by Stuart Gibbs
* * *
“The girl just went into the river!” Gianni announced. He was keeping an eye on the boat while Esmerelda focused on the controls.
She came around, seeing the river laid out ahead of her. Sure enough, there were only two people standing on the pilot deck of the speedboat now. “Where is she?”
Gianni squinted at the water. He couldn’t see anything in the dark-brown murk, and now they were flying toward the sun, so the reflection off the surface was blinding. “I don’t know! But she dove off to the right!”
Esmerelda didn’t have much time to weigh her options. In the single day she had known Charlie, she had learned that the girl was smarter than just about anyone she had ever met, perhaps smarter than everyone. So it was possible that she had a plan of some sort.
Then again, Charlie was still young. Maybe she had simply panicked. Or maybe she had decided to abandon the speedboat before someone dropped a stick of dynamite directly on it.
Esmerelda didn’t know who the people on the boat with Charlie were, but she suspected that they needed Charlie to find Darwin’s treasure. Therefore, taking out Charlie was still the priority.
But at the moment, she had no idea where Charlie was. So she decided to focus on the boat. If they destroyed it, Charlie would be stranded. Then they could take their time to track her down. Or they could just abandon her here. Or who knows, maybe the girl would get eaten by a caiman.
So Esmerelda aimed toward the speedboat and directed her brothers, “Blow that thing out of the water.”
* * *
Despite all the dangerous animals that Charlie had told her brother about, she wasn’t particularly concerned about any of them. It would certainly be bad to run into a full-grown caiman or a school of piranhas while swimming in the river, but as far as she knew, the chances of that were extremely slim—and even then she probably wouldn’t be attacked. Animals rarely killed humans. Humans killed other humans. In fact, this was the second time today someone had tried to kill her.
The murky water hid her from the airplane, but on the other hand, she couldn’t see a darn thing. Just below the surface, she could barely see her hand in front of her face; three feet down, everything was black. But she didn’t want to surface, because then the Castellos might spot her, so she held her breath as long as she could and swam in the direction of the barge.
Although she couldn’t see anything, she could still hear what was happening. Sound carried far better through water than it did through air. So she could pick up the slow rumbling of the barge’s motor in the distance, the loud whir of the speedboat’s motors closer by, and the thrum of the seaplane’s propellers as it came closer.
Something skipped through the water close to Charlie. A bullet, she figured. A shot that had come dangerously close.
And then there was a loud, concussive blast, followed by a shock wave that rippled past her. That was followed by more motion, a large school of fish that had been startled and fled.
They had dropped another stick of dynamite.
Charlie risked surfacing again. She desperately needed air—and she wanted to see what had happened.
The plane was racing away, having made another pass, and the speedboat was still all in one piece.
But Esmerelda and her brothers probably had more dynamite, and it was only a matter of time before they hit their mark.
Charlie had been swimming along the perfect vector, though. The barge was bearing down on her.
While the plane was still going the other way, Charlie swam as hard as she could across the surface of the river, hoping she was right and that her plan would work.
* * *
Dante was doing everything he could to keep from getting killed, weaving back and forth across the river in an unpredictable serpentine pattern, while trying to keep an eye out for Charlie, too. His plan to head for shore had been dashed when his bullheaded sister had impetuously jumped off the boat. He didn’t want to leave her behind—but he didn’t want to run over her and slice her up with the outboard motors, either.
Beside him, Milana had her gun out, ready to fire on the approaching plane, but she wasn’t firing, because they couldn’t afford to waste ammunition. They had only packed a few clips and there weren’t going to be gun stores in the Amazon. They had expected they might encounter trouble—but not an aerial assault. So Milana kept her eyes locked on the plane as it approached, waiting for her best shot.
It wasn’t going to be easy to hit her target, given that the boat was skimming along the river and Dante was changing direction every few seconds and the plane now had the sun behind it again. Still, Milana was as good a shot as there was in the CIA, and part of being a good shot meant being patient and waiting for the right moment.
The plane came in low. One man hung out the door, one foot on the pontoon, firing with his submachine gun. A line of bullets stitched across the water, just missing them as Dante juked the boat to the right.
Milana saw her opportunity and seized it, squeezing off a few quick shots.
Not all of them hit, but one struck the engine housing, one webbed the windshield, and one caught the guy on the pontoon in the arm, making him drop the machine gun, which plunked into the river.
The engine coughed smoke, but the plane kept flying. And the other guy, the one still inside the plane, dropped a stick of dynamite as they zoomed overhead.
The dynamite bounced off the pilot deck on the boat.
Milana kicked it, a perfect free-kick shot from her days playing high school soccer. It sailed off the boat and exploded a second later, close enough to knock her and Dante off their feet. A piece of red-hot shrapnel nicked her arm, while others whistled past her head, but they were otherwise all right.
For now, at least. “That was way too close,” Milana said.
Dante nodded agreement, but he didn’t know what else he could do. He had no other defense against the seaplane.
Where on earth was Charlie?
* * *
As the barge plowed past her, Charlie grabbed the side and struggled to pull herself aboard.
It was harder than she had expected. The swim had taken a lot out of her, and the current was trying to drag her under the boat. Her muscles screamed as she clambered up and flopped onto the deck of the barge, gasping for air. The deck was filthy and reeked of oil fumes, but every part of her exhausted body wanted to just lie there. Only, there was no time for that.
The seaplane was arcing around for another attack on the speedboat.
Charlie forced herself to her feet.
She was close to the rear of the barge. At the far end was a small pilot house, where the captain and two crewmen were. They were busy watching the seaplane and therefore didn’t notice Charlie.
Behind the pilot house, two long tanker trucks were parked end to end. As was the case with much machinery in South America, they were older models than one would have seen on the roads in the United States. In fact, they had probably been used in the States for years, then shipped down here to be driven until they literally fell apart. The wear and tear on them was extreme. The tires were bald, the chassis were rusted, and the tanks were dented and dripping oil in spots where the seals had worn out.
Charlie ran to the rear of the first tanker and squeezed into the narrow gap between it and the front of the next truck. At the base of the cylindrical oil tank was a vertical opening the width of a large hose with a metal lid fitted over it, from which the oil would be pumped out at the next destination. Oil was dripping steadily here, too, indicating that the lid no longer fit as well as it should have.
The lid was secured with several latches.
Charlie quickly undid them.
The lid opened slightly, and oil spurted from the tank with such force that Charlie had to leap out of the way to avoid being doused. The oil quickly began flooding the barge, spreading out evenly across the flat surface beneath both tankers.
Charlie hated what she was about to do, as it would pollute
the river, but she didn’t see that she had any other option.
The seaplane was coming toward the speedboat again.
Even though her strength was fading and she had no way to defend herself, Charlie climbed up to the top of the second tanker, right out in the open, where Esmerelda and her brothers would have a clear shot at her.
* * *
Esmerelda was bearing down on the speedboat when Paolo yelled and pointed toward the girl.
Paolo was the one who had been shot by Milana. The bullet had caught the side of his arm, but it hadn’t hit bone or an artery, so he would be fine. The original shock had stung badly enough to make Paolo drop his gun, but Paolo had the same genetic condition that his sister did—and Gianni, too, for that matter. While other people might still be reeling from the pain, he no longer felt it. He was making a tourniquet with a strip of his shirt to stanch the bleeding and would then be ready for action again.
The girl had somehow made it to a nearby barge, where she was trying to unlatch the lid of a large hatch on the top of it, probably trying to do something crazy like ignite the oil inside, but she didn’t seem to be having any luck getting it open.
Esmerelda made a split-second decision and turned toward the barge.
The people on the speedboat had guns and the woman had already shown that she was surprisingly adept with hers. The girl was smart but unarmed. If Esmerelda got rid of her, maybe she wouldn’t even need to get rid of the other two. They might be lost without her brains.
As Esmerelda approached the barge, Gianni took the remaining submachine gun, stepped out onto the pontoon, and prepared to shoot.
Charlie heard them coming. There was no way to hide the sound of the plane’s propellers. She gave up on trying to open the hatch and ran along the top of the tanker, away from the pilot house and toward the rear of the barge. In her haste, she dropped something.
There was no time for her to even give it a second glance. She ran as fast as she could while the plane closed in on her.
Gianni opened fire. Bullets sparked off the metal skin of the oil tank.
Esmerelda bore down on Charlie, coming in low over the barge to give Gianni the best shot possible.
Charlie reached the end of the tanker and, without missing a beat, dove off the end of it, intending to plunge into the safety of the river.
Gianni didn’t mind. As long as Charlie was in the air, he had a shot at her. As the plane closed in, he had her in his sights.
And then the world erupted into flame.
SIXTEEN
The cigarette lighter that Charlie carried in her money belt had belonged to her grandfather. It was a piece of art, carved from jade with a beautiful dragon etched into it. The last time Charlie had seen Dante, she had been carrying it for years but had never replaced the lighter fluid in it, because she didn’t smoke. She simply treasured the object, as it was a family heirloom.
But in the months she had been on the run, she had filled it with butane, because you never knew when you might need to start a fire.
Like when someone was trying to gun you down from an airplane, for instance.
Charlie hadn’t really been trying to open the hatch at the top of the second tanker. She was only pretending to do so, waiting for the Castellos to notice her.
Meanwhile, she was giving the oil she had released from the tanker as much time as possible to pool on the deck of the barge.
That was happening quickly, and the deck was now sloshing like a saucer full of milk.
Charlie hated to lose the lighter. It was practically her only personal possession. But she had no choice.
It had been wrapped in a plastic baggie in her money belt, along with her passport, to keep them safe in case of emergency. Charlie hadn’t expected to jump into the river quite so soon into her journey, but she had figured there was a decent chance of getting rained on, given that the Amazon basin was the world’s biggest rain forest. (She hadn’t taken the same care to protect the money, because money was waterproof and people usually didn’t mind if it was wet.) So the lighter had stayed dry during her swim. Now she ignited it and dropped it as she ran along the top of the tanker, making sure it fell to the side of the truck so that Esmerelda and her brothers wouldn’t see it.
Therefore they didn’t see it land in the pool of oil that was spread out beneath the trucks and instantly set it on fire.
But they couldn’t miss what happened next.
Charlie had no way to accurately assess exactly how big the resulting explosion would be, but it was much bigger than she had expected.
The tanker in front exploded first, which made sense, as that was the one that was still spilling oil. The flames raced into it, and the entire thing detonated.
Charlie had tried to time everything in order to lure the Castellos in as close as possible, so their plane was directly above the first tanker when it blew apart like an enormous firecracker. The blast tossed the plane like a toy, while a ball of fire and smoke enveloped it and a hundred bits of metal pierced its fuselage like buckshot.
Charlie was in midair when it happened, and the force of the explosion sent her cartwheeling into the river. She landed hard, but the water then protected her from the surge of heat and fire and the rain of metal that followed.
She was disoriented for a moment but quickly figured out which way was down and swam toward the bottom while pieces of the truck plopped into the water and sank, so hot from the blast that they sizzled.
Charlie held her breath as long as she could, then kicked for the surface again.
She emerged to find fire everywhere.
The barge was ablaze, flames surrounding the remaining oil tanker, which was making ominous popping noises as it heated up. The barge’s pilot and crewmen had dived into the river for safety as well and were swimming for shore.
The seaplane was also on fire. As Charlie watched, it landed, smoking, on the river in the distance, and then Esmerelda and her brothers leapt from it, their clothes on fire too. Just after they dove into the water, the plane blew up.
Even the river blazed. Slicks of oil were scattered on the surface, burning. The heat made the air shimmer, and with all the smoke, Charlie didn’t see the speedboat until it was almost upon her. It emerged from the haze like a ghost ship.
Dante was still at the wheel. So it was Milana who reached over the side and extended an arm to Charlie. Charlie grabbed on, and Milana hauled her up into the boat, where Charlie sprawled on the deck, exhausted.
Dante glared at her angrily. “If you ever try another crazy stunt like that without my permission, I’ll end this mission and haul you right back to the CIA.”
“Awww,” Charlie said. “You’re hiding how worried you were for my safety behind a veil of fake anger. That’s sweet.”
“There’s nothing fake about how angry I am,” Dante growled. “You could have been killed out there!”
“Yes. Because the bad guys were trying to kill us. So I took a calculated risk. You’re welcome for that, by the way.”
Dante was so exasperated, he looked as though he might burst into flames himself. “My plan would have worked just fine!”
“If we’d gone to shore, they would have dropped a stick of dynamite on our heads,” Charlie replied. “Or they would have blown up our boat and stranded us, then gone on ahead and beaten us to Darwin’s treasure. Now they’re the ones who are stranded.” She pointed up the river.
In the distance, through the smoke and fire, they could see Esmerelda and her brothers swimming for shore.
Dante seemed to recognize that Charlie was right, but he didn’t admit it. Instead, he gunned the engine and started back upriver, toward the Castello family.
“What are you doing?” Charlie asked, alarmed. “We’re going the wrong way.”
“I can’t just leave them there,” Dante said.
“Yes you can!” Charlie exclaimed. “They’re bad guys! This is the second time they tried to kill me today! If our positions were reversed,
they wouldn’t rescue us.”
“I’m not like them.”
“This is a mistake.”
“That’s not your call.”
Charlie would have argued more, but at that moment, the second oil tanker exploded. The fire on the barge had heated it up like a popcorn kernel. The metal tank ruptured, and the entire vehicle was flung into the air and crashed back down into the river, starting a new blaze on the surface.
Milana watched the burning hulk sink into the Napo, then looked to Charlie. “Why is it that everywhere you go, chaos follows?”
Charlie sighed, feeling miserable about the destruction she had caused. “If there was any other way to save us, I would have done it,” she said.
She sat sullenly on the bow, and they headed downstream to find the place where the river turned to blood.
SEVENTEEN
Any other family would have been in crippling pain.
Esmerelda and her brothers had all been badly burned by the fire that had engulfed their plane. Most of the burns were second-degree, blistered and red, although Gianni’s arms and Paolo’s back had third-degree burns where their clothes had caught fire. Esmerelda had a nasty second-degree burn, a streak of ruined skin crossing her left cheek and scarring her beautiful face.
She couldn’t see what had been done while she was in the river, but she could feel it. It was far worse than the slight burn she had suffered back at the Basilica, when the climbing rope had struck her face. That would have healed; this would not. Charlie Thorne had made things even worse, and Esmerelda hated the girl for it.
As usual, the pain had passed quickly for the Castellos.
However, that didn’t mean they were all right. Esmerelda and her brothers knew that while the quick passage of pain sometimes seemed like a blessing, it could also be a curse. Pain was important; it let you know when something was wrong with your body. A person who didn’t know they had been badly injured could die. It had happened many times in the Castello family. So their mother had taught them to always err on the side of caution and seek medical help whenever they thought they might need it.