Empire of Gold

18


The jungle rolled below, mile after mile of endless green. The Cessna was heading almost due north towards Caracas, detouring slightly to avoid the peaks of the Serrania Mapiche mountains. The sun dropped towards the horizon, casting a golden hue over the landscape. The explorers had left Valverde less than an hour ago, so were not even halfway to their destination, and it would be dark in around forty minutes.

‘Is landing at night going to be a problem?’ Eddie, in the copilot’s seat, asked Valero. ‘Without a radio, I mean.’

‘Don’t worry,’ the Venezuelan replied. ‘I can do it.’

‘Great.’ He looked down the cabin. ‘How’s Ralf?’

‘Asleep,’ said Macy. She and Osterhagen were taking it in turns to watch the injured man, having used the plane’s first aid kit to clean and bandage his gunshot wound. There was a good chance he would recover if he reached a hospital.

‘What about you?’

She grinned half-heartedly. ‘Oh, just kinda wishing I’d worked harder in school so I could have done a medical degree like my parents instead of archaeology. You get shot at less that way. Even in Miami.’

Eddie smiled, then examined a navigation chart. Valero had earlier pointed out a landmark: Cerro Autana, a great flat-topped mountain, standing alone on the jungle plain. The bizarre tower was now many miles behind them, so before long they would pass about ten miles east of the city of Puerto Ayacucho.

He noticed something else. Puerto Ayacucho, as a regional capital, had a fairly large airport . . . but it was also marked as a military facility. ‘Is this an airbase?’ he asked, pointing at the map.

‘Si,’ Valero replied. ‘That is why we are going to Caracas. I didn’t want to land in the middle of Callas’s friends.’

It made sense, but Eddie was suddenly on edge. An airbase so close to the border would serve a strategic purpose, its planes patrolling the edge of Venezuelan airspace . . .

And intercepting intruders.

‘Where are the binocs?’ he demanded.

Macy found them, concerned by his change of tone. ‘What is it?’

‘If Callas has friends in the air force, we don’t need to land to meet them. They can come to us!’ He looked northwest through the binoculars, following the long sparkling line of the Orinoco until he spotted the greys and browns of civilisation. The airport was south of the city.

Even from this distance, it was easy to make out a couple of parked airliners. He was searching for something smaller, however. He panned away from the civilian terminal to a cluster of hangars and support buildings. Their drab functionality told him at a glance that this was the military facility.

Something was moving in the rippling heat. Camouflage paintwork: a fighter jet, rolling towards the runway.

It could have been a coincidence, the plane about to set out on a routine patrol . . . but he wasn’t about to bet his life on it. ‘Oscar – take us down as low as you can, and head away from the city. Quick!’

‘Why?’

‘’Cause if you don’t, we’ll be going down in flames! They’re sending a fighter after us.’

Shocked, Valero banked right and put the Cessna into a steep descent. Macy pulled her seatbelt tighter. ‘Okay, I don’t know much about planes, but aren’t we at kind of a horrible disadvantage in this thing?’ She gestured towards the propeller.

‘That’s why we’re trying to stay under their radar,’ Eddie told her. ‘Most of it’ll be pointing west, towards Colombia. We might have a chance.’ Valero’s expression, however, suggested it would be very small.

Macy saw their shared look. ‘Oh, great! After everything we’ve been through, we’re going to be blown up by the Venezuelan Maverick and Iceman?’

‘We’re not going to be blown up,’ Eddie growled. He raised the binoculars again.

Perspective flattened the runway against the landscape as the plane descended. Where was the jet? He couldn’t see it. Lost in the heat distortion, or—

It was already in the air, a dark dart pulling up sharply atop a cone of flame from its afterburner. Its silhouette triggered his memory of aircraft recognition training: a Mirage 5, a French-built, delta-winged fighter. Some versions lacked radar . . . but not, he remembered, the Venezuelan variant.

It would find them. Soon. ‘Buggeration,’ he muttered.

‘Oh boy,’ Macy gulped. ‘Not good?’

‘Not good.’

‘Shit shit shit, why didn’t I pay attention in biology class?’

The jet levelled out, afterburner flame disappearing – and turned in their direction. ‘Oscar,’ said Eddie, ‘I don’t have a f*cking clue how, but we’re only going to stay alive if you can lose it.’

Valero shot him a disbelieving look. ‘I don’t have a f*cking clue how either!’ He eased out of the dive, the Cessna only metres above the rainforest canopy.

Macy pointed. ‘There’s a river. Maybe we could fly along it, behind the trees.’

Again, Valero’s face revealed what he thought of the odds of success, but nevertheless he turned the plane to follow the river, easing back the throttle to give himself more time to react to the waterway’s turns as he dropped lower.

The high trees along the bank blocked Eddie’s view of the Mirage. He felt a moment of hope. If they couldn’t see it, it couldn’t see them – and the fighter’s radar would also struggle to detect them through the trees.

But all the pilot had to do to find them was head for the river and look down to spot the white cross of the Caravan.

Valero made another turn. Eddie kept watching the sky. The high wing, which had made the Caravan the ideal choice for surveying the ground, now blotted out part of his view. How long before the jet reached them? The Mirage was a supersonic fighter, but even at subsonic speeds it could cover the distance in under two minutes—

Osterhagen made a startled noise as the wingtip thwacked a branch. Eddie winced, but there was no damage beyond a green stain on the paintwork.

Valero slowed the Cessna still further, holding it just above stalling speed. Even so, the plane was still tearing through the jungle at over seventy miles per hour. The river weaved, the rainforest rising on each side like green walls.

Walls that were closing in.

‘There is not enough room,’ Valero said urgently.

Eddie was still scouring the sky. ‘Stay low as long as you can. If it goes past us, we might have a chance—’

‘I can see it!’ Macy cried.

‘Is it going past us?’

Her voice was simultaneously angry and terrified. ‘Whadda you think?’

‘Oscar, climb!’ Eddie roared. Stealth was now worthless; they needed room to manoeuvre. ‘Macy, what’s he doing?’

‘Coming right at us!’ she shrieked over the engine’s howl as Valero pulled up sharply.

Eddie finally saw the Mirage again, sunlight flaring off its cockpit canopy. It was approaching head-on. The Caravan would be fixed in its gunsight, the slow-moving aircraft an easy target—

Twin flashes of fire beneath the fighter’s fuselage. Glowing orange dots seemed to drift towards him, but he knew all too well that the cannon fire’s apparent laziness was just an illusion. ‘He’s firing!’ he yelled.

Valero responded, flinging the Cessna into a hard rolling turn. Loose items bounced around the cabin. A loud crack came from the roof as an aluminium panel split under the stress. Eddie lost sight of the Mirage, but knew the shells were still incoming—

Bright streaks flashed past the windows like meteors. ‘He missed!’ cried Osterhagen.

‘Let’s hope he keeps missing!’ Eddie strained to hold himself upright as the Cessna wheeled round. The Mirage came back into view. Closer. The guns flared again. ‘Oscar!’

Valero changed course again, climbing . . .

Too late. Some shells seared past – but others hit home. Two fist-sized holes exploded through the starboard wing. Macy screamed as a piece of shrapnel scarred the window beside her.

Valero struggled with the controls. ‘Can you keep it in the air?’ asked Eddie, trying to see the damage. Something was coming from the wing. Smoke?

No. A red liquid, sparkling in the light of the falling sun.

Fuel.

The Venezuelan saw it too. He cursed in Spanish, eyes flicking over the instruments. ‘I can’t stop the leak.’ The wing tank had been punctured top and bottom by the cannon shells; no way to shut off the flow.

‘The plane!’ Macy cried, instinctively ducking. Eddie saw a flash of camouflage green and brown rushing at them—

The Mirage blasted overhead with an earsplitting scream, the Cessna crashing violently through its wake. The jet had come in too fast, unable to slow enough to match the weaving transport’s speed. Instead, it ignited its afterburner with another sky-shaking roar and powered into the distance.

Eyes wide, Osterhagen watched it thunder away. ‘He’s leaving,’ he gasped.

‘No, he’s not,’ Eddie replied grimly. The Mirage was making a long, sweeping turn, the pilot about to swing back round . . . and fire a missile. ‘Can we get to Caracas without that fuel tank?’ Valero shook his head. ‘Shit! How much fuel’s still in it?’

Valero checked a gauge, the needle of which was slowly but steadily dropping. ‘Four hundred litres, and falling.’

Eddie thought for a moment, tracking the distant Mirage as it turned. ‘Head away from him, and take us up,’ he ordered.

Valero stared at him, confused. ‘What?’

‘Up, take us up – we need all the height we can get!’ He unfastened his seatbelt as Valero put the Cessna into a climb, heading northwest.

‘What are you doing?’ Macy demanded as he stood.

‘The emergency kit – where is it?’ The yellow plastic case had contained the first aid supplies used to patch up Becker, and more besides. He spotted it at the back of the cabin and slid down the sloping floor to retrieve it.

The glowing dot of the Mirage’s afterburner cut out. ‘Eddie, the jet’s turning,’ warned Valero.

‘Just keep climbing!’ Eddie opened the case. Inside were a Very pistol and several distress flares. He loaded one and snapped the breech closed, then looked through the window. The fighter was coming back towards the Cessna. ‘Okay, Oscar. Can you dump the fuel from the knackered tank?’

‘Yes – but why?’

‘Get ready to do it! Level out, and turn so he’s directly behind us.’

‘But that’ll make us a really easy targ— Oh,’ said Macy, regarding him with sudden hope. ‘You’re going to use the flare gun to decoy the missile!’

‘Nope,’ said Eddie, shaking his head. ‘That only works in movies. We need something a lot hotter!’ There was a small hatch opposite the main door; he unlocked it and swung the top section upwards. Wind shrieked into the cabin – along with the stench of fuel, the leaking avgas swirling in the vortex created by the plane’s wing.

Macy’s hope was replaced by appalled disbelief. ‘You’re going to blow up the fuel? What happened to the whole us-not-blowing-up thing? We’ll go too!’

‘Not if I time it right.’ The Mirage was moving in behind them, now some miles distant – the ideal range for a heat-seeking missile. ‘Oscar! Dump the fuel when I say, then head for the ground.’ The jet disappeared behind the tail. ‘Now!’

Valero, with considerable trepidation, pulled the fuel-dump lever.

The plumes of red-dyed avgas streaming from the holes in the wing were joined by a much denser spray as the main valve opened. The needle on the fuel gauge plummeted. Eddie leaned out of the open hatch, the slipstream tearing at the back of his head as he searched for the Mirage. The dark dot was directly astern. He readied the flare gun—

Another flash of fire from the jet, this time beneath a wing. A line of smoke trailed behind a white-painted speck. A heat-seeking missile, either an American Sidewinder or a French Magic, but it made no difference – neither would have any trouble locking on.

The missile closed in a sweeping arc. Travelling at over Mach 2, it would take just seconds to reach its target.

Fuel was still gushing from the dump valve. Eddie held his breath, feeling droplets soaking his skin. If he fired too soon, Macy’s fear would be realised – the igniting fuel vapour would consume the plane and its passengers.

And if he fired too late, they would be dead anyway . . .

The deluge stopped, the tank empty but for the last dribbling dregs.

He pulled the trigger.

The pistol bucked, the flare spiralling into the dissipating red cloud. For a moment nothing happened . . .

Then the sky caught fire.

Flames spread like an exploding star, greedily swallowing up the drifting fuel. Searing tongues lashed after the Cessna, trying to reach the last morsels in its ruptured wing. Eddie threw himself back into the cabin as a wave of heat hit the plane.

The missile was an R550 Magic, carrying a fragmentation warhead of twelve and a half kilograms of high explosive wrapped in frangible steel. Its infrared seeker was overwhelmed by the fireball, the heat source of its target’s engine lost amidst a much bigger, hotter signal. It ran through its programmed options in a millisecond. Target lost at close range: only one response.

Detonate.

The missile was less than a hundred metres from the Cessna when the warhead exploded, sending red-hot shrapnel out in all directions. Most of the chunks of metal hit nothing . . . but only a fraction had to strike their target to score a kill.

The Caravan’s tail shredded as if hit by a shotgun blast. Other sizzling shards ripped through the wings and fuselage.

One hit Valero above his ear, tearing away a chunk of flesh and hair. Blood splattered the windscreen.

He slumped, unconscious. The Cessna’s descent steepened, beginning to roll.

Eddie slid across the rear of the cabin as the plane tilted. ‘Eddie!’ Macy screamed. ‘Oscar’s hit!’ He hauled himself up and half ran, half fell down the aisle to clamber into the copilot’s seat. Rows of dials and gauges gazed meaninglessly at him. ‘One of these days,’ he gasped as he took hold of the control yoke, ‘I’m going to learn how to fly a f*cking plane!’

He turned it like a steering wheel in the hope that it would counter the roll. Smoke trailing from its tail, the aircraft staggered back to a wings-level attitude – but still with its nose pointing down at the rainforest. The altimeter he understood, at least: two thousand feet.

Falling fast.

He pulled back the yoke, trying to level out. Nothing happened, the control refusing to move. ‘Oh, bollocks,’ he muttered as he tried again, harder. It gave slightly, then locked again. The damage to the Cessna’s rear had jammed the tailplanes. ‘Oh, bollocks!’

Fifteen hundred feet. He jerked the yoke in an attempt to free it. The plane responded slightly, producing a faintly nauseating roller coaster sensation, but the controls remained stuck.

But to have worked at all, they still had to be connected to the tailplanes. The problem was a physical obstruction, something preventing them from moving. Maybe they could be forced free . . .

One thousand feet—

Eddie planted his feet firmly against the instrument panel. Macy watched in frightened bewilderment as he gripped the yoke with both hands. ‘Everyone hold tight!’ he warned as he pulled at the control, simultaneously pushing with all the strength in his legs – trying to force the tailplanes to move through sheer brute force.

The yoke creaked. It seemed to give, but only a little. He pulled harder, aware that if he tore the handgrips clean off their mount, they were all doomed.

Five hundred—

‘Come on!’ he rasped, face twisted with effort. The jungle was rapidly approaching. Three hundred feet. Every muscle trembled as he strained. The glass of a dial cracked beneath his foot.

Two hundred—

Something snapped. The yoke suddenly broke free, the tailplanes slamming upwards to their full extent. The aircraft pulled out of its dive . . .

Not quickly enough.

The jungle’s tallest trees stretched up well over a hundred feet above the ground. Even as the Cessna levelled out, it was still heading inexorably into the thick canopy—

Branches and leaves disintegrated as the propeller carved through a treetop like a chainsaw. Eddie wrestled with the controls, still trying to pull up, but the plane hit another tree, branches clawing open the Cessna’s skin.

The towering trunk of an emergent redwood rose above the canopy ahead. Eddie shoved down a rudder pedal, but even had the controls been fully responsive there wasn’t time to turn away—

The tree scythed past less than a foot from the fuselage’s left side, slicing off the port wing at its root. Fuel erupted from the tank inside it as it crumpled. The Cessna’s tail, still smouldering, hurtled through the spray – and ignited it. The wing blew apart, an oily mushroom cloud roiling up through the foliage.

What was left of the plane dropped towards the ground, the mangled tail now aflame. ‘Brace!’ yelled Eddie, grabbing his seatbelt straps and bending into a crash position—

The Caravan hit on its belly, the impact tearing away the wheels and buckling the hull. The propeller blades bent as they churned through the earth. The starboard wing clipped another tree and was ripped in half, the fuselage skidding onwards in a huge spray of soil and rotting vegetation. The windscreen shattered, dirt filling the cockpit. Jutting roots tore at the aircraft’s belly as it crashed over them with a terrible screeching sound.

Which suddenly lessened.

Eddie clung to the straps, eyes shut tight. The plane was still moving – but the ground beneath it was somehow cushioning its passage. The bumps continued, but muffled, fading as the plane slowed . . .

And stopped.

The bent hull tipped back with a thump. Eddie wiped away mud and cautiously opened his eyes. They were indeed stationary. His arms ached where the straps had cut into them, and there was a horrible bruise across his stomach from the steering yoke. He flexed his hands, then his feet. Nothing broken.

Valero had fared much worse. Unconscious, he had been unable to protect himself, flailing as the plane ploughed through the trees. Two of his fingers were bent back at unnatural angles, and blood streaked his face where he had hit the controls. Becker, equally helpless, had come off better; secured in his seat, he was now slumped over the armrest, moaning softly.

‘Ow, God . . .’ a female voice whispered. Eddie staggered to his feet. Osterhagen sat bolt upright, eyes squeezed shut and breathing loudly and rapidly. Macy, meanwhile, had her head against the window, grimacing.

Eddie staggered to her. ‘Macy! Are you okay?’

‘I dunno . . . ’ She tried to stand. ‘Ow, that hurts – wait, if it hurts . . . ’ She rolled her head to clear the dazed fog from her mind. ‘I’m not dead?’

Eddie half laughed. ‘No, we’re alive. That means I’ve survived two plane crashes in less than a year. F*ck me! Don’t know if that means I’m really lucky or really unlucky.’ A feeble smile briefly turned up her lips, which he returned. ‘We need to get out of the plane, though. Something’s burning.’ He faced Osterhagen. ‘Doc. Doc! Can you hear me?’

Osterhagen’s eyes snapped open, darting about wildly before settling on Eddie. ‘Where are we?’

‘On the ground, and that’s good enough for me. Are you hurt?’

‘Only bruised, I think. But my neck is very painful.’

‘Whiplash, but I doubt you’ll get the chance to sue anyone for it. Okay, you and Macy get Ralf out of the plane. I’ll get Oscar.’

They released the injured men from their seats and hauled them through the main hatch. The reason for the plane’s relatively soft landing became clear; they were in a marsh, boots sinking inches deep into the soft muck. Eddie looked at the plane, seeing smoke curling from the tail, then searched for more solid ground. There was a broad hump of earth not far away. ‘Lie them down on that,’ he said. ‘Then I’ll—’

A deep rumble shook the rainforest. The Mirage. It was still out there.

Hunting for them.

Osterhagen searched the patches of sky visible through the canopy. ‘Where is it?’

Eddie turned, listening. The jet growl was loudest back along the channel gouged out of the jungle by the careering plane.

And still getting louder . . .

He glimpsed movement above the trees to the southeast. The Mirage was circling. But not overhead. He realised why; the exploded port wing had sent up a column of thick black smoke.

And from a fire that large, the pilot might assume that the entire plane had blown up.

The Mirage came round for another low, slow pass. Even something the size of the Cessna slashing through the all-encompassing canopy would only have left a small scratch; the pilot wouldn’t be able to spot more than a few scraps of wreckage through the trees.

Or so Eddie hoped. He waited, the engine roar growing louder. Another brief flash of something large and deadly above . . .

And gone. The thunder faded as the Mirage accelerated away, heading northwest. Back to the airbase.

‘Think they’ll come back?’ Macy hesitantly asked.

‘Not in a jet,’ said Eddie. He carefully lowered Valero. Macy and Osterhagen put Becker beside him. ‘They might send a chopper or a foot patrol, but I reckon that pilot thinks we’re dead. The wing made a pretty big bang. And speaking of which, better grab what I can before the rest of the plane catches fire.’ He hurried back into the wreck, re-emerging with a handful of charts, Becker’s hat, a torch and a plastic bottle of water. ‘Couldn’t find the first aid kit – it must have been sucked out of the hatch.’

‘So what can we do to help Ralf ?’ Osterhagen asked. ‘And Oscar?’

‘I still think Ralf’ll be fine if we get him to a hospital,’ said Eddie. ‘Oscar, though . . . ’ Even a cursory glance told him that things did not look good for the Venezuelan. The deep head wound needed sterilising, stitches and bandages – none of which he could provide.

He lifted Valero’s hand to get a better look at his broken fingers – and the man jerked awake with a scream. Macy jumped back, startled. Valero cried out in Spanish, writhing. Eddie tried to hold him down. ‘Oscar! Oscar, stay still. You’re hurt. Don’t try to move.’

He tried to wash a little water over the gash above Valero’s ear, but he flinched away. ‘Eddie, you’ve got to get to – to Caracas. Tell militia about . . . ’ His face twisted in pain. ‘Callas. Tell them about Callas.’

‘We can’t leave you behind,’ Eddie insisted. ‘We’re not far from Puerto Ayacucho. We can get you to a hospital.’

Valero shook his head, the movement clearly causing him great suffering. ‘No,’ he said, his voice falling to a hoarse whisper. ‘In my head, I can – I can feel it. Something hurts, it hurts so bad. You have to—’ The tendons in his throat pulled tight as he convulsed in agony, a strangled moan escaping. ‘Clubhouse, Callas is at – the Clubhouse. Stop . . . him . . . ’ Another spasm, mouth open wide in silent torment . . . then he relaxed, his final breath softly leaving his body.

Eddie, Macy and Osterhagen stared at him in silence. Macy was the first to look away, eyes brimming with tears. Osterhagen rubbed his head with a shaking hand. ‘A burst blood vessel, perhaps . . . I don’t know.’

‘Doesn’t matter,’ said Eddie stiffly. He reached down to close Valero’s pain-stricken eyes. ‘We know who caused it. Callas. And Stikes. All of this is because of them. Oscar was right – we’ve got to stop them.’ He stood.

‘Can we really get to this Puerto place?’ Macy asked quietly.

‘Yeah. We’re maybe seven or eight miles away as the crow flies – but if we go due west, we’ll get to a main road a lot quicker.’ He unrolled a chart and showed her. ‘About four miles, a bit more. We can hitch a lift.’

‘What about Ralf?’ Osterhagen asked.

‘I’ll carry him.’

‘All the way?’ Macy exclaimed.

‘I can manage. You take this.’ He tossed her the torch. ‘Once we’re out of this swamp, the chart says there’s no rivers and the terrain’s pretty flat, so it shouldn’t be too bad. We’ve got less than half an hour of light left, so we need to get moving. Doc, give me a hand.’ Osterhagen helped him hoist Becker in a fireman’s lift. The injured man moaned faintly, but didn’t fully wake up. ‘Okay, let’s get going.’

Time in the cell blurred past as if in a fever dream, the after-effects of the poisoning lingering like a sickness. Nina drifted in and out of consciousness, unsure whether moments or minutes had passed each time she closed her eyes.

She felt the swirling, clammy darkness rising to swallow her again, and shifted her head, resting it against the metal bars for the coolness they provided. But it didn’t last long. The awful weariness pulled at her once more . . .

A noise startled her into wakefulness. Two soldiers dragged Kit into the room and dumped him back in his cell before slamming its door and leaving. Nina pushed herself upright. ‘Kit,’ she said, her voice weak. ‘Kit, are you okay?’

The bruises on his face revealed that Stikes had used old-fashioned interrogation techniques in addition to his vile little pet. One eye was blackened, the lower lid puffy and swollen, and there was a smear of blood down his chin from a split lip. ‘I’ve had better hospitality,’ he croaked. ‘I . . . ’ His face suddenly twisted with pain, and he let out a choked scream as he clutched his chest.

‘Kit?’ said Nina, alarm rapidly turning to fear. ‘Kit! Oh my God!’ She tried to stand, but her legs still felt rubbery. ‘Hey!’ she shouted at the guard. ‘Do something, help him!’

The guard gave her an uncomprehending look, apparently not understanding English, before turning his gaze back to the convulsing Indian . . . and doing nothing.

Horrified, Nina rattled the door. ‘He’s dying! Help him!’ But the soldier’s expression remained dispassionate. Appalled, she realised what that meant; now that he had been interrogated, Kit was expendable. She tried to reach across the empty middle cell to him, but he was too far away. ‘Kit!’

His moans stopped, and he slowly raised his head to give her a pained wink with his swollen eye. ‘It was worth a try,’ he rasped.

Nina glanced back at the guard, who still showed no signs of understanding what was being said, before lowering her voice. ‘You were faking?’

‘If he had opened the door, I could have found out how well I remembered my unarmed combat training.’

The guard was younger and considerably beefier than Kit. ‘As much as I want to get out of here,’ said Nina, ‘I’m kinda glad you didn’t put it to the test.’

Kit managed a look of mock affront. ‘Are you saying I couldn’t have taken him down?’

‘I’m saying that I know how I feel right now. I’d guess that you probably feel worse.’

‘You’re probably right.’ He slumped on the concrete floor, sweat beading his forehead.

‘What did Stikes want from you?’ Nina asked, hoping that conversation would help him – and her – stay awake.

A hesitation. ‘He . . . asked me lots of questions about Interpol. He wanted to find out how much I had told headquarters about Callas.’ He moved his arm to display a reddened scorpion sting. ‘He believed me when I said that they knew nothing. Eventually. But what about you?’ he went on before Nina could ask another question. ‘What did he want from you?’

‘El Dorado. How to find it.’

‘And did you tell him?’

She looked away, shamefaced. ‘Yeah. All about the statues, earth energy, how I used them to find Paititi . . . everything.’

With visible strain, Kit sat up. ‘Nina, you did nothing wrong. Nobody can stand up to torture, however strong they think they are.’

‘Eddie probably could.’ The thought of her husband filled her with sudden guilt; her own suffering had pushed him from her mind. ‘Oh, God, I hope he’s okay. I don’t even know what happened to him at Paititi.’

‘I think he is still alive. Stikes seems to be the kind who would enjoy telling you if he wasn’t.’

Despite her efforts to stay focused, the sickening tiredness was rising to swallow Nina again. ‘I hope you’re right,’ she whispered, slumping against the bars.

The trek westwards was not difficult physically; the thick jungle canopy actually made movement easier by starving the undergrowth of light. Eddie and the others made steady, if plodding, progress.

What made it unpleasant were the humid heat, which refused to lessen even after the sun had set, and the insects. They were bad enough in daylight, but once the twilight gloom forced Macy to switch on the torch they swarmed around the light. ‘You know what?’ she complained after a particularly huge and loathsome bug batted her in the face with its wings. ‘Screw the rainforest! They can bulldoze the whole place into strip malls for all I care!’

Eventually, to everyone’s relief, the jungle thinned, giving way to open ground that had been subjected to slash-and-burn cultivation. Before long they found themselves on a road – not a glorified dirt track like those found in the rainforest, but an actual paved highway. It was only one lane in each direction, but to the exhausted group it seemed like an eightlane motorway. ‘Oh, thank God!’ Macy cried. ‘Civilisation! Kinda.’

There was no sign of traffic. Eddie checked his watch; it was coming up to nine p.m. ‘Let’s hope somebody’s out at this time of night. And that Venezuela doesn’t have laws against hitchhiking!’

They laid Becker down beside the northbound lane, and waited. After a few minutes, headlights appeared to the south. Eddie stood in the road and waved for the approaching vehicle to stop. Macy joined him. ‘What?’ she said, to his look. ‘If the driver’s a guy, he might be more likely to stop for a hot babe, right?’

She was covered in dirt and sweat, clothes torn, hair a ratty, tangled mess. ‘Right now you look about as hot as I do. But maybe he likes it dirty . . . ’

‘Shut. Up!’

The vehicle, a beaten-up pickup truck, stopped. Macy did the talking, explaining that they had been in a crash – she left out that it had involved a plane to avoid awkward questions – and forced to walk through the jungle. The driver, an elderly man, chided the yanquis for lacking both caution and survival equipment before agreeing to take them to Puerto Ayacucho. Osterhagen rode up front with Becker, while Eddie and Macy sat in the rear bed.

The drive along the empty road didn’t take long. They passed the airport, Eddie keeping a wary eye open for military patrols, and entered the city. The driver pulled up outside the hospital. ‘Eddie,’ said Osterhagen as the Englishman climbed from the truck, ‘I am going to stay with Ralf.’

‘You sure? They might still be looking for us. Two gringos in the hospital . . . they could make the connection.’

Osterhagen looked at the wounded man. Becker had drifted in and out of consciousness through the entire trek, but never been lucid enough to do more than mumble in German. ‘He will need someone to tell him what has been going on. Besides . . . ’ He regarded the hat he was holding. ‘He is my friend. I should be with him.’

Eddie put a hand on the older man’s shoulder. ‘I can’t argue with that. Just be careful, okay?’

‘I will. And you be careful too.’ They lifted Becker from the truck. ‘What about you and Macy? What are you going to do?’

‘Rescue Nina and Kit. And kill Stikes and Callas. Not necessarily in that order.’

Osterhagen’s face suggested that he thought the latter objective a dangerous step too far, but he said nothing. He and Eddie carried Becker into the hospital. Macy gave a modified version of her story to a nurse to account for Becker’s wound, the ‘crash’ now happening while fleeing armed robbers. The story seemed to be accepted, and Becker was taken away for treatment.

Osterhagen shook Eddie’s hand. ‘Thank you. For keeping us alive.’

‘Shame I couldn’t do it for everyone,’ Eddie replied glumly. ‘But look after Ralf. And yourself. Hopefully see you both again soon.’

‘Thank you,’ the German repeated, before following his friend.

‘So how are we going to rescue Nina and Kit?’ Macy asked once they were outside.

The pickup driver had waited for them, keen to learn Becker’s condition in the hope of adding a happy ending to his tale of Samaritanism. ‘We need to get to this Clubhouse place,’ said Eddie. ‘I doubt this bloke’ll take us all the way to Caracas, but ask him how we can get there – if there’s a bus or something.’

Macy did so, learning that there was an overnight bus between Puerto Ayacucho and the capital, with still enough time for them to catch it. ‘Ew, I hate using buses,’ she added after reporting this to Eddie. ‘There’s always some really gross guy trying to check me out.’

‘You want to walk three hundred miles?’

‘Depends how gross the guy is.’

‘Can’t be as gross as those bugs. Ask if he’ll give us a lift to the bus station. Oh, and if there are any payphones there.’

‘Yes, and yes,’ she said after posing both questions. ‘Who are you planning on calling? Someone in the government we can warn about Callas?’

‘I would if I knew who to call, but I don’t – and I don’t know who we can trust, either. If Callas is planning a coup, he’ll need more than just the military on his side. He’d have to have people in the militia too. They’re the biggest threat to him.’

‘Except for you.’

Macy had meant it as a joke, but the smile Eddie gave her had a very hard edge. ‘Yeah. Except for me.’

They got back into the pickup and set off. ‘So who are you going to call?’ Macy asked.

His smile this time was somewhat warmer. ‘An old friend.’