by David Gilman
He had also listened in to the radio chatter of the various people who patrolled the strip zones around the rain forest and forbidden mountain kingdom, and as he heard the sporadic radio calls in the background, he studied air-reconnaissance photos of the area.
Riga looked through a stereoscope’s eyepieces, shifted the photos slightly and saw the aerial images of the sheer mountain walls lose their flat perspective and become three-dimensional.
Now he could identify clefts in the mountains, but he knew that no one would survive going through there, not with the security measures Cazamind’s people had put in place. He scanned the riverbed and saw what looked like smoke but knew it to be the vapor from a waterfall. These photographs had been taken on a clear day some years ago, but the physical features had not changed. Riga heard excited shouting of men on the ground through the radio set. He spun the chair and fine-tuned the channel. The excited shouts were too difficult to follow, and, besides, Riga did not understand Spanish well enough to follow the fast, disjointed speech. He went to the door and called out through the rain to the pilot, who ran the few steps from his helicopter into the hut.
“What’s going on here?” Riga asked, pointing at the radio.
The pilot listened for a few moments. “There’s some kind of trouble. There’s been shooting; three of the men are missing. The guy’s saying there were strangers down there. They’ve escaped. Something scared him pretty bad.”
Riga turned to a map spread out on the table. “Speak to him. Get his position. I want to know where he is. Exactly.”
The pilot lifted the microphone, thumbed the Call button and spoke quickly in Spanish. He had to shout once or twice to calm the excited man at the other end of the radio link. He moved next to Riga and the map, tracing his finger along the rain forest that nudged against the curved river. He dragged his finger south onto the scarred landscape where the forest had been cleared. “He’s about here.”
Riga could read a map like others could watch a movie. Every line, every mark was a picture in his mind’s eye. He pulled the aerial photographs next to the same area. “Tell him to stay there. Fire up the chopper.”
The pilot looked horrified. The low cloud base obscured the mountain slopes down into the jungle. No one could fly in this. “It’s not possible, señor! We would crash into the mountains or the forest. We have to wait until the clouds lift.”
Riga was already pulling a backpack from the floor and picking up his rifle. “We fly between the forest and the mountains, along the river. And we fly low and we fly fast.”
He was already moving out of the door with the pilot begging at his side. “Señor Riga, I do not have the skills to fly like that. It cannot be done. Please, it will be dark soon; tomorrow will be clear.”
Riga looked at the frightened man.
“Your life is in your own hands.”
The meaning was clear. The pilot had to find the ability within himself to fly the machine in treacherous, almost suicidal conditions—and survive—or disobey Riga and die where he stood. The minuscule odds of survival flying blind in terrifying conditions at least gave him a chance.
He started the engines.
Max gazed upward. The cave looked about a hundred meters high, the limestone bleeding into stalactites that seemed to hang precariously from the roof. Max could not help but think of the needlelike teeth of the boa constrictor. As he looked down toward the darkness at the end of the cave, it felt like he was moving down the creature’s gullet.
There was very little light inside the cave, and the mist added to that made it an eerie, unwelcoming place. Max knew his imagination could be his worst enemy. The mist was being drawn from the river and had penetrated only so far into the gloom. Max reasoned that this had nothing to do with any breeze from outside, but rather that there was air sucking it down the tunnel—so there had to be a way out. It just meant going into the pitch-darkness and feeling his way beneath a mountain. And Max hated confined spaces.
He dropped the various pieces of wood and dried root he had gathered before moving into the cave. The kindling and resinous branches from an ocote tree would help get him deep under the mountain without darkness smothering him.
Using the panga, he shaved the pine into flakes and wrapped them in the supple roots he had ripped from the forest floor. Slowly but surely, he built a torch, allowing each layer of air to breathe. The dank, sticky atmosphere would smother a flame without these pockets of oxygen. Finally satisfied, he laid the sturdy torch at his side and sat, small and insignificant, in the cathedral-sized cave. He opened the vine-wrapped food Flint had given him at the village and chewed, on what he did not know. Then he unwrapped a pod, like a small egg, licked it and with undisguised delight bit into it. It was pure cocoa—a fast and delicious energy fix that also gave him a psychological boost. Swilling his mouth with water, he held the liquid for a moment, letting it smother his taste buds, hoping it would slake his fear-induced thirst.
Kneeling in the limestone dust, he hit the panga’s blade against the flint-tipped spear. It sparked three or four times, and then the shards of fire found the resin chips. The torch began to burn. Max blew on it, more for luck than necessity, and held the shaft above his head. The flickering flame spluttered in the damp air, but as he moved forward into the darkness, cooler, drier air allowed it to crackle with life. Fire, the most basic of human needs, gave him comfort as he pushed deeper into the cave’s embrace.
The height of the cave did not seem to diminish as he moved farther into the darkness, but then, with the glow casting giant shadows around him, stalactites bore down as the roof curved and narrowed. Like snakes’ teeth. Easy to see how legends were born. At least, that was what Max hoped.
It was impossible to gauge the depth of this mountain range, or how long it would take to get through to the other side, but as he moved forward, he felt something crunch beneath his feet. Lowering the torch, he saw the dusty outline of bones. He knelt down and gently brushed away some of the dust from the remains. The bones crumbled under his fingertips. Perhaps these were ancient, but as he looked more closely, he could see that the victim had been trying to crawl toward the cave’s entrance and that there was a broken clay pot within reach of the bony fingers. Had this been someone trying to escape? Was the clay pot the last of their provisions? Had they succumbed to the terrifying darkness?
There was no telling whether Max would get so far and no farther, or whether he would be able to return if he got trapped in narrow spaces. It was like a huge tomb, and Max did not want to die alone and in the dark—because sooner or later, the flame of his torch would fail. His mind kept questioning his courage. Could he go on? The heavy silence and limestone-dust floor absorbed the sound of any footfall or movement. He could imagine the fire flickering and dying, leaving him in absolute blackness, being unable to move forward or go back, being forced to curl in the rock face, lost and forgotten, with no one knowing where he was. That was where he would die. And one day an explorer might find his bones.
“Shut up!” he yelled at the corrosive voice in his mind. “That’s not going to happen! So do us all a favor and SHUT UP!” It suddenly felt better to have screamed a defiant warning to himself. After all, there was no one else to do it.
The distorted echo bounced off the walls and rock faces, and then there was another sound—muffled at first and then sharper. Someone was calling his name.
Orsino Flint snatched a breath, the exertion from clambering across the rugged cave floor taking its toll. “You move like a damned mountain goat,” he complained, his own fire torch adding to the flickering glow.
“An’ you don’ smell too good, either, cousin,” Xavier said.
Max smiled. “It’s my special jungle fragrance,” he said, his morale boosted now that there were others who would share his dangerous journey. “Things didn’t work out with your mates, then?”
Xavier shrugged. “You can’t trust nobody these days.”
“How did you find me?�
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It took only a few minutes for Flint to lay the blame at Xavier’s door. The Latino boy argued as best he could, but it was obvious, from the fact that his brother’s friends back on the road were now working for someone more powerful with more money, that old loyalties no longer existed. The trail of destruction in the forest had not been difficult to follow, and Flint had picked up Max’s trail past the dead gunman crushed to death by the snake. It was obvious that Max had killed it. There was nowhere else Max could go other than the cave, and it seemed that Orsino Flint, as reluctant as he was, had to follow, because he expected the jungle roads to be swarming with gunmen sooner rather than later.
“The man at the truck had a satellite phone. He’ll be calling others,” Flint told him.
Xavier shivered. Max realized it was from more than the cave’s chill. “Let’s keep going while we have light,” he said. “There’s fresh air ahead. I can smell it.” He smiled at Xavier and put his hand on his shoulder. “It’s good to see you again, cousin.”
“You too,” the boy said without much conviction, staring nervously into the encircling darkness.
Flint settled his feathered hat on his head, looking around warily at the cave that carried such frightening legends. “Can we forget the family reunion and try to get out of here?” he said, the grizzled face yielding no sign of humor. “When we crossed the river, I could have sworn I heard a helicopter. They might be bringing people to the cave.”
“You goin’ crazy, old man. That was thunder. No one could fly in conditions like that,” Xavier argued.
“They won’t come after us in here, Flint. They know the legend of the Stone Serpent. They’ll be too scared.”
“I’m scared, and I’m here,” Flint told him. “I’m telling you, someone with more guts than I’ll ever have was flying a chopper down the valley. And there’s only one place they could be heading.”
Riga was not immune to fear. He had taken part in many vicious campaigns where his daring had been tested, but now even he felt a lurch in his stomach as he gripped the steel handrail in the helicopter. The pilot was soaked in sweat, his eyes unblinking as he gazed into the near-invisible way ahead. He prayed as the helicopter lurched when he threw it to one side, then swore, pushing hard on the rudder pedals and making the helicopter do an almost acrobatic movement it was not designed for. He had just missed the face of a cliff. Riga’s knuckles were white, but he showed no other outward sign of fear. The helicopter’s skids nearly touched the river, the blades thrashing through the tree-hugging clouds and mist. And then suddenly the pilot pulled back on the control stick and the helicopter veered sideways. He had reached a hairpin bend in the river, and he had not seen the trees in time. Riga felt the helicopter shudder as the skids tore at the treetop branches, and the screaming engine, pushed beyond its capabilities, began to falter. By a miracle, it lifted free of the treetops and seemed to dance across the top of the canopy. In the swirling confusion, Riga saw a pickup truck on the ground and a man waving a crimson flare.
It was a hard landing. The helicopter skidded and bounced and finally ran into tree stumps, veered round on its axis and came to a shuddering halt as the pilot fought the twisting impact and switched off engines and fuel supply.
Riga’s arm and shoulder ached from the exertion of gripping the handrail, but he jumped onto the ground, casting a glance back at the pilot, who sat slumped over his controls. Maybe the man had snapped his neck on impact. But then Riga saw him shudder. He was crying, sobbing with relief at surviving the hell of the journey.
The gunman threw the flare to one side and began to jabber at Riga, hoping his failure to stop Max and the others would not cause him to be punished. Riga ignored him and clipped the earpiece of his satellite phone in place as he turned for the forest. He had studied the maps and photographs and knew exactly where to go, but first he was going to tell Cazamind. Whatever lay inside those no-go mountains was dangerous enough to scare everybody. Riga needed to be prepared to face that threat if he was going in after Max.
They went farther into the labyrinth. Climbing across obstacles of rock and crumbling crevasses, they became increasingly exhausted, but Max knew they had to push on as far as they could for as long as they could. The others wanted to stop and sleep for a few hours, but Max argued that they had to keep moving while they still had torchlight.
The cave became a twisting tunnel, a corkscrew whose smooth-sided rock face became more and more treacherous. If they slipped, the steep gradient would hurtle them down to the unknown. Max felt a gust of air on his face, and the torch flared as he reached the edge of a black hole, no wider than a man’s body. Somewhere below he could hear water. Xavier and Flint caught up with him and knelt, looking into the abyss. Max leaned forward, holding the torch as far down as he could, and they saw the funnel curve out of sight. It was probably climbable, like a smooth chimney, but at some point that shaft would give way to a drop. How big a drop was the unknown factor.
“I think we have to sacrifice one of the torches—mine hasn’t got long to go anyway.” The worried look on Flint’s and Xavier’s faces reflected his own trepidation at slithering down the last curve of the Stone Serpent’s belly.
He dropped his torch. It flared and reflected the twisting chimney. They could hear it clattering as its light reflected upward for a few seconds. And then it went quiet. Max counted in his head: a thousand and one, a thousand and two, a thousand and three, a thousand and four—then they heard a splash. Max had counted four seconds exactly. He didn’t know how to work it out, but he guessed that that had to be about a fifteen- to twenty-meter drop. Into what? Shallow water that would smash their legs or deep pools with currents that could suck them under and drown them?
There had to be another way down. He just didn’t believe his mother would have come this way and taken such an un-calculated risk as to drop down this chimney into the unknown, no matter how brave she was. And there was also the skeleton that had been crawling toward the cave’s entrance. That person could not have suddenly got from river to cave by levitation. There had to be another way down.
“We have to backtrack,” Max told them. “We can’t risk jumping through there. Flint, you lead the way. If we’re above an underground river, there might be some kind of pathway down to it.”
No one had wanted to drop through the hole in the floor, so Flint and Xavier nodded. Xavier licked his lips. “Chico, you know I don’ float so good. Maybe we should go back the way we came—back to the forest. At least we have a chance out there.”
“That’s up to you,” Max said as Flint moved away toward the cave’s walls. There was nothing he could do if Xavier wanted to make his own decisions. He kept his eyes on Flint, who made cautious progress through jagged stalagmites.
The soft light from Flint’s torch cast its shadows. Xavier studied the boy next to him. His knuckles were scraped, there were scratches on his face, he was smeared with dirt and grime, his hair was matted and he gripped the spear like a prehistoric hunter. Max Gordon did not look like any schoolboy Xavier Garcia had ever known. He looked dangerous.
“That was some snake you kill, eh?”
Max nodded. He didn’t want to talk about it. He would never be able to erase the horrible image from his mind.
“OK. Maybe I stick with you. You’re gonna get us out of here.”
“I wouldn’t bet on it,” Max said.
“I would,” Xavier said. “You gotta have faith in your angels, cousin.”
Flint yelled. “Over here. There’s a way down.”
Xavier smiled. “I could make money on you, Max Gordon.”
They moved quickly to where Flint held the torchlight above what looked like a huge open stairwell. At some stage, perhaps thousands of years ago, someone had hacked rough handholds and steps into the cave’s walls leading downward.
The steps were just about wide enough to accommodate the width of a body. Max took Flint’s torch. “All right, let’s see what’s down here.”
They took no more than a couple dozen steps, twisting down, when Max stopped them. Something was wrong. The rising air was suddenly acrid. Their eyes stung and ammonia fumes choked them.
Max felt the shock wave of air. A surge of energy ascending from the bowels of the cave. And then he heard them. It was nothing like the fluttering sounds he had experienced in the river cave. These squealing screams were as if someone had taken the lids from the coffins of the undead.
Vampire bats.
Cazamind drew blood. It hurt and he winced, sucking his finger, hoping the pressure of his tongue would ease the insignificant wound. It was the small things that seemed to hurt the most—a rose thorn, a stubbed toe and this, a torn fingernail. Riga’s crazy cuckoo-clock control freak had developed a bad habit. He bit his nails. It was unsightly, it was unhygienic and, as in this case, painful. It had started when Max Gordon had evaded all attempts at assassination. Then the private hospital had been compromised by someone hacking into the security system, and that had to have something to do with the Gordon boy as well. And now MI5 had taken it upon themselves to examine every inch of the place. Luckily his own cleanup crew had effectively destroyed or altered evidence. His friends in government would soon stop them investigating any further, but it was all getting dangerously close to secrets being exposed. Who could have imagined when that interfering eco-scientist Helen Gordon had stumbled upon his secret in the rain forest all those years ago that her son would now be posing as big a threat? If Cazamind failed his masters, he would bear the full responsibility—and he did not wish to die. Now the situation had just worsened. He listened to the satellite link from Riga. He was on the boy’s trail, right behind him, and was convinced he could finish the job. He was asking for information about what lay in the amphitheater of mountains that for years had remained of no concern to anyone. Cazamind paid gangsters and former drug runners to be his mobile guards; he had stripped back the rain forest, sheltered illegal loggers, dissuaded and even killed environmentalists, all to disguise what lay in those forested mountains. Riga wanted information. Wanted to know what was in there.
