Blood Sun

by David Gilman

  Riga froze the frame where the boat had turned back from the shoreline, the angle the helicopter had as it turned to continue the attack. The shoreline disappeared. He zoomed in; there in the boat’s wake were two small black dots. He released another frame and watched as the boat jerked its way out of view, and for a fraction of a second, white foam highlighted movement that looked like someone swimming.

  Riga smiled: what were the odds of a teenager surviving a gun battle like that? This Max Gordon was proving to be a challenge worthy of Riga’s skills, for he was convinced that if anyone had reached the shoreline, it would be the English boy. Riga picked up the satellite phone sitting next to his computer, pressed a button and heard Cazamind’s voice answer.

  “I think the kid made it,” Riga said. “I’m going after him.”

  Max and Xavier looked ridiculous. Precious minutes were wasted in laughing at each other. Max had pulled one of the pieces of cotton onto his head—the torn fringe would help keep the flies and mosquitoes away—and jammed down on top of that was the crownlike headgear that Xavier had laboriously made, which would shield their eyes from the sun. As a final safeguard, Max had dug his hands into the nearby riverbank and smeared them both with foul-smelling mud in an effort to keep the vicious mosquitoes at bay. They looked like warriors from a long-lost tribe.

  After a thorough check of the area, Max was satisfied that there was no sign of them having been marooned on the spit of land. If anyone did fly over, they would see only a narrow, unspoiled beach and the dense jungle fringed with mangroves.

  The inflowing tidal current pushed them along, but it was a smooth ride, and as Max stood at the back of the raft using a straight branch to pole them around protruding boulders, Xavier sat as if he was on a pleasure cruise. The raft seemed to be strong enough for both of them, but as a precautionary measure, Max kept the white seat loose so that if anything happened Xavier had a flotation device. Within an hour or so, they had left the low, dense vegetation of the mangroves and floated between limestone cliffs that rose up each side of the river. Max was ever vigilant, watching out for the deep places where the current swirled and sucked around exposed rocks. Water shivered as the river tumbled over a shallow stretch.

  “Hold on,” Max warned as they bumped their way over the thirty-meter stretch. Xavier whooped with joy, like a kid on a small waterslide. But it was Max who was doing all the work, making sure the raft stayed as rigid as possible as he guided it over the broken water. He realized that anything more turbulent, like a real white-water ride, would tear them apart. Suddenly the river was deep again, running smoothly into calmer water. Max gazed up at the jungle that clawed its way across the forty-meter cliffs. Brightly colored birds swooped to catch insects; others sang, being answered by birds across the chasm. It was an unblemished paradise, wild in its majesty, untouched by man’s hand. Max felt a strange contentment.

  Riga sat in the open door of the Bell 222 helicopter as it thundered through the sky at 175 kilometers per hour, thirty meters above the ground. His feet were braced on the helicopter’s skids, keeping him balanced precariously as he sat on the helicopter floor. It was an older model, but tough and serviceable, deliberately chosen by Riga because it was such a common aircraft and would not attract undue attention. Drug runners would have had the latest model with the most powerful engine, but this old 222 could travel at 240 kilometers per hour with a range of 600 kilometers, more than enough for the job at hand. Across his lap he gripped the wooden stock of an M14 sniper rifle. This, too, had been field-proven over the years and was still used by U.S. Special Forces, as the 7.62 mm round had enormous stopping power. He could have chosen any weapon, but Riga was, at heart, a simple man, who needed a simple, uncomplicated killing tool.

  He mentally replayed the Coast Guard’s pursuit. He had given the pilot the coordinates, and they weaved along the coast. The pilot brought the helicopter down to sea level a hundred meters offshore, just as the mercenary had ordered. Riga did not want to disturb any evidence supporting his belief that Max had survived. Riga pointed, waving his hand slightly, telling the pilot to move slowly from right to left so that they could get a clear view of the small beach and tree line. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary; there were no footprints, no sign that anyone had been on that beach. The helicopter edged into the estuary. The tide had moved into the mangroves, half submerging them, but again there was no sign of life. And no sign of any wreckage from the boat. As there should have been.

  Riga motioned the pilot forward, and when they were fifty meters off the beach, he signaled him to hover. The skids almost touched the surface of the water, and Riga stepped down into the warmth of the lagoon. He was in up to his chest and held the rifle clear of the water as the helicopter’s downdraft flattened the small waves. It banked away and held station a kilometer offshore, waiting for Riga’s command to return. Riga walked out till he was ankle-deep in the water and let his eyes move across the sand and into the trees, looking for anything out of place; if Max Gordon and a second person had had any chance of survival, this was exactly where they would have come ashore. The lapping water reached up and gently sucked back across the sand, never going higher than the line of seaweed. Riga put the rifle butt onto his shoulder and slipped off the safety catch, ready to kill.

  He spent an hour searching the immediate vicinity and saw no sign of anyone being there until he came across scuff marks on a tree trunk—not the gouged scratch marks of a hunting jaguar, but possibly made by monkeys. He squatted down, listening to the jungle sounds, and let his eyes find a way into the tangled forest. He picked a spot close by, then moved his vision inward another couple of meters and then repeated the action again until he had penetrated the forest to about fifteen meters, which was about as far as anyone could expect to see. There, at knee height, was a stem, not broken but bent backward. He stepped cautiously in that direction. It would take time, but he knew he would find more evidence of someone or something moving into the jungle.

  Slowly but surely, he followed the almost invisible trail that Max had left by bending and breaking branches. Max had taken away the pieces of cotton, but he could not alter a few broken sticks that told their own story. Riga reached the bamboo thicket and saw the signs of Max’s water-tapping. For a moment his guard was down as he knelt in front of the bamboo. A black mottled shadow unfurled itself from the jungle and crouched to attack.

  The big cat had barely snarled its warning when Riga brought the rifle to his shoulder and fired two rapid shots. In the couple of seconds it took for the jaguar to fall, roaring in agony, Riga didn’t retreat but strode fearlessly toward the stricken animal and shot it once more, killing it instantly. He stood over the dead cat, whose breath still curled from its jaws. The amber eyes dimmed, and the muscle spasms stopped. Riga looked about him carefully—he had obviously stepped into the jaguar’s territory. So, too, had Max Gordon, and Riga wondered if the boy had come face to face with the jaguar. It didn’t matter—there was now only one hunter in this patch of jungle. Riga gazed down at his victim and felt neither sorrow nor exhilaration for the kill. It was what Riga did. Then he heard the softer and less threatening snarl of another jungle cat. He raised the rifle and aimed quickly at the young cub’s head. He hesitated, though unsure why he did so. He decided to let it live; maybe it would survive on its own. Everyone had to learn to do that at some stage of their lives.

  Retracing his steps, Riga went back to the beach, but now he looked more carefully. He soon noticed that a tree’s fibers had been teased away from its trunk. Another had a shadow that curved upward, as if a clinging vine had been pulled away from it. Skirting the beach where the sand gave way to the jungle, his eye was caught by an oddly shaped clump of leaves in the undergrowth. He reached in and pulled out torn palm fronds. Someone had been trying to make something out of them, and their failures had been cast aside. So Max Gordon had found water and used a supple vine to tie or make something. The torn palm fronds gave him no clue, until he made a cir
cle from one strand and saw that it could fit neatly over his head. Clever boy. Water and shade. But how would he have got away from this place? There was only one way and that was by river. That was what Max Gordon had done—he had made a raft and escaped.

  Riga smiled. He had him. The boy was as good as dead.

  Charlie Morgan might have been MI5 with the FBI on her side, but she did not have Riga’s sources of inside information. She had scoured the town for any knowledge of an English boy who might have tried to rent any of the rooms available without any luck or word from the FBI. It seemed that Max had disappeared off the face of the earth. She could not know that Cazamind’s influence hid even the news of the Coast Guard cutter’s seek-and-destroy attack.

  Charlie hated being inactive, and sat in her sweltering room beneath a creaking old fan with a map of Central America spread out on the floor. Beyond the small city were scattered settlements and the occasional speck of a town, but there were vast areas of dense forest and remote mountains where rivers cut through gorges and where it was probably impossible to survive for any length of time without proper equipment and supplies. Her finger traced the coast from Panama up across the isthmus—the major drug corridor from South America to Mexico and into the United States—and then continued her search along the coast, up to the desolate Yucatán Peninsula. Borders merged into each other, and she knew that some of the countries had endured horrendous civil wars. Kidnapping and murder were still commonplace in various parts of Central America, and she could not imagine how, if Max Gordon had survived, he had managed to get down there. He had no money, no passport and probably only the clothes he wore; that was a pretty desperate state to be in.

  Morgan allowed herself an amusing indulgence—her mobile ring tone. The unmistakable theme tune from Mission Impossible broke the sound of the whirring fan. She recognized the number; it was her FBI contact.

  “Charlie, it’s Tony. We’ve picked up something pretty strange from an intercept. One of our Coast Guard cutters in the Caribbean was involved in a firefight. We caught snatches of the pilot’s voice transmission as he attacked a drug runner’s boat. The whole thing is being locked down, and we don’t have direct access to the intel on it. There are other agencies involved, and we’re being told to ignore it.”

  “You’re being kept out of the loop?” Charlie asked. “Is that normal?”

  “Didn’t you say your MI-Six guys leaned on your boss?” he answered.

  “Right, yeah. So what do we have, a foreign operation under way, keeping out intelligence agencies inside your own country?”

  “It happens. But there’s more. Is it likely your boy Max Gordon could have any association with those drug runners who took him?”

  “I don’t know. I doubt it,” she said.

  “These guys run go-fast boats from Central America in and out of Miami. Maybe your boy wasn’t kidnapped, is all I’m saying. Maybe he had contacts. We’re just trying to figure it out.”

  “Are these the people Max got involved with in Miami? Was he on the boat your Coast Guard shot up?” Her heart sank as she thought of the carnage that would have occurred and that Max might have been caught up in it. He was only a kid, for heaven’s sake.

  “Could be. We don’t know why it’s being kept quiet. It must be something more than drug running. Anyway, the boat got taken out. There were no survivors. I’m sorry, Charlie, but if he was with those guys, I think your boy is dead.”

  Charlie’s mind whirled. Was it that simple? Was what that simple? Max Gordon kidnapped by drug runners, or did he know them? Their boat attacked by the U.S. Coast Guard and all record of the operation, of the gun battle and the boat’s destruction, kept secret. That wasn’t simple—that was a complexity that needed unraveling and explaining. Ambitious as she was to be the one to bring the operation to a successful conclusion and take the credit that would enhance her career, she felt strangely protective of Max Gordon. This wasn’t over. If he was dead, she wanted to know why. He was her case, her boy.

  “Can you find out more? Can you get the transcripts of the attack? I’d like to get the coordinates and see where all this happened.”

  “We’ll do our best, Charlie, but let’s just say the impossible happened and your kid was dropped off on the mainland before these guys got taken out—where do you reckon he’d head for?”

  That was the $64-million question. If Max’s evasive tactics were to do with the death of his mother, then no one knew where she had died, but maybe questions were where Charlie Morgan had to begin. She had to get into those jungle settlements and towns and start talking to people. “I don’t know,” she said. “I’ll try to figure something out. If my boy is on the mainland, I just can’t see how he could survive. Try to pinpoint the location where the boat was destroyed.”

  “It’s all restricted access, Charlie. We’re not even supposed to have this. They just won’t let us get our hands on it. I think it’s a no-can-do.”

  “You’re the FBI. And I always thought Americans had a can-do attitude. Or is that just a piece of Hollywood?”

  She could imagine him smiling at the end of the phone. “You’re a cruel woman, Charlie. Can-do is what we do. Though I’ll probably lose my job.”

  “That’s OK. Down here is a great place to retire. Find out what you can. I’m going on a bike ride.” She closed the phone and hovered her attention across the map. Then, without hesitation, she touched the name of a town with her fingertip. She had to start somewhere—it might as well be a place that sounded appropriate: Ciudad de las Almas Perdidas, the City of Lost Souls.

  * * *

  The Bell 222 hugged the contours of the river. Max and his companion had a day’s start on Riga, but the assassin calculated that they couldn’t have got far on a makeshift raft. The wind buffeted Riga’s face, and he could smell aviation fuel and exhaust. The clattering engine was an assault on his senses, and he enjoyed every moment of it. The helicopter’s body shuddered, its vibration going through Riga. It was as if the beast were alive and he a part of it. He still cradled the well-worn stock of the M14 across his lap, and he debated whether he would shoot Max on sight or go down when he spotted the boy to hunt him on the ground.

  When this whole thing had started, Max Gordon had held no interest for him, but now the boy was beginning to fascinate him. Like every good hunter, he had learned what he could about his prey. Cazamind had sent him as much information as they could find on Max. The boy had survived in Africa, and he had been involved in an enormous conflict in the French Alps, where he had taken on a powerful opponent and won. And then there was Max Gordon’s father, whose reputation stuck in the throat of the people he had brought to justice, but he wasn’t a threat any longer. In Cazamind’s mind, everything now confirmed that Max’s mother was the eco-scientist who had died in Central America years ago. Riga had questioned Cazamind; if Cazamind’s clients had been involved, then Riga should know about them and to what extent they were implicated. Where exactly had Helen Gordon died? Cazamind had yielded little information. All he had been told was that Max Gordon should be stopped from proceeding any farther into the wilderness. Why not let the boy take his chances? Riga wanted to know.

  Cazamind did not like the word chance; there was too much at stake. And now that they had discovered just what this boy was capable of, they should change their thinking. Max Gordon posed a threat—he was dangerous.

  Riga felt a stab of resentment. All his life, since he was a boy, he had dealt with these faceless men who could change the course of people’s lives—and of history—by issuing a command from the safety of their anonymity. Over the years he had obeyed their orders, done their bidding and killed whomever they wished him to kill. Perhaps he understood Max Gordon more than he realized. Riga had come face to face with him in the British Museum and had seen the look of determination in the boy’s eyes. The English boy had given them all a good run for their money. There were times Riga thought that the likes of Cazamind should be dragged out and forced to
face their victims so they could see and smell the fear and desperation of those being hunted, but he knew that their cowardice was entrenched. These men had no honor or courage, which was why they used people like Riga. It was a simple equation: money was power and power was control, and Riga was the instrument of their success.

  At the end of the day, it did not matter what he thought of these men. His conviction was all that was important, and he was convinced of one thing: Max Gordon was no match for him.

  * * *

  Max heard the helicopter before he saw it, the blades’ reverberations flattening the air. There was nowhere to hide; the limestone cliffs rose on each side, and boulders forced the water into eddies, making steering almost impossible.

  Xavier watched as Max furiously dug the pole into the water and tried to find some purchase, desperately wanting to push them closer to the bank.

  “Is it the Yanquis?”

  “I don’t know, but they’ll be on us in less than a minute.”

  Max searched frantically for overhanging trees or anything that would give them cover. Xavier pointed. “Over there!”

  There was a narrow cave on the other side of the river beneath an overhang, but it meant pushing across the current, which was running more strongly in that part of the river. They needed more power to get across.

  “Take the pole!” Max shouted.

  Xavier scrambled to his feet without question and took it from Max’s hands. “Push the raft as fast as you can,” Max told him, and slipped over the side into the water, kicking his legs and forcing the raft into the middle of the river. If he caught one of those swirling tongues of water, there was a risk of being stranded on the rocks, but if they could just get past them, he reckoned they would reach the cave in time. It was such a low, crevicelike slash on the waterline that they’d be lucky to get inside lying flat on the raft, but there was a good chance they would escape detection if they could reach it.