by Andy Lucas
Still, Pace mused as they cycled through the rain-flecked water, it gave him time for some steadier camera shots and helped ease his aching legs. The footage he snatched was good quality; atmospheric and gritty.
It was a couple more hours before the road climbed out of the flood and they found solid ground again. The rain hadn’t stopped now for the best part of twelve hours, maybe more. Hammond was out of sight entirely for his leading role, riding over one mile ahead. All around the forest was stirring; irritated by the excited itch of an eager dawn. The relative calm of the night was cautiously broken by an avian chirrup or a primate howl.
‘Glad you could join us,’ grinned Hammond, as they hit their next rest slot and caught up with him. He already had the shelter up, though his voice was shaky and he looked drawn. ‘I was getting lonely.’
‘Well, we’re here now,’ said Ruby, rubbing the blood back into her buttocks as she dismounted. ‘Why are you riding so far ahead anyway?’
‘No reason,’ he lied easily, shrugging. ‘I just love to ride along this road, it’s such a challenge.’ He couldn’t tell them the truth.
‘Something to be tackled alone?’ added Attia.
‘Maybe,’ he replied.
‘Anyway, I’m hungry,’ shrugged Pace. ‘What stunning feast is there?’
‘It’s a surprise.’
It wasn’t. They drank water and munched on energy bars as the morning spilled dirty light over the treetops, showing a strip of thick, grey cloud directly above them. The rain grew slightly heavier but had warmed with the full arrival of the day.
Humidity was bearable and Pace decided to stay outside the shelter to eat again. Cosmos and Hammond went inside, leaving Attia and Ruby outside with him. Attia moved off down the road, Pace presumed to relieve himself because as he took his backpack with him.
Ruby took a bottle of shower cream from her pack, calmly stripped off a few metres from him, and started to work up a lather in the middle of the deserted road.
Instinctively, he plucked the camera from his belt and pointed it at her. It was meant to be a joke and he expected her to go mad. Surprising, she just smiled as she lathered her hair, nodding that it was okay. It took him by surprise but who was he to argue? Naked bodies always added commerciality to television or film, especially when it wasn’t gratuitous.
This was real, it was happening because she wanted to get clean, so it was actually just part of what he’d come here to film.
A minute of film later, his own clothes were in a pile next to hers and he stood with her in the pouring rain, sharing some of her bubbles. Afterwards, he dressed without drying himself and slipped his poncho back on, hood up. Ruby bent over and slipped inside the shelter, determined to get dried off properly. Pace felt refreshed and alive, and all of a sudden feeling a desperate urge for hot coffee. He quickly set up his stove, filling the collapsible saucepan with rainwater, and got brewing. After they all enjoyed a hot drink, they set off again.
Here the mountain bike truly came into its own as the water level deepened by several inches. The individual suspensions coped excellently with sudden potholes when they found him and it meant he could stay mounted. Any other bike would have required him to get off and wade.
By early afternoon a false darkness had fallen, with evil clouds piling one atop the other to form an impenetrable blanket of murk. Pace turned the bike’s powerful lights on and wondered if the forest was turning on its rain tap in a bid to rid itself of an infection of humanity.
Eventually the road rose back up a few feet, lifting onto firmer ground, but where the road surface was eroded and pitted the enraged downpour quickly found its feet and turned the route into a quagmire. It was here that his front wheel dipped into a really deep hole and he suffered his first spill over the handlebars, landing in an ungainly heap in the slick surface. Landing wasn’t the problem; it was the bike following through and whacking him on the back that hurt. He staggered to his feet, slipping over twice as he did so, and clambered back aboard, calling a warning for the others to slow down and ride even more cautiously.
After two hours, the storm finally decided that enough was enough. The rain stopped completely and the sky cleared, giving patches of clear blue to be enjoyed. A flock of gorgeous red-and-blue macaws hove into view, gliding across the road without a downwards glance, before being lost from view.
To his delight, the road lifted sharply, stretching for over a mile ahead of him before veering off to the northeast. The centre became drier, despite the rain, and there were even some small stones compacted into the dirt. The edges remained boggy but the centre surface would stand some speed. Immediately Pace called back to the others, who sounded relieved.
‘At last,’ groaned Hammond in his earpiece, ‘we can get a move on. Tim’s lot are probably already drinking champagne cocktails at the finish line!’
‘This is rain forest,’ chirped Ruby. ‘They’ll have hit earlier downpours that we missed, the same as Team Three will miss ours but hit their own. The weather’s going to hurt everyone’s time until we pick up the hovercraft.’
‘Hovercraft racing on the Amazon,’ laughed Cosmos. It was the part he looked forward to the most. ‘Machines that are dry and fitted with seats a little softer than these, I cannot wait.’ Pace smiled. It wasn’t just the untrained backsides who were feeling a mite saddle sore.
‘Don’t worry,’ called Attia lightly. ‘My little black bag contains soothing remedies for anyone feeling the pain of riding these things for too many hours.’
Pace heard a ripple of laughter, immediately followed by a fierce burst of static in his earpiece. It cleared a fraction of a second later to be replaced with blood-curdling screams of real terror so pitiful that they chilled the very blood inside his heart valves. Skidding his bike to a halt, he slewed the rear wheel around a pivoting left leg, and pumped furiously on the pedals, racing back the way he’d just come.
19
Doyle McEntire stared at the laptop computer screen in front of him and felt the chilling grip of looming disaster grip his guts with vice-like certainty. He knew it had been on the cards, but his intuition had been telling him that everything would work out well; that Cathera wouldn’t be so stupid as to make his move when his treacherous power base was still so shaky. Now he knew that his usually accurate sixth sense had failed him. He also realised that, because of his own miscalculation of the situation, people were about to die.
In his private stateroom aboard the Toronto, he sucked in a thoughtful breath and considered the facts. The screen of his laptop was being fed with secret data directly via the McEntire Corporation’s very own satellite link; channelled through one of a network of low-orbiting, NATO spy satellites.
Heavily encrypted and untraceable, the information came to him as a mixture of text and moving video images. Sensitive cameras aboard the satellites allowed him to zero in on specific areas anywhere in the world, whenever he needed to. Infrared and heat sensitive monitoring equipment added a night vision capability.
Unlike the movies, accuracy wasn’t good enough to be able to read the print on a newspaper someone was carrying, but he was able to get a clear enough picture down to a distance of perhaps one hundred feet. Now, sadly, the cameras were trained on the Amazon. He wasn’t trying to follow the progress of the racing teams; the Trans-Amazonian Highway was heavily shrouded by tree cover for the most part, obscuring direct sight, and the huge numbers of warm-blooded primates and other forest wildlife rendered the heat-sensitive equipment useless.
He replayed the images of men, weapons and helicopters being assembled at a remote cattle farm yet again. Three hundred miles outside the city, where the jungle finally gave way to the vast Matte Grosse grasslands, Cathera’s plan was being put into action.
Intelligence reports from paid informants had steered McEntire’s cameras there a full two hours previously. The images were old now, as the satellite had moved on for now – he would have to wait a while longer before another one would b
e able to reacquire the site. This was an operation with deadly intent; that kind of firepower would not be needed if the plan was simply to go in, find a group of helpless, unarmed civilian athletes, and whisk them off somewhere. This was an assassination squad.
Every few seconds, new reports were also coming in of armed clashes between police units and armed insurgents across several major cities. The thrust seemed to be centred on government buildings, with several local politicians and administrators reported killed, leading the President to declare a state of emergency fifteen minutes earlier; bringing the army out onto the streets to support the woefully inadequate firepower of the police. The situation was bad, and getting worse.
The world’s media; already assembled in the country in force, was on it like a shot, and already the world news channels were beaming pictures of raging urban gun battles into living rooms around the globe. The mercenaries at the farmhouse numbered at least sixty, and they could clearly be seen loading an assortment of automatic weapons and explosives onto three military helicopters; old Hueys by the look of them.
Weighing up his options, McEntire paused to sip from a cup of herbal tea. He had to get to the missing aircraft, and investigate the fate of its cargo. That was the priority that he’d been given. Losing the racing teams would be a media disaster, he knew, but if the wrong people ever found out what was on board the plane, or somehow managed to use it, the consequences would be far worse.
It was obvious to him that the mercenaries were going to be dropped into the Amazon to prey on the racing teams. He could do nothing officially other than make the information available to the President; but with armed uprisings being carefully co-ordinated in so many cities, rescuing the racing teams would be last on his list of things to do.
He had alerted Tom, and the rest of the race support team, instructing them to recall the teams. Nobody would be allowed to enter the rainforest during the state of emergency, but at least he could get them to turn around and make their own way back to the city. Ominously, Tom had just informed him that the support team had been unable to raise any of the competitors. Some kind of technical hitch, but they were working on it.
McEntire had never wanted to risk direct action; that was the whole point of staging the race in the likely search area in the first place, but things had changed. He picked up his private satellite phone and made a quick call. Committed to a new course of action now, he knew that there was another pressing matter that also needed to be dealt with.
A second call was made and he began to mentally prepare himself to lose his only daughter, forever.
Pace didn’t have far to ride, perhaps half a mile, so it took barely a minute to reach them. All were dismounted, their machines discarded in an untidy heap. They were huddled in a tight circle around something lying on the road, Ruby kneeling. As he drew up and leaped from his bike, he recognised the frighteningly still form of Attia sprawled on the muddy road.
‘What happened?’ Leaning in over the others he could see exactly what had happened, just as the words left his mouth. A thin dart, about six inches in length, protruded from Attia’s exposed neck. A thin trickle of dark blood ran down his throat and stained his clothing.
Everyone was rattled but Ruby was a total mess. Poncho slicked with thick mud, she’d skinned both knees when Attia was struck and their bike had upended at speed. She seemed oblivious to Pace and was scrabbling unsuccessfully to find a pulse on the doctor’s wrist.
Calmly, Pace knelt down next to her and used his fingertips to search out the best place to find a skulking pulse; the neck. Attia’s skin was clammy and, tragically, there was no pulse to find. Pace checked the doctor’s breathing next, as he’d done countless times to a rubber dummy on first aid courses in the past. The chest was deathly still and Attia’s neck was at an awkward angle, maybe broken; Pace didn’t know for sure. The dart might have killed him, or the fall. None of it mattered to Attia. He was as dead as he’d ever be.
Working on the assumption that the dart was poisoned and that the neck just looked worse than it was, he knew it was in vain but he did his best to put life back into the man’s body. Pulling Attia’s medical bag from his discarded backpack, Pace fumbled around until he came up with a box of self-injectors filled with various anti-venoms.
A couple were filled with clear fluid and were marked as containing adrenaline. It was one of these that he stabbed into the doctor’s arm, pausing only to pluck the dart from Attia’s throat and throw it away.
For five minutes he sweated over the doctor, giving heart massage and mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. He then ordered Hammond to take over while he jabbed Attia with another shot of adrenaline, before taking over resuscitation again.
If his brain had been in gear at all, he would have been watching his back for more poisoned darts but Attia’s condition demanded total attention. Fortunately the unseen attacker seemed satisfied with only one victim, for now, because none came flying from the towering jungle walls.
Pace was a great deal more than just a competent first aider and he knew a dead body when he saw one. The good doctor’s life had slipped away for good. Finally, admitting defeat and stopping, his arms and shoulders ached with effort as sweat ran from him in rivulets.
Shock does strange things to people and the human beings in their little group were no different. They were all intelligent adults but it still took them another couple of minutes of numb fumbling and stunned squabbling before they finally came to terms with what was happening.
Nobody had seen anything. Attia was on the back saddle, on the trailing tandem. The dart had come out of the jungle, unseen, and struck him in the neck.
Race Amazon was over.
Fearing further attacks, they finally came to their collective senses and got back on their bikes. Ditching the single bike, Pace took over Attia’s seat and the two tandems shot off up the road as fast as tired legs could manage. Attia was left lying in the middle of the road, his lifeless upturned face covered with his own backpack. Pace had taken the medical bag before they left.
Riding two-abreast, within seconds the body was lost behind them and all thoughts turned to putting as much distance between themselves and the unseen killer as possible. Fear gave them all the energy they needed to stretch feet and yards into several miles, with the road thankfully remaining in passable condition all the way.
Ruby was the first one to break the silent ride, after maybe five miles had bumped and slipped beneath their tyres, muttering to herself but clearly audible over the headsets.
‘We must keep going for as long as we can….yes…that’s it…get as much distance as we can then stop and….er…stop and…yes….we’ll stop and James can call base.’
‘Are you okay? Ruby?’ Pace asked firmly. This was no time for the team leader to fall down on the job. Ignoring a sudden stabbing pain in his chest, he resolved to control the situation. ‘Everything will be okay.’
‘James, when we stop, it’s up to you to raise McEntire on the transmitter. He’ll have to sort this out.’
Cosmos suggested they stop immediately but Pace shot him down. They needed more distance and the safety it would lend them. Cosmos saw the sense and shrugged his agreement.
‘McEntire will send in a helicopter to pick us up,’ huffed Hammond, as he pedalled for all he was worth; the two tandems fairly flying along the worn centre of the jungle road. ‘There was nothing like this considered, even remotely, but I know we’ll be all right when we get a message out to him.’
‘We need to warn Team Three,’ shuddered Ruby, almost faltering in her pedalling but catching herself just in time. ‘They could ride into the same thing!’
‘First things first,’ insisted Pace, very gently. ‘We have to protect ourselves. We’re no good to anyone if we allow ourselves to be killed or injured, that’s the first rule of survival.’
The bikes continued to fly up the gently meandering road as their conversation batted around the airwaves.
‘It was
a native dart,’ observed Hammond suddenly. ‘Probably loaded with reptile venom. Poor bastard didn’t stand a chance.’ He said something else but it was swallowed in a fierce burst of static that vanished as quickly as it came.
‘What do we do about the race?’ Cosmos posed the question.
‘The race?’ asked Ruby, still in a daze. ‘The race is finished. You can forget the next challenge, or the hovercraft leg, or any of the money. Sponsors will run for cover when this gets out.’
‘Maybe not,’ Hammond ventured hopefully.
‘Don’t you think we should stop now?’ Cosmos suggested, feeling they had come far enough.
‘You’re right,’ Pace conceded, hoping the extra mile or two travelled would be enough.
Pulling the bikes to a halt, they stayed mounted as Pace flicked the switch to alter the transmission from internal to external. His was the only headset programmed to work with the external signal. It was supposed to be a perfect connection, via satellite uplink, whatever the weather. Ominously, the pit of his stomach knotted as static hissed loudly in his ears like a mocking serpent.
Something was very wrong. He knew the signal wasn’t getting out above the crackle and pop of the interference but there shouldn’t have been any. Without this lifeline to the outside, they were totally alone and cut off from all help.
Pace swallowed back thoughts of being stranded in a hostile jungle and tried the Mayday again but the static just grew louder in response. The others couldn’t hear anything in their headsets when he worked on external mode, so he broke the bad news quickly.
‘How much longer before we get to the river?’ he asked Ruby, who looked stricken at the news of a dead transmitter. ‘There’s another checkpoint machine by the hovercraft. We could screw it up deliberately and let them know we’re in trouble.’
‘Why isn’t it working?’ Ruby asked tightly, hard pushed to control a rising sense of panic; a feeling alien to her normally adventurous spirit.
