RACE AMAZON: Maelstrom (James Pace novels Book 2)

by Andy Lucas

  He was thrown to the left, then to the right, as Ruby jockeyed to control the thoroughbred machine’s romping course as it flew away from the jetty. Needing to be upright, Pace twisted and scrunched his limbs around like a demented spider until his body righted itself in the seat, pleasantly surprised to be still breathing. Pain burned on his shoulder and he clamped one hand over the wound to staunch the blood, pressing down firmly and feeling the hot, sticky blood oozing through his fingers.

  Outside, an incessant chatter of gunfire was mirrored almost immediately by the terrifying thud of bullets smacking into the little craft. Twisting his head, he glanced at Ruby; sat in the driver’s seat next to his own. He could only see her profile, fixed in single-minded concentration. Vivid scarlet flowed steadily down the side of her face that he could see, from a hidden wound somewhere up on her hairline. Three or four bullet stars in the twin windscreen nearly blocked her vision and she was squinting through a clear section of the glass to steer.

  Another hail of lead punched into the hull, seeming to rain down right next to his left ear. The craft was a specially designed racing model, rugged and all three had been supplied by one of the sponsors, for free.

  Called the K12, and powered by a German-built gas turbine, it was never designed to be bullet proof. It had, however, been built by a company in Canada who specialised in military hovercraft; this was a new sideline for them. Consequently the hull was made from the same composite material they fabricated their military models out of, one of the main ingredients being Kevlar.

  Thankfully the bullets were absorbed easily and none but the ones that came through the windows caused a problem. Pace was amazed that Ruby hadn’t been killed by the ones that had already smashed most of the split-screen.

  There was nothing to do but be a passenger as she sped the little craft out of harms way, literally plucking them from the slavering jaws of death. Cosmos was in the tiny cabin area behind the front seats, keeping his head down and hanging on for dear life to a support rail moulded into the floor.

  The gunfire quickly faded, leaving only the audible whine of the hovercraft’s engine. Cosmos’s grip on the rail eased and he plucked a dressing from a medical kit screwed to the bulkhead and quickly dressed Pace’s shoulder wound. The bleeding had already eased and it hurt little more than a bad cut.

  ‘You are a lucky man,’ beamed the Kenyan, leaning in between the two front seats. ‘A few inches higher and our friends back there,’ he jerked his head towards the back of the hovercraft, ‘would have removed your head cleanly from your neck.’ He was right and to avoid thinking about having no head, Pace had a good look around him. It was the first time he had seen one of these hovercraft for real. Of course he’d seen technical drawings but being inside his first K12, he now understood just how compact they were.

  There were the two moulded cockpit seats up front, occupied by himself and Ruby. Cosmos sat across both the rear bench seats and on top of a tiny recess, Pace guessed, meant for their kit. The roof was open-framed but a soft canvas hood could be pulled over to seal the cabin from bad weather. The roof sat only a few inches above his head. Cosmos took up nearly all the room in the back and Pace idly wondered how five of them would have coped.

  He started to speak to Ruby at the same moment that she slewed the machine around some unseen hazard in the river and he found his face squashed suddenly up against a large glass dial set into the simple rubberised instrument panel in front of him.

  ‘Sorry,’ she muttered absently, her total concentration fixed on controlling the vessel’s careening ride over the rich, brown water.

  Pace hadn’t given the river itself a look yet and he pulled himself upright in his seat to look through an undamaged section of windscreen. They were riding low to the surface, as racing models were designed to do. There was little visible movement on the water’s surface and barely any spray flew up to splash against the glass. The racer was fitted with wipers but they weren’t needed.

  At this point, the river spanned about eighty feet, from tree-encroached bank to bank. Heavy, dense foliage reached right to the water’s edge on both sides. Creepers and other lianas hung down in places, forming natural curtains but there were intermittent areas of exposed brown riverbank and slippery rocks. From deep within the draped folds of green, dark holes and splits seemed to peer out onto the water, regarding them as if with soulless eyes. Even as an educated, spiritless Westerner, he could easily understand how a forest was often described as being alive by its inhabitants.

  The best thing about any hovercraft is its phenomenal rate of speed, mainly unburdened by the water drag that affects hulled vessels. They zipped over the water on its shallow cushion of air, hovering between forty and forty-three knots, leaving only a shallow foam in their wake.

  ‘How far have we come?’ Pace asked Ruby. She glanced down at another display to her left.

  ‘Five miles, nearly six. Any sign of them coming after us?’

  Pursuit hadn’t, until she mentioned it, come into his mind. There had only been one hovercraft moored up, which left two unaccounted for. Suddenly worried, he snapped his head around and stared out of the tiny rear window, past the circular fan propeller that sat dominantly at the back of the little craft. Beyond the invisible, whirling blades, there was only empty river. Because they were slewing around gentle bends continually, he couldn’t see back further than two hundred feet at any one time but they were not being chased.

  In their wake, startled waterfowl began to settle back down on the agitated water in an erratic, disgruntled manner. This noisy new creature of the river was not welcomed by its regular dwellers.

  ‘There should’ve been three machines,’ said Cosmos. ‘I wonder what they have done with them.’

  Then a terrible thought struck Pace; so hard that he physically jerked his head back round to the front, eyes alert for danger. Cosmos looked at him curiously, without any sign he’d been hit by the same nightmare.

  ‘It’s a trap,’ Pace muttered, barely below his breath. Cosmos looked at him as if he’d lost his mind and they both twisted their faces to look at Ruby. Her hands flew across the controls automatically but her own head was cocked on one side, listening. Pace was reminded they needed to tend to her wound, which still bled strongly down her face.

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘Something that covers every eventuality,’ Pace reasoned angrily. ‘If any survivors made an attempt on the hovercraft, the chances of them being gunned down was high, right?’

  ‘Of course. With all those mercenaries back there, it’s a miracle we made it through without one of us being killed at least.’

  ‘Were we lucky? Maybe? But on the slim chance that anybody might manage to get away with their life, and steal a machine, others would need to be moored somewhere downstream, ready to intercept them.’ The more he thought about it, the more he knew they were in trouble. The stretching distance between them and the checkpoint was purely an illusion of freedom, as was the hovercraft’s speed and agility. Somewhere downriver, the enemy lay in wait for them as certainly as they did behind.

  ‘You’ve lost the plot,’ Ruby barked. ‘Maybe you’ve lost more blood than we thought.’

  ‘No, I haven’t. We’re not being chased from behind; there’s no need. We must get off the river. Now!’ His voice held firm, his sense of urgency unmistakeable. ‘It can’t be much longer before we run into trouble.’

  ‘There isn’t anyone waiting for us,’ flustered Ruby, becoming exasperated with Pace for so quickly bringing her hopes of freedom crashing down. ‘The other hovercraft might have been shipped out or sunk for all we know. We’re on our way home and I won’t just stop. I won’t do it,’ she told herself.

  ‘It might make sense to set a trap for us,’ concurred Cosmos quietly, having weighed up Pace’s fears for a moment in his typically gentle, methodical way. There was little trace of emotion in his voice, just a thoughtful collection of words. ‘Allowing just one machine to be moored mig
ht be enough to tempt any stragglers to try for it.’ He rummaged inside the medical kit again as he spoke, then proceeded to clean the nasty glass cut on Ruby’s frontal scalp with an antiseptic wipe.

  ‘Exactly.’ Pace felt his jaw tighten as anxiety began to writhe uncomfortably in the pit of his stomach. ‘Enough to entice us out so that they don’t have to carry on scouring the jungle. Leave the bait and wait.’ He wanted to kick himself. ‘How could we have been so blind?’

  ‘You may be totally wrong, James, let us not forget that.’ Cosmos played devil’s advocate. ‘We could yet find our way back to Manaus unmolested.’

  ‘Do you really believe that?’

  ‘It is another possibility.’

  ‘This is all in your heads!’ snapped Ruby hotly. ‘Total madness. Let’s just get as much speed up as possible and get back to the city. We’ll be safe there.’

  ‘No. We stop now,’ ordered Pace.

  ‘No?’ Ruby queried. ‘If they were so determined to set a trap, why not just plant a bomb? I don’t hear any ticking,’ she added petulantly.

  ‘Those guards back there were really shooting at us. If this thing was rigged to explode, they could have saved their ammunition, or used blanks. The bullet that hit me was real.’

  ‘I think you’re wrong,’ she continued to argue her point.

  ‘Maybe, but I don’t think so. All that matters is pulling off the water, right now.’

  ‘We are all feeling scared and clinging to any chance of life. Fighting amongst ourselves will help only the enemy.’ Cosmos’s observation hit home like a drunk finding that the pavement can bite.

  Pace felt some of his anger being replaced by fatalism. If he was right, it was something their enemy had banked upon. The fact they avoided bullets earlier was a minor inconvenience for the mercenaries, nothing more.

  ‘We must stick together,’ Pace muttered to Ruby. ‘I’m sorry to be brusque but I don’t want us to die after coming so far.’

  ‘Neither do I,’ smiled Ruby wanly. ‘Maybe you are right, or maybe you’re plain crazy.’ Cosmos finished cleaning her head wound and wrapped a bandage neatly around her head, tying it off at the back like a bandana. The little hovercraft whizzed around a sharp bend in the river and Ruby had to perform some fancy piloting to avoid an old fallen tree that leaned in from the bank and blocked three-quarters of the waterway with its skeletal, leafless fingers.

  Once clear she eased back on the throttle and the blur of the riverbanks solidified again into leaves, trees, mud and huge, twisted aerial roots. Slowly she steered the hovercraft into the far bank.

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘You’d better be right, that’s all,’ she grumbled, still not convinced. ‘This could be our one chance to escape and we’re throwing it away.’

  ‘We just need to stop and make a new plan. If nobody comes looking for us in a few hours, then you can tell me I’m a fool and I’ll owe you both a huge apology. But at least we will still be alive, either way.’

  Slowly they swept into the bank. Pace stood up on his seat, pleased the material soft-top roof was neatly stowed away, and rested the Sten on the rubber lip running around the roof frame, exposed to the air from the mid-waist up. He squinted down the sights as the bank drew near.

  Then they nosed on to the brown, reed strewn mud that rose barely three inches from the water. There were no hanging creepers here and the view into the trees was fairly clear until it fused into shadow a few feet in. Ruby killed the engine and silence returned.

  As the only armed team member, it fell to Pace to check there weren’t any mercenaries lurking nearby. Cautiously he climbed out of the open cockpit and jumped down onto the muddy bank. He purposefully moved into the trees, sweeping his gun from left to right, scanning for any signs of trouble. There was the occasional rustle of leaves that raised his heartbeat temporarily but nothing leaped out to eat him or demand his surrender. The animal noises from high above the ground slowly filled the air again, as the forest creatures forgot the anarchy of the now stilled engine.

  High above his head, monkeys started eating and playing again, watched by hungry arboreal snakes, chattering exotic birds, and generally disinterested lizards.

  He stepped back to the riverbank, beckoning for Ruby to bring the little craft up with a wave of one hand. He couldn’t see beyond the shattered glass of the driver’s front window but she obviously registered the signal because the engine immediately exploded into raucous life again and the machine floated up the lip of the bank and eased beneath the protection of the trees, the noise resonating terribly within the cathedral-sized confines of the canopy.

  Pace guided her in, around two huge tree trunks, until the machine was completely obscured from the river. Nodding, he drew one hand across his throat and Ruby complied by switching off the engine. The welcome silence was, for a second time, deafening.

  The next ten minutes passed in frantic activity. First of all, they had to check the hovercraft over for damage, it was frightening how many bullets had struck it. There was barely a fist-sized area that hadn’t taken a hit, but dents in the Kevlar was all the bullets could muster. The engine and fans were undamaged, as was most of the air cushion. It was designed to be compartmentalised and only the rear, port air sac was holed. The remaining three were undamaged and the little K12 seemed to work fine on just three.

  A check of their stores brought both good and bad news. While the small storage compartment beneath the rear seats had been stripped out, the emergency box had been left. Apart from a second first aid kit, there was a similarly sized survival pack. The mercenaries had not thought enough of their chances to bother removing it or they hadn’t realised what it was.

  The main supply of food and water they had hoped to find was missing but the survival pack contained two large bottles of drinking water; about four litres in total. It also boasted two ultra-light foil sheets, a dozen small bars of chocolate and a packet of high-energy biscuits, two spools of fishing line, an array of hooks and floats, matches, a small pen torch, miniature compass, penknife and some needles and thread.

  The two medical kits had the usual assortment of bandages, dressing and plasters but there were also a number of refinements such as single-application syringes of penicillin, quinine and adrenaline. A tiny pair of scissors and a plastic eye-bath nestled in their respective niches, set in the lid of the tiny green plastic box.

  Ibuprofen tablets, a small bottle of aspirin and a tube of anti-biotic cream completed the drug selection. Added to the full medical kit retrieved from Attia’s body, they were fairly well covered for basic emergencies. Rations being limited, they had to make some speedy decisions.

  The most important item in the survival kit, and one Pace could hardly believe was there, was a blood-red, hand-held radio transmitter. When they were running through their equipment training back in Manaus, they were all shown how to work one.

  Compared to the large transmitter in his backpack, they were little more than a child’s toy, with a battery life of no more than six hours from new and a paltry range of ten miles. They were purely for use in an emergency and probably wouldn’t be much good even then. They could be switched to transmit, on one of three pre-set frequencies, or left on a beacon mode.

  In this state, the set would emit a homing signal every fifteen seconds until the batteries failed, allowing rescuers to fix the position of the team.

  The three of them stood outside the hovercraft, with the rain beginning to patter lightly against the treetops above their heads, and surveyed their hoard. It wasn’t great but it was something at least. He took a moment to check his watch, noting it was still only seven o’clock. The sun was up, although shrouded and diffused by low, swollen clouds clearly visible above the wide stretch of river.

  After a brief conference, they agreed to sit it out for the day and attempt to slip downstream under cover of darkness. Navigating in the dark would be difficult but the hovercraft would take submerged rocks and branches in its stride. The
real danger would come from any human element that might be waiting, perhaps anticipating the move. Darkness, especially if it rained heavily, would be their protector. It could do nothing to muffle the engine noise but it would definitely make them a harder target to sink. Pace remained convinced that a trap waited for them, so running in the dark was a necessary risk. The others agreed.

  The day dragged its heels, with each of them taking turns, three-hourly, to crouch in the thick mud of the riverbank, hidden behind low vegetation, to keep watch over the sullen water. Gentle rain fell until noon, the skies clearing rapidly afterwards with the afternoon breaking clear and hot. Humidity stayed constant, sapping their energy levels but they were all accustomed to it by now. As the water vapour and rising heat worked in tandem to draw sweat from their pores, they tried hard not to move and talked as little as possible to conserve their bodily fluids.

  At a shade past three o’clock, during Ruby’s watch, a commotion from the direction of the river snapped Pace from a half-hearted, fly-irritated doze. Cosmos was already up and alert, as Pace rose from his position; sitting with his back propped against the hull of the hovercraft, and crossed the few paces to where the huge Kenyan stood.

  Ruby chose that second to appear. Her face was drawn and her complexion was swollen and ruddy from relentless sweating.

  ‘What is it?’ Cosmos asked. At the same time, a high whirring sound floated to their ears, growing louder by the second.

  ‘Our friends aren’t giving up by the looks of things.’

  ‘How many?’ asked Pace, hurriedly retrieving the Sten from where he’d been sitting.

  ‘Three boats,’ explained Ruby. ‘Two inflatables, with large outboards engines on the back. I couldn’t see how many people were in each.’