The Hadrian Memorandum

2

Marten hesitated, then turned and ran, rushing madly through the tropical downpour and back up the trail he and Willy had come down only moments earlier. Seconds later he pulled off it and ducked into an undergrowth of huge ferns to look back.

What he saw sickened him. The first army truck slid to a stop just as Father Willy reached the young boys. Immediately soldiers jumped from it. As they did, Willy stepped in front of the boys, trying to protect them. In answer, a rifle butt was slammed against his head. The boys screamed as he fell and tried to fight the soldiers. Simultaneous rifle butts hit the first boy in the face. Two more hit the second; one in the face, the other at the back of his head as he fell. Then the motionless figures of all three were picked up and thrown facedown onto the truck bed. At the same time, the other army truck swerved around the first, raced toward the place where Marten and Father Willy had parted, and stopped. Immediately twenty or more soldiers leapt from it and started fast up the trail toward the place where Marten hid.

“Christ!” he breathed and pushed wildly from his hiding place, running back up the jungle path three hundred yards ahead of them at best. In seconds he realized he was leaving tracks in the mud. He looked left, then right, then picked a spot, and plunged off the trail into heavy undergrowth, his sudden move startling monkeys and tropical birds and sending them into a screaming fit in the trees above.

He ran on. Thirty feet, forty, fifty. Suddenly he stopped short. There was nothing before him but impenetrable rain forest, all of it thick as a carpet. He turned around. There was nowhere to go but back the way he had come.

He’d covered less than half the distance to the main trail when he heard them coming. They were moving hard and fast and jabbering in Spanish.

Abruptly their talking stopped and the sounds of them moving died out. The monkeys and birds stopped, too. So did Marten. Except for the rain, the jungle was silent. He held his breath. They were close and listening. He inched backward, his eyes locked on the foliage in front of him, feeling his way over the sodden ground. Then he heard someone shout, and the place where he had turned off the trail exploded with rushing men. They had found his track.

Marten whirled and raced through the tangle of growth in front of him. The rain came down harder, all but drowning out the shouts of his pursuers. He clambered over a rotting log, jerked apart a curtain of low-hanging vines, and slipped through it. The pounding of his heart roared over everything else. He didn’t have a chance and he knew it. God help him when they got him.

The rain and mud made footing next to impossible. He slid and started to fall, then recovered and looked back. He could see the first ones clearly. There were three of them. Forty feet behind him at best. Big, powerful black men in jungle camouflage uniforms. Razor-sharp machetes flailing the thick growth before them. Then one of them saw him and they locked eyes.

“There he is!” he yelled in Spanish, and they surged forward.

Those eyes-homicidal and utterly merciless-and the determination behind them were the most frightening thing Marten had ever seen. In that instant he knew that if they caught him he wouldn’t just be killed, he’d be butchered on the spot.

He ran on, the jungle as thick as a web around him, as if the rain forest itself had joined the enemy. Behind him came more shouts and then more still. They were closing in, and fast.

“My God,” he breathed. “My God!”

His lungs were on fire; his legs had nothing left. He was starting to turn, to look back, more out of instinct than anything else, when suddenly the ground gave way beneath him. In a blink he was plummeting down a steep embankment. Trees, ferns, vines, foliage of every kind flew past. He tried to dig in his heels, to get some kind of purchase that would slow him. At the same time, he reached out, frantically trying to grab hold of anything that would break his fall. Nothing did. The rain-soaked soil was so slick it might well have been ice. He went faster. Then faster still.

Suddenly his right arm circled a vine, and he pulled it in tight. There was a wrenching jolt and he stopped, face up against the sky. For the briefest moment he clung there, the tropical rain washing over him. Then he let out a huge breath and looked down. His legs stretched out over nothing. He had come that close to going over the edge and plunging into whatever was below. He flashed on the cascade of falls he’d seen when he’d been with Father Willy less than an hour before. Remembered looking down and seeing them disappear into the jungle floor a thousand feet beneath. If that was the terrain here, he had come within inches of his death.

Suddenly his chest heaved and he made some kind of animal cry, half sheer horror and half release. From somewhere far above he heard the voices of the soldiers. They were rough and raw and urgent. He had no idea how far he had fallen or if there was a way they could work around and come at him from the side or if they had ropes and would just rappel down to where he was.

He looked to his left and saw another vine. Beyond it was another. If he could use them to move across the face of the cliff or steep hillock or whatever it was, maybe he could find solid footing on the other side. If so, he might work his way into the jungle and hide there until darkness came. Something, he estimated, that would occur in no more than two hours.

He took a deep breath and grasped the vine tightly. Another breath and he swung toward the one just beyond it. He reached it and grabbed hold, then carefully tested its strength. Satisfied, he let go of the first vine. He repeated the procedure once and then again. Now he could see his destination, the edge of the ravine into which he had fallen. The rain came down harder. If the soldiers were still up there, he had no way to know.

Another breath and he swung again, almost reaching the far side before the momentum pulled him back. He tested the vine and swung once more. Closer this time, but not quite. Another swing and he almost had it, his fingers brushing the shrubbery that lined the edge before his momentum carried him back.

“Easy,” he breathed and swung again. This time he went a little further. The shrubs were right there. He reached out, grabbed hold of the closest plant, and-suddenly there was a sickening jolt as the vine pulled free of the soil above. For the briefest instant he hung in midair; then came a shower of rocks and mud and he plunged backward into nothing.

He heard himself scream as he fell. For a second he thought he saw water, a fast-rushing stream cutting through the jungle far beneath him. He kept falling and falling. Then he hit something hard and everything went black.