Empire of Gold

15


Panting, muscles stiff and burning, Eddie watched from a high branch of a creeper-choked tree as the truck set off. His run through the jungle, stopping every ten minutes to check his bearing against the sun, had taken just over two hours. Tough going, but the thought of what would happen to Nina and the others if he didn’t make it had driven him on.

But he was too late.

Even from outside the perimeter fence he had picked out Nina’s red hair immediately in the hot afternoon sun. She and Kit were being taken to the Mi-17. A forklift hoisted the crate containing the sun disc into its cabin, and it looked as though Stikes, recognisable by his beret, and Callas were waiting to board the helicopter as well.

But his concern was now for those left behind. The armed guards in the truck told him that at least some of the prisoners were still alive . . . but they wouldn’t be for long. Civilians held on a military base might arouse questions. Corpses buried in the jungle would not.

But how could he help them? The truck was too far away for him to catch up. And he couldn’t help Nina and Kit either; too many armed men around the helipad for him to stand a chance of even getting close.

The helipad . . .

Part of his mind had already subconsciously registered something wrong, and as the other chopper’s rotors began to turn he realised what. A Hind? That wasn’t unusual in itself, as the Russian flying tank had been sold all over the world . . . but this one bore the red-and-white roundel of Peru, not the Venezuelan tricolour. What was it doing here?

He dismissed the question when he saw something more important. On the far side of the base was a small motor pool. A soldier climbed into a Jeep.

His chance—

Eddie leapt down, breaking into a run parallel to the boundary fence. He couldn’t catch the truck – but if he was fast enough, he might be able to intercept the Jeep.

The Hind roared into the air and turned northwards. The Mil had been loaded, the forklift backing away to let its passengers, willing and otherwise, board. A flash of red: Nina being pushed inside.

He forced down a surge of anger and kept running. The soldier in the Jeep waved impatiently to another man. The deforested area was only about two hundred metres across – once the 4×4 set off, it wouldn’t take long to reach the gate.

A corner of the fence ahead. He swung round it, angling away from the base. Another glance—

The Jeep was on the move.

Shit! Could he catch it? It disappeared from view, blocked by trees, then reappeared. Closer than he had expected. The driver was in a hurry.

So was Eddie. He forced himself on, aware that one stumble on the uneven ground could cost the prisoners their lives. Dangling vines swatted at his face. His heart pounded, leg muscles on fire, but he couldn’t stop.

A scrape and clatter of metal – the gate being opened. He heard the clash of gears as the driver set off.

A shallow slope ahead. The muddy road at the bottom came into view through the undergrowth – as did the Jeep. Moving quickly.

Too quickly. Eddie knew he couldn’t reach it before it passed.

His chance was gone—

No!

He turned again, aiming ahead of the Jeep, and leapt up, grabbing a clutch of creepers hanging from a high tree. He swung down the slope, reaching the bottom of his arc, rising higher . . .

And letting go.

He fell, landing with a bone-jarring crash in the Jeep’s open back as it passed. The two soldiers had put their AK-103s on the rear seat, and it now felt as though they were embedded in his spine.

The pain of his touchdown was nothing compared to the soldiers’ shock, however. The driver jumped halfway out of his seat in fright. The 4×4 swerved almost into a ditch before he regained control.

Eddie pulled himself upright. One of the AKs clattered into the footwell. But they were too close to the base for him to use the weapon – the shots would draw attention. Instead, he smashed an elbow into the driver’s face as he looked round. The Venezuelan’s head snapped back, blood spraying from his burst lip.

The other man twisted in his seat, grabbing for the rifle. Eddie chopped at his throat. He jerked away, the blow catching his jaw.

A retaliatory strike lashed at Eddie’s eyes. He threw himself back – and banged his head on the hard-edged bodywork.

The passenger took advantage of his brief dizziness, pulling the AK from the footwell by its barrel. He spun it round, about to empty the magazine into the intruder’s chest at point-blank range—

Eddie reached between the front seats and yanked the handbrake.

The 4×4 skidded. The sudden deceleration caused the passenger to be thrown forward, and his head thunked forcefully against the windscreen’s frame.

Eddie used the same inertia to fling himself upright. The dazed soldier was halfway out of his seat, and Eddie shoved him with both hands to make the exit complete. With a cry, the passenger tumbled out of the Jeep’s open side, and hit a tree at the roadside head first, breaking his neck. The AK bounced into the undergrowth.

One down – but the driver had recovered. He released the handbrake and stamped down hard on the accelerator.

The Jeep fishtailed, kicking up a muddy spray. The sudden swerve hurled Eddie sideways. He clutched desperately for a handhold to avoid following the dead soldier out of the vehicle, but only caught the edge of the rear seat. He hung over the Jeep’s side, mud splattering into his face.

The driver jerked the steering wheel. The Jeep swayed, tipping Eddie even further out. The track blurred past beneath him. He tried to hook a foot under the front seats, but couldn’t get a firm hold.

Green in his peripheral vision—

He closed his eyes as a plant at the roadside smacked into his cheek, at this speed even mere leaves enough to draw blood. Stinging, he looked ahead again – to see a tree coming up fast.

The driver saw it too. He swerved to scrape off his uninvited passenger against its thick trunk.

Eddie kicked, searching for a foothold. His boot thumped against the hard seatback. He strained to pull himself back into the Jeep, but couldn’t get enough leverage.

The tree rushed closer, filling his vision—

His groping foot finally caught the seat’s underside, and he yanked himself back inside as the tree whipped past, the leafy creepers dangling from it swatting his head.

Other parasitic growths concealed a danger of their own, though – a branch protruding into the road—

The driver screamed and braked hard – but too late.

The branch hit the Jeep’s windscreen. The glass shattered, pieces showering into the driver’s face. Chunks of broken wood bombarded both men. The remaining AK fell off the rear seat, ending up beneath the driver.

Eddie recovered first. He grabbed a piece of smashed tree and swung it at the soldier’s head, scoring a satisfyingly solid hit.

But the driver wasn’t out of the fight, swerving the 4×4 sharply across the track. As Eddie swayed, the Kalashnikov rattled into the front footwell – giving the driver the chance to snatch it up.

With an angry leer of victory, the Venezuelan swung round to shoot his attacker—

Eddie was gone.

The soldier was bewildered by his apparent disappearance – until he realised the Englishman had flattened himself across the rear seat.

He whirled back—

The Jeep had angled off the track – directly under a low, thick branch. There was a crunching thud. Slowed by dense bushes, the 4×4 bounced to a stop amidst the undergrowth. The engine rattled and stalled.

Eddie cautiously looked up. The driver was still in his seat . . . up to his neck. His head was a hundred feet further back, a pulped mess beneath the bough that had chopped it from his body.

‘Nice bit of tree surgery,’ Eddie said, clambering into the front and kicking the decapitated corpse from the Jeep. He recovered the AK-103, then restarted the engine and backed the 4×4 on to the road.

Now, he had to find the truck.

Before it was too late.

The new track was even more narrow and overgrown than the one that had led to Paititi, trees clawing at the military truck. Macy ducked a clawing branch, then peered fearfully at her surroundings. The vehicle had turned off the base’s access road on to the almost hidden path only a few minutes earlier, but even over that short distance the jungle had transformed into a dark, malevolent thicket. The trees were gnarled, as if twisted by the wounds of physically battling each other for the few scraps of daylight. Even the sun seemed to have abandoned this place . . . or turned away in horror.

Because there was something hanging in the air, permeating everything with foulness. A stench, beyond the inescapable jungle odour of decaying vegetation.

Osterhagen had caught it too. ‘I did my civilian service in the Katastrophenschutz – disaster relief,’ he whispered to Macy, his face grim. ‘I know that smell.’

The scent of death.

They were at their journey’s end.

Macy searched the soldiers’ faces for any hint of mercy. She found none. The four Venezuelans holding them at gunpoint were all cold, dispassionate. They had done this before.

One last lurch over some roots, and the truck clattered to a stop. The jungle canopy was so thick it seemed like twilight beneath, all colour sapped away. A soldier unlocked the tailgate and let it fall open with a gunshot bang. ‘Muévete!’ he said, pointing out of the truck with his AK.

Soto began to shudder. ‘Oh, please no, please, don’t do this, please . . . ’ One of the soldiers roughly dragged her to her feet. She wailed, a keening mewl of helpless despair as he shoved her from the truck.

Valero snarled, about to leap up at him, but received a brutal kick to the head for his trouble. Another soldier threw him out on to the ground.

The two remaining men gestured with their guns. Macy and Osterhagen picked up the semi-conscious Becker and carried him from the vehicle. One of the soldiers plucked the injured man’s hat from his head and put it on, earning sarcastic laughs from his fellows.

The driver was waiting, Kalashnikov in hand. He signalled for the prisoners to advance. The guards pushed them forward. Macy could hardly breathe, the stench of rot clogging her nostrils and fear tightening her chest. She rounded the truck to see . . . the hole.

It was aptly, bluntly named: just a ragged opening in the earth, steep sides littered with decomposing leaves. But as Macy got closer, she saw that it was not empty.

Bodies were piled inside it, a dozen, more. Most were rotted beyond recognition, insects and animals having feasted on the rich flesh and organs. Only the pair on top of the heap remained recognisably human, just a day or two dead, but even these had already lost their eyes and chunks of skin to the relentless scavengers. Insects swarmed from the blackened bullet wounds in their chests. Cayo’s partners, the drug smugglers.

Cayo himself soon joined them. As the other soldiers held the prisoners at gunpoint, two men pulled his corpse from the truck, carted it between them like a sack to the pit, and tossed it in. Flies exploded from the bodies as it thumped down on top of them.

The soldiers repeated the process with Cuff. Macy looked away in horrified disgust. Loretta’s pitiful cries became even louder at the sight of the dead American splayed on the pile, his remaining eye staring dully back at her.

‘Mother of God,’ grumbled one of the soldiers in Spanish, ‘that’s a noise I could live without.’

‘We’ll do her first,’ said another man, before switching to English. ‘Okay, down! On your knees!’

They forced the explorers to kneel at the pit’s edge. Valero muttered a desperate prayer. Macy realised she was crying, tears stinging as she started to hyperventilate. Loretta gave her a pleading look as the soldier stood behind her.

Macy wanted to keep her eyes fixed on the helpless, innocent woman, but her fear forced them shut. A last whimper escaped Loretta’s mouth—

A gunshot, shockingly loud.

There was a soft thump as her body slumped forward. The dull impact of a boot against flesh, and with a slithering thud Loretta’s corpse dropped into the hole.

The soldier moved behind Macy.

She desperately tried to open her eyes again, to take one last look at the world, but they were locked shut by terror.

A rustle of cloth as the soldier raised his gun . . .

And another sound, rising fast—

An engine!

She heard the man behind her turn in surprise. ‘Who’s that?’ Macy opened her eyes and looked back.

A military Jeep charged past the truck. Its driver held the steering wheel with one hand, an AK in the other—

Eddie !

‘Duck!’ he yelled, yanking at the wheel—

The 4×4 skidded in the mud as Eddie pointed the Kalashnikov out of its side and pulled the trigger. He didn’t need to aim – the Jeep’s spinning turn swept the bullets in a swathe above the kneeling prisoners’ heads.

Three soldiers took hits to their chests and faces, dropping dead to the ground. The man behind Macy was caught in the left shoulder, the impact sending him reeling to the edge of the pit. With his good arm, he pointed his AK-103 at the Jeep . . .

Macy sprang up and barged him over the edge. He landed on the heaped corpses, rolling down them into the rotting sludge at the bottom of the hole.

One soldier was left standing, though. Eddie’s wild fire had missed him. He raised his gun—

The skidding Jeep had made a half-turn, and was now pointing backwards. Eddie jammed it into reverse and leaned low across the front seats, stamping hard on the accelerator. Bullets clanged through the bodywork and cracked against the seat backs. He yelled, but held his course.

The Jeep hit the soldier with a bang, scooping him up over its back end. Eddie raised his head, seeing the man bent over the rear seat – still very much alive. In reverse the 4×4 was only doing twenty miles per hour.

The Venezuelan’s eyes met Eddie’s, widening with anger. He swung the AK round—

Eddie twitched the wheel, and dropped again.

The Jeep smashed tail first into a tree, throwing Eddie against the bullet-pocked seats – and mashing the soldier into the wood.

Eddie pushed himself upright. The Venezuelan was pinned against the trunk, mouth open in a silent scream of agony. His gun had been thrown into the undergrowth.

‘Eddie!’ Macy cried. Not in thanks, but in warning. The soldier in the pit was still alive, still armed, climbing up over the corpses.

Eddie restarted the engine and put the battered Jeep into first gear, tearing free of the tree. One of the soldier’s legs came with it, snared on twisted metal. ‘Out of the way!’ he shouted. Valero and Osterhagen dragged Becker away, Macy leaping aside as the Jeep surged forward—

Eddie dived out of the 4×4. It sailed over the edge of the pit - just as the soldier reached the top of the piled bodies and aimed his weapon. The Jeep hit like a giant hammer, pounding him back to the bottom of the hole and crushing him into the ooze of his victims.

Macy ran to Eddie and helped him up. ‘Oh my God! Eddie! Are you okay?’

‘F*cking top,’ he groaned, seeing the three men nearby. ‘Where’s Loretta?’

Macy’s tears returned. ‘They – they killed her. Right before you got here.’

‘Oh, shit,’ he breathed, sagging. If he had arrived just a few seconds sooner. . . ‘I’m sorry. I’m sorry,’ he repeated, more loudly, to Osterhagen.

The German’s lips were tight as he struggled to hold his emotions in check. ‘You did all you could. Thank you.’

‘How did you find us?’ Macy asked. ‘How did you even get here?’

‘I ran,’ Eddie told her, standing. ‘Got to the base just as they were driving you away.’

‘You ran? Jesus. You’re . . . you’re amazing. Thank you.’ She embraced him, her tears now of gratitude. ‘Thank you.’

Valero, still supporting Becker, limped over. ‘We have to warn the militia about Callas.’

‘Yeah, we do,’ said Eddie, ‘but then we’ve got to find Nina and Kit. I saw Stikes and Callas put them in a chopper. Where are they taking them?’

‘Stikes said something about a clubhouse,’ Macy remembered.

‘A clubhouse?’ Eddie echoed. ‘What, like a golf club?’

Unexpectedly, Valero laughed, a bitter little bark. ‘Not a golf club – but near one. The Clubhouse. It is the joke name of a house in Caracas,’ he explained to his bewildered audience. ‘It overlooks a golf course in one of the richest parts of the city. The government confiscated it from a businessman who did not pay his taxes. It was supposed to be given to the people, but the military took it over – temporarily, so they said. But they are still there.’

‘Callas is using it?’ Macy asked. Valero nodded.

‘Then that’s where they’ve taken Nina and Kit,’ said Eddie. He frowned, thinking. ‘Is that Peruvian Hind – the gunship – part of what Callas is doing?’

‘A drug lord called Pachac got it for him,’ said Valero. ‘We heard them talking about it. I don’t know what Callas is planning, but it is why he has been selling the treasures from Paititi – he needs millions of dollars, tens of millions, to pay for it.’

‘He’s an army general doing something he doesn’t want the President to know about, he’s got a helicopter gunship, and he’s hired Stikes for some “conflict resolution”. There’s only one thing this can be about.’ Eddie looked grim. ‘Callas is planning a coup.’ He indicated the truck. ‘Sooner we get moving, the more chance we have of stopping it.’

‘What . . . what about Loretta?’ asked Osterhagen, glancing hesitantly towards the pit. ‘I don’t want to leave her there.’

‘We’ll have to,’ said Eddie. ‘Sorry, but we don’t have time to bury her properly. Once we contact the militia we can tell them how to find this place, but right now we’ve got to get out of here. We’re not far from the base, so it won’t be long before this lot are missed.’

‘I understand,’ Osterhagen said with an unhappy nod. ‘Oscar, help me with Ralf.’

‘Macy, see if there’s a first aid kit in the truck,’ Eddie said as they took Becker to the tailgate. He collected the dead soldiers’ rifles, then searched the bodies, gathering a handful of Venezuelan currency.

Even after the horrors he had witnessed, Osterhagen was still shocked. ‘What are you doing?’

‘Being practical,’ said Eddie. ‘We’ve got no money, and we might need some to make a call. Besides, these bastards don’t need it. Okay, let’s go.’

He retrieved Becker’s fedora and handed it to Osterhagen, then climbed into the driving seat, Macy beside him. The vehicle turned, then rattled away down the path, leaving the dead in silence.