Ramsey's Gold

Chapter Thirty-Four

“It’s still pretty swollen,” Drake said as he inspected Allie’s ankle in the hazy morning light.

They’d made it to the outpost and tried to rest, adrenaline from the nocturnal escape still coursing through their systems. Jack’s words and the reality of his death had made it impossible to sleep. Allie had been quiet, and Drake left her alone with her thoughts.

Drake’s mind was racing now that he knew his father’s best friend had betrayed him. For all of Jack’s remorse, wasn’t it equally possible that he’d betrayed Drake as well, only this time to the CIA? No wonder he’d been so adamant about Drake taking the offer. He wondered what Jack had been offered to encourage him to jump at it? Ten million? Twenty? Had he still been planning to betray them later on?

The rain had ended at some point during the night, and once dawn had broken he’d gone to check on Allie, who looked puffy and red-eyed, her ankle still swollen.

“It hurts, but not as much as when I first sprained it.” She hesitated. “Thank you for risking your life to rescue me.”

Drake felt color rush to his face and looked away. “You would have done the same for me.”

“Easy to say after the fact. But I want to tell you that I appreciate everything you did. I wouldn’t be here if you hadn’t put it all on the line for me.”

Drake’s voice softened. “I’m a sucker for a damsel in distress.”

“I’ll have to remember that.”

Drake hesitated. “I’m sorry about Jack.”

She closed her eyes and nodded. “And I’m sorry about your father. I couldn’t believe my ears.”

“That was a long time ago. And it sounds like he was surprised they killed him.” Drake shook his head. Excusing Jack’s treachery didn’t come easily, even if it was to make Allie feel better.

Spencer approached from where he’d been standing at the edge of the clearing, his AK at the ready.

“We should probably give your ankle another day to heal before we try to move,” Spencer said. “Keep it elevated. That’ll reduce the inflammation.”

“What are the odds they can find us?” she asked in a small voice.

Spencer shook his head. “Pretty low. With the rain, they wouldn’t be able to track us easily, and since we’re not on any trails, it would be almost impossible. Having said that, we still need to be careful and quiet. No point in making their job any easier. And remember that they’re not the only bad guys in this jungle.” He stared at the remnants of the Inca outpost. “By tomorrow afternoon, we’ll be miles away. I like our chances.”

“We can get going today. My ankle really does feel better than yesterday.”

“Don’t sweat it. Give it time to mend,” Drake echoed, which seemed to settle it.

In the late afternoon Drake and Spencer tried their hand at hunting with the crossbows, as there were no nearby rivers. Spencer showed Drake how to cock the bowstring, and they practiced firing at a tree for an hour. Drake found that he was pretty accurate with the weapon — surprisingly so at up to thirty yards — more than with a pistol.

When they finished practicing, they screwed hunting tips onto the carbon shafts and headed into the brush.

“What are we looking for?” Drake whispered.

“Anything we can eat. Python, deer, monkey…”

“I thought you were kidding about monkey.”

“Do I strike you as a kidder?”

“What about—”

“Shhh.” Spencer stopped and cocked his head to the side, listening. He stood frozen, then leaned into Drake as a light breeze dented the canopy above them. “Get ready. I think we got lucky.”

“What?”

Instead of answering, Spencer opened his mouth and slapped one cheek, making a hollow ponk sound. He repeated the odd performance several times before raising his crossbow and pointing it into the brush. Drake narrowed his eyes, trying futilely to make anything out. He was just about to say something when he heard grunting and snorting from ahead. He froze, waiting. Spencer was tracking something with his crossbow, and Drake was just raising his when Spencer fired. His bowstring snapped, and Spencer whispered to Drake.

“Give me your bow. Quick.”

Drake did as instructed and Spencer fired again. Drake heard movement racing through the brush, as if a herd of deer were tearing away. When it had grown quiet again, Spencer pushed branches aside and led Drake to their prize: what appeared to be a small boar, with a quarrel embedded in its side and another in its skull.

“What is that?” Drake asked as Spencer knelt beside the dead animal.

“White-lipped peccary. This is a juvenile. Maybe thirty pounds. Adults can get up to more than double that. They’re good eating. What we heard crashing through the brush was the rest of the herd. They travel together in large groups — up to a hundred or more.” Spencer eyed Drake’s knife. “Give me that shiv of yours and I’ll dress it right here. No point in hauling the carcass back to camp.”

Drake handed it to Spencer, who expertly carved steaks and slipped them into a plastic garbage bag he’d brought. He cleaned the blade with some of his canteen water and wiped it on the peccary’s bristly coat. The whole procedure took no more than five minutes, and they were soon returning with ten pounds of meat for dinner.

“We can cook it tonight and it should keep for breakfast. Unfortunately in this heat it won’t last longer.”

“How do you cook it?”

“Very carefully.”

Allie was sitting under a tree when they arrived, her Kalashnikov beside her for companionship, a look of relief on her face when she saw them.

“Did you get anything?”

Drake told her about the peccary, and she made a face. “Tell me it didn’t look like Bambi.”

“I can swear it looked absolutely nothing like Bambi. Honest,” he said, hand on his chest.

The steaks smelled mouthwatering when Spencer cooked them, and they tasted like butter after days of eating nothing but fish and dry food. He slipped the leftovers into another bag and wrapped it carefully, then sealed it in yet another bag.

“We want to ensure that nothing comes sniffing around in the middle of the night. I wouldn’t want to try to take on a jaguar in the dark. Or at any time, but especially not at night,” he warned. Drake believed him. He didn’t want to ask him how he knew.

Morning brought more hiking, but tougher going due to the absence of trails. Spencer studied Jack’s GPS and calculated the route direction, and then zoomed out and studied the satellite image, which showed a solid field of green.

Using the trajectory from the final outpost’s paver stones, their goal for the day was a barely visible stream eleven miles east. While they were in uncharted territory now regarding what to expect, their hope was that the same general pattern would hold and that they were no more than twenty-five miles from Paititi — or two days’ hard push from their current location.

Allie pushed along without slowing them down, determined to not be a hindrance. Her limp lessened through the morning, and by the time they reached the stream where they would camp for the night, she seemed greatly improved.

They spent most of their daylight hours the following day slogging through the rain, following game trails through the jungle as they pressed on. In the early afternoon they heard the crashing of a nearby waterfall — a promising sound, because the journal had theorized that Paititi would be located in an area surrounded by waterfalls and a river.

At the base of the waterfall, they took a break while Spencer studied the GPS. “We’re two miles short. You want to keep going, or have you had enough for today?” he asked.

Drake eyed Allie. “It’s up to her. I could go on. But if there’s no pressing reason to, this is a pretty nice spot.”

Allie pursed her lips. “Oh, sure, make it all about me. I’m fine.”

“This is a good place to camp. And the rain’s letting up, so it’ll get hot soon. I vote for stopping here today,” Spencer said.

The river below the small waterfall proved to be full of fish, and they feasted on several different types that they roasted over a fire. The rain had stopped an hour after they set up the tents, and Spencer had used his petroleum jelly to ignite a small pile of damp branches in order to dry out an armful of others.

They spent the next two days exploring their surroundings, using their new camp as base, but their efforts yielded nothing but exhaustion. As their second evening by the waterfall drew to a close, Spencer’s skepticism about their chances of success grew more pronounced. Drake tried to ignore him, but the doubts had an insidious effect. He could tell Allie was also wavering, but they had no option B.

On the third afternoon, Drake was chopping his way through some particularly dense jungle, his machete heavy in his tired hand, when he heard the roar of falling water ahead — another waterfall, but bigger than the one they’d camped by. Allie called out softly from behind him.

“Do you hear that?” she asked.

“I do. Follow me. It can’t be much farther,” Drake answered.

“Lead the way,” Spencer said, his tone morose.

Drake hacked at the foliage with renewed vigor, and in a few minutes he emerged onto a ledge overlooking a breathtaking sight — easily five stories of water tumbling over a cliff edge into rushing rapids below.

“I’d say that qualifies as a waterfall,” Drake said, inching along the rock outcropping to get a better look at the pool below.

When his feet went out from under him, slipping on moss he hadn’t seen, it felt like gravity was suspended for a brief moment, and then the wind was knocked out of him as he landed on his back, though his backpack absorbed the worst of it. He shook his head groggily and tried to stand as Allie edged closer to help him, but felt himself sliding inexorably toward the precipice, the slick growth covering the rock accelerating his fall.

Allie and Spencer watched in horror as Drake’s expression went from confusion to fear in a kind of slow motion. Desperate, he clawed at the rock, trying to find a hold. Blood stained the surface of the stone as he tried to latch on to it to break his slide, and then he was gone, sucked into the roaring vortex.

“No!” Allie yelled, pushing forward. Spencer restrained her, knowing that if she made it much farther onto the ledge, the same fate awaited her.

“Stop screaming. Unless you want to draw every hostile for ten miles,” Spencer warned, his tone sharp.

“Oh, God. We have to help him…”

“Not by joining him. Come on. Let’s find a way to the bottom.”

Spencer backed away from the edge, pulling Allie with him. Farther in the brush they found a faint track that led down the side of the slope. After some rough terrain, they emerged at the base of the waterfall, where the cascading water exploded into a deep pool before frothing along a narrower channel that transformed into whitewater rapids. Spencer shrugged off his backpack and removed his shoes, and then dove into the pool as Allie watched.

He bobbed to the surface after almost a full minute, like an otter, and then went under again. He repeated the process several times, with no success. When he came back up for the final time, he swam to the edge of the pool and climbed out, gasping for breath. Allie studied his glum expression with shock written across her face. She tried to speak, but the only sound she produced was a dry rasp. He shook his head and looked away, unable to meet her gaze.

Drake was gone.