“They weren’t doing much there,” he said, not bothering to deny admiring her, any response but admission an obvious lie.
When she reached her bedroom, she tossed him a knowing look over her shoulder, and he decided to cut his losses and leave her to the dinner preparations. The warm shower was calling to him after a long day’s exertions, and his better judgment was telling him that with Jack in the mix, he’d be better off sticking to deciphering the journal than exploring the rebellious look in Allie’s dancing eyes.
Chapter Twenty
Thunderstorms moved through the valley while Drake and his companions ate breakfast on the veranda. Fortunately, the morning’s downpours had tapered off enough to continue with their training by the time they’d finished eating.
Paolo’s wife cleaned up the dishes as they returned to their rooms to collect their things. Drake’s body felt every minute of the prior day’s abuse: his shoulders and arms were stiff, and his muscles protested as he climbed the stairs. He withdrew the big knife from his backpack and strapped it onto his hip, the weight oddly reassuring. The knife seemed like a very real link between father and son, and he resolved to wear it for the duration.
The slog to the clearing took longer than the prior day. Flocks of birds rose into the gray sky as they passed, the air smelling like ozone and wood smoke, the tall grass rustling softly from stray gusts of wind, the trail now mud, pulling greedily at their shoes with every step. When they arrived, Jack stood by the same spot and gave a brief lecture on knife techniques, and then demonstrated them with a short length of dowel he’d found in one of the drawers.
It was immediately obvious why anyone with a functioning brain would want to avoid a knife fight at all costs. When Jack demonstrated the most effective attack, it was truly terrifying. He held the dowel low by his right side as he used his left to block any potential threat. Drake could see why no matter how skilled the defender, he was going to get cut – in most cases, badly cut.
“Add to the pure violence of a knife-wielding attacker your inability to do much to stop him, and you’ll see why it’s the absolutely last thing you ever want to deal with.”
They continued, and after a morning focused on knives, they munched on sandwiches while Jack chatted about guns.
“Let’s talk about silencers. Specifically, on pistols. First, they’re called suppressors, not silencers, by anyone who knows anything about them. Second, with ordinary ammo they’re still really loud. So if you’re thinking you can be like one of those guys on TV and sneak up on your target and pop him without anyone noticing, think again.”
Drake nodded. “What I’m getting out of all this is that it’s hard to kill someone, hard to do so quietly, and hard no matter what method you use.”
Jack grunted. “Yep. But at the end of the day, a gun’s the surest chance you have, so if you can’t dodge a fight altogether, which is what I keep coming back to as the smartest choice, it’s how you want to take on your attackers. But the same things that will make you harder to shoot will work against you. Moving, for instance.”
“I found that out the hard way back in the Rio slum,” Drake affirmed.
“Five more minutes and we’ll start on knots. Allie, this will be more interesting for you. I’ve never really shown you most of these.”
Allie didn’t look convinced. “How about some kind of super ninja skills? That’s what I want to learn.”
Jack grinned. “The takeaway from all this is that your best skill is the ability to stay calm under pressure. That’s a very rare trait. Most soldiers can’t manage it. So that’s what we’ll be practicing. Because to have a chance against professional killers, who will be calm, you need to match them, or you’ll be dead before you know it.”
A cloudburst hit in the afternoon and they had to run for the house, getting soaked by the warm rain in the process. When they arrived, Jack stood under the overhang, water dripping off his nose, watching the deluge.
“That’s one of the things I remember about the trip with your dad. The rain. It hits out of the blue, and it soaks everything. That was the worst part about it. Worse than the bugs, the snakes, you name it. Constant rain. At least at this time of year, it might be a little better than when we were there – right in the middle of the wet season.”
“How long were you in the jungle for?”
“Almost a month. Seemed like it was never going to go anywhere, and then your father discovered the remains of one of the outposts built along the trail from Peru to Paititi. We actually found that in the area that’s laughingly referred to as their Matsés National Park. Don’t let the name fool you – it’s a frigging swamp. Mosquitoes the size of baseballs, venomous insects too numerous to count. Small wonder nobody’s bothered to do much exploration there.”
“Don’t sugarcoat it, Dad,” Allie said.
“Nothing I say will prepare you for the reality of that place – and the Brazilian side’s as bad or worse. This is a vacation at the Ritz compared to what we’re going to be going into.”
A car bounced up the drive, both sides covered in mud up to the windows, and Jack squinted to make out the driver. “That’s my meeting. You two get cleaned up. No point in trying to do anything more with this coming down. If all goes well, we’ll be getting out of here soon.”
Drake and Allie exchanged puzzled looks and she shrugged. Drake followed her into the house, both trailing puddles of water on the rustic hardwood floor. Allie climbed the stairs and looked over her shoulder at Drake with a small smile.
“You want the first shower?” she asked.
“I was thinking I could wrestle you for it. Sort of like combat practice.”
“Haven’t you gotten beaten up enough? If I didn’t know better, I’d have said he wanted to torture you.”
“I wasn’t going to say anything. Plus, you looked way too amused by my misery.”
“That’s not true. I mean, not completely true. You risked your life to recover my purse. That earns a lot of points, Ramsey.”
“Could have fooled me,” he said, and then changed the subject. “Who’s your dad meeting with, anyway? He’s being very secretive.”
“I don’t know. But I wouldn’t read too much into it. He’s always like that.”
Drake paused by his bedroom door. “You can take the first shower. I’m good.”
“A real gentleman, I see. Tell you what, I’ll buy you a beer in half an hour. In the kitchen. I saw they stocked a few six-packs.”
Drake grinned. “Deal. Let me know if you need your back scrubbed or something,” he tried, and immediately regretted it.
She took it in stride. “Did you make my dad the same offer?”
Drake recovered quickly. “You bet. Especially after he spent the last two days beating the snot out of me.”
Her frank gaze met his with a look he couldn’t read. “I’ll leave you some soap. You look like you need it. Go on. I’ll be out in a few.”
He took the hint, his arms sore from hundreds of blocks, and pushed into his bedroom, wondering simultaneously at Allie’s unreadable demeanor and the visitor who’d come in the middle of a rainstorm to the Brazilian hinterlands to meet with Jack on unknown business.
The rain beat a steady tattoo on the metal roof as he stripped off his clothes and wrapped a towel around his waist. The storm had blown through, the insistent percussive attack now little more than a drizzle. Drake stretched his arms over his head and yawned, and then moved to the window to look out. He squinted through the grimy panes of glass at the area beside the house where the newcomer was parked, and saw nothing but muddy puddles of water and two ruts already filled from the downpour.
The car was gone.
Chapter Twenty-One
Jack was quiet at dinner, wolfing down heaping mouthfuls of a delicious stew Paolo’s wife had cooked up. When he finished with his bowl, he sat back and took a long sip of water before speaking.
“We’ll be leaving tomorrow. Flying to Lima. My contact arranged
for an introduction to someone who’s familiar with the area and can get us whatever we need.”
“What time do we leave?” Allie asked.
“Someone will pick us up at six. So, early. Back to Rio, then to Peru, which will take most of the day. I meet his guy tomorrow evening in Lima.”
“How do you know you can trust him?” Drake asked.
“How can I be sure I can trust anyone here? He’s being recommended by a friend. An expat who’s been in country for a long time and has his fingers in a lot of pies. So he rubs shoulders with plenty of people who are, shall we say, helpful when it comes to niggling issues like crossing borders without paperwork, getting weapons…”
“Great. Who is this recommendation, exactly? What does he do?”
“The way my friend described it, he’s a facilitator who does a lot of business in the tri-border area – Brazil, Bolivia, and Peru. Knows the customs, the locals.”
Drake nodded. “He’s a smuggler?”
“An ugly word.”
“For an ugly occupation.”
“The world here’s different. It requires a certain…ethical flexibility. Corruption is endemic, and there are a lot of people who exist in a gray area that would be illegal in the States. Here, they make the machine work. They get things done. They arrange things.”
“What else does the guy have on his résumé?” Allie asked.
“He’s been in the region for over ten years. The jungles are his backyard. Speaks some of the local dialects. Most importantly, he likes money. And he’s always hungry. My friend contacted his associates in Peru, and this was the only name that came back. So he’s our only choice.”
Allie and Drake shared after-dinner beers once Jack had retired for the night. They sat outside, stargazing, the clouds having blown west earlier. The trees around them buzzed and clicked and rustled with nocturnal creatures, and with all the lights off except for the one in the kitchen, the darkened compound could have been uninhabited.
“You think we’ll actually be able to pull this off?” Allie asked, swinging one leg lazily as she reclined in an outdoor chair crafted from wood and hide.
“If anyone can, we can. Don’t ask me why I feel that way, but I do. Maybe it’s having read the journal, I appreciate the logic that went into my father’s reasoning. Or maybe it’s because I’m stubborn, and I always finish what I set out to do.”
“Have you always been that way?” she asked, taking a pull on the bottle of beer.
“As long as I can remember. My mom said that’s how my dad was, too. She said it probably ran in the genes. When she first told me that, I was about six. I ran around for a week wondering where in my jeans stubbornness was running – what it looked like and how she could see it.”
Allie laughed. Drake took a swig from his brew and set it down by the side of his chair. “What about you? What does the trained archeologist among us think?”
Allie beetled her brow. “I don’t have an opinion yet, because I don’t fully know what we’re up against. In a way, it’s like a needle in a haystack. Worse, really. We need something that will narrow the odds. Hopefully the journal will help us do that. It would really help if I knew what you did. I guess that’s what I’m saying.”
Drake nodded. “The journal’s really a set of deductions based on a careful examination of the oral and written histories that exist. Much of it’s speculation, but it seems well founded. Remember that my father made at least four prior trips here, so he felt like he was onto something to make the final one. And your dad says that my father believed he was only a day or two from locating the treasure when he was killed. Really, all we need to do is get back to that last camp area and see if we can find any of the landmarks he mentions – waterfalls, a stone jaguar, an arch. Waterfalls near Paititi are consistently mentioned.”
“Then it’s really going to be more about thoroughness than any aha moment.”
“That’s how it sounds. Good old-fashioned grunt work,” Drake agreed.
“If that’s all it would take, I wonder why the Russians never found it.”
“Because they’re criminals, not critical thinkers or archeologists. That’s my guess. If we see them, we can ask,” Drake said.
“I wonder why they killed him. Your dad?” Allie said softly.
“Maybe he wouldn’t tell them what they wanted to know. Or maybe he did, but it wasn’t the truth – or simply wasn’t enough to go on. I’ve come to grips with the idea that I’ll never know. Whatever happened, only a few people were there. My dad. The two Russians. Maybe helpers, if they had any.” Drake paused. “Or here’s an idea that came to me a while ago: we’ve been assuming the Russians killed him. What if they didn’t? I mean, we know they were in the jungle, but so were the local tribes, and probably smugglers, and who knows whom else. It’s possible he was killed for reasons that have nothing to do with Paititi.”
Allie shook her head, disagreeing. “I’ll go with ‘the murderous psychos chasing us killed your dad’ as the most likely, though.”
Drake finished his beer with a nod. “Seems the most obvious. But I’m also willing to entertain the possibility that he was killed and the Russians either didn’t do it, or didn’t learn anything, and that’s why any information they got didn’t help them. It doesn’t change much from our end, but one of the things that comes through loud and clear in the journal is my father’s philosophy of keeping an open mind. Maybe that’s not such a bad thing.”
“It’s never a bad thing,” Allie agreed.
Drake went inside, retrieved two more beers and popped the tops off using his new knife. He handed one to Allie and returned to his seat.
“What about you, Allie? Seeing as we’re going to be going into the deepest darkest reaches of the rainforest together. What are you all about?” he asked, his tone light but the question serious.
“What is there to tell? I’m just a girl. Grew up without a mother, for the most part. Spent most of my time working my ass off in school. And then trying to find a job. There’s not a lot more. It’s not like I have some fascinating hobby or anything. Just a girl out in the world trying to get by.”
“That’s it? There’s always more. Come on. Give.”
“Okay. I’m also a serial killer. Been abducting hot young male hitchhikers for the last five years, keeping them locked in the basement to pleasure me, and then offing them when I grow bored. Oh, and I cook ’em and eat ’em like that Hannibal dude.”
“Sounds like you’re not getting enough fiber in your diet.”
“Or greens. It’s really hard to prepare a balanced hitchhiker meal.”
They sat comfortably, bantering easily for another fifteen minutes, but when they mounted the stairs to the bedrooms, Drake knew little more about Allie than he had that morning. A part of him wondered what she was hiding or defending against, but another cautioned against being too interested. He needed to work with Jack, and that would be almost impossible if Allie and he became a thing.
Morning came too soon, and he was still groggy when he descended with his bag. Allie and Jack were at the dining room table, drinking coffee and nibbling at their plates.
“Hey. Good morning. There are some more eggs on the stove. Just heat them up for thirty seconds and you should be golden,” she said as he dropped his backpack near the door.
“Thanks.” He helped himself, preferring to wolf his breakfast down lukewarm from the pan. Two minutes later he sat down across from them with a mug of steaming coffee and checked the time. “At least I’m not late.”
“You’ll find that once we’re in the jungle, you’ll be rising at dawn,” Jack said. No greeting. Just a terse warning. Drake had already grown accustomed to his abrupt style, so he merely nodded.
A car approached the front of the house, its exhaust burbling from a deteriorated muffler, and they quickly finished their coffee and rose.
“I’ve got to take care of Paolo. Go ahead and load the stuff into the car. I’ll be right back,” Jack said
as he moved to the door. Drake and Allie hefted the bags and followed him out into the bright sunlight. The heat was already rising and the atmosphere humid, as it had been since their arrival in the tropics. The driver, a tall black man with a shaved head, helped them load the luggage into the battered sedan, and when Jack returned they all piled in, Jack in the front seat, Drake and Allie in the rear.
The flight to Peru took five hours, and when they arrived they quickly passed through customs and caught a taxi to their hotel. They agreed to rendezvous for dinner after Jack’s meeting with his contact, which was arranged for seven that evening at a nearby watering hole.
Now that they were nearing putting boots on the ground and heading into the rainforest, Drake was feeling a mixture of excitement and trepidation. The theoretical was about to become real, and the prospect of walking the same trails as his father was invigorating and terrifying. He tried to rest after eating a late lunch, but his mind raced, and after an hour tossing and turning he flicked on the light and reread his notes for the fiftieth time, hoping for some new kernel that had escaped him thus far.
He was disappointed. There were no revelations, no breakthroughs, and the task on which he was about to embark seemed as impossible as ever. He locked the notes in the room safe and returned to the bed, and spent the next hour trying to sleep. When he did finally drift off, his dreams filled with visions of fleeing through the jungle chased by invisible pursuers.
~ ~ ~
Jack stood outside the bar for several minutes waiting for seven o’clock to roll around, leaning against the red mortar façade with a casual ease as practiced as a streetwalker’s, studying the neighborhood and calculating escape routes in case he had to bolt. The habit was unconscious, like so many of his survival instincts, honed over the years and now as indelible a part of his makeup as his crow’s feet or the aches in his bones.
A beggar in tattered rags shuffled toward him with a grimy hand extended, and Jack fingered a couple of coins and dropped them into his palm, more for the sake of the skinny dog trailing him than out of compassion for the man. The beggar offered a muttered gracias and their eyes met for an instant. Jack immediately regretted his generosity – the vagrant’s pupils were dilated with the telltale look of the drug-addled, and he was much younger than Jack had originally thought.
Ramsey's Gold (Drake Ramsey Book 1) Page 14