Blood Sun

20

There were no tracks to follow in the jungle, so Max ran purely on instinct. Keeping his head down and his shoulders hunched, he brushed aside many of the low branches. If he couldn’t see any tracks, then neither could the men following him, but they would hear him crashing through the undergrowth, and that would lead them to him.

Before he plunged into the undergrowth, his last sight of the three in pursuit was of them running in a V formation. That was clever. It meant that Max’s arc of escape was in a confined area.

He tried to keep a sense of direction and run in a straight line-almost impossible in these conditions-but he knew that if he could, he would reach the ravine and hopefully find the entrance to the cave. The going was hard, and already the heat and difficult terrain were sapping his strength.

He crouched, wiped the sweat from his eyes and tried to slow his breathing. If he could not see his pursuers clearly, then the same was true for them. He waited. These men were clumsy, just pushing through the undergrowth. There was a rustling movement nearby-one of the gunmen. Max lay flat.

He concentrated on his breathing-it sounded so loud. The man was less than three meters away.

Max eased the blowpipe from his back and, with agonizingly slow movements, loaded a dart. He got the blowpipe into position, brought it to his lips and in his mind’s eye pictured the man’s route.

The jungle floor rustled with insect life, and the largest spider Max had ever seen emerged from the twisted growth. Its long, prickly legs must have spanned almost twelve centimeters and supported a hairy, misshapen body. The legs picked their way through the debris and came straight for him. The spider’s fangs for biting and poisoning its prey were clearly visible, and its globular eyes seemed to be focused on his own. The man’s footfalls had obviously flushed it out. Max froze. The spider straddled the blowpipe, and with silk-like softness walked across his hands.

Max’s heart thumped into the ground. He squeezed his eyes shut and felt the spider clamber across his face. Every part of him wanted to scream and jump clear.

His back muscles quivered. The spider picked its way across his hair and onto his neck. The way Max was lying meant his shirt collar was pushed up. It crawled underneath.

Like a tickling piece of cotton, its hairy legs touched his spine. It seemed to hesitate. Did it think being under his shirt was a safe refuge? Should he roll quickly onto his back and crush it? Impossible. He’d be dead. Certain death from the gunman or from a fatal spider bite. Neither was a happy solution.

It crept its way along his spine, and then he felt it move out from beneath his loose shirt.

The moment its weight left the back of his legs, Max jumped up, leveled the pipe and aimed at the man, who had gone past by four or five meters. It was a clear shot-the gunman’s shoulders were above the low undergrowth.

Max spat breath down the pipe-and missed.

The man half turned. He must have heard the dart cut into the branches. He stopped and listened for any other movement. Max already had another dart loaded. He deliberately took his time, aimed the pipe, took a deep breath and blew.

The man yelped as the dart struck the muscle over his shoulder blade. As he twisted round to feel what had bitten him, Max ran.

The man shouted. An answering voice called from a distance away. And then Max heard the howling of a high-revving engine. He knew it couldn’t be the pickup-this was some kind of machinery that had been started. Max dodged through the undergrowth, ducking and weaving as gunfire raked the branches, but it was high, way too high. Max risked a glance back. The gunman was down on his knees, the AK-47 spraying the air. Then he fell facedown.

Max dropped to his haunches, trying to see if there were any animal tracks or paths that would allow him an escape route-nothing. Now the sound rose in intensity as a churning, slashing rending of the forest came closer and closer, as if a huge beast was on the rampage.

In places the jungle was lighter, less dense, and that was his best way forward. He pushed on, but still that sound grew closer and closer. He turned and looked at the canopy. The leaves shuddered and shook. He could feel the vibrations coming up through the ground, and for a moment he thought some trick of his imagination was conjuring up an earthquake.

The noise surrounded him. He felt a moment of blind panic but refused to yield to it, because then he would be helpless. He turned and ran, ignoring the whip stings of branches on his face, determined to put distance between himself and the ever-increasing roar. And then he saw the monster. Its teeth devoured the forest before it.

It was a tractorlike machine, its operator sitting in a mesh safety cage as he drove it forward. Whirring blades with clawlike teeth reached out ahead of the machine, their power ripping and tearing every living thing in their path. If Max made the wrong decision and became entangled in the undergrowth, he would be shredded.

But could he outrun it?

He turned his back on the howling, thrashing noise. The ground leveled out before him, and he looked for where the light penetrated the canopy the most. He used the shaft of the spear to push away some of the low-lying branches in front of him and dared, once, to look behind him. There was no sign of the other man who had come into the forest, but the one driving the machine had obviously spotted Max and was increasing the revs, speeding up as he focused on the retreating boy.

It took twenty seconds to break through the next dense patch, and in that time Max was out of sight of the pursuing killer. A muddy bank suddenly gave way to a sheet of rock. Max slipped, grabbed at roots and stopped himself slithering over the edge of the sheer drop that lay camouflaged beyond the curtain of trailing branches and vines.

As he hauled himself to his feet, the machine burst through the undergrowth. All he could see were its vicious blades, blurred with speed, bits and pieces of root and leaf caught up in its teeth like a carnivore’s incisors after a kill.

He saw the man’s eyes through the mesh cage, glaring in anticipation of a gruesome kill, and the unmistakable push of his arm as he shoved the throttle lever forward. He knew he had Max. The surge of power that went into the tanklike treads churned up the ground.

The man saw a boy frozen in fear.

Max saw a man smiling in victory.

Then, dropping his spear, he reached up onto a vine, grabbed a couple of handholds higher, bent his torso and pulled himself out of harm’s way.

The blades chewed the dangling vine trailing below him. The rush of air from their vicious, lacerating spin caught the back of his legs-it passed barely a handbreadth below-and then it fell away.

In seconds the machine had disappeared. The engine raced without the traction from the ground, and Max knew that suffocated in that cacophony was a man’s scream as, trapped in the cage, he plummeted to his death.

There was a distant crash as metal tore on rock, and then, except for the cries of alarmed jungle birds, there was silence.

Max dropped to the ground, retrieved his spear and, using it as a staff to steady himself, peered over the edge. The overhang hid what must have been a sheer drop. He had to skirt round it and find another route down. But the third man was out there somewhere. Max focused and ran, hoping his peripheral vision would allow him to spot the enemy. Now the silence was uncanny. Death had stalked the jungle and won.

Small gullies, a couple of meters wide, crisscrossed in front of him. He leapt across one, turned and followed the narrow strip of water that ran away to one side, convinced it had to lead to the river and the ravine. The blood pounded in his ears, and his smashing through the undergrowth muted the sudden slashing of the leaves. It was as if someone was using a thin flexible stick to lash the greenery around him.

This ripping sound was immediately followed by the hacking chatter of an automatic weapon. The things snapping angrily around Max’s head were bullets!

He jumped into one of the water-filled gullies. It was waist-deep and the bank allowed him some cover. Trying desperately to control his breathing, he peered into the thick jungle, looking for any sign of his enemy’s approach. Reason cut through his fear: these men were not jungle fighters; they were armed thugs paid to control the outside area. This gunman was shooting blindly. Max smiled to himself, the hunter’s instinct rising from his belly into his chest-a different type of energy now, the need for survival putting him on the offensive.

Keeping his eyes on the jungle and letting his breathing calm so his hearing could pick up every sound, he scooped mud from the low bank and smeared it across his face and shoulders. Then he crawled into the low undergrowth, using ferns for cover, and pressed himself against the broad roots of a big tree.

Max could smell him.

Stale cigarette smoke, sweat and alcohol settled on the air like the scent of a pungent flower. His pursuer was fairly close. No matter how skilled the man might be-and he wasn’t-it was impossible not to make any noise. Max closed his eyes and listened. About five meters away, the man’s heavy footfalls and stumbling approach were as good as shouting out his location.

Max felt for the darts. They were gone. He must have dropped their holder during the chase. He refocused, looking for anything that would help him defeat his pursuer. A couple of meters away, a large brown clay ball of a termite nest clung to a trailing vine. No sooner had Max seen it than the man’s face appeared through the foliage. Acting purely on instinct, Max threw the spear and heard it thud into the target. Inside the ball a honeycomb swarmed with termites, and as the clay dome shattered, it fell across the man’s head and shoulders. Suddenly engulfed in thousands of small biting insects, the man floundered and the AK-47 fell to his side, held by its strap, as he tried to beat them away. He yelped and swore.

It was a momentary diversion; Max knew the man would recover quickly, but the few moments it might buy him were vital. Max still needed his weapon, and he ran hard, skirting the man, to retrieve his spear. The gunman reacted as quickly as he could when he heard the sound of the crashing undergrowth. One hand went back to the AK-47 while the other tried to brush the termites from his eyes and face, but as he swung an arc of gunfire, he spun on his heel, and the combined effort of shooting and beating at the termites made him lose his balance. He fell backward into the shallow gully, which gave Max enough time to reach his spear. He yanked it from the ground, turned and powered on, knowing he had to get farther down the watercourse. He hoped the stream would take him to the ravine’s edge. The man dragged himself from the water, gasping, still plucking insects from his eyes, but his anger had given him the energy to scream what Max took to be a full-blooded threat. One very angry man with one very lethal weapon meant Max had a long way to go before he was safe.

He jinked left and right. Another stream, another gully, and then he could hear tumbling water. Roots of trees crept into the low banks, and he realized that the water had become shallower, so he would make quicker time. He just had to be careful not to run blindly over the edge; he had to find a way down.

His pursuer had recovered quickly and could be heard splashing through the shallows; he, too, had realized that this was the easiest route. Suddenly there was no place to hide. The man came round the bend of the gully, and he was in plain sight. If Max tried to move now and clamber back into the undergrowth, he would be spotted immediately, and a burst of gunfire would rake him to death.

The gully’s low overhang was his only chance of concealment. With any luck, the man would be looking ahead and might bypass the dark shadow that was Max unmoving among the tree roots. There seemed to be no choice. He lay down on his side, feeling the mud suck at his clothes as he eased himself backward until the bank pressed against him. Bits of tangled root and leaves offered some camouflage in front of his face, and he hoped he could settle his breathing-right now he felt as though the whole world could hear him gasping for breath.

A huge snake, five meters long, stirred. Alerted by movement, its muscles flexed. At full length it resembled a dead tree trunk, its mottled-brown shaded patterns camouflaging it almost to the point of invisibility. Heat-sensitive pits on its head guided it toward the creature that had blundered into its territory. It had not eaten for a couple of weeks. The deer it had crushed to death and swallowed whole had taken that long to digest.

Max had no idea that the shivering turbulence along the stream’s bank was one of the jungle’s most lethal creatures. Its jaws, lined with small, hooked teeth, would grip its prey as it rapidly coiled itself about its victim. Within moments the massive strength would crush bone and suffocate lungs; then the jaws would unhinge, allowing it to swallow its prey. No one was strong enough to fight a boa constrictor of this size once they were held in its coils.

Death was certain.

Now it would eat again.

Sayid had paced the floor, back and forth, eventually sitting on his bed, head in hands. Had his intrusion into the building been traced? He half expected to hear someone pounding on his door at any moment, so powerful was the fear of discovery. What to do? If he admitted hacking into all those cameras, then one thing would lead to another and they would know that he was involved with Max from the very beginning. But if he did not warn the authorities that a man might have been killed or captured, he would never be able to live with himself.

By the time he had made his decision, he found himself already knocking on Mr. Jackson’s door.

“You’re absolutely sure that this is exactly what happened?” Fergus Jackson asked him moments later.

“Yes, sir. I think they held him at gunpoint, and after that they pulled the camera off the wall. It’s all a bit of a mess, sir. I hope I haven’t made matters worse by sending the information through to the people at MI-Five. That would mean I was responsible for whatever happened to that man.”

Mr. Jackson nodded and put a hand on the boy’s shoulder. “Well, you’ve done the right thing now, Sayid. We have to bring in the authorities,” he said as he picked up the phone.

“I really don’t want to hurt my mum. And I’m scared.”

“I’ll make sure nothing happens to you and your mother.” Jackson turned away as he spoke into the phone. “Hello, Bob, I think there’s something you should know.”

The White Hat hackers were safe; Sayid had seen to that. They had left absolutely no trace of their involvement and had created a spaghetti junction of unfathomable complexity to cover their tracks. Robert Ridgeway and another man had landed in the helicopter an hour after Mr. Jackson made the telephone call. Now he stood back as the young man with him keyed information into Sayid’s computer. He turned and nodded, and Sayid could see that he had reconnected to the CCTV cameras in the building.

“The boy’s telling the truth, sir. He was logged into the security circuit.” He adjusted the screen so that Ridgeway, Sayid and Mr. Jackson could see. A dozen camera views flitted through the building, and Sayid could see men and women in every area. They were searching, testing for fingerprints and recording everything on cameras.

“One of our men is missing, and those are my people searching for him. You are certain you saw nothing other than what you’ve told us?” Ridgeway asked Sayid.

“I’ve told you everything. I was the one who alerted you in the first place. I sent you the building’s location.”

“Yes, well, we’d really like to know how you did that. That’s a major security breach as far as we’re concerned.” He glanced at Jackson, who shook his head gently. He did not want any threat leveled against Sayid and his mother again.

“But perhaps that’s a conversation we might have at another time,” Ridgeway said, pressing a button on his mobile phone. They watched as, seconds later, one of the agents on the screen answered his own phone.

“We’re watching,” Ridgeway said.

The man looked up into one of the cameras, speaking directly to them.

“Boss, there’s no trace that Keegan was in the building. No prints, no fibers. Nothing. This is a private hospital. Half a dozen rooms behind each security door. It’s also a mortuary. It’s genuine; we’ve checked it out. It’s run by an independent medical group called Zaragon that uses it for their international clients based in London. Postmortems are done here at the request of a patient’s family. There’s nothing suspicious, so what do we do now?”

Sayid pointed at one of the screens. “There were monitors on that wall where that stainless-steel table is, and your bloke saw something that was really horrible.”

“Did you hear that?” Ridgeway said into the phone.

The agent nodded. “We’ve checked already,” he replied. “They’re viewing screens. So far all we found was a computer library with postmortems recorded. Keegan isn’t the toughest of blokes, with all due respect, sir. Anyone could cringe at an autopsy.”

Ridgeway looked at Jackson. He was stymied. The only evidence he had was that Sayid Khalif had hacked into the building’s cameras and had sent the location to MI5 in the first place. If it were not for the fact that Keegan was missing, he would write this off as a schoolboy prank that had got out of control.

Ridgeway stared at Sayid. “There’s nothing I can do about this, unless you can give me something more to go on. Did you see these men hurt my agent?”

“No, sir, but I think one of the men pointed a gun at him.”

“Then is there anything else at all that can help us find out what happened to him?”

Sayid couldn’t think of one thing. He gazed at the screens and let the computer mouse click on each one. He stopped in the tiled room with the stainless-steel examination table. Then he panned the camera round slightly. Something was different. What was it?

He pointed to the room. “There was something like a clothes rack there. It had special suits hanging on it. They were biohazard suits. Now they’re gone.”

“Biohazard?”

“Yes, the same kind I saw in the tunnel when Danny Maguire’s body was found,” Sayid told him.

Ridgeway considered this information for a moment and then put the phone back to his ear. “Lock that building down and bring in a full forensic science team.”

They saw the agent nod. Ridgeway looked down at Sayid. “I can’t see any reason why you would make that up. You’ve convinced me something’s going on in that building. Well done, son.”

The snake coiled rapidly, twisting round his body. It happened so quickly he had no time to scream. Barely a gasp of fear was possible as it slithered from the mud, caught his ankles and then in a smooth, lethal turn entwined his body. One hand was free, but he couldn’t reach a weapon. If he could have grasped his knife, he’d have slashed at the ferocious head that now stared into his face, its tongue flicking out to touch his bursting, sweating skin.

It crushed him. Steel-like bands of coiled muscle contracted, exerting a force that squelched his organs and made his eyes bulge with horror as the needle-toothed jaws opened.

From a place of darkness, somewhere deep inside his body, Max’s primal scream echoed through the jungle.

That horrifying sound was almost inhuman. It froze the blood and rooted Xavier and his guard to the spot. The fight in the forest had played back to them in all its heart-clenching terror. Xavier reacted first. Breaking free from the man’s grip, he sprinted down the path looking neither right nor left, determined never to run into the jungle again. He zigzagged, but he was an easy target. The man raised his weapon.

“Stop!” Orsino Flint yelled, bursting through the edge of the forest.

The gunman turned and fired. Flint dived into cover.

Xavier stopped, turned and shouted in surprise. “Flint!”

The gunman twisted back and fired at the boy, who forgot his fear of the jungle and plunged into the undergrowth.

“Don’t shoot!” Flint shouted again as he ducked into the open, and back again, getting ever closer to Xavier.

The gunman could not cover both at the same time. He waited, the AK-47 sweeping left to right, ready to fire again. He was scared. The scream from the forest, the failure of his companions to return, all brought home the fact that he was alone and vulnerable. There was a sudden flurry at the edge of the jungle. He fired, the bullets chopping the leaves, but Flint had moved farther down the forest edge and run across the strip.

He gripped Xavier’s neck as he pinned him to the ground, the bullets snapping the air above them. “Stupid! You’re so damned stupid!”

“You said you were leaving!”

“I saw your dumb stunt, and I couldn’t believe it! Come on! He’s reloading.”

Xavier was dragged to his feet. He saw the gunman fumbling for another magazine, but Flint had already yanked him into the trees.

Which was worse? The gunman or whatever lay in the jungle?

Max burst from the muddy water, powering himself upward, his mouth still wide open from the scream, but now he was snarling as he attacked. He held the spear in both hands and lunged.

The gunman’s bulging eyes were glazing over, the breath had been sucked from him like vacuum-packed meat as the snake still twisted round him. His swollen tongue protruded, and in the last few moments of consciousness, he saw the blurred movement of a mud-streaked demon lunging at his head with a spear. Max thrust the spear into the snake’s jaws and shoved with all his might. He felt the recoil as the snake’s muscles spasmed and swirled, lashing in ferocious death throes. Max leaned on the spear, pinning the snake to the ground, jamming one foot onto its writhing coils. Dripping with sweat, he desperately sucked in air as he overcame his fear. He closed his eyes, gripping the shaft of the spear, concentrating all his strength and energy, making sure that the terrifying snake could not survive and attack him.

Light faded as thunder ricocheted across the mountains from the low-lying clouds. Max was oblivious. He hunched over the writhing snake, clasping it with foot and fist, the flint blade like a big cat’s claw. Max’s teeth were bared with exertion as he growled with primitive savagery against the thrashing snake.

Finally, he knew the snake was dead and sank to his knees. He gazed at the magnificent creature and for a brief moment regretted its death. The man who had tried to kill him lay on his back in the dirt. Max tried to find a pulse, but there was none. His effort to save the man had come too late.

A steady pattering beat the forest leaves as a rainstorm broke. Max tilted back his head and let the fresh water wash the grime and sweat away, tasting the sweet liquid that his adrenaline-scoured body so desperately needed. Nothing else moved. A distant, muted bird trill and a gentle plopping call of another was all that could be heard.

The downpour ended almost as quickly as it had begun.

The rapid beating of the rain gave way to the steady sound of dripping leaves. A small movement caught his eye-a blue morpho butterfly opened its wings, its deep iridescence startling against the greenery. A brief moment of beauty in a place of death.

Max yanked out the spear and turned for the ravine. He had fought one snake; ahead lay another unknown peril-the Cave of the Stone Serpent. Like a jungle cat, he bent his body and sought a path beneath the low foliage. Some of the big leaves reflected the dull glint of rain, but a mottled form shifted in the shadows, and Max could smell the dank odor of wet fur. Without another thought, he chased the shadow. His senses altered, and like radar, his sense of smell and hearing took over. He ran bent low, ducking beneath curved branches as he found the animal path opening ahead of him. The rustling branches and the sound of paws on the ground led him through a dim, twisting labyrinth where light barely reached the forest floor. His feet hit mud, and he slithered onto his side, brought to a halt by a rotten log across the path. His shoulder slammed into the crumbling bark, and as he reached up to pull himself clear, he gazed into the eyes of the creature that had led him this far. Four meters away, smudged in camouflage, the jaguar gazed at him; its panting breath reached his nostrils. Max blinked. The jaguar was gone. Had he imagined it? He saw tracks in the mud. Surely it could not have been an illusion? The big cat had guided him here. Max looked to one side; the cliff had turned into a steep, muddy descent. Imaginary or not, he had reached a place where he could get down to the river.

Max could hear the sound of a waterfall. Using vines as ropes, he slithered his way down to the river sixty or so meters below him. It was broad but shallow, and he could see that, with care, he should be able to cross without being swept away. But what held his attention was the gaping hole in the rock face on the opposite mountainside. It looked as though someone had carved a mask into the mountain, and the cave gave the appearance of snarling jaws with jagged pinnacles of rock as teeth. Fetid, breathlike mist eased out of the opening. From where Max stood, there could be no doubt that it resembled the head of a snake. This was it. He had to enter the Stone Serpent’s gaping jaws.

Another ragged rain cloud curled down the mountainside at the far end of the valley, snagging on forest limbs like sheep’s wool on barbed wire. Max felt the first gust of wind and sting of rain as it urged him across the shallow water and onto the lower slopes of the mountainside. It seemed insistent on pushing him into the unknown.

Something splashed out of the mist into the stream behind him. He spun round. It was the driver of the bush-cutting machine. Blood streaked his clothes. Somehow he had survived the fall-maybe the cab’s roll cage had saved him. He staggered toward Max, pulled back the action on the shotgun he carried and brought it up to waist height. Max was exposed. There was no cover. There were one or two deep pools, but how far underwater could he dive to escape those lethal blasts? How long could he hold his breath until the man gave up? It was not an option.

In that moment of hesitation, the man stumbled into deeper water. He raised the shotgun, but it was more for balance than for aiming at Max.

A cry of pain ripped from the man’s throat. He had dropped the shotgun, beating the water with his fists. He screamed when the surface fluttered as if struck by hailstones, then fell facedown into the turmoil. Max was rooted to the spot. In less than a minute, the man was shredded. His blood had attracted the most ferocious of predatory fish-piranhas.

A stupid thought flashed through Max’s horror. He hadn’t known there were piranhas in Central America.

He did now.

Fragments of the man’s shirt floated past him.

Max gazed up into the huge, frightening cave that awaited him, but after the punishing terror he had experienced, it offered the illusion of a place of safety.

Could his mother and father have traversed this very route? Somewhere in the amphitheater of these mountains, on the other side of this cave, had they faced danger and death? His mother had died; his father had run. There was only one way to find out the truth.

Max stepped into the darkness and let the serpent’s breath smother him.