by Rogers, Matt
Rollins glanced briefly around at the procession and saw them all staring at Frisson with reverence, honoured to be in the presence of the man. Frisson smiled through yellowing teeth and nodded to each of them in turn, making sure to let his gaze linger on each member of the tribe for a moment.
Rollins hung back in the shadows, and couldn’t help but accept that Frisson was damn good at his job.
The man raised one fist in the air and shook it at the sky, bellowing a cry of greeting. A couple of the villagers echoed the call. There was nothing notable about it — the gesture was simply a release of nervous energy as they moved closer to the supposed “awakening” event.
Anthony stepped forward, and Rollins shrank behind two of the closest tribespeople, imperceptibly turning his head toward the ground and lowering his gaze. It was paramount that Frisson didn’t see him in the villagers’ presence until it was far too late.
‘Do you have it?’ Anthony said, impatience palpable in his voice.
Frisson flashed Anthony a dark look. ‘Why else would I be here?’
‘I apologise. We grow restless — that’s all.’
‘What did I tell you? The gods cannot be rushed.’ Then he turned his gaze outward, to the people. ‘But they are ready! I have it with me!’
A couple of the tribespeople flashed devilish grins. Others simply gazed in wonderment. Rollins started to understand the dynamic at play — the fact that many of these Asháninca people had spent their entire lives without much contact at all with the outside world. What little encounters they’d had would have undoubtedly been hostile, either through clashes with loggers or soldiers or drug gangs operating in the Peruvian rainforest. So when a smooth-talking Westerner by the name of Bradley Frisson strolled into camp with a carefully concocted plan to convince them of his shamanic abilities, most of them had fallen straight into the trap.
Rollins couldn’t blame them.
But he found himself seething with rage as Frisson continued with his spiel.
‘Translate this,’ Frisson said to Anthony, and then launched into a tirade about the power of the maninkari. He spoke of true freedom, of releasing the hallucinogen he’d come across in the most dense section of the Junín Region, which happened to be its capital city, Huancayo.
Rollins listened with his head bowed and his teeth gnashing together, but he couldn’t allow Frisson to finish the speech.
Frisson had only been in the camp for thirty seconds, and sooner or later he would notice the white man in their midst. He’d become wrapped up in his own performance, ignoring the blindingly obvious, and Rollins knew he had a window of opportunity.
He stepped up to Anthony, muttered something ineligible in his ear, and pushed the giant translator forward.
Anthony nodded, clearly assuming that Rollins wanted to make himself known to Frisson, and hurried toward the man.
Here we go.
One chance.
Rollins couldn’t waste it.
He ghosted after Anthony across the clearing.
16
Weeks of infiltration, another couple of weeks of imprisonment, and a daring breakout from a remote mountain prison had led to this moment.
Rollins sucked up every ounce of nervous energy in his body and prepared to transfer it into a showing of brute force.
Bradley Frisson’s face was the colour of a beetroot as he shouted and sprayed vague phrases of encouragement at the surrounding tribe. He was looking in every direction at once, now ignoring the individual faces, which meant he didn’t notice Anthony approaching until the giant translator was uncomfortably close. Behind him, his three comrades shifted restlessly in place — Rollins recognised a couple of them as the men who had carted him off to the prison in the first place. They were all European, a mixed bag of ethnicities, some Polish, some Dutch, some Spanish. All hard, uncompromising men who had wound up in central Peru to put their mercenary abilities to good work. Rollins knew from the way they’d handled him a week earlier that they had military experience.
Do they have combat experience, though?
Rollins had spent enough time in the field to know the difference between show and strength. It was effective to beef one’s physique up through a weightlifting regime and cover yourself in tattoos and pick up a rifle and pretend to be a menacing paramilitary thug, but only a handful of the mercenaries were the real thing. They wound up in South America to intimidate, to aid drug dealers and cartel members in their quest to dominate an industry, but many of them never actually had to resort to physical violence.
Rollins had made a career out of resorting to physical violence.
‘Frisson,’ Anthony said, and his tone carried enough weight to cut the American man off mid-spiel.
Frisson darted a glare in Anthony’s direction, and Rollins made sure to angle himself correctly, keeping out of sight until the final couple of feet, at which point recognition would be inevitable.
‘What?’ Frisson hissed. ‘This is important—’
Anthony held up a hand. ‘I know. But the man you sent to us for judgment. We have forgiven him.’
‘What?’
‘Sam Rollins.’
‘The government guy? Don’t worry, I took care of him.’
‘No, he’s—’
Anthony had already started turning in a half-circle, making a sweeping gesture with his left hand. But before he could complete the sentence — No, he’s right here — Rollins darted straight past and surged into range. All that powerlifting strength and muscle mass on Bradley Frisson’s frame would probably prove effective in a macho-fuelled street brawl, but this was a different kind of fight. Against a man with proper Muay Thai training — in fact, close to a decade of Muay Thai training — it would only serve to slow him down in the initial exchange.
And most street fights ended in the initial exchange.
It came down to who could place the more accurate shot.
And Frisson was still in the process of connecting the dots, his mind racing through the possibilities as to how Sam Rollins had teleported from a prison in the Huaytapallana mountain range to the same village he’d been exiled from a week earlier. By the time he’d realised he wasn’t hallucinating and Rollins was actually standing before him, Rollins had shut him off at the power switch with a staggering right hook to the jaw.
Rollins had put everything into the punch. If it missed, he would have careened off-balance and one of the three armed guards would have put him down with a single pull of the trigger. But a resonating crack echoed through the clearing — either Rollins’ knuckles shattering, or Frisson’s jaw being obliterated — and the big man went down.
Before anyone could react, Rollins powered straight over the collapsing body of Frisson’s unconscious form and stabbed the sole of his boot into the throat of the closest guard. He’d isolated the weakest link in the trio, and sure enough the guy went down howling, some of the soft tissue in his throat destroyed. Rollins snatched his weapon — an M16A2 set to burst-fire — out of thin air and used it to rattle off a pair of bursts before the other two guards could even raise their own weapons in retaliation.
Then he turned and put a final three round burst through Frisson’s skull at close range, creating one of the more grisly exit wounds he’d ever laid eyes on.
Then there was silence.
Four men dead in the space of a couple of seconds.
And Bradley Frisson, a man the Asháninca people had come to worship over the course of a few short weeks, had been brutally slain before their eyes.
Rollins gulped back apprehension and tossed the M16A2 away in a feeble attempt to show he offered no further threat.
He met Anthony’s eyes, and saw a deep seated rage in them. Rollins had enacted the ultimate betrayal. He’d put his own mission above Anthony’s trust, and now all those conflicting emotions were coming to the surface.
Rollins could have held onto the gun. He could have turned it on the tribe and gunned down enough of them to make a bre
ak for it. He could have sprinted into the jungle with no food, no water, and no supplies.
But he wouldn’t have lasted a day.
And he didn’t have it in him to slaughter these people. They were easily manipulated, but they were not guilty of anything other than that.
So Rollins took the satisfaction of sending Bradley Frisson to his grave and placed his hands willingly behind his head as the tribe descended on him with all the rage of a village that had lost its shaman.
17
Groggy, bloodied, and beaten, Sam Rollins collapsed on the floor of the hut.
The last few hours had been excruciating, to say the least. Many of the tribespeople had beaten him mercilessly, wailing at the loss of the man they believed would lead them to an enlightened state. Anthony seemed to be the only Asháninca native with a semblance of self-control, as he’d warded the more furious members of the tribe away to cool their heads. Rollins, with his lips cut open and his cheeks swollen and his eyes turning black, couldn’t for the life of him figure out why Anthony was protecting him.
Surely the translator should feel the most betrayal…
But when Anthony tossed him to the floor of this hut and shut the door, sealing the pair of them into the dark musty interior, Rollins figured he would get some answers.
‘Please,’ he spat.
He couldn’t take much more punishment.
‘You want me to kill you?’ Anthony hissed.
‘Yes.’
‘Too bad. You do not deserve such a painless death. I’ll give you the substance we spoke of earlier, but not for a long time. Not until you realise you have no hope.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘I trusted you,’ Anthony said. ‘You destroyed the beliefs of this entire village.’
‘Where’s the capsule?’ Rollins muttered, a string of blood dripping out of the corner of his mouth. ‘The golden ticket. Where is it?’
‘It was in the back of one of the vehicles. We have it in our possession.’
‘It’s a bomb,’ Rollins said, figuring there was no point holding anything back any longer.
‘I’m sorry?’
‘It’s a goddamn bomb. How can you not see that?’
He continued staring at the floor, letting the silence drag out. When he figured he wasn’t getting a response, he lifted his head to meet Anthony’s gaze. To his surprise he saw the man sporting a wry smile, as if Rollins had uttered the most foolish sentence in existence.
‘Frisson said you would say that,’ Anthony said. ‘As soon as he revealed your true intentions and sent you away, he said you would have made up lies to try and steal the capsule for yourself. He was right. And I was wrong to ever trust you in the first place.’
‘Are you stupid?!’ Rollins said. ‘You can’t see what’s right in front of you.’
‘You’re a bad actor, Sam Rollins. I can see it in your eyes. You want the capsule for yourself.’
‘No, I don’t. I’d prefer to stay alive.’
Anthony reached out with a gangly limb and struck Rollins with a backhand across the face, sending him flying across the room as he recoiled from the pain. He wasn’t bound at the wrists or feet, but he could barely move a limb. There was no hope of overpowering the translator and escaping. He had been beaten into the dirt over the course of the afternoon, and he had nothing left in the tank. The fight with Frisson and his men, although short, had sapped him of his energy. Throwing a punch like your life depended on it tapped into certain energy reserves that couldn’t be easily replenished.
The lack of recovery, coupled with the beating of a lifetime, had left him moving through quicksand.
‘We will study the capsule,’ Anthony said. ‘We will learn its secrets. Then we’ll head into Huancayo and do what you tried so desperately to stop us doing.’
‘That’s not a good idea, Anthony.’
‘How does it feel?
‘What?’
‘To try so hard to stop Bradley Frisson from enlightening us, and failing?’
Now Rollins was angry. He’d been placid and helpful for long enough, but the constant talk of enlightenment was a step too far.
‘You’re going to kill hundreds of innocent people when you get to Huancayo,’ Rollins said. ‘That was Frisson’s plan all along. And you bought into his act so completely that you’re still going to go through with it after he’s dead. Fuck it. Go ahead. Do it, Anthony. I hope you’re not around the capsule when it goes off so you can stay alive to see what you did.’
‘More lies from a traitor,’ Anthony said, his face a mask of dark fury as he got to his feet.
For good measure, he thundered a kick into Rollins’ bruised ribs.
‘I will leave you in this hut,’ the Asháninca man said. ‘I should kill you, but I won’t. You want contact with the maninkari so desperately that you would run through anyone to do it. That’s why you came back here. I will leave you alive until morning so you can see your failure with your own eyes.’
Rollins made to respond, but the words wouldn’t form. He slumped on his back across the wooden slats, letting the blood from his mouth run down the sides of his cheeks, staring up at the musty roof of the hut.
He simply didn’t have the energy left to put up an argument.
He closed his eyes, hoping for some kind of reprieve.
Anthony scoffed at his predicament, turned on his heel, and ducked straight back out of the hut. He slammed the door behind him. Rollins heard the distinct sound of an enormous object being moved up to the other side of the door.
He wasn’t going anywhere.
Alone in the dark, he wiped his face with a shaking hand and tried to stifle an outbreak of emotion. He had stopped Bradley Frisson in his tracks, and expected to be murdered for it. He was still alive, but even in the wake of Frisson’s death the man had enacted control over the Asháninca tribe. Tomorrow morning they would carry the capsule blindly into the heart of Huancayo and kill hundreds of people.
But why?
Rollins didn’t know. Frisson had taken his motives to his death — in the movies Rollins would have had the opportunity to worm Frisson’s reasons out before killing him, but this was not the movies. He’d capitalised on a tiny window in time and taken the man out.
But he hadn’t done enough.
The plan would go ahead.
He would fail.
He closed his eyes in the hot, dark space and hoped for some relief from the pain.
Both physically, and emotionally.
18
The longest night of Sam Rollins’ life unfolded.
He was sure one of his ribs was broken. It was hard to discern in the dark, but he poked and prodded around until he found the most tender area of his mid-section. Even the slightest ounce of pressure against his skin brought on sickening waves of pain, and he gave up trying to assess his injuries shortly after. He simply lay on his back and wallowed in agony. The blood dried on his face, and the commotion outside slowly died down to nothingness as the tribespeople retired to their huts. There was anticipation and nervous excitement in the air — Rollins could feel it crackling even though he couldn’t see it with his own eyes.
These people were excited.
They were about to meet their gods.
Rollins battled waves of pain and tried to keep his mind clear, running through any number of possibilities as to how he could worm his way out of this situation. They were keeping him alive, which meant he had a chance. Anthony evidently didn’t think Rollins could put up much of a fight, although he wasn’t aware of the power of adrenalin. Rollins had been through numerous grievous injuries over his career, often much worse than his current predicament, and he’d utilised the flood of cortisol countless times to crush the pain down temporarily.
He could do it again.
But he needed the chance.
And it wouldn’t take much.
As light began to filter in through the gaps between the wooden planks, Rollins opened his dry lips and
gasped for air. He’d slept intermittently, managing brief periods of respite amongst the pain, and already the effects of dehydration were beginning to set in. His throat had the texture of a ten-year-old sponge, horrendously coarse. He was hungry as all hell, but that paled in comparison to the thirst.
He figured Anthony and the other villagers wouldn’t bother feeding him or giving him water, considering the fact that they only wanted to keep him alive until morning. He began the process of hardening his mind, trying to accept the fact that any attempt to break free would have to be undertaken in a severely diminished state. He couldn’t fathom a trek through the jungle in his current condition, and it sapped the strength from his bones just thinking about it.
It seemed pointless to even bother trying.
But then the door opened a crack and light spilled through into the hut’s interior, blinding Rollins. He sat up, the blood caked across his face cracking, and wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. It took a moment to compose himself, but when he saw Anthony striding into the hut with a large bowl of water in one hand, he couldn’t help but think he was still dreaming.
‘W-why?’ he croaked.
The giant lanky translator squatted into a crouch and passed the water across. His face hadn’t softened in the slightest — there was still innate rage stewing under the surface.
The Asháninca man was doing his best to suppress it.
‘Because I need to keep you alive and conscious for just a little bit longer.’
Rollins considered the fact that the water might be drugged, but as he took the bowl in his hands that thought slipped from his mind. If Anthony wanted him dead, he would force feed him the toxic hallucinogenic concoction from the previous day. It wouldn’t take much effort — Rollins was currently in no state to fight back.
