Jack nodded at Spencer and left without a sound. Drake and Spencer watched as the guard bounced on his haunches and then stood again. He paced back and forth before easing himself into a seated position beneath the drooping fabric square, seemingly unruffled by the cloudburst.
Jack appeared at the edge of the clearing behind him, moving in a crouch, each step carefully placed, the falling rain masking any sound his boots made on the wet ground.
Spencer leaned in to Drake. “When he drops the guard, don’t hesitate. Get to Allie, cut her loose, tell her to stay quiet, and get to the river. If something goes wrong and there’s shooting, don’t stop, don’t try to join in…don’t do anything but get her clear. Understand?”
“Got it.”
Jack prowled through the tall grass toward the sentry. Drake watched through the goggles, fascinated, his stomach in a knot as the older man closed the distance to the guard. Twenty feet, then ten, then five, and then he was on him, one hand across the man’s mouth as he drove his combat knife into the base of his neck, instantly severing his spinal cord. Spencer nudged Drake into action, and he sprinted from behind the plants and across the clearing as Jack gently lowered the guard’s inert form to the ground. His first errand complete, Jack swiveled with his rifle, watching for any movement from the sleeping gunmen.
Drake reached Allie and she started awake, obviously surprised by his sudden proximity. He saw panic in her eyes and realized that she couldn’t make out who it was, especially with the night vision goggles covering most of his face.
“Allie, it’s me. Drake. I’m going to cut you loose and we’re getting out of here. Don’t say anything, stay quiet.” Drake realized as he spoke that she couldn’t talk with the bandanna gag. He pulled it out of her mouth and sliced at the rope binding her wrists, careful not to slash her with the big knife’s razor-sharp blade.
“Wha–”
“Shhh. Are you hurt?” he murmured.
“No.”
“You think you can run?”
“Damned right I can.”
“Okay. Quiet as possible. Take my hand and follow me,” Drake said, sheathing the blade and gripping his rifle.
They rose and, after a final look around, crept to the river twenty yards down the bank. They were three-quarters of the way to the water when Allie stifled a cry. She’d landed on her bad ankle the wrong way, sending a streak of blinding pain up her leg.
A grunt sounded from beneath the tarp, and one of the men called out a query in Spanish.
When no response came, the gunmen scrambled for their weapons as Drake practically carried Allie the rest of the way to the river. Gunfire exploded behind them in the night, instantly answered by the percussive bark of Jack’s rifle. After that, everything seemed to happen at once. Muzzle flashes lit up the clearing as the guards fired indiscriminately at the perimeter. They were quickly joined by the two Russians, who emerged from their tents spraying lead with their AKs on full auto.
Spencer picked off one of the guards, and Jack another, and then a stray round struck Jack in the chest. He went down hard, coughed, and scrambled to his feet, returning fire as he made his break for the jungle’s cover. Spencer lay down measured volleys as Jack stumbled toward him.
Jack threw himself into the undergrowth as rounds whistled by, and then Spencer had his arm around him and half dragged him farther into the jungle. Spencer held his AK in front of him, using the scope to see, and soon the hiss of slugs tearing through the leaves died as they moved deeper into the brush.
“We…need to…get to the river…Allie…” Jack said. Spencer heard the telltale burble of blood in his breathing, as well as the sound of air sucked through Jack’s chest wound.
“Okay. We will. Save your strength. The river’s off to our right. Come on. You can make it.”
They stumbled through the undergrowth, Jack’s legs barely supporting him as he tried to keep up with Spencer. After what seemed like an eternity, they saw a ribbon of water, rain rippling the surface in the darkness.
“We’re here. Now all we have to do is wait,” Spencer hissed. Jack collapsed in a heap on the bank, his lifeblood seeping from his chest, his shirt soaked with its inky stain.
They heard splashing from their right. Drake and Allie materialized out of the night. When Allie saw Jack struggling to breathe in the dim moonlight, she dropped to her knees next to him.
“Oh, God. What happened? Are you…” She looked up at Spencer.
Spencer shook his head. “He’s hit. Bad.”
Allie put her hand on Jack’s cheek. He felt cold. His eyes flitted open and he took her in.
“We…got you out…of there.”
“Yes. You did.”
“Took a couple of them with us, too.” He coughed, and she could see the crimson trickle from his lips. He groaned and shut his eyes again. “Get moving. I’m done for.”
“No. I won’t leave you here,” Allie cried. Drake squeezed her hand.
“Shhh. They’ll hear you, and then we’re all dead.”
She bit back her response and nodded, her eyes welling with tears as the rain washed Jack’s blood into rivulets that strained down to the river.
Jack hacked, an ugly wet sound. “Drake…I’m….sorry about…your dad…”
“You did everything you could. Don’t worry about it, Jack. It’s over.”
Jack shook his head. “No. You…don’t…understand.”
Drake leaned in closer. “What don’t I understand?”
“I…he wasn’t…supposed to get…hurt…” Another cough, this one accompanied with blood and wheezing through the chest wound. “Something went…wrong.”
“What do you mean, he wasn’t supposed to get hurt? By who?”
“I’m…sorry. The…Russians. They…promi–”
Drake had never heard a death rattle before. It wasn’t so much a rattle as a long, gurgling moan. Jack stared heavenward, his final regret dying on his lips, gazing into eternity as droplets of warm rain fell into his open eyes.
“We need to get out of here. Grab his gun and his backpack. Hurry,” Spencer whispered, breaking the spell. Drake picked up Jack’s rifle and slipped his backpack off, his movements wooden, his mind reeling from Jack’s revelation. The bastard had sold his father out. No doubt for a handsome figure – enough so he’d never had to work again. But something had gone wrong. Dad hadn’t cooperated and things had turned ugly, robbing Drake of his father.
They plodded down the side of the river until Spencer stopped and turned.
“The goggles. Give them to me. Quick.”
Drake handed them over. Shots rang out behind them, and slugs smacked into the wet dirt. Spencer scrambled up the bank and growled at Drake and Allie. “Follow me.”
Allie crawled to Spencer and he pulled her to her feet. Drake was right behind her, his boots slipping in the slick mud as he fought for a foothold. Then they were moving along a trail, branches tearing at his skin as he pushed through them, Jack’s confession burning in his ears as they plunged deeper into the jungle’s embrace.
Chapter Thirty-Four
“It’s still pretty swollen,” Drake said as he inspected Allie’s ankle in the hazy morning light.
They’d made it to the outpost and tried to rest, adrenaline from the nocturnal escape still coursing through their systems. Jack’s words and the reality of his death had made it impossible to sleep. Allie had been quiet, and Drake left her alone with her thoughts.
Drake’s mind was racing now that he knew his father’s best friend had betrayed him. For all of Jack’s remorse, wasn’t it equally possible that he’d betrayed Drake as well, only this time to the CIA? No wonder he’d been so adamant about Drake taking the offer. He wondered what Jack had been offered to encourage him to jump at it? Ten million? Twenty? Had he still been planning to betray them later on?
The rain had ended at some point during the night, and once dawn had broken he’d gone to check on Allie, who looked puffy and red-eyed, her ankle still s
wollen.
“It hurts, but not as much as when I first sprained it.” She hesitated. “Thank you for risking your life to rescue me.”
Drake felt color rush to his face and looked away. “You would have done the same for me.”
“Easy to say after the fact. But I want to tell you that I appreciate everything you did. I wouldn’t be here if you hadn’t put it all on the line for me.”
Drake’s voice softened. “I’m a sucker for a damsel in distress.”
“I’ll have to remember that.”
Drake hesitated. “I’m sorry about Jack.”
She closed her eyes and nodded. “And I’m sorry about your father. I couldn’t believe my ears.”
“That was a long time ago. And it sounds like he was surprised they killed him.” Drake shook his head. Excusing Jack’s treachery didn’t come easily, even if it was to make Allie feel better.
Spencer approached from where he’d been standing at the edge of the clearing, his AK at the ready.
“We should probably give your ankle another day to heal before we try to move,” Spencer said. “Keep it elevated. That’ll reduce the inflammation.”
“What are the odds they can find us?” she asked in a small voice.
Spencer shook his head. “Pretty low. With the rain, they wouldn’t be able to track us easily, and since we’re not on any trails, it would be almost impossible. Having said that, we still need to be careful and quiet. No point in making their job any easier. And remember that they’re not the only bad guys in this jungle.” He stared at the remnants of the Inca outpost. “By tomorrow afternoon, we’ll be miles away. I like our chances.”
“We can get going today. My ankle really does feel better than yesterday.”
“Don’t sweat it. Give it time to mend,” Drake echoed, which seemed to settle it.
In the late afternoon Drake and Spencer tried their hand at hunting with the crossbows, as there were no nearby rivers. Spencer showed Drake how to cock the bowstring, and they practiced firing at a tree for an hour. Drake found that he was pretty accurate with the weapon – surprisingly so at up to thirty yards – more than with a pistol.
When they finished practicing, they screwed hunting tips onto the carbon shafts and headed into the brush.
“What are we looking for?” Drake whispered.
“Anything we can eat. Python, deer, monkey…”
“I thought you were kidding about monkey.”
“Do I strike you as a kidder?”
“What about–”
“Shhh.” Spencer stopped and cocked his head to the side, listening. He stood frozen, then leaned into Drake as a light breeze dented the canopy above them. “Get ready. I think we got lucky.”
“What?”
Instead of answering, Spencer opened his mouth and slapped one cheek, making a hollow ponk sound. He repeated the odd performance several times before raising his crossbow and pointing it into the brush. Drake narrowed his eyes, trying futilely to make anything out. He was just about to say something when he heard grunting and snorting from ahead. He froze, waiting. Spencer was tracking something with his crossbow, and Drake was just raising his when Spencer fired. His bowstring snapped, and Spencer whispered to Drake.
“Give me your bow. Quick.”
Drake did as instructed and Spencer fired again. Drake heard movement racing through the brush, as if a herd of deer were tearing away. When it had grown quiet again, Spencer pushed branches aside and led Drake to their prize: what appeared to be a small boar, with a quarrel embedded in its side and another in its skull.
“What is that?” Drake asked as Spencer knelt beside the dead animal.
“White-lipped peccary. This is a juvenile. Maybe thirty pounds. Adults can get up to more than double that. They’re good eating. What we heard crashing through the brush was the rest of the herd. They travel together in large groups – up to a hundred or more.” Spencer eyed Drake’s knife. “Give me that shiv of yours and I’ll dress it right here. No point in hauling the carcass back to camp.”
Drake handed it to Spencer, who expertly carved steaks and slipped them into a plastic garbage bag he’d brought. He cleaned the blade with some of his canteen water and wiped it on the peccary’s bristly coat. The whole procedure took no more than five minutes, and they were soon returning with ten pounds of meat for dinner.
“We can cook it tonight and it should keep for breakfast. Unfortunately in this heat it won’t last longer.”
“How do you cook it?”
“Very carefully.”
Allie was sitting under a tree when they arrived, her Kalashnikov beside her for companionship, a look of relief on her face when she saw them.
“Did you get anything?”
Drake told her about the peccary, and she made a face. “Tell me it didn’t look like Bambi.”
“I can swear it looked absolutely nothing like Bambi. Honest,” he said, hand on his chest.
The steaks smelled mouthwatering when Spencer cooked them, and they tasted like butter after days of eating nothing but fish and dry food. He slipped the leftovers into another bag and wrapped it carefully, then sealed it in yet another bag.
“We want to ensure that nothing comes sniffing around in the middle of the night. I wouldn’t want to try to take on a jaguar in the dark. Or at any time, but especially not at night,” he warned. Drake believed him. He didn’t want to ask him how he knew.
Morning brought more hiking, but tougher going due to the absence of trails. Spencer studied Jack’s GPS and calculated the route direction, and then zoomed out and studied the satellite image, which showed a solid field of green.
Using the trajectory from the final outpost’s paver stones, their goal for the day was a barely visible stream eleven miles east. While they were in uncharted territory now regarding what to expect, their hope was that the same general pattern would hold and that they were no more than twenty-five miles from Paititi – or two days’ hard push from their current location.
Allie pushed along without slowing them down, determined to not be a hindrance. Her limp lessened through the morning, and by the time they reached the stream where they would camp for the night, she seemed greatly improved.
They spent most of their daylight hours the following day slogging through the rain, following game trails through the jungle as they pressed on. In the early afternoon they heard the crashing of a nearby waterfall – a promising sound, because the journal had theorized that Paititi would be located in an area surrounded by waterfalls and a river.
At the base of the waterfall, they took a break while Spencer studied the GPS. “We’re two miles short. You want to keep going, or have you had enough for today?” he asked.
Drake eyed Allie. “It’s up to her. I could go on. But if there’s no pressing reason to, this is a pretty nice spot.”
Allie pursed her lips. “Oh, sure, make it all about me. I’m fine.”
“This is a good place to camp. And the rain’s letting up, so it’ll get hot soon. I vote for stopping here today,” Spencer said.
The river below the small waterfall proved to be full of fish, and they feasted on several different types that they roasted over a fire. The rain had stopped an hour after they set up the tents, and Spencer had used his petroleum jelly to ignite a small pile of damp branches in order to dry out an armful of others.
They spent the next two days exploring their surroundings, using their new camp as base, but their efforts yielded nothing but exhaustion. As their second evening by the waterfall drew to a close, Spencer’s skepticism about their chances of success grew more pronounced. Drake tried to ignore him, but the doubts had an insidious effect. He could tell Allie was also wavering, but they had no option B.
On the third afternoon, Drake was chopping his way through some particularly dense jungle, his machete heavy in his tired hand, when he heard the roar of falling water ahead – another waterfall, but bigger than the one they’d camped by. Allie called out softly
from behind him.
“Do you hear that?” she asked.
“I do. Follow me. It can’t be much farther,” Drake answered.
“Lead the way,” Spencer said, his tone morose.
Drake hacked at the foliage with renewed vigor, and in a few minutes he emerged onto a ledge overlooking a breathtaking sight – easily five stories of water tumbling over a cliff edge into rushing rapids below.
“I’d say that qualifies as a waterfall,” Drake said, inching along the rock outcropping to get a better look at the pool below.
When his feet went out from under him, slipping on moss he hadn’t seen, it felt like gravity was suspended for a brief moment, and then the wind was knocked out of him as he landed on his back, though his backpack absorbed the worst of it. He shook his head groggily and tried to stand as Allie edged closer to help him, but felt himself sliding inexorably toward the precipice, the slick growth covering the rock accelerating his fall.
Allie and Spencer watched in horror as Drake’s expression went from confusion to fear in a kind of slow motion. Desperate, he clawed at the rock, trying to find a hold. Blood stained the surface of the stone as he tried to latch on to it to break his slide, and then he was gone, sucked into the roaring vortex.
“No!” Allie yelled, pushing forward. Spencer restrained her, knowing that if she made it much farther onto the ledge, the same fate awaited her.
“Stop screaming. Unless you want to draw every hostile for ten miles,” Spencer warned, his tone sharp.
“Oh, God. We have to help him…”
“Not by joining him. Come on. Let’s find a way to the bottom.”
Spencer backed away from the edge, pulling Allie with him. Farther in the brush they found a faint track that led down the side of the slope. After some rough terrain, they emerged at the base of the waterfall, where the cascading water exploded into a deep pool before frothing along a narrower channel that transformed into whitewater rapids. Spencer shrugged off his backpack and removed his shoes, and then dove into the pool as Allie watched.
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