” he gasped.

Xavier nodded, pleased he could hand back the steering of the raft to Max. He shoved the pole toward him.

“That was great-well done, mate,” Max said reassuringly.

Xavier grinned. He could not remember the last time someone had said he’d done something well. “Yeah? I do OK?”

“Better than OK. You saved us.”

The boy smiled, wobbling as he kept his balance against the swaying movement, but there was an unmistakable look of pride on his face. Max knew how important it was to be encouraged when things got tough.

“Can you help me balance it now? The current’s getting stronger-we have to be really careful. Whichever way I move to pole us, you go on the opposite side,” Max said.

“You, the angels and me. We make a great team. ?Si?”

“The best,” Max said.

As Max shoved hard to slip the raft sideways, out into the middle of the river and the calm water, Xavier moved carefully, concentrating on doing what Max had asked him. For the first time since he could remember, he was no longer a passenger.

Riga flew on for another hour. There was no sign of the boy, and there were a dozen or more small tributaries and offshoots like veins creeping into the jungle. Maybe he had got this far and gone off into one of them. If that was the case, it would take another couple of days of searching, and there was far more cover in those narrow rivers so he would be hard to spot. Riga needed more men, and another helicopter. He would call them in at dawn.

“Find a sandbank or somewhere to land.”

The pilot glanced back. This was not something he was keen to do.

“Weather’s shifting,” he said, hoping it would change Riga’s mind.

Riga checked the sky. He could smell the salt air being pushed upriver by the stiffening breeze. He nodded.

“I know. We stay as long as we can. The boy’s out there somewhere.”

“You think you missed him?”

“He has skills-and maybe luck-so we wait. Until morning, if the weather lets us.”

The pilot nodded, knowing better than to argue. At least they had emergency rations aboard the helicopter. It might be a long night, but they could close up the chopper and keep out the mosquitoes, and they would have food in their stomachs, which was more than that kid would have. But he had seen these local weather fronts hit the coast before. This Riga was not local; he might think he could outlast anything. Not around here.

“It’ll be difficult,” he said, “what with the storm. We might have to get going in a real hurry.”

“I don’t care,” Riga replied. He wanted to stay as close as possible to the hunt. The pilot hoped this crazy man wasn’t going to leave it too late for them to escape. He lifted the helicopter above the tree line and began searching for a landing zone.

Riga knew that if time was on his side, then Max Gordon might fall into his hands and make life-and death-a lot easier.