by Matt Rogers
“My name is Mabaya,” he said. “And I want to know why four big strong men such as yourselves are wandering about in my territory armed to the teeth.”
“We have business elsewhere,” Sam said.
Mabaya sneered. “I don’t think so. Nothing around for miles. What is this business you have?”
“Rescuing a friend.”
“If this friend of yours is anywhere near here, he’s already long dead.” Mabaya motioned to his troops. “Cuff them and take them to the shack.”
Jake’s hands were tugged behind his back and tightened together with crude cloth until the circulation was cut off. A bag was thrown over his head. Some kind of hessian sack. And just like that, they were kidnapped deep in the heart of the Amazon Rainforest.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Wolfe spat out a mouthful of blood as his vision came back to him. He was bound at the knees and at the wrists, lying in the middle of a clearing. He recognised the place. It was where he had found himself as a Delta Force sniper, seventeen long years ago.
It hadn’t changed. The lone palm tree still towered high in the centre. Wolfe was lying in the muddy dirt next to the trunk. He shimmied over and propped himself up against it.
He couldn’t remember much. Only flashes of colour amidst a long, muddled black. But he knew he was in a bad situation.
Archfiend was crouching in the mud nearby, flicking some leaves absent-mindedly across the ground with his claws.
“Just … kill me already,” Wolfe spat out. His voice was nothing more than a throaty rasp, the result of days of dehydration.
Archfiend looked up and bared a menacing grin. “Ah, the white knight awakens.”
“Do it,” Wolfe snarled.
“And what fun would that be? I brought you all the way out here for a reason. So I’m not going to kill you. Not yet. If I do, that chip somewhere inside your body stops working and your friends turn around and leave before I get a chance to crush them.”
“Why here?”
“Australia wouldn’t cut it. I won’t give your team much but I’ll give you this: you work well in an urban environment. You’ve all proven very hard to kill…”
“So have you.”
“Why, thank you,” the beast said. “But I’ve finally won. This place is a death trap. I know the rainforest well. Last time we ran into each other in here, it didn’t turn out so well for you.”
“We escaped,” Wolfe said.
“I could have killed you anytime I wanted. You got away out of sheer luck.”
“And now?”
“Now it’s over.” Archfiend paused, almost for effect. “I didn’t have time to finish your team off in the past. I’ve been planning something. Planning it for a long, long time. Now, I’m ready. I had time to come up with a way to flush you all out. And it worked flawlessly.”
“The hive was a setup?”
“The whole thing was. Drop a few dozen slayers in one place and you gentlemen are bound to pick it up. From there, it was just about manipulating you all into one big bottleneck.” He spread his arms theatrically. “And here we are. I must say, this is going to be fun. I’m going to kill Jake in front of you.”
Wolfe spat at him. Archfiend ducked out of the way. He let out a snarl of rage so loud it set Wolfe quivering.
“It’s been hard to resist killing you,” the monster snarled. “But in fourty-eight hours, your team will be dead.”
An exotic bird whooped far in the distance, breaking the silence.
“Before I do, though,” he said. “I’m going to show you what I’ve been putting together for the past decade. Then you can see that you’re really just pawns in a much bigger game.
“Then, ‘Wolfe’, you can see just how drastically you failed.”
*
Sixty kilometres away, Jake was in a similar position, tied up, ankles bound to a wooden chair. His wrists were tied together, resting in his lap.
He was sitting inside a hot, dusty room with a low ceiling and a sole window. It was dark and musty and he was sweating profusely. Sam, Link and Felix sat in identical chairs on either side. They were arranged in a row along the warehouse floor. Six mercenaries stood around them, including Mabaya.
They had been led from the rainforest down into a small valley, just large enough to house what had been referred to by Mabaya as ‘the shack’. It sat on the valley floor, a long low building constructed of corrugated iron, covered in thick clumps of Amazonian vines that twisted and snaked across its surface. The undergrowth provided excellent camouflage. They were led down a gravel trail and forced through a small entrance door and bound to the chairs that had been dragged out into the middle of the open space.
The place was practically empty, furnished with nothing more than a row of makeshift trestle tables. The tables spanned across one of the walls. A plethora of chemical apparatus was sprawled across their surfaces. Two small white men hustled about, tinkering with vials and tapping keys into an ancient computer. Jake figured the middle of the rainforest was a difficult place to update technology often. The two men were both shirtless, exposing their saggy, pale torsos. They looked unhealthy. It didn’t seem they went outside much.
“It’s probably a drug gang,” Sam whispered to Jake. “Those two over there produce the stuff – I’m guessing meth, by the look of that equipment – and then these seven here are hired guns. Protection.”
“Do they need that many men out here?” Jake whispered back.
“The Amazon is a dangerous place for two guys like them. They must think we’re here to steal their drugs.”
Mabaya walked around behind the chairs, slowly and deliberately. He was taking his time. Making them listen to each footfall. He was brandishing one of their machetes in his hand. Jake flinched as the blade scraped along the back of his chair.
“Quentin!” Mabaya barked. “What do you make of this? Got some men who were trying to sneak up on us.”
One of the scientists turned away from the row of tables and gave a distant, sheepish smile. Even from halfway across the room, Jake spotted yellow teeth, decaying in their gums. The man shrugged awkwardly and turned back to his work. Too nervous to speak.
Felix, on the other hand, was unwavering.
“Is this supposed to terrify us?” he said. “Tying us up in a place like this? Just because you live in something as disgusting as this, doesn’t mean it’s going to make us quake in our boots.”
Mabaya had finished his long, arcing circle around the four chairs and came to a stop in front of Felix. He lifted the machete and slowly ran the edge of the blade along the man’s throat, hard enough to let Felix know that he wasn’t messing around without drawing blood.
“You want to keep talking, boy?” Mabaya said. “Keep talking. It will not get you anywhere.”
Felix said nothing.
“So what are you doing out here?” Mabaya asked.
Felix still did not reply. The room was dead quiet. Mabaya struck out with his free hand and punched him in the face. Jake could see the blow had some serious power behind it, but compared to a slayer, it was nothing.
Felix burst out laughing. “That was good, that was really good. Please, try again.”
Mabaya snarled and moved along to the next in line. Link.
“Care to explain what you four are doing here?”
No response.
Mabaya took another step, so that he was standing in front of Jake.
Jake couldn’t help it. He was terrified. He was unable to sneer in the face of jungle mercenaries like Felix and Link had done so effortlessly. His leg began to twitch and shake as Mabaya raised the machete.
“Stay away from him!” Felix shouted. “He’s only sixteen.”
Mabaya turned and smiled. It was a cold expression, without a hint of empathy. “The Amazon is no place for a teenager. He will die like the rest of you. Now I am going to ask this one more time before I start killing people. Why are you here?”
“We’re with the DEA
,” Felix said. He sighed as he spoke, as if reluctant to divulge information. “The Drug Enforcement Agency. We’ve been tracking you for the last month. We were supposed to come in here and get a grip on the situation, to see if you needed dealing with.”
Mabaya bought it. “Well, that’s a shame, isn’t it? Now I have to kill you.”
“I’ve got a document on me. A mission briefing. It details all the evidence we have against you.”
“And you think if you give it to me, I will let you live?”
Felix shook his head like a man who had just lost his composure. “I don’t care. Just take it. Please.”
“Where is this document?”
“Pants. Right pocket.”
The five other mercenaries observed in tense silence as Mabaya walked over to Felix and reached down to his pocket. Jake breathed a sigh of relief. He knew what was coming.
Felix let go with a colossal headbutt. The blow was so fast and so hard that for a fleeting moment Jake had trouble comprehending what had happened. Mabaya roared in pain and dropped the machete into Felix’s lap. Blood fountained from his nose. Felix caught it by the handle and twirled it in his fingers, spinning the blade upwards. The steel sliced straight through the bonds in his wrist. He reached back and slashed at the rope wrapped around his waist. It severed with one strike. He was free.
The warehouse plunged into chaos.
Several things happened at once. Felix sprung up off his chair like an uncoiling spring and elbowed Mabaya in the face. There was a sharp crack and he dropped like a stone.
With his free hand, Felix threw the machete through the air like a dagger. It buried itself deep within the calf of one of the mercenaries, the only one who had been armed. The man screamed and released the AK-47.
Sam and Link threw themselves backwards simultaneously, carrying their chairs with them. The flimsy wood smashed to pieces against the ground. They sprung up from the floor on either side of Jake, both still bound at the wrists, and leapt at the two nearest mercenaries. Sam crash-tackled his man to the ground. Link took a running leap and shouldered his mercenary in the chest and slammed the guy back into the wall.
Jake didn’t possess the subconscious connection that the other three had, to react as one. He struggled desperately with his bonds. In front, both Sam and Link had knocked their opponents unconscious, through a barrage of kicks and headbutts. They were both searching the bodies, trying to find something to sever the rope at their wrists. The remaining mercenaries were scrabbling for weapons. They had been taken by surprise.
Too much was happening at once. Jake struggled to process what was going on. He glanced to the left, just in time to see Felix tossing him the machete. He had wrenched the blade out of the injured mercenary’s leg. Jake caught it and sliced through the rope in one smooth motion.
He burst up off his chair.
One of the mercenaries was charging at Felix from behind. Felix was oblivious to the imminent danger. The man was armed with a small, rusty knife.
Jake swung his machete back like a baseball pitcher and hurled it across the room. He hoped his aim was true. The machete spiralled blade over handle in an arc. It missed Felix by centimetres, continued right on past and sunk into the sprinting mercenary’s shoulder. The man howled and spun away, tripping up on his own feet. Momentum carried him forwards. He crashed into Felix’s back. The impact would have thrown an ordinary man off his feet, but Felix was no ordinary man. He spun on his heel and hit the mercenary in the face with a punch fuelled by anger. The guy went limp in an instant.
Five down. There was one mercenary left.
In the confusion, he had managed to get his hands on an AK-47. Jake saw him heft the gun up onto his shoulders and suddenly he was staring straight down the barrel. He swore under his breath. There was no nearby cover. He was standing in the dead centre of the room. The mercenary was positioned in front of the drug production tables. There was no way he could make it there in time.
But someone could.
Felix let out a roar and set off on a full-pace sprint towards the mercenary like a raging bull. It was clearly fear-inducing. The man swivelled his AK-47 over and aimed it with shaking arms, but Felix was coming at full-pelt. He would only get one shot off.
He fired …
… and missed. The barrel had been unstable. The bullet went high.
Felix crashed into him with the force of a locomotive. It was a devastating hit, like a professional linebacker hitting an ordinary Joe. The mercenary was bundled onto the trestle table. His gun went flying away. Felix picked him up by the throat, and with one huge hand, slammed him into the wall. The metal dented under the force exerted upon it. For a brief second the mercenary almost hung there, suspended. Then he crashed down onto one of the tables below. It collapsed underneath his deadweight and he ploughed straight through in an explosion of glass and wood.
It was over. Jake twirled in a complete three-hundred-and-sixty degree turn. Some men were unconscious. Others were writhing around on the floor, moaning, in too much pain to stand. None were dead. Despite everything, a weight lifted off his chest. He hadn’t been looking forward to burying a man, no matter how bad they were.
“Link,” Felix gasped. “We need to bind them. Before they try anything else.”
“Got it.”
“Jake, Sam, search for any gear we could find useful.”
The pair went to work on the mercenaries. They cut sections of rope and tied them up. Some were rousing from their slumber. It was of no concern to Felix and Link. The mercenaries had taken hard hits. They would be drowsy and unresponsive for hours.
Sam moved along the tables, sifting through hordes of equipment. The two white men had retreated from the tables and were cowering up against the wall. Their hands were raised high above their heads.
“What’s it look like?” Jake said.
Sam took a while to answer. “I don’t know, brother. This is like nothing I’ve ever seen used in a drug lab.”
Jake cocked his head. “It’s not meth?”
“That’s what I thought it was,” he said, “but none of this is production equipment. It’s like they’re studying something.”
He moved to the sole computer monitor, placed his hand on the mouse and waved away the screensaver. A complex diagram flashed up on the screen. Sam studied it for a beat, and froze still. His eyes nearly jolted from their sockets.
“No way,” he whispered.
Felix looked up. “Sam, buddy. What is it?”
“Uh, bro, you might want to come take a look at this.” Sam gestured to the monitor. Felix came over. The same perplexed expression flashed over his face. His mouth dropped.
“Would someone care to tell me what’s going on?” Jake said.
Sam tapped a single finger to the monitor. “This image here. It’s a diagram of the slayer virus.”
“No…”
Link looked up. “Are you sure?”
“Come see for yourself,” Sam said.
Link did, and sure enough shared the same reaction. Jake had no idea what the virus looked like, but he placed enough trust in the other three to recognise it. He stared at the mercenaries in a new light.
“Archfiend told them to kidnap us?” he said.
Sam shook his head. “Nah, I don’t think so. If Archfiend had mentioned us to these guys, we’d have been dead the second Felix got caught in that trap. This is something different.”
Felix wasn’t wasting any time. He crossed the room and seized the man Mabaya had referred to as Quentin by the neck.
“What is this?!” he barked, motioning at the tables. “What are you doing here?”
Quentin chuckled, giving the same vacant smile he had given Mabaya. It was like he was staring into space, not fully aware of what was going on. Jake thought he might be drugged.
“The master paid us,” he cackled. “Paid us lots of money. Offered up one of his monsters to us. We made a … concentrated batch of the virus. From it’s blood. Incre
ased the toxicity. Then the master brought us a subject to test it on. A big guy, from Iquitos. Real big. Tallest guy I’ve ever met. His name’s Koji. We injected him with the virus, oh yes we did, oh yes we did…”
“What?” Felix said, bewildered.
“You called them slayers, yes? Oh yes, yes, yes, that’s what I heard you say. Well, to – ah – sum things up … we took a ‘slayer’. And we turned it into a super slayer. That’s what we did. Koji’s quite the sight to behold.”
“Where is Koji?” Sam asked.
“Quite the sight to behold,” Quentin repeated, staring absently at the roof.
“I don’t see him around?”
Quentin pointed over Sam’s shoulder, to the far corner of the warehouse. Jake noticed a thick metal door built diagonally into the wall. It was an enormous thing. The frame stopped just shy of the ceiling. It appeared to be custom-made. It was an ominous sight.
“Downstairs,” Quentin said. “Not safe to have him running around up here. No, not safe at all. He’s all locked up. Out of harm’s way, oh yes he is.”
Sam and Link moved over to the door and inspected it thoroughly, running their hands up and down the seams. It was securely fastened to the wall.
Felix visibly relaxed. “Well, that’s a shame. He could have lent you a helping hand.”
“Koji doesn’t help. The virus destroyed Koji’s brain. Koji’s dumber than the master’s beasts. Koji kills everything.”
“Then it’s lucky you didn’t release him.”
There was a pause. Quentin smiled, exposing his rotten teeth.
“Quentin did.”
He motioned to a small remote lying on the table just behind him. Jake stepped over and picked it up. It was a tiny metal box, housing a sole switch with two variables – LOCK and UNLOCK. The switch was set to UNLOCK.
“I realised these stupid people would lose.” He waved his hands at the mercenaries tied up on the floor. “I’m smart. Very smart. So Quentin let Koji out. This way, everyone loses! Not just Quentin!”
“Oh, god,” Jake said.
There was a deafening crash from the other side of the room. He looked up just in time to see the steel door burst outwards, smashed off its hinges. It landed in between Link and Sam.
