by Matt Rogers
‘Not exactly. I’ll take one of their vehicles. They won’t be needing it.’
‘Found a weapon yet?’
‘Not yet,’ King said. ‘But I’m keeping a lookout for—’
He dropped the phone into his lap out of sheer panic as a pickup truck’s engine roared only a few feet ahead. Blinding floodlights seared up the trail. King brought a hand across his forehead to shield his eyes from the glare.
That way, he didn’t see it coming.
The approaching vehicle elected to stop his Toyota in its tracks by ramming into its hood in a head-on collision. King couldn’t have been travelling far over twenty miles an hour, but a direct hood-to-hood impact delivered a brutal shockwave all the same.
He smashed chest-first into his steering wheel, inadvertently beeping the horn in the process. The harsh sound cut through the thick night air, discordant amidst the rainforest.
Frantic voices exploded out of the car ahead. King coughed up a warm liquid that felt very similar to blood. Realising that it would be suicide to stay in the driver’s seat and allow himself to get surrounded on all sides by hostiles, he threw the door open and dropped into the mud, still stunned from the sudden confrontation.
As he rose to his feet, a hand wrapped around the back of his neck and forced him face-first into the puddle of gunk. He spat mud at his feet and scrambled for purchase on the slick ground.
Then a rifle barrel touched the back of his skull.
41
‘Hey!’ King cried, raising both hands far above his head, adopting the facade of an idiotic tourist.
He kept his fingers spread.
And his expression flabbergasted.
The oncoming headlights flickered off, allowing him a better look at who had ambushed him. The vehicle that had ploughed into his own was similar in both age and build. It was a rusty old pickup truck, same as King’s Toyota. He got the feeling that old, reliable workhorses were popular in this region.
Because people were only out here for work, anyway.
There were four of them in total. All were bare-chested, their dark skin slick with sweat, their eyes rabid and crazed, their hands wrapped around four identical Kalashnikov AK-47s. King could barely tell one from the other — they were all munching on some kind of tobacco. He could smell the foul stench of their breath, even through the thick coat of mud dripping off his frame.
‘What is this?’ he panted. ‘Who are you?’
The Kalashnikov barrel pressing against the back of his skull dug in a little deeper, maybe even drawing blood. King winced as the prodding motion forced him back into the mud. He picked himself up for a second time, breathing in rattling gasps.
One of the trio in front of him stepped forward. The guy’s eyes were bloodshot as all hell. It seemed that he consistently committed the cardinal sin — don’t get high off your own supply. He squatted down in the mud in front of King and snatched him by the chin, gripping hard.
‘What you doin’ out here, tourist boy?!’ he screamed, loud enough to send a flock of nearby birds flapping out of their tree branches.
‘Please,’ King said softly. ‘I’m lost.’
‘Lost?!’ the man roared. ‘Do you know where you are?! This is jungle! You should not be here!’
‘I know,’ King said. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘Who you with?’
‘No-one.’
‘Just you?!’
‘Yes.’
‘You sure?!’
‘I promise.’
The man slapped King across the cheek, hard enough to omit a resounding crack that echoed off the nearby trees. Hot liquid fire spread down King’s neck. He rolled with the blow, but it still jarred him significantly. He crumpled harder onto his knees and tried not to let the heat of the moment affect him.
It wasn’t time to retaliate.
He wanted them to let their guard down first.
Despite having to exacerbate the terror on his features, deep down he truly was frightened. In a situation as uncomfortable and volatile as this, it would only take one twitch from the man behind him to send his brains splattering across the puddle he knelt in.
He had training experience and cognitive abilities well beyond the external shell he was displaying, but that was nothing when up against four trigger-happy, drug-fuelled gangsters in the lawless jungles of Guatemala. If one of them decided to jump the gun — literally — and shoot him dead where he knelt, there wouldn’t be a thing he could do to stop it.
They needed to grow careless.
They needed to turn their attention away from him.
Now that he had a proper view of the truck they’d leapt out of, King stared into the rear tray. Sure enough, Lars’ information had been completely accurate. A giant, modified washing machine had been fixed into the floor of the tray. King could hear it working over the noise of the two running engines.
The plexiglass front of the machine was facing forward, allowing King to see inside. Massive hordes of coca leaves were churning within, dumping around and around in a centrifugal spin. He realised that these mobile laboratories were used to spread out the supply, wringing the cocaine out of the coca leaves while ensuring that there would be additional product spread throughout the jungle in vehicles such as these. It protected some of the stash in the event that the main complex was invaded by rival cartels or the authorities.
Smart, King thought.
He stared at the machine for a beat, before the barrel of the Kalashnikov ran down the base of his neck, coming to rest between the tightly-bunched muscles of his upper back.
He didn’t know whether that spelled disaster, or whether he had been given longer to live.
The three men in front of him moved quietly over to his sad-looking Toyota Hilux. They swept the barrels of their guns over the interior, checking for any sign that King wasn’t telling the truth. He noted their every move, registering the jumpy way in which they aimed with their weapons. They were almost certainly all high on cocaine. If King burst into action, he guessed that they would over-compensate, their heart rates skyrocketing as they aimed in his direction.
He hoped their first few shots would miss.
If they confirmed that he was alone, they would shoot him dead for even laying eyes on their operation.
There was no mercy out here.
Two men moved to the opposite side of the Toyota, creating a barrier between themselves and King. The third man continued trawling along this side of the vehicle, peering through each dirty window in turn. With King’s sole headlight providing the only illumination on the narrow trail, it was hard to make out the shape of their silhouettes in the lowlight.
When gunfire broke out, it would be madness.
King tried not to give any visible sign that he was about to act. He kept himself composed on the inside, while continuing to pant with fear on the outside. When the guy on this side of the vehicle skirted around the rear tray to meet the pair on the other side, King realised he was alone with the man behind him.
He barked like a dog, just once, a sharp, strange outburst of noise that caused the thug to hesitate for a split second.
That was all the time King needed.
He capitalised on the confusion, twisting on one knee and slicing back with an open palm. As soon as his fingers touched the Kalashnikov pressing into his back, he pushed with all his might. The barrel speared away from his torso, now pointing into the jungle beyond.
The thug seized up in panic and locked his finger against the trigger.
Unsuppressed rifle fire flared, cracking through the oppressive rainforest, scattering all nearby wildlife.
King thundered a boot into the guy’s groin, hard enough to feel phantom pain in his own nether region. A fight to the death had no rules, and he was fully prepared to take advantage of that. As the horrific pain of a close-range, unprotected front kick set in, the guy slackened his grip on the AK-47.
Big mistake.
King tore the gun out of the guy
’s hands, reversed his grip on it, and put three rounds through the man’s tattered singlet.
The man dropped into the mud, coated in both blood and sweat.
King ducked low and pressed himself up against the side of the Toyota, shrinking away from any reactive gunfire, staying absolutely silent.
Like a patient hitman, he waited in the sudden quiet for one of the trio on the other side of the vehicle to make a move.
As he did so, he ran his hands over the grip of the Kalashnikov AK-47 and couldn’t resist a brief smile.
Despite the odds, he’d acquired a rifle.
Here we go, he thought.
42
King let his breathing settle and kept both ends of the Toyota in his peripheral vision, waiting for any sign of human activity. He caught a glimpse of movement to his left — coming from the hood of the car — and let off a volley of shots in that direction. The guy ducked back instantly. King heard the scuffing of the man’s trainers against the mud.
He swung the Kalashnikov in the other direction, and just as he suspected lined up on the other two men sprinting around the rear tray of his Toyota Hilux. He brought the sight of the AK-47 up to the empty space just underneath his eye and lined up a cluster of precise rounds. At such close range, the bullets had nowhere else to land.
The thugs jerked around like marionettes on strings as their chests were shredded by the Kalashnikov ammunition. King let go of the trigger, corrected his aim, and fired again as the two bodies were dropping — just to make sure that they were both dead once they hit the ground.
Nothing happened.
‘Oh, fuck,’ he whispered.
The magazine hadn’t been full when he’d first pried the weapon out of its owner’s hands. The guy must have spent the morning shooting at wild animals for leisure, or maybe they’d already run into a lost tourist just like the person King was portraying.
Whatever the case, the gun in his hands was now prematurely empty.
He took off for the other side of the trail, aware that there wasn’t enough time to dive for one of the dead men’s rifles. He would catch a bullet for his troubles if he did so. He smashed through the undergrowth and powered into the darkness just as a wild burst of Kalashnikov fire emanated from behind him, lighting up the jungle with its muzzle flares.
The last man standing, unloading his rifle in King’s direction.
The guy was armed.
King was not.
King ducked behind one of the enormous trees, almost tripping head-over-heels on a gnarly root fixed into the sloping ground. He stumbled forward…
…just as a stray bullet whisked past his face, so close he could feel its path slice through the empty air.
He froze in terror and pressed himself against the trunk.
Breathing.
Waiting.
Staying calm.
He heard footsteps in the dirt nearby. The cocaine must have got the better of his adversary, for the man had abandoned all plans of standing still and waiting for King to come to him. He had sprinted full-pelt into the jungle after him.
King admired the man’s nerve.
It would get him killed, though.
He ducked round the tree trunk, rounding it in a single step and slinking through the bushes, doubling back on the guy. In the near-darkness, he could only make out flashes of the man’s movements amidst the undergrowth. Grimacing, he scurried back to the trail, abandoning all hope of confronting the man in the dense jungle. It would only increase the risk of death.
He broke out onto open ground and ran across the few feet of trail between the jungle and the two vehicles pressed head-to-head in the middle of the path.
He vaulted into the rear tray of the enemy vehicle.
The adapted washing machine was still running, trundling through its motions as it wrung the cocaine out of a mountain of coca leaves. King squinted in the lowlight, looking for the latches that fixed the massive cube to the vehicle underneath it. He located both of them, then flattened himself to the hot floor of the tray as he sensed the cartel thug re-appearing on the trail.
He stayed quiet, masking a grunt of pain as a loose piece of metal dug into his ribs. He allowed the thug to get closer and closer, letting the tension heighten. The man would be confused, wondering where King had ran off to, sweeping his gun barrel from left to right in an attempt to locate him.
King waited until it sounded like the man was directly on top of him. Then he flicked the latches open simultaneously, both of them clicking softly in the darkness. The thug audibly froze, his footsteps dying.
What’s going on? the man was probably thinking.
King jumped into a crouch, wrapped two powerful arms around the enormous washing machine, and wrenched it off the tray bed with a primal roar of exertion. He estimated its weight at close to four hundred pounds, based on his prior powerlifting experience. Adrenalin and determination lent him an added boost in strength, and he used it to hurl the machine off the rear tray.
The industrial-sized cube barely covered a foot of distance through the air, but it was enough to reach the last thug left alive.
The corner of the machine crunched into the guy’s upper back, dropping him like a deadweight. King saw the shock and pain register on his face as he was thrown off-balance by the weight of the object. It bounced away and thudded into the muddy trail floor with enough force to send reverberations down the path.
King leapt out of the rear tray and snatched up the AK-47 the man had dropped.
The guy’s injuries were clearly horrific. Muscles had been torn in his back, and bones had been broken.
King put him out of his misery with a single bullet.
The relentless noise of a life-or-death battle faded into nothingness.
He took a deep breath, calmed his nerves, and let the resulting silence wash over him.
He’d done it.
43
In the moody darkness of the remote jungle trail, King collected the three AK-47s with ammunition left in their magazines and tossed them into the drug-runners’ truck. It was a similar build to the Hilux, but the logo and paint had seemingly been stripped off — either deliberately, or due to the natural effects of the searing, suffocating humidity.
Before he left the area, he knelt down by the dented washing machine. Its plexiglass door had sprung open as it sunk into the damp ground, spilling dry coca leaves across the trail. The green leaves looked nothing out of the ordinary in the rainforest — a passer-by would never know that the cocaine contained within was the substance that propped up a billion-dollar worldwide drug industry.
King bent down, scooped up a handful of the leaves, and shoved them into his mouth.
He chewed vigorously.
The leaves themselves wouldn’t get him high. At least, not in the same league as pure cocaine powder. Lars had told him that coca farmers in the Andes munched on the stuff all day. The leaves suppressed hunger, thirst, and fatigue — effects that he sorely needed in his current state. He crushed the leaves to pieces in his mouth, unsure if that was the correct way to go about it, or if the process would even have an effect on him. He was sure that there was more to it than that.
Unsatisfied, he spat the bitter tasting gunk into the mud and wiped his mouth with his shirt sleeve.
A bead of sweat ran off the bridge of his nose as he vaulted across the hoods of the two vehicles — crushed face-to-face in an awkward union — and crashed down on the other side of the trail. He grabbed his duffel bag out of the Toyota, checked the vehicle for any other belongings, then left the vehicle where it rested for good.
The thugs’ truck had more gas.
The keys still rested in the vehicle, illuminated by the artificial ring of light around the ignition. King threw the truck into reverse and backed it along the trail. The front end separated from the Hilux with a groan of twisting metal. He backed right up to the wall of dense jungle, then turned around on the trail until was facing the way he had been headed in th
e first place.
He checked the rear view mirror once, observing the four dead bodies scattered across the mud…
… then he let all thoughts of the encounter drift from his mind and continued on toward Piedras Negras.
Now heavily armed.
He didn’t know what he might find in the ruins. Had Ramos set up his facility directly on top of the Mayan site? King doubted it. In all likelihood the two sites rested alongside each other. The ruins would act as a beacon for all visitors to locate. If they saw the ancient site, they would know they had come to the right place.
King wondered what kind of business dealings took place in this lawless land.
He kept an eye out for any other mobile laboratories along the way. For all he knew, there could be a complex, intricate web of similar vehicles trundling through the empty National Park, searching for trouble at every corner.
He didn’t want to get caught in the middle of a war zone.
It was a strange sensation rumbling along the abandoned trail, knowing that any human contact this far from normal civilisation could only spell disaster. There was no authority out here, no laws or rules or regulations, just a subhuman society of criminals looking to gain the edge over each other. The darkness weighed down on him. He couldn’t shake off the urge that there was someone watching, peering at him through the shadows as he jolted and rattled the pick-up truck along the uneven trail.
Ten minutes later, the phone in the duffel bag barked.
King snatched it up and answered. ‘Lars?’
‘The one and only. You’d better have good news for me.’
‘Such as?’
‘Are you armed?’
‘Yeah.’
A pause. ‘How the hell did…’
‘Maybe it’s best you don’t know.’
‘Maybe so.’
‘What’s the update?’
‘I’m ringing because you’re just over a mile out. That’s why I was praying that you’d found yourself a gun. You’ll be on the site in minutes.’
‘Piedras Negras?’
