by David Gilman
Max felt the monster falter. If he did not let go of the vine, the helicopter would slam back down onto the ground and crush him. It swung crazily, as if trying to rid itself of whatever held it earthbound. Max rolled clear but saw the nose sideswipe Riga, who fell heavily.
In an instant Max stood alone as the helicopter ripped itself upward. Its nose tilted and he gazed up at the monstrous bug. A man sat in the backseat, leaning forward, commanding the pilot and pointing toward Max. The nose tilted farther and the rotor blades began to thrash the swirling smoke. They were going to hack him to death.
Riga was pulling himself away, but Max had nowhere to run. In a desperate but determined gesture of defiance, he threw the machete at the high-tech monster that was trying to kill him.
It clattered into the rods at the base of the rotors, and over the din of the whirring blades, Max heard the satisfying graunch of metal against metal. The helicopter shuddered. Max saw the fear on the pilot’s face. The men inside were mouthing shouts of panic. And then the rotor blades tore into the dirt, the helicopter slammed into the ground, cartwheeled over and landed on its roof. The blades twisted and screamed as they were wrenched from the body. Lethal shards of metal hissed through the air as Max flung himself facedown, clawing his fingers into the dirt and praying that the hurtling metal would miss him as pieces slashed into the few remaining trees, the impact splitting their trunks.
Riga had backpedaled as fast as he could from the crashing helicopter. The destruction settled quickly. The beast of a machine was dead. He looked toward Max. Unbelievable. The boy had destroyed a million-dollar aircraft with a machete worth a couple of dollars. The men inside the aircraft hung upside down from their seat belts. The tough-looking one recovered quickly, kicked open the door and helped to drag the man in a suit, with the attache case chained to his wrist, out of the crash. Cazamind.
Riga went for him. The bodyguard blocked his attack, and Riga had a hard fight on his hands. Riga was a lethal opponent, but the other man had not endured what the assassin had gone through these last few hours. For a couple of minutes he got the better of Riga with hard, muscle-tearing blows.
Cazamind stumbled away. Max tried to see him through the smoke, but then the ground shifted and began to break up. Like liquid, the earth slewed a few meters. Max kept his balance. There was a thrill of fear-he had been in an avalanche before and knew how terrifying it was-but when half a mountain moves, there is little chance of survival. The ground beneath his feet steadied, but the far side of the small plateau started to disappear.
The helicopter began to slide, metal screeching against rock as it was slowly dragged ever closer to the edge and the plunge down to the river of lava that cut through the valley floor. Cazamind panicked, lost his footing and managed to scramble away from the machine. Max saw that he had fallen and that the chain of the attache case had snared itself on the helicopter. It was going to pull him down. He would be fried. Max ran forward and saw the man desperately trying to unlock the handcuff. The helicopter groaned as it slipped away. Any moment now it would slide rapidly into the furnace. The crumbling earth would not bear its weight much longer.
Max felt the heat from the flowing lava blistering his skin, even though it was a hundred meters below him. He got down beside the man, who looked imploringly at him and gestured with a small silver key that was attached to a chain from his belt. He could not reach the handcuff.
“Help me, boy, help me! For God’s sake, don’t let me die. Don’t let me die! Please!”
Max’s mouth was so dry he could barely speak, but he pushed his face close to the man’s. “My mother needed help. She was dying, and you refused to help her.”
The man shook his head desperately. He was crying, a horrible death only moments away. He begged. “I had to! It would have exposed our plans.”
“Did you infect her? Is that how she died?”
Cazamind shook his head. “No, no. We hadn’t started the program then. She just got sick. It was the jungle that killed her. Not me. I swear. The case! Everything is in the case! She found out-”
The helicopter slithered another meter. “What?” Max screamed at him.
“Save me! I beg you!” Cazamind would barter the world to save his life. “Your mother … the rain forest … we were buying the rain forest … thousands and thousands of hectares … It’s all in the case!”
“Who gives the orders? Is it Zaragon? Is that who you work for?” Max yelled.
Cazamind’s face scrunched up in fear and self-pity. He shook his head. Tears leaked into the creases around his eyes. “Please … please … don’t let me die.…”
There was no more time. Max ripped the key chain from him, fumbled with the lock, his hands sweating. The helicopter lurched. Cazamind screamed. Max got the key into the small lock. He hesitated. Cazamind looked horror-struck. Was the boy tormenting him? Was he going to let him die after all?
“The case’s combination. What is it?” Max insisted.
“All sixes! HURRY!”
Max turned the key and released the handcuff. The terrified man fell clear and rolled away as Max grabbed the attache case.
He wanted revenge for his mother’s death, but he could not let the man responsible die in such a horrible manner.
Riga had no such sensitivity.
As Cazamind got to his knees, Max could see him mouthing, Thank you, thank you. And then Riga appeared out of the smoke and hauled him to his feet. Cazamind’s face distorted into a mask of terror. He knew there was no compassion or mercy to be had here.
Riga had the bodyguard’s handgun, which he leveled at Cazamind’s head. Max saw that he tried to beg, and there was a brief look of surprise and relief as Riga lowered the weapon, but it was a cruel act of false hope-it was all over in a second. Riga threw him backward. Cazamind’s scream was lost in the roar of fire. His body hit the downward slope and then tumbled over its edge toward the lava that had just consumed the helicopter.
Max could not avert his eyes from the horrific sight. Cazamind’s body flared into a fireball and then disintegrated as it hit the molten lava.
It seemed to Max that, no matter how injured or exhausted he was, Riga was unstoppable. The killer turned toward him, kept his eyes on the boy and bent down to retrieve the attache case. His blackened, bloodstained face was like a Mayan war mask. Max was too exhausted to resist when he took it from his grip.
“This,” Riga said as he picked up the case, “is everything.”
They faced each other. Was he going to kill Max now?
“End of the road, Max. Go home. Be a schoolkid, like you’re supposed to be. Stay out of trouble.”
And without another word, Riga moved away down the far side of the slope into the trees, which looked as though they had been flattened by a bombing raid. Max was safe from the killer now. He had been reprieved. All he had to do was get home-somehow. So why did he hesitate? Why did he turn and search the smoke-filled hillside for the assassin?
Because in trying to save the rain forest, his mother had stumbled upon a greater evil. Others could suffer a vile death like Danny Maguire, and the evidence of corruption and inhuman experimentation was in that case. He went after Riga. It was what his dad would have done.
Charlie Morgan’s superficial injuries from the crash had been patched up by her men, and when they broke through the narrow defile, there was virtually no further resistance from the gunmen. She saw the fire mountain move and watched smoke churn in a rhythmic swirl that could only be caused by the draft from a helicopter’s rotors. Her binoculars showed her fragments of the conflict on the hillside more than a kilometer away. The smoke and flame obscured much of what was going on, but she watched for a few moments longer while her men were regrouping and heading for where they had heard cries from a vast hidden compound that held the captive Maya. She wasn’t interested in who they were or why they were there-what held her focus on the distant hillside was that there were two survivors. The larger of them had taken somethi
ng from the smaller, who had the look of a boy. At last she had found Max Gordon.
The man moved away and it looked as though he carried a small case. That case was important.
She ran.
Max unclenched his fists. His fingers, caked with dirt and ingrained black ash, curved into claws. A strange stillness embraced him, distancing him from the roaring fires and exploding trees. The fractured land still tore itself apart in a determined act of self-destruction, but Max did not move. He gazed across the layers of smoke, saw the sun throw spears of light through the clouds, pinpointing the running man-who then disappeared into the smoke-shrouded forest.
Instinct took over from reason. Max would have to risk moving down the slithering hillside and jumping across the breaking ground to reach him. It would take the predatory skills of a jaguar to move that quickly and sure-footedly in pursuit.
Max’s thought process had moved to another level. He was beyond rational thought; he was sniffing the air, finding the man’s scent, and he was running.
Rain clouds that had clung stubbornly to the mountain peaks edged down toward the inferno and released a tropical downpour that began smothering the flames. The ghostly haze rolled into the broken land, twisting its way through branches and undergrowth. Moisture dripped from the broad leaves as the ash-blackened rain pounded the forest.
Memory told Max he had run to the farthest part of the valley where the lava stream’s curtain of crimson mist still rose, though now it was being sucked into the forest, making it an eerie netherworld of twisted shrouds.
A flicker of movement caught his eye. A woman, tufts of hair the color of fire, was running hard along a path in the partly obscured distance. She disappeared from view. Max hunched down. The footprints of his prey scuffed the earth; his senses tasted the man’s smell. A slab of ground broke free, earth tremors and rain forcing it away from the clinging roots of the forest. Trees tore, snapped and crashed down, carried by the force of the landslide. Creatures ran, birds screeched, monkeys howled.
Max leapt onto a tree trunk, gripping and ripping its bark as in a seamless bound he stretched across the void and found the safety of pockmarked boulders next to water cascading down a ravine. A natural channel from the high peaks, its roar was louder than the depleted firestorm in the distance.
A surge of water splashed against rock, dousing Max. He gasped as if plucked from a dream. His hands stung from dozens of scratches and thorns-as though he had been running on all fours. He refocused.
Less than two hundred meters away, wind sculpted the mist, twisting the crimson curtain into a monstrous smoke ring-an oscillating halo-and in its midst lay the body of a man beneath a fallen tree. He was facedown in the mud, one arm outstretched, the other trapped beneath him. A short distance away, the attache case lay on the ground. It looked as though the assassin’s luck had finally run out and the landslide had killed him.
Riga lay in the path of the young MI5 agent. How did she get here? It made no difference. Max realized that the tree under which Riga lay was an old deadfall, not a casualty of the earthquake, and that water sluiced beneath it in a shallow runoff, so the ground was gently scooped out. Max gazed at the body. Something was wrong. Riga’s head rested close to his trapped arm, so the water trickled around it; otherwise the man would have drowned were he not already dead. Riga had a breathing space. He must have seen the girl approaching and crawled beneath the tree. His face was turned in Max’s direction, away from the girl, making the situation more inviting, less threatening for her.
His eyes were open.
It was a trap. The girl was going to be dead in a minute.
It was no good shouting a warning. The waterfall would swallow the sound of his voice. Max had to make sure that Riga saw him and that when he did, Morgan would be alerted.
And that Riga did not gun him down.
Sweat stung her eyes, and the rain felt like driven sand, but she moved steadily upward, gripping the semiautomatic in her hands. She slipped and stumbled a couple of times on the slimy ground, but maintained enough balance to watch the unmoving body. Her eyes were on the briefcase a few paces away from him. What was in there that was so important? She would know soon enough. Ambition drove her on. She could almost hear Ridgeway’s praises, could see the commendation, knew her future was assured and that high rank would be hers for the taking.
She was almost there. Her hand trembled, more from anticipation than fear. She kicked the body. It did not move. She carefully took a couple of steps away, then bent forward to retrieve the case. A figure was running flat out from the top of the hillside, slipping and sliding, waving his arms, mouth wide open, screaming a silent yell. The boy was sliding down the mud bank as the mist curled in on itself, a small bloodred wave that made him look like a demonic surfer. She lost sight of him momentarily; then he reappeared, directly level with the body now. Max Gordon. He must be terrified, desperate to be rescued.
And then she realized that he was charging at her, rather than simply gaining her attention. He was warning her.
She threw herself to one side at the exact moment the man’s body twisted, coming up with a gun in his hand. He fired rapidly three times. The numbing pain crashed through her body. She fell. Riga had hit her with every shot.
He turned, leveled the weapon. Trained men don’t aim; they point and kill. He pointed at Max-a demented kid who looked like hell, cut and bleeding, blackened from fire, who swung a piece of wood like a club, who was attacking. Attacking a man holding a gun! There was something gloriously insane about it. But not something Riga would consider worth saving the boy’s life for.
Max saw the moment when Riga leveled the gun, when his eyes looked beyond the weapon and locked on to his own.
Riga fired twice-a double tap that would pierce heart and lungs.
Max fell, his body sliding, momentum carrying him into Riga. The angels were still with him-the bullets had barely missed him as he threw himself backward half a heartbeat before the killer squeezed the trigger. He kicked out at Riga’s injured leg. The heat and exertion would have taken its toll on the wound. With the massive kick and impetus from the slide, Max hit his target.
Riga cried out in pain and tumbled back across the fallen tree into the mud, the handgun slipping away into the slime.
The killer’s body had cushioned Max’s impact. He clambered across the tree trunk, swinging the piece of wood, uncertain whether the red mist in front of his eyes belonged to the forest or to his own rage. Riga was on his knees reaching for him; if he pulled Max down into the mud, he would kill him. The club connected with the side of Riga’s head, and he fell back onto his twisted, injured leg. Max stood above him panting like an ancient warrior who had brought down a beast of the forest. Danger heightened everything. Each grunting breath was confirmation of his victory as he stood over the beaten enemy, never taking his eyes off the fallen assassin.
Max was in the zone.
The rain was heavier now. Sluices of blood-colored mud exposed the bone-white limestone mountainside. It would not be long before the ground gave way and swept debris and boulders down into the valley below.
Max dropped the club and went over to look at Charlie Morgan. She lay where she had fallen, and had it not been for the splashes of blood on her rain-drenched clothes, he might have thought she slept. He carefully eased her arms down to the sides of her body, then straightened her legs. He could see the dark blood still oozing where she had been hit. He eased open her shirt. There was a wound in her side, another in her upper chest and a third in her leg, but the bone had not been broken. She was alive. He took off his tattered shirt, ripped it into bandages and then dug into his cargo-pants pockets and pulled out the herbs Orsino Flint had given him.
The downpour washed the blood from the wounds. He dabbed them dry as best he could, then, using his thumb, pushed the herbs carefully into the punctures. He bound each wound with the strips from his shirt.
He was still on his knees, wiping the flecks of dir
t from her face, when he felt the forest change. The rain eased, the crimson mist shifted slightly in the wind, and the dense jungle undergrowth a hundred meters away fell silent for a moment. A shadow figure, the rosettes on its skin barely noticeable, had made the disrupted light alter. Max gazed through the foliage, into the dark patch that was unmoving. Two amber eyes gazed back. They blinked; small tufted ears twitched.
The stare was intense.
And then the jaguar bared its teeth.
Slushing rain and mud disguised the sounds behind Max.
But the vibration in the air had changed. His sixth sense was heightened, the link between jaguar and boy almost tangible. Max spun round in time to stop Riga’s lunge.
Like two beasts they grappled, rolling in the sliding mud. Neither spoke, neither yelled, both grunting in their fight for survival-and Riga was still by far the stronger. Max had a blurred memory of clawing the man’s back and trying to bite and scratch his way clear.
He reached out blindly for anything to strike Riga. His hand delved into the mud for a weapon, but all it found was tangled roots. And that saved his life.
The ground slid away, the force of the water creating a mudslide that swept Riga from him. Max clung to the roots, but he saw Riga’s face. A look of disbelief as he gazed into Max’s eyes. The killer knew he could not survive. He smiled. Max Gordon had won.
Max pulled himself clear, onto drier, firmer ground, and looked down the mud slurry to the valley thirty meters below. There was no sign of Riga’s body; it must have been swept farther away into the turmoil of the broken land.
In the end, the forces of nature had beaten the killer.
Max pulled the case to him and thumbed the beveled locks. All sixes-666. The mark of the beast. There was a handwritten notebook inside, as well as dates, numbers, names, a computer disk and a small picture clipped to an environmental-impact report. Max’s mum. This all started and ended with her. He placed the file back in the case with her picture still attached and closed the lid. Others would now know how she had triggered the unfolding events.
