RACE AMAZON: Maelstrom (James Pace novels Book 2)

by Andy Lucas

Rummaging around inside the medical kit, she found some scissors, antibiotic powder and penicillin capsules. She clipped his chest hair as short as she could and gave the wound another rinse before sprinkling the powder liberally over it. Next she taped a sterile dressing over it and got him to swallow some capsules. Finally, he was ordered to down two aspirin, and drink a litre of bottled water.

  ‘The aspirin will help the pain but it won’t get rid of it completely,’ she explained, wiping cold sweat from his forehead with another dressing, damped with more bottled water. ‘I don’t want to give you morphine unless I have to. If the wound gets worse you could cause extra damage by pushing yourself because you won’t feel anything. Remember, pain is just the body’s memo to slow down,’ she lectured, her tone steeped with poorly disguised fear.

  It was odd how, in himself, Pace felt quite at home in the Amazon now and was the least frightened of them all, but fate had conspired to suddenly knock him back down again just as he was beginning to come into his own. He laughed, which turned into a series of coughs.

  For a second, he was back in a hospital bed, on that fateful morning when McEntire nearly caused him to choke up his lungs. A shudder of agony wracked his ribcage and sledgehammers attacked his sternum. His body spasmed into a foetal huddle as he forced his breath in and out calmly and quietly. Ruby held him close to her until the spasm passed. She didn’t let him go even then.

  As his breathing eased, Pace forced himself to swallow down a few more sips of water and cursed silently at how his worst fears of getting sick were coming true. Looking up into Ruby’s worried face, he wanted it to be Sarah’s face staring back at him and felt an ungrateful bastard for thinking it. She was probably enjoying Tom’s company and forgetting all about their time together. Seeing the pain etched into his features, his team leader wiped his forehead again and whispered that it would be okay.

  He didn’t remember falling asleep but when he awoke, the daylight outside the shelter’s opaque skin was fading into the darkness of another night. The fire in his chest had gone out, leaving only the wispy smoke of a dull ache remaining. He sat up gingerly and realised he was alone in the shelter, wearing just his boxer shorts. A dark shadow outside moved as it saw him stir and Ruby’s lithe form slipped in through the tight entrance slit a moment later, water bottle and more pills in hand. By the obvious relief on her face, he must have looked better.

  ‘Was I that bad?’

  ‘Am I that obvious?’ Ruby’s counter was framed in a forming smile.

  ‘Transparent as hell.’

  Sitting forward, Pace did a few experimental stretches and accepted the offer of more water. Ruby crouched down beside him, watching him drink at least four large mouthfuls. As soon as the first one hit his stomach he realised he was completely parched. She made him swallow down three more penicillin capsules pills and let him drink a good pint before gently easing the bottle from his hands.

  ‘There’s plenty where that came from. No need to drink it all at once.’

  ‘Just tell me I have only just swallowed antibiotics,’ he grinned at her. ‘I wouldn’t like to think you slipped me another sedative tablet in with them this time.’ It was obvious she’d given him a knock-out pill earlier – natural sleep just didn’t strike him that fast.

  ‘I promise,’ she said solemnly, not bothering to deny the truth.

  The water revitalised him and he noticed the outside of the shelter was dry, with no sound of rain hitting its skin. Also the outside world seemed very quiet. No other shadows were visible beyond the shelter. He asked where Hammond and Cosmos were.

  Ruby’s smile faded a little and she gave a little resigned shrug.

  ‘They decided we needed to get help as soon as possible.’

  ‘Because I was out of it?’

  ‘You were in no state to travel,’ she nodded. ‘They’ve pushed on to the staging area by themselves. To get the help we need,’ she added.

  Ruby either elected to remain behind, or was persuaded to do so by the others. Given that she was the team captain, and not one to be bullied, he suspected she stayed by choice.

  ‘They headed off after grabbing a couple of hours sleep and some food.’ She smiled again. ‘I got that contraption of yours working and cooked up what I think was Beef Wellington. I even made some hot chocolate with the water, but it tasted like crap,’ she admitted. ‘Still, it was hot and wet.’

  ‘Sounds wonderful,’ Pace said, feeling a little hungry himself.

  ‘I’m just boiling another pan of rain water. We might as well have some hot food ourselves while we’re stuck here.’

  ‘Sounds even better.’

  ‘What would sir like this evening?’ she asked pompously. ‘Would you care for the chicken curry or a fine spicy sausage with onions? The vegetable casserole is supposed to be wonderful, I hear.’

  ‘You choose. Anything hot will be fine, thanks.’

  ‘Easy to please, I see.’

  ‘You were telling me about the others.’ He wanted to know more about their plans.

  ‘Right.’ She gathered her thoughts. ‘Okay, they took enough fresh water and biscuits to last a couple of days.’ She checked her wristwatch. ‘We figured out where we are on the map cards, near enough I think. There can’t be more than another five hours riding left of this stage, maybe eight if the going is really slow.’ She paused to draw a thoughtful breath. ‘If they’re not there already, they should be right on top of the hovercraft by now.’ Her cheery tone was so forced that it was clear she had her doubts about whether they would get there at all.

  ‘When they get there, they’re going to really mess around with the checkpoint to alert headquarters that we’re in trouble. Hammond doesn’t think they’ll have to do anything though. He went off certain that a rescue helicopter is already parked out there, just waiting for us to arrive.’

  ‘There’s confidence for you. I hope he’s right.’

  ‘All we can do is wait for the cavalry to arrive, I guess.’ Her soft Canadian accent and gentle demeanour showed him another side to this dynamic adventurer. He caught something behind her eyes but couldn’t quite tell what it was. She looked pale but she had been on her own all day, hoping his condition didn’t deteriorate and no other killers found the camp, so the look was probably just a little fear he told himself. As a static target, the shelter stuck out on the island like an emergency rocket flare against a midnight sky.

  It was time he pulled himself together, Pace determined. Despite her protests, he knelt up and found everything sore but functioning. Planting a grateful kiss softly on her cheek, he slipped through the shelter entrance; careful not to brush the tight plastic lip against his dressing. He needed to breathe fresh air and think through his options.

  Once outside, he stood up and immediately felt the world around him start to spin. Propping himself against the shelter, he stubbornly refused to sit down and waited until his undulating vision settled and he regained control of his legs.

  ‘I told you to take it easy,’ Ruby chided softly, joining him. ‘You’re in no shape to do anything. In fact, if the race was still on I would retire the team because of your condition.’

  ‘I’ve never been too good about taking orders,’ he admitted. ‘That’s why my superiors in the Royal Air Force were so pleased to see the back of me.’ He knew she was right about his condition but it stung to accept. ‘I really thought I could hold out.’

  She nodded, eyes suddenly readable as sympathetic. She instinctively understood his need to succeed because she had spent her own adult life hounded by the demons of personal failure.

  ‘It doesn’t matter now. We just have to get out of here as quickly as we can.’

  ‘I’ll admit, I won’t be sorry to get back to civilisation now the wound is playing up. I think I might need a couple of days in bed.

  ‘That’s an understatement,’ she laughed, the sound light and refreshing in the rapidly falling darkness. ‘I’d say you’ll be taking forced bed rest for at least a
week, maybe longer, back in hospital.’

  ‘Now there’s something to look forward to,’ he grimaced.

  Staring back down the road, something began to nag at the back of his mind, demanding his attention. He glanced at the luminous dial of his watch and the hope that he’d blown things out of proportion suddenly blew away as quickly as a dead leaf in a toying autumn wind.

  ‘Are you all right, James?’ When he didn’t answer straight away she tugged at his naked elbow. ‘James?’

  ‘Look,’ he said slowly. ‘I don’t want to be the voice of doom but I’ve been out of it all day, right?’

  ‘About ten hours, give or take.’

  ‘So, where is Team Three? They should have caught up with us by now. We haven’t moved an inch in those hours, so a racing team only two hours behind us at the start couldn’t have dropped more than a couple of hours on us over that time. They should have caught up with us after four hours, five tops.’

  Ruby knelt down to check the cooker as it bubbled away. She’d been thinking the exact same thing but had tried to ignore her own suspicions.

  ‘Maybe they got bogged down in bad weather.’

  ‘Bad weather comes with the territory. They would have coped as well as us, if not better.’

  ‘Is there any chance they missed us?’ It was a stupid question given the conspicuous nature of their shelter and its position slap bang in the very middle of what now passed as the Trans-Amazonian Highway.

  ‘None. The shelter is in plain view and you’ve been watching all the time, haven’t you?’ She gave an imperceptible nod, not looking up but still concentrating her gaze into the bubbling pan of water. ‘Unless they’re lost, they should have passed this way hours ago.’

  ‘Then you think something has happened to them?’ Ruby asked slowly. ‘Do you think they’re dead?’ He had a suspicion she had a couple of good friends running with Team Three and wasn’t surprised to see the glisten of welling tears in her eyes, despite her best efforts to keep her gaze fixed away from him. The tremble in her voice was audible when she spoke again and a single tear rolled down her cheek and dropped into the boiling water. ‘They could all be dead right now, couldn’t they? Just like Prassal?’ Her tone grew thick with misery.

  ‘Or they might have already been pulled out by helicopter,’ Pace soothed. ‘They could have turned back if they hit trouble instead of carrying on, like we decided to. If they turned back, they’d have made it back to the city by now.’ He didn’t believe a word he said to her but it gave him a moment longer to think.’

  From her pack, she took out two meal packs and dropped them into the boiling pan of water. She started to say something else but her voice suddenly cracked and the tears flowed. His arm was around her shoulders before he knew it and she turned and buried her face into his bare shoulder. There were no wracking sobs or cinematic-style chokes, just silent tears and a trembling body. Her strength of character made her seem impervious to things that had dogged him from the start, namely fear of failure, frustration and a healthy dose of doubt, but she’d been pushed to her limit, then just a little over it.

  ‘Everything will work out.’ Pace comforted her in as believable a voice as he could. ‘Nobody’s going to get us and it will look brighter in the morning.’

  Still her tears flowed. ‘I believe you,’ she sniffed, suddenly angry with herself again.

  ‘If you want, we can pack up camp and follow the others. I can pedal okay for a few more hours, especially if it means getting you to safety. I’m feeling much stronger now,’ he lied, knowing full well that a few more hours in the saddle at that moment might actually kill him.

  Ruby pulled away, shaking her head and wiping tears from her puffy face with the back of one hand. ‘You’re in no condition to do anything of the sort. We’d better just wait for help here.’

  Pace didn’t relish the idea of dying in the middle of the jungle, so grudgingly agreed to wait. ‘Okay, you’re the boss.’

  They ate dinner at seven-thirty in the evening, spooning piping hot vegetable casserole down their throats as they watched the empty jungle road through their visors, first one way, then the other. The Amazon basin is an impenetrable jungle and hid its secrets well behind towering walls of solid vegetation. They saw nothing but the night air became swiftly vibrant with a thousand-species, nocturnal, insect chorus.

  The coffee was ready just as rain returned. It deluged down upon them; there were no distinguishable drops, just solid sheets of falling, tepid water that drove them immediately inside the shelter. Fortunately Pace had poured a cup of coffee for each of them already, so they huddled together, sipping it in their man-made cocoon, sitting in darkness rather than lighting a torch. Visors on, neither of them had thought it a good idea to set the shelter up as an illuminated igloo to attract unfriendly eyes.

  Conversation was as minimal as the light. They finished their drinks and it seemed the most natural thing in the world to pull close and hold each other gently; being careful to keep any contact away from his wound. Pace again reassured her that they were survivors and promised the others would get help back to them quickly. Barely minutes later, her head sagged heavily against his left shoulder and her breathing eased into sleep.

  He didn’t move at first but after twenty minutes, when she had slipped into a much deeper sleep, he carefully disentangled himself and laid her down gently. Then he slipped out of the entrance and fumbled for his pack in the incessant rain. A few minutes later, he crawled back inside, soaked to the skin, and settled himself just inside the entrance.

  Ruby remained fast asleep, so was unaware that he now cradled the Sten gun in his lap, freshly loaded with a clip of ammunition. The cold metal felt reassuring in his hands as he slipped back the bolt quietly, determined not to wake her. He kept his finger close to the trigger but not on it, just in case he dozed off and then woke suddenly. The safety catch was now off and he couldn’t afford for any unintentional bullets to start flying about.

  Taking a second clip of bullets, he propped it horizontally in between the lips of the entrance; jamming them open in the centre about ten inches and giving him an open window onto the road outside.

  His ears strained to hear any suspicious sound above the rain, listening for the noise of a killer approaching in the darkness, but it was a pointless task because it was impossible to hear anything above the falling water. He resolved to put all his faith into the green clarity of his night vision visor, vowing to concentrate and miss nothing.

  Despite what he’d said to Ruby, somehow he knew things were about to get a great deal worse. Somebody was coming for them, although he didn’t know who, or why. He just prayed McEntire’s people would find them first.

  3

  What the bloody hell was that? Pace awoke with a start to find Ruby and himself huddled together on the padded floor. He must have dropped off about midnight, when the thoughts in his head could no longer be bothered to go around and around in unending circles. The Sten lay next to him, still pointing its dangerous end towards the entrance.

  At first he wasn’t sure what had roused him; the darkness beyond the shelter skin was barely greying. The dome still insulated them from the sounds of the jungle but it was immediately clear the rain had ceased. The silence was total as he strained his ears to their limits.

  The skin on his back crawled with anxiety but he shrugged off the last remnants of sleep and slowly slid away from Ruby’s sleeping form. Suspicions of foul play jangled up and down the length of his spine but he moved with clear purpose, preparing himself calmly for what was to come. He had once heard somebody say that the human sixth sense is a gift ignored at your peril. Here, in this primeval place, it was an avoidable peril. But what should he do?

  If there was someone outside, waiting, what exactly could he do about it? The answer was either hope whoever it was moved on, or pray that they allowed him to get off a burst with the Sten first.

  The entrance lips were still jammed open with the ammunition c
lip from the night before but he had somehow lost his visor during the night. The road was shadowed and forbidding without its technological enhancement, deepening to solid darkness a few feet from the choked edges. Everything appeared quiet but was too indistinct. A fumble on the floor of the shelter eventually turned up the visor. He slipped it on and curled his finger around the gun’s trigger.

  The world outside his constructed window brightened into green glory and he peered intently through it again, scanning his eyes from left to right but keeping his face well back from the opening. Trees, low ground growth and lianas trailed from the ground up into the canopy hundreds of feet above. It all looked normal.

  The road was still heavily cracked and pitted, with puddles of muddy water dotting the surface wherever dead vegetation hadn’t fallen. The odd, unbroken area of soft mud looked smooth and glistened with damp. It was a little early for the birds to be up and a light breeze, sweetly scented with an earthy fragrance of water-soaked vegetation.

  There was no movement outside. After a second, detailed look, he was about to slide through the lip when the static, solitary figure on the opposite side of the road suddenly moved, revealing itself to him.

  The figure moved slowly towards the shelter, about one hundred feet away down the road. It hugged the protected edges and stayed in the shadows. Without night vision, it would have been impossible to spot.

  Pace froze, cursing the accuracy of his intuition as he watched the figure sidle closer. His heart pounded in the back of his throat at the sudden glimpse of a cylindrical object held in the stranger’s hands. It wasn’t a walking stick.

  Gathering his wits, Pace could see there were no glasses on the figure’s face and there was no sign of his own movements, at the entrance lip, having been seen. The stalking figure, he assumed, remained unaware that anyone inside the shelter was awake, let alone up and watching.

  The shelter entrance faced the stalker which gave Pace the advantage. He could see his enemy but the enemy had yet to see him. He’d already made his mind up to shoot the intruder but he needed to close the range to be sure of a killing shot. If he didn’t get a kill with his first few bullets, return fire might end all his problems.