Ramsey's Gold

Chapter Thirty-Two

The evening meal was a grim one. It was as though Allie had disappeared into thin air, leaving only three brass shell casings and nothing else. All three men had their pistols strapped to their belts and their rifles by their sides, and Spencer and Jack had been quietly discussing how to proceed, with no agreement.

The final rays of waning sun streamed through the overhead canopy as they ate surplus MREs, none of them having the will to fish, their imaginations working overtime on what might have happened to Allie.

A muffled thud sounded from nearby. They were instantly on their feet, rifles at the ready. The vegetation across the river rustled and Drake was drawing a bead when Spencer pushed his gun barrel aside.

“No. Look. Over there.” He pointed to a white square fastened to a grapefruit-sized rock.

Drake retrieved it. A folded sheet of paper was tied to the stone with twine. He unsheathed his knife and sliced the cord, and then unfolded the note. The handwriting was neat, the message brief.

The note was unsigned.

“What the hell…” Drake muttered and gave it to Jack, who read it once and handed it disgustedly to Spencer.

“The Russians.” Jack spat his contempt on the rainforest floor.

“Are you sure?” Drake asked.

Jack squinted at the far riverbank. “They tend to favor the brute-force approach. No finesse. And kidnapping is about as brute force as it gets.” Jack thought for a moment. “We need to figure out a way to deal with them and get her back.”

“Deal with them?” Drake asked.

“Of course. They’re going to kill her no matter what. Even if you give them the journal. That’s how they work.”

“But I don’t have it.”

“Right. And at that point, they’ll want you. What’s in your brain. They’ll torture it out of you and then kill you, too. It’s their standard operating procedure.”

Spencer’s eyes narrowed. “Seems like you know an awful lot about these Russians.”

Jack nodded. “I should. I made it my mission to find out everything I could about them after they killed Drake’s father. You could say I’m an expert on their behavior by now.”

“How did they know we were here?” Drake asked.

“I told you we were racing the clock. They obviously recorded the spot, just like I did, and bet that we’d come back to it eventually. Turns out that was a good bet,” Jack said.

“What are we going to do?” Spencer asked, deferring to him.

Jack paced, fingering the trigger guard of his rifle as he did so, a nervous habit he was unaware of. Eventually he stopped and turned to Spencer.

“How good are you at tracking?”

The next day they rose before dawn and sat around the stones they’d circled to create a fire pit, their faces drawn from a night with no sleep. Nobody spoke, their demeanors serious, dark circles beneath their eyes evidence of their fatigue as the gray shower fell around them, the silence broken only by an occasional bird or a monkey screeching overhead.

When the messenger arrived on the far side of the river, they bristled, guns in their laps. The man on the other bank was reed thin, Jack’s age, dressed in tropical camouflage pants and shirt, his gray hair trimmed tight to his skull. He had a Kalashnikov of his own slung over his shoulder, but seemed completely calm. Jack was almost certain it was Sasha, but it had been a long time…

“Drake Ramsey,” he called, his Russian accent obvious.

“That’s me,” Drake said, standing.

“You read note?” the Russian asked, the words more a statement than a question.

“Yes.”

“Good. You give me journal, yes?”

“No.”

Sasha looked puzzled, but only for a moment. “Then girl dies.”

“I don’t have the journal.”

“Lies.”

“It’s true. I don’t. I left it in the United States.”

“I don’t believe.”

“Doesn’t matter what you believe. I don’t have the journal, and I can’t give you what I don’t have.”

“Then why are you here?” Sasha fired back.

“To find the Inca city.”

“Using journal…”

“No. Using the information in the journal.”

“Is same thing. Where is it?”

“The info? It’s right here.” Drake tapped his head with his free hand.

They stood staring at each other for a few beats. “You write it down. Give to us.”

“I can try. But there’s no way of guaranteeing it will be complete. Just what I can remember.”

The Russian seemed to make a decision. “Then girl is dead.”

“And you get nothing,” Drake said, his tone mild. “Seems stupid to me. Are you an idiot?” He tapped his forehead with his hand while scowling.

Sasha’s eyes narrowed. “We keep the girl till you remember everything.”

Drake shrugged. “Hey, do whatever you want.”

The discussion obviously hadn’t gone the way the Russian had expected, and he seemed unsure of what to do. A sly look flashed across his face and he nodded.

“Then we wait until you find city.”

“That might be a while, buddy,” Jack said, speaking for the first time. “It’s not like youngblood here has a map where X marks the spot.”

Sasha didn’t understand. “We trade girl for map.”

Drake nodded. “I can try.”

“No try. Do it.”

“I’ll need some time.”

“You have one day.”

“Wait…”

But the Russian had spun and run back into the jungle, obviously distrustful of them.

“How much of a head start do you want to give him?” Jack whispered.

Spencer looked at his watch. “Five minutes. He doesn’t look like he knows much about negotiating the jungle. Wrong kind of boots, for one. And his hat. He didn’t have one. Which is poor planning in a rainforest for a host of reasons.”

“You’re confident you can track him?”

“As long as it’s fresh, which is why I advised against killing him and trying to follow his trail back to the camp. And assuming it doesn’t rain hard and erase his footprints. As it is, the ground’s soft and moist, so he should leave a trail as obvious as an elephant.”

“Okay. We’ll be right behind you,” Jack said.

“It’s smarter for me to track him on my own and return once I’ve located their camp. Why don’t you give me the GPS and I’ll set a waypoint when I find it, and then sneak back?” Spencer suggested.

“I don’t like only one of us going,” Jack said.

“Even if a slip from one of you results in your daughter being killed?”

Jack brooded for a moment and then pulled his GPS free from his backpack and handed it to Spencer. “You win. But for God’s sake, be careful.”

“I will.” Spencer eyed them both. “But don’t try to follow me. I need to know that if I hear something behind me, it’s an enemy. I can’t be second-guessing. Clear?”

Jack and Drake nodded. “Clear. You really think you can do this?”

“I’m positive.” Spencer bent down, hefted his backpack, and slipped his arms through the straps. He adjusted his hat and, after taking a last look at his watch, jogged down the bank to the shallow part of the river. “I’ll be back. Stay put.”