by Matt Rogers
‘Uh…’ he said, his gaze flittering from body to body. ‘I dunno, mister.’
‘Everyone who came for us is dead. The gang in the jungle will have no idea that we’re still on our way. All you need to do is follow exactly what I tell you. As soon as I’m out of your plane, you can fly back here, contact the authorities and forget this whole thing ever happened. Our command will take care of you. I promise.’
Diego’s lips remained firmly sealed. King didn’t know if he would get a response.
‘Did you hear me?’
Diego nodded.
‘Will you do what I say?’
Another nod.
‘Do you think you can still fly the Cessna?’
‘Yes,’ Diego said. ‘I fly plane for many years. Can do it with eyes shut.’
‘That’s good, Diego. The faster we do this, the faster you can get back home. Would you like that?’
Diego nodded again. ‘They all dead, King.’
‘I know.’
‘You kill them?’
‘I killed all the men in the truck. Clint and Brad didn’t make it.’
‘I see dead body before,’ Diego said. ‘But never this many. Never this much blood.’
‘Let’s get out of here. Nothing else to see.’
‘Are you okay?’
‘I’ll be fine. But there’s some people in the jungle who won’t be unless we go right now. It’s up to me to extract them. You got that?’
‘I got it. Let’s go.’
King led him to the small aircraft in the centre of the hangar and helped him into the pilot’s seat. As Diego preoccupied himself firing up the engine, he went back to Brad and plied the SCAR from his dead hands. He would no longer be needing it. King looked at the trestles tables. Sure enough, everything on their surface had been torn to shreds by gunfire. The satellite phones lay in pieces on the concrete floor. Completely ruined.
No backup.
His skin grew cold and he gulped, suddenly anxious, but it would do no good to let it show. Diego was dealing with enough already. He didn’t need to see a special forces soldier scared out of his mind.
Before King left, he stopped and glanced back at Brad. The man’s face sported the expression of steely determination, still frozen from his last moments. No surprise. No fear. He had never known his fate.
King knelt down and rested a hand on Brad’s vest, spending one final moment with the corpse. Then he jogged back to the tables, stuffed the SCAR into the duffel bag, zipped it up, threw it into the plane alongside the parachute container and clambered in through the open fuselage door.
‘Ready?’ he said to Diego.
‘Ready.’
The pilot thumbed a button and the single propellor at the front of the plane whined into life, deafeningly loud. The drone of the engine drowned out all other sound. If King shouted, nothing would be heard.
He reached up and swung the door shut, sealing the interior in relative silence. Now there was nothing but a cluster of nervous energy inside the plane. A small, claustrophobic tin can, which he would soon be exiting at 14,000 feet. After all the death he had just witnessed, the jump seemed rather inconsequential.
‘How will I explain if police find this before I return?’ Diego said softly, his voice barely audible above the shuddering fuselage.
‘I know people so high up the ranks they could make this disappear in an instant,’ King said. ‘You’ll be safe. I swear.’
Silence.
‘Do you know where you’re going?’ King said.
Diego nodded. ‘Your friends give me co-ordinates.’
‘Just get me there. I’ll handle the rest.’
As he sat on the floor of the tiny plane and felt the vertigo in his stomach as it lifted off the runway, the gravity of the situation began to dawn on him. Brad and Clint were his only form of backup. He had no way out of the rainforest after he entered it, save for a hundred mile hike. No form of communications with his superiors in the government. The plan had been shoddy to begin with, even before the clusterfuck that had just unfolded.
His only hope at making it out alive was to steal communications equipment off one of the Phantoms. The men at the facility had to have some method of contacting their friends in Iquitos. King would find that method, no matter how many bodies he had to pile up to do so.
The three hostages needed him. He would do everything in his power to get them out.
He let his back rest against the wall behind him and felt the light aircraft shudder and shake in the wind. He was thirty minutes away from falling into the middle of the rainforest, with limited supplies, no backup, no real knowledge of what he would be facing, or where they were located.
But he was alone.
That was all that mattered. King could do things by himself that entire armies could not achieve. The circumstances did not matter. He was the only one responsible for his survival, and that was just the way he liked it.
CHAPTER 9
Back over the Amazon Rainforest…
As he stepped off the plane half an hour later, the fear instantly dissipated. It wasn’t the act itself that scared King. It was the build up. When he opened that door and dove out into thin air with the wind pummelling him from all sides, there was no time to think about anything other than action. The nerves remained. His pulse stayed high. But the sensory overload meant he felt none of those things.
Usually, skydiving was beautiful. King had only done it recreationally a handful of times. He spent the majority of the time in freefall racing toward hostile forces looking to violently murder him. It didn’t give him much time to focus on the pleasantries of the experience.
For a while it felt like he was floating. With nothing around him for 14,000 feet, there was nothing to compare his speed to. No way to gauge it. He fell at over one hundred and twenty miles an hour, but it was hard to tell that there was any movement at all.
The wind battered him relentlessly but that was the only noticeable factor. King held his stable position, arching his back and spreading his arms wide. It was a difficult position to control. The duffel bag around his mid-section plus his one-hundred kilogram frame combined to form a significant amount of weight under canopy. A heavy duty parachute had been required to handle his bulk.
It meant he fell like a bullet.
For a moment he admired the view. From this high up the jungle was a sight to behold. Endless plains of green, spanning as far as the eye could see. All lush and serene. He soaked it all in. He knew it wouldn’t last.
Sixty seconds from now, there would be nothing to admire.
Survival and completion of the mission would be the only things on his mind when he landed.
It didn’t take long for the ground to grow dangerously close. One second the rainforest was nothing but a tiny map far below. The next, it was right there. He began to make out individual trees.
He had to pull off an extremely low opening. Otherwise, his chances of detection would shoot through the roof.
He waited until just before his life fell into endangered territory, then reached back and yanked the ripcord from its position at the bottom of the container.
Nothing happened.
King didn’t panic. There was always a delay. A second of hesitation as the canopy billowed from the container. Most men would be certain of their impending death. The rainforest was less than a thousand feet below him. It felt like he would impact at any moment.
Calm, he told himself.
Then the chute caught the wind. A sudden jerk on his shoulder straps. The resounding whump of a fully opened canopy. He slowed in an instant.
Just in time.
The treetops were so near his feet he could almost kick them. It was the closest he had ever cut an opening. Another second’s hesitation and he would have been skewered on the branches. Preferably killed instantly. Worse case scenario: he would have bled out over the course of the day.
Now that he was alive, the hard part began.
&
nbsp; King braced for impact.
He had a beat or two before he crashed into the trees at close to thirty miles an hour. He reached up and snatched the toggles on either side of his head. Usually they were used for steering.
There was no time to steer.
King yanked down hard on both toggles. Each side of the canopy bent toward him, effectively slowing him down. The move was known as ‘flaring’. It was used by all skydivers to reduce their speed before touching down. Most skydivers touched down on flat ground though.
‘Fuck,’ King muttered under his breath, preparing for what came next.
He slammed into a palm tree chest-first. Its large drooping fronds took away a little of the force behind the impact, but the hit still knocked the breath from his lungs. He spiralled away from the tree, now inside the rainforest. Branches tore at his khaki gear. He spun. Unsure which way was up, which way was down. Then a violent tug at his shoulders.
And he stopped.
He looked up. The canopy had caught on the branches and fronds above his head, severely entangled. There would be no salvaging the parachute. It was a miracle it hadn’t been torn to shreds already. King now dangled from the container’s straps, looping over his shoulders like a backpack. The weight of his gear threatened to cause significant problems. He heard the string lines of the parachute straining, threatening to give. They would snap if he didn’t act.
He took a second to get his bearings. The rainforest floor was as he expected. Dense and inhospitable. It would be difficult terrain to traverse. Foliage and overgrowth covered everything.
His current situation was far more precarious. A distance of at least twenty feet separated him from the ground. The vegetation was widespread, but it would not be enough to save him from broken limbs if he fell. Any serious injury in these parts would be a death sentence.
First he unclipped the duffel bag from his chest, letting it fall. There was significant weight in the bag and it made a hollow thud as it hit the ground below. King paused, slowly rotating in his harness.
Silence.
No sounds came from the jungle. Not even the chattering of wildlife. He assumed the parachute crash had caused enough commotion to scare off any animals in the vicinity. In the distance, he heard the exotic call of a native bird. But no signs of human activity. Nothing to signal he had been spotted.
Time to move.
He undid the strap around his waist. Then slowly and tentatively extracted one arm from the harness. The move swung him round. He shot his free arm around and snatched hold of the pack.
Now with both hands wrapped around the container’s straps, he hung suspended in the air, both feet dangling. There was nowhere to go but up. Breathing heavily with exertion he pulled himself up and snatched hold of one of the string lines connecting the canopy to the container. With the extra weight of the duffel bag gone, the thin lines managed to support his weight.
Barely.
Although designed to hold a man in a harness, there were more than twenty of them. With two in each hand, the uneven distribution of the weight threatened to tear the canopy if he wasn’t careful. He began to slowly shimmy up the lines, attempting to spread his bulk out as evenly as possible.
‘This isn’t good,’ he whispered, staring up at the canopy.
It started to give. A tear in the fabric began to widen. It threatened to split the entire thing in half, sending him tumbling down to injury. He had to do something to avoid that situation before he wound up left for dead in the middle of the jungle.
A sturdy branch jutted out of a tree trunk a few feet above his head. He couldn’t reach it yet. But it was his best shot at survival.
He threw caution to the wind and lurched upward. Grabbing as many of the string lines as possible. Reaching as high as he could. As he hurried, the canopy tore, accompanied by the sound of ripping fabric. One final burst and he was within touching distance of the branch.
As he pulled on the string lines one last time they came down, sending a pang of shock through his chest. For a single terrifying moment he hung suspended in the air. Holding onto nothing. Milliseconds from falling.
Then he shot his hand out and wrapped three fingers around the branch.
CHAPTER 10
The canopy finished tearing in half. It cascaded to the forest floor below as King hung, breathless and shocked, still nowhere near safety. It would be a long trek down.
He began his journey, making slow deliberate movements. Any slip-up now would spell serious trouble. First he swung hand-over-hand along the branch. Not recklessly and spectacularly like Tarzan. But very carefully, and very hesitantly. Style points meant nothing out here.
He shimmied to where the branch met the trunk, and planned his next move. The tree was tall but its trunk was disproportionately thin. Still wider than a man, but small enough so he could wrap his arms around its girth and lock down a proper grip. He splayed his legs and arms out wide, feeling the rough bark against his fingertips. It would suffice.
He inched toward the ground. Each move was delicate, measured, cautious. First he scraped his all-weather boots down the trunk, then loosened the tension in his hands and dragged them in the same direction. He took care not to take the skin off his palms as he manoeuvred his way down. He would need fresh hands when he made it to the bottom.
The knot in his gut began to subside as he made it within fifteen feet of the ground. Any fall from this distance would hurt, but would avoid the disastrous ramifications of serious injury.
He touched down on solid ground roughly two minutes after landing in the trees. If not for the subconscious timer in his head that invariably ticked away at all hours of the day, he would have thought he’d spent hours up there. He knew most sane men would fear the thought of dying at the hands of mercenaries more than sustaining a fall-related injury in the rainforest.
But most men did not have the experience that King did. He knew which would be less painful. And it wasn’t the wrong end of a bullet.
The duffel had landed in the shallow space between two logs covered in moss. He zigzagged around at least a dozen different plants to retrieve it. The sheer volume of undergrowth covering everything was stifling. King already felt the humidity eating away at him. Under his khakis, droplets of sweat trickled down his skin. It was uncomfortable as all hell, but comfortability sat at the bottom of his current list of priorities.
First — get his bearings.
He slung the duffel over one shoulder, wiped sweat off his brow and looked around. Three directions held nothing but endless rows of trees, clustered sporadically, wrapped in various ferns and plants. These ways barred easy travel. But to his left, King saw a break in the trees up ahead. The sound of running water sounded just past the break.
A river.
It would be the first step in locating the Phantoms’ facility. He set off at a brisk pace. As brisk as one could manage in the conditions. Each footfall had to be carefully placed. He had to ensure he didn’t turn his ankle and incapacitate himself before he even found the hostiles.
The sounds of the jungle were far different to anything he’d ever heard before. As the commotion of his crash-landing faded into obscurity, the catcalls of birds and shrieks of animals began to creep back into the surroundings. King recalled some vague fact he’d heard about the Amazon Rainforest holding hundreds of different bird species. He wasn’t sure exactly how many. But he heard every single one of them as he trekked. Their calls ranged from short, sharp chirps to long drawn-out hoots, each with their own personality and resonance.
He stopped concentrating on the birds when he stepped out onto the riverbank and made direct eye contact with two men holding automatic weapons.
CHAPTER 11
No one said a word. King’s pulse leapt through the roof.
He’d emerged from between two trees to see a murky river snaking away to the left and the right, flowing fast. The banks were built up with a mixture of churned dirt and washed-up sticks. The two men stood
in front of a cluster of four rickety boats, each with a sizeable outboard motor on the back.
He watched as they both went through a period of momentary confusion, the type of emotion that pops up when you come face-to-face with what appears to be a soldier in territory you believed to be uninhabited. They looked similar. Olive skin, lean muscular builds, dirty complexions. Both clutched battered and rusty Kalashnikov AK-74s. And both had the same insignia branded on their upper arms. A ghastly skull, forged from their burnt skin.
A phantom.
One man had long straggly hair and wore a combat vest over his bare torso, which was slick with sweat. The other kept his hair short, cut close to the skull. He wore a tattered singlet, exuding confidence. Just from his demeanour, he appeared to be the dominant member of the pair. He stood slightly taller. His body language was more confident. His shoulders straighter. His reaction to the confrontation less panicked.
So King shot him first.
He reached down and ripped the Glock 19 out of its holster at his waist in one motion. Levelled it. Fired a round into the short-haired man’s skull before the other guy could blink. There was no blood, no guts, no graphic explosion of gore. Just a well-placed shot that crumpled the gangster, killing him instantly.
The sound of the Glock’s report shook the long-haired guy into action. He brought the barrel of his AK-74 up, his aim searching. King recognised he was a second away from death and ducked behind one of the thick palm trees lining the shore.
He felt the reverberations in the trunk as bullets tore into the wood on the other side. They whisked all around him, slicing through fronds and leaves to his left and right. Crouching behind cover, he couldn’t help but smile. The man shooting at him was unaccustomed to combat. He’d spent a significant length of time in the middle of the Amazon Rainforest, armed to the teeth with nothing to fight against. When action finally struck, he was thoroughly unprepared. King knew within seconds his magazine would run dry. Overcompensating on his aggression would be his downfall.
