Pray for Death (A Gunn Brothers Thriller)

by James Hilton

  White-Hair reached out and took hold of Celine by the back of her neck. “Move. Now.”

  “I’ll be alright,” said Gillian, her voice barely above a whisper. The look in her eyes told a very different story. The brief words of reassurance did not prevent Celine’s heart racing as the two friends were separated.

  25

  The rising sun burned through the canopy with bright daggers of light. The three men had broken camp before dawn. After a quick breakfast of coffee and granola bars, they’d loaded the tents and camping equipment back into the Jeep. The brothers carried only the most essential kit on their persons. Moving with a steady gait, the old man led the way. Danny followed with Clay a few steps behind. Using a trick they had learned from their father, the brothers spoke in turn of any points of interest as they passed.

  “Tree with no leaves,” said Danny.

  A minute later Clay added, “Rock shaped like a popsicle.”

  Jak cast more than one curious glance at the brothers as they spoke. After a while, he paused. “You’re marking your way back to your vehicle.”

  Danny nodded. “We may not have you to lead us back again. We’ve been moving steadily south-west from the Jeep. We just might have to double-time it back again if things go tits-up.”

  “I like the way you talk,” said Jak. “You sound like the school caretaker from The Simpsons.”

  “That’s just great, I meet a random Mexican Indian in the middle of the jungle and he compares me to Grounds-keeper Willie.”

  Clay nudged Danny with his elbow as he drew level. “Do your Sean Connery, that’ll impress him no end.”

  “I love Sean Connery. He was my favourite James Bond,” said Jak as he looked back over his shoulder.

  “Well, Jak Shanarani, you’re a shite for shore eyes.”

  Clay barked with laughter. Jak raised one eyebrow but said nothing. After a couple of seconds, he resumed his pathfinder duties. Danny regarded him with growing admiration. The old man never faltered as he picked his way through the thick vegetation. At various points the path transformed from wide and easy flattened ground to natural tangles of roots and branches. Jak navigated around the thicker copses with ease.

  “You boys ever seen a cenote before?” asked Jak, pausing at the rim of a wide circular chasm.

  “Aye, we both have, but they’re still damned impressive to look at,” answered Danny. The nearly perfect circle of the sinkhole was bordered on all sides by intrusive emerald shrubs with thick spears of fern-leafed branches. The edge of the weathered limestone was smooth and gave way to a sheer thirty-foot drop. The water within the base of the cenote was of a blue so dark it looked unreal. Long ropey tendrils, erratically dotted with small leaves, stretched from overhanging branches all the way down to the surface of the water.

  Jak stared into the natural well for a minute before speaking again. “You know how they are formed?”

  “I do,” said Danny. “The limestone is worn away over thousands of years from below by underground rivers. Eventually the rock gives way and drops into the chasm, and forms the sinkhole.”

  Jak rewarded him with a lopsided smile. “Looks like someone paid attention at school.”

  “Sadly, that’s not true. I hated school. Most of what I know is self-taught from books or the TV.”

  “Or he just makes it up,” added Clay.

  Jak gave another brief, uneven smile. “No one really knows how far the waterways run but there are hundreds of cenotes spread out in every direction. Cave divers have explored a lot of them now, but there are still hundreds of miles of tunnels down there.”

  “The subterranean world.” Danny picked a small piece of limestone free from the edge of the cenote and tossed it underhand into the water below. The dark blue water swallowed the stone without a sound. “Is it true the ancient Mayans used them for human sacrifice?”

  “Well I’m no historian, but I think they have found bones at the bottom of more than a few. Some gold and jewellery too. I suppose they had to put the bodies somewhere after they cut out their hearts on the top of the pyramids. Pretty hard to dig graves when the ground is mostly limestone.”

  “It would be easy to fall into one of those if you were wandering around out here at night,” said Clay.

  Jak gave a single slow nod. “Most locals know where they are and are careful around them, but every now and again someone takes the short way down. Sometimes they manage to climb out, sometimes not.”

  “I was in one years ago. It had stairs carved into the rock and lights strung up on the walls,” said Danny. “I think that was over near Chichen Itza.”

  “Yeah, they have opened a few up and made them safe for the tourists,” said Jak, with a tone that suggested disapproval.

  Clay gave another glance at the sinkhole, then said, “We’re burning daylight here. Time to move.”

  Without another word, Jak pointed along the narrow path they had been following and then moved on. His pace quickened and the brothers followed his lead.

  “Whoa!” Danny stopped suddenly. A set of majestic stone steps towered above him, rising out of the thick vegetation. Tree roots thicker than his leg traced the path of the stone steps like monstrous green veins. A wide crack marred the lower steps. The face of a carved serpent peered out from the foliage.

  “There are many pyramids around here that the jungle has taken back,” said Jak dismissively.

  Danny shared a look with Clay.

  For the next few hours they travelled at a steady clip. All three men lapsed into a mutually comfortable silence, only broken by Clay’s and Danny’s logging of natural reference points. Jak’s feet brushed the ground as he walked with slightly bowed legs, hardly bending at the knees as he moved.

  Danny glanced at his wristwatch. “We must be getting close to the compound now. We’ve been on the move for three and a half hours.”

  “About another fifteen minutes.” Jak took another couple of steps then turned slowly, his nose held high as if smelling the air. “That way.”

  Danny followed the line of Jak’s outstretched hand. He could see only more of the same, gnarled tree trunks and invasive branches and sprouting vines. A low stone wall poked out of giant tree roots.

  “Can you smell it?” asked Jak.

  Danny adjusted his backpack to allow a moment’s relief from the heat that had built up between his skin and the fabric. “Smell what?”

  “Smoke and people smells.”

  “People smells?”

  Jak nodded. “People smells. Smoke, food, garbage, cars… people smells.”

  Danny sniffed the air. “I can’t smell anything except jungle.”

  “You have your skills, Mr Gunn. I have mine.” Jak gave a dismissive shrug.

  Clay caught up, still chewing a strip of beef jerky that had been occupying his jaw for the previous five minutes. “We gettin’ close?”

  Danny pointed in the direction Jak had indicated. “Fifteen minutes out. We need to go silent from here on.”

  “Not a problem. The next voice I want to hear is Celine’s.”

  “When we get to the camp we’ll scope it out properly. We need to know what we’re dealing with,” said Danny. “Figure out how best to go at them… if Celine and her friends are in there. This may need to be clinical, not hot and heavy with the boomstick.”

  Clay’s voice matched the cold look in his eyes. “We haven’t got enough ammo for that anyhow.”

  “Let’s hope we don’t need a lot, then.”

  Jak looked between the two brothers. “This challenge will not be decided with bullets alone. It will be decided by the spirit of the jaguar.”

  The scars on the left side of Clay’s face crinkled as a sullen frown began to form. “Let’s keep moving. Every moment we waste means another moment Celine may be in danger.”

  Jak held up a placatory hand. “Wait a moment, Clay. Take some water. You’ll need it once you enter the testing grounds.”

  “The what?”

  Jak
sat on a small outcrop of gnarled tree roots and sipped some water from a flask before continuing. “This has all happened before, and in time will happen again.”

  “Quit speaking in riddles, old man.” Clay’s voice carried the first tinge of anger.

  “You think I just happened upon you two by chance?”

  Danny and Clay exchanged a brief glance.

  Jak took another sip of water. “I knew you would come. I dreamed about it. I knew where you would be and when you would be there.”

  “So now you’re a psychic Mayan medicine man?” said Clay. “We don’t have time for this.”

  Jak continued to sit as if Clay had not spoken. “There are many stories about two warrior brothers who fought battles against the evils of the world, the hero twins. One brother was a fast and cunning warrior, wily and skilled with many weapons. The other brother was skilled with the blowgun. He was bigger than his brother and bore many battle scars over his face and body.” Jak cast a slow but deliberate eye over the lattice of white lines that creased Clay’s skin.

  “We both have more than our fair share of scars,” Danny said.

  “The hero twins fought many battles, many trials and challenges. They were both warriors, both skilled ball players too, as many true Mayan heroes were. They fought against the lords of the underworld. The brothers passed through many tests and trials, faced many deadly tasks.”

  Danny rubbed the back of his hand across his chin. “Kind of like Castor and Pollux from Greek mythology.”

  “I do not know the Greek myths,” said Jak. “In some versions of the story the twins were sometimes helped by an old sage and the spirit of a dead princess.”

  “And what, you think that we’re the hero twins reincarnated?” scoffed Clay. “Horseshit. I’ve had enough of these campfire stories. Celine may be in a world of hurt and we’re shooting the shit about old stories.”

  Jak regarded Clay with rheumy eyes, then stood up and began to lead the way again. “We will see what we will see.”

  “You believe any of that hooey he just spouted?” asked Clay, hanging back so that Jak couldn’t hear.

  Danny gave a shrug. “I’ve heard stranger stories in my time. You have too.”

  “If he thinks we are the hero twins reborn, you do realise that he thinks he is the wise old sage, here to guide us?”

  “Aye, I kind of got that,” said Danny.

  “And?”

  “Probably hooey, like you said.”

  “He’ll be selling us bottles of snake oil before we know it,” said Clay.

  Danny smiled at his brother. “Anyway, you can’t be the blowgunner twin reborn. You can’t shoot for shit.”

  “Dumbass.”

  “Still, we both were warriors—well, soldiers, anyway. And ball players too. You were a so-so quarterback for a while in high school and I was a damned nifty striker back in the army team.”

  “I don’t think soccer and high-school football is what he meant,” said Clay as he followed the old man. “And there was nothing so-so about my football sk—”

  He stopped talking suddenly as Jak raised a hand. They were approaching the camp.

  26

  Celine sat on the edge of her bed, her head in her hands. The dead woman was gone, only a foul-coloured stain on her bedsheet to show she’d been there at all.

  “I still can’t believe this is really happening. It’s like a nightmare.” Celine looked at the black woman, who was now fully awake and sat perched on the end of her own bed. She’d introduced herself as Rebecca Dale. She was also from the US.

  “Did you meet the leader?” asked Rebecca.

  Celine nodded. “Master Ezeret. He scared me. The way he looks at you. He smiles, but his eyes are weird, like he’s trying to hypnotise you or something.”

  Rebecca puffed out her cheeks. “That man is like the Devil. He doesn’t do much of the dirty work himself, but his little mind-warped minions are always scuttling around, desperate to please him.”

  Celine wiped away the tears that traced their way down her face. “How long have they kept you here?”

  “Truth is, I don’t really know. Maybe a year.”

  “A year?” Celine’s voice was high and shrill.

  “I’m not sure exactly how long, though.” Rebecca glanced from side to side. “Every once in a while, they slip you a dose of the essence and you’re gone again. When you wake up you might have lost a few hours or a day or a week. It really screws with your brain. Your memory gets so scrambled, you can’t tell what was real or if you just dreamed it.”

  “How many guards do they have?” asked Celine.

  “I’m not sure, I don’t think I’ve seen more than nine or ten, but like I say, they keep spiking us so it’s hard to keep track of anything.”

  “You called it ‘the essence’?”

  Rebecca sneered. “Oh, that’s what they sometimes call it, like it’s some kind of joke. I heard one of the men, the big one with the white hair, also call it ‘Devil’s breath’. I think they’re both the same thing.”

  “Has anyone managed to escape?” asked Celine.

  “I don’t think so, but I’m not sure. When my head is clearer I sometimes remember different faces that I’ve seen. Different people come and go. I don’t think they get to leave.”

  “So where do they go?” asked Celine, a knot forming again in her stomach. “What happens to them?”

  Rebecca closed her eyes, but not before tears escaped down her face.

  “Rebecca, talk to me. What happens to them? What’s going to happen to us?”

  When she answered, her voice was low and suddenly devoid of emotion. “People come to the camp, mostly older men. They take us under the main house.”

  “Under the house? Then what? What happens under the house, Rebecca?”

  “Bad things, horrible things.”

  “Tell me!”

  “Sometimes it’s the guards, Ezeret’s followers. Other times it’s the visitors. Sometimes it’s both. I think men pay to come here to do things…” Rebecca turned her head as if she was going to vomit.

  Celine clenched the edge of the bed to stop her hands shaking. “What happens under the house?”

  “Bad things. They call them the games.”

  A twinge from between her legs. Celine bit the inside of her mouth, tasting blood. “Sex games?”

  “Sometimes. Those aren’t the worst.”

  Grim realisation swept over Celine as her mind considered all the depraved acts that visiting men might pay for. Depraved men who would travel to a place like this. To a place that held kidnapped victims in secure sheds. Her stomach bucked wildly. “What else?”

  Rebecca shot up from her bed and began pacing back and forth. “I only remember flashes.”

  “Tell me.”

  “I remember… fights.”

  “What kind of fights?”

  “I remember the sound of screaming.”

  “Jesus.”

  “I remember blood, lots and lots of blood.”

  Celine stood and pulled Rebecca close. “We’ve got to get out of here.”

  “The worst thing of all is the… audience. The men laugh and cheer like they’re at some damned football game or something.” Rebecca sank back onto the bed again. “At least when they drug me I don’t remember that laughing for a while. It’s the cruellest sound I’ve ever heard.”

  “Jesus Christ, that’s horrible. Like something out of a horror movie.”

  “Then after the fights, it’s our turn. Even with all the drugs, I remember what happens after the fights.” The haunted look on Rebecca’s face said enough.

  Celine’s head snapped towards the door. “Oh no. They took Gillian. What if they took her under the house?”

  Rebecca said nothing, her head lowered.

  27

  Ghost awoke in the same prone sniper position she had fallen asleep in. Her cheek rested upon the stock of the Marlin rifle. The hunter’s ghillie net clung momentarily to her face li
ke a second skin. She blinked several times, trying to make sense of her surroundings. Then she remembered. The leader of the compound had failed to present himself as a target again.

  “Another day gone. Another day I failed you, Lauren.” Ghost scowled, disappointed in herself as she had been many times before.

  Mayhap today be the day, chile?

  “Be quiet. No noise. You know the rules.”

  Mayhap today be the day when you catch a bullet in the head?

  “Shut up,” whispered Ghost.

  Mayhap today be the day when they catch you like a rat in a trap and take you back in there.

  “No! I won’t let that happen.”

  Mayhap today be the day that they gang rape your worthless black ass and leave you dead for real this time?

  Ghost pressed her forehead into the roots of the tree. Unchecked tears ran down her face. “No.”

  Who’s goin’ to save you, huh?

  “I’ll save myself.”

  You didn’t save Lauren…

  A deep sob racked her body. “No, I didn’t save Lauren.”

  She lay motionless, for how long she had no recollection. Then she blinked and her mind came back. The compound was as quiet as a graveyard. She propped the Marlin against a tree root, the barrel of the rifle still pointing at the main house. Moving at a snail’s pace, she pulled a narrow plastic bottle from a pocket on her right leg. The water it contained was tepid but welcome as she slaked her waking thirst. She chewed on a granola bar, her gaze never straying far from the house. She ate a second bar. Then, with a soft curse, she began to inch backwards. It took five minutes, but finally she was satisfied that she was fully out of view of the compound. She took care of her insistent bladder.

  She had her trousers half-zipped when she felt eyes on her. Her hand flew to her pistol, but when she looked around all she saw was a dog. Her voice was a whisper. “Damn it, dog, you just nearly got a bullet between the eyes. Where in hell did you come from?”