by Nick Cook
The corners of Villca’s mouth curled upwards as he spread his hands wide. ‘I thought after I’ve been so helpful that you might increase that figure to twenty per cent…’
Alvarez’s gaze tightened on the man. ‘Don’t get greedy, Commandant, or I can assure you that you’ll regret it.’
For the first time I saw a look of fear crossing Villca’s face.
He quickly raised his hands in an apologetic gesture. ‘No problem – fifteen per cent will be just fine, my friend.’
‘I’m glad we understand each other,’ Alvarez replied.
Before the commandant could respond, the general turned on his heel. He and his three mercs headed out of the door and into the main police station.
Villca scowled at Alvarez’s back, then rolled up his shirt sleeves and walked back into Mike’s cell. The corridor was now empty of people and it was just him and the other officer inside the cell.
I turned to Jack and nodded.
I quickly drew my fibre-optic camera back into the room and stowed it in my rucksack along with the Sky Wire.
The sound of someone choking echoed along the corridor.
‘Let’s go,’ I whispered.
We slowly stood, weapons in hands. I took hold of the cell door’s handle and opened it a crack.
Tom had taught us the basics of squad combat movement for clearing a building and I used them now, entering the corridor first and taking up a lead position to the left-hand side of Mike’s cell door. Jack came behind me.
‘Just tell us where your friends are and we can stop this,’ we heard Villca say, followed by the sound of someone snatching in a large gulp of air.
‘I’m not telling you a fucking thing,’ Mike replied.
‘Then let’s see if we can loosen your tongue.’ The sound of splashing water and more choking came from the cell.
My jaw stiffened and I aimed my LRS towards the door, nodding to Jack. He yanked the door open.
Villca and the police officer spun round as we barged into the cell. Mike was sprawled on the ground, his face covered with a towel, water bubbling up through the wet fabric as he struggled to breathe.
White-hot fury burned through my veins. Villca and the officer reached for the guns on their belts, but I gestured with my pistol towards them. Both men raised their hands.
Jack squatted by Mike’s side and yanked the towel off his face. ‘We’ve got you, buddy.’ He helped Mike gently into a sitting position and slipped a knife through the plastic ties binding his wrists behind his back.
‘You came for me,’ Mike said, his voice wavering.
I gave him a smile as I fought back the threat of sudden tears. ‘There was never a question that we wouldn’t.’
In the split second my attention had been on Mike, I caught the police officer’s hand dropping to the gun on his belt.
My weeks of training at Eden kicked in instantly. Adrenaline powered through my bloodstream as I brought up my LRS to shoot. I squeezed three shots straight into the guy’s chest before his hand had reached his gun, remembering the target shooting with Tom. But this was no cardboard target. The officer stared at me, a shocked expression filling his face as he clutched his chest, blood dripping between his fingers. Then he slumped to the floor, the life flowing out of him.
I couldn’t help but wince as Jack checked the pulse in his neck and shook his head.
The old Lauren would have been appalled, but this new version just felt a cold, hard focus and pushed the rising nausea back down. This was a mission and it was my duty to get us all out of here alive.
Villca just stared at me, his face ashen. ‘Please don’t hurt me. I have a family.’
‘Everyone’s got a family,’ Jack said. ‘It’s just a shame you didn’t remember that with Ricardo.’ He reached forward and grabbed Villca’s gun from its holster, holding it out towards Mike who just blinked at it.
‘Humour me here,’ Jack said.
With a faint nod, Mike took the weapon and cradled it in his lap.
I glared at the commandant and a feeling of pure hatred rose up through my icy calmness. This guy so deserved a bullet in the brain. I took a deep breath. No, I needed to keep my emotions in check and not let this situation get out of control. Besides, we could use him.
‘OK, Jack, can you cuff the commandant?’
Jack peered at me. ‘No summary execution?’
Villca grimaced.
‘I haven’t become that person, not yet at least.’
‘Good to hear. So what are we going to do with this bastard?’
‘We’re going to use him as a hostage.’
‘Oh, now I’m liking your thinking,’ Jack said as he helped himself to the cuffs hanging from the dead officer’s belt. He pulled Villca’s hands to his back and snapped the cuffs shut round them.
I moved behind the commandant and stuck my LRS into the small of his back. ‘If you don’t do exactly what I tell you, you’re a dead man walking. Do you understand me?’
Villca gave me a frantic nod.
‘OK, this is how it’s going to work,’ I said. ‘We’re going to head out into the yard like we’re the best of friends. If you do anything to make anyone suspicious about what’s happening, you’ll get a bullet through the back of the head.’
‘OK, OK!’ he replied, his shoulders shaking.
Whatever else Villca was, I was becoming increasingly certain that hero wasn’t among them.
‘Mike, can you walk?’ Jack asked.
Mike took a steadying breath. ‘Yeah, I think so.’
‘Good man.’
I handed my baseball cap to Mike. ‘Put that on and pray that nobody recognises you on the way out.’
‘You got it,’ Mike replied, pulling the cap’s peak low over his face.
With our weapons hidden, I propelled Villca ahead of me and we stepped out into the corridor.
My plan instantly fell apart as the door to the station opened and a young policeman appeared. For a split second he stared at us. Then he reached for his pistol.
Jack was already raising his Glock.
‘Stand down!’ Villca shouted.
The young officer just stared at him, his gun shaking in his hand.
‘You heard what I said, officer!’ Villca said.
The guy nodded and lowered his weapon.
Time seemed to stand still for a moment. I felt the uncertainty creeping back in, but I had to make a call.
I raised my chin towards the young policeman. ‘OK, you, back to where you came from. We’re about to come through after you and if anybody so much as blinks, your precious commandant is history. Now go and warn everyone.’
The officer blinked rapidly and stepped backwards through the door, shutting it behind him.
Villca stared at the closed door. ‘Your plan is shit, you know. If you shoot me, it will be over for you.’
‘Oh, I have other plans for you,’ I replied. I raised my LRS and struck him hard across the back of the head. Villca slumped to the floor and stilled.
‘I thought we wanted him as a hostage?’ Mike asked, gazing down at him Villca.
‘That’s what we want the officers out there to think,’ I said. ‘They’ll be expecting us to try to walk through that door. And we all know it takes just one person with an itchy trigger finger to send everything rapidly south. So here’s the real plan, guys. Jack, get ready to throw flash-bang grenades – and anything else you fancy – through that door. Meanwhile, we’ll exit the way we came, as originally planned.’
‘Really liking your style,’ Jack replied with a smile as he took tear-gas, flash-bang and smoke grenades out of his pack.
Supporting Mike, I headed to the rear door. As I opened it, I gave Jack a thumbs up. He pulled the pin on three grenades and jerked the door to the station open. He lobbed the grenades through and slammed the door shut again.
Guns sounded, bullets peppering but not piercing the door. A split second later, we heard three muffled bangs, followed by shouts an
d cries. Smoke began billowing through the gap beneath the door.
Still hanging on to Mike, I stumbled out into the yard towards the rusting chairs. I glanced back to see Jack lobbing another smoke grenade into the cell block. Then he raced out and slammed the outer door behind him.
‘Jack, can you stack those chairs and help Mike over the wall?’
‘Sure, but what about you?’
‘I’m going to slow down our pursuers.’
‘Go knock yourself out.’ Jack began to pull the chairs from out of the weeds, stacking them to form a ladder over the wall.
I raced towards the scaffolding poles, grabbed a couple and jammed them at an angle against the rear door. Hopefully this would buy us precious seconds.
I ran back just as Mike scaled the chairs up on to the wall. Jack had draped an old rubber doormat over the barbed wire and Mike crawled over it and dropped down the other side. A moment later Jack and I followed him.
So far, so good.
‘OK, guys, we need to act as casually as possible and get back to our motorbikes.’
Jack and I stowed our pistols as Mike offered the police officer’s weapon to Jack.
‘Best keep it,’ Jack said.
‘Please, mate,’ Mike replied.
Jack sighed, took it off Mike and stowed the pistol in his rucksack.
We stepped out of the shadowed alley into the sunlit street. Onlookers crowded round the entrance to the police station, watching smoke billowing out from it. A number of police officers were sitting on the pavement coughing and wiping tears from their eyes. Fortunately, no one noticed the three westerners heading across the street and disappearing into the alley opposite.
‘Mike, are you good to ride your bike?’ I asked as we headed for the parked up Zeros.
‘Just about, although I could so do with a stiff drink first,’ he replied.
‘Later maybe,’ I said as Jack and I shoved our kit into our panniers.
I pulled my crash helmet on and pulled up the navigation system. A quick search later, the destination was locked in: Choquequirao. I selected the menu option to share it with the others.
‘Where the hell is Choquequirao?’ Mike said over the intercom.
‘We think it’s where the next micro mind has been hidden,’ Jack replied.
‘You mean you didn’t recover it from beneath Machu Picchu after all?’ Mike said.
‘No,’ I admitted. ‘There’s a lot to bring you up to speed on.’
We were soon weaving our way through the traffic, following the GPS markers on our helmets’ HUDs. All the roads out of town were crammed with vehicles heading the other way. Through a gap in the buildings I saw why. A huge line of traffic was snaking up the road to Machu Picchu. There were also what looked like thousands of people heading up the walkway on foot to the ancient site.
‘Looks as if Gabriel has made good on his promise to get the town up there,’ Jack said over the intercom.
‘It’ll certainly make life difficult for Alvarez, not to mention Villca, when the locals discover what they’ve been up to.’
‘My heart bleeds for them,’ Jack said.
‘The main thing is they get to Cristina and that she’s OK,’ I said.
‘Amen to that,’ Jack replied.
The few minutes it took us to reach the edge of the town felt like hours and I had to fight the urge to open up the throttle and race out of town like a scalded cat. At last we reached the main road and sped away along the tarmac between the towering mountains. It was only then that a weight lifted off my shoulders.
Chapter Eighteen
We’d just passed through a small town called Cachora and were now on a road gently weaving its way along the bottom of a rocky valley. There were only occasional mountain goats to witness our near silent passage on the electric Zero motorbikes as we drove past. After five hours, it was still a good forty-five minutes to the site of Choquequirao. Above, the deep blue sky was tinged with gold, hinting at the coming sunset. There wasn’t much in the way of daylight left before nightfall.
On our journey I’d rung in and updated Niki on what was happening. He wasn’t at all happy when we’d told him Alvarez had turned up and we’d had to rescue Mike. He was going to recall one of the security teams and would be sending them to support us as soon as possible. It had done nothing for my leadership confidence; Niki clearly didn’t think we could handle this by ourselves.
On the plus side he’d told me that various social media sites were now alight with what had been discovered at Machu Picchu and that an unnamed high-level police officer had been implicated in corruption – fuelled by the photos of Villca abducting Cristina.
High in the sky, a large lone bird circled in the dying thermals of the day. Jack quickly informed me this was an Andean condor. I glanced in my rear-view mirror at Jack and Mike in our motorbike convoy.
‘Anyone else notice the distinct lack of other vehicles on the road?’ I said over the intercom.
‘It’s really not that strange,’ Jack responded. ‘There are plans to create better access to Choquequirao for tourists, but it’s currently still a remote site. Although I’m surprised we haven’t seen anything in the way of a pursuit by now. Whenever Villca came round, he would have been as annoyed as hell. I would have expected him to throw every resource at tracking us down.’
‘Not forgetting what he’ll do when they eventually work out the micro mind isn’t at Machu Picchu after all,’ I said.
‘Hopefully, Gabriel and the townspeople are making life as difficult as hell for them,’ Jack said.
‘But Alvarez is like a cat who always lands on his feet. Experience tells me it’s just a matter of time before they find us.’
I realised then that Mike hadn’t said a word. In fact, thinking about it, he’d hardly said anything since we’d fled the town, even when we’d finished bringing him up to speed on what had happened while he’d been captured.
‘Mike, are you OK back there?’ I asked.
There was no response. I glanced in my rear-view mirror again, but it was impossible to see his expression through his visor.
‘Are you OK, buddy?’ Jack asked.
This time a reply came, his voice sounding strained. ‘Sorry, I zoned out there. What were you saying?’
‘Lauren was talking about the company we’re expecting before long,’ Jack said.
‘You can count on it…’ Mike replied, his voice trailing away.
He sounded distracted, and of course he was. We’d all had a taste of torture courtesy of Alvarez. But being waterboarded would probably haunt Mike for the rest of his life. Maybe Jack, after caring for traumatised soldiers who’d suffered similar experiences, would have ideas on how we could help him.
I returned my attention to the GPS display on my helmet’s HUD. According to the map, we’d another mile left until we hit somewhere called Capuliyoc. There, we’d leave the tarmacked road behind us and would be on the trail itself. Jack had already briefed us that this was only used by mules and tourists heading up to Choquequirao on foot. We’d have to take it easy, as apparently the trail was treacherous in places. Hopefully, our Zero bikes would be up to the challenge; without them it would be a six-hour trek.
The mountain peaks either side of us cast long shadows across the valley, dropping it into a deepening gloom. It wouldn’t be long now until night descended. I felt shattered after the day’s events. We’d all certainly earned a good night’s sleep. But that wasn’t on the cards for a while yet.
Ahead of us the road came to an end in a car park, from where a lone minibus was just departing. A glance through the windows revealed a number of sleeping tourists with suntanned faces. As the vehicle drew level with us, it slowed to a stop. The minibus driver, a young guy in his thirties, wound his window down.
‘If you’re thinking of trekking up to Choquequirao, don’t bother,’ he said. ‘A series of tremors hit earlier today and everyone has been evacuated off the mountain until things calm down.’
Electricity tingled through my veins. This had to be a good sign. ‘Thanks for the heads-up. Was anyone hurt?’
The guy shook his head. ‘No, but the tremors got stronger and there have been some strange sounds coming from the mountain too.’
Mike sat upright on his motorbike and cracked his visor open. ‘What sort of sounds?’
The driver made the sign of the cross on his chest. ‘A wailing noise…’ He glanced in his rear-view mirror at the sleeping tourists and dropped his voice to a whisper. ‘Some of the locals are convinced it’s demons that have been woken up in the mountains.’ He rolled his eyes at us. ‘Anyway, I have some tired walkers in desperate need of a bar. Adios, my friends.’
He started up the minibus and drove away – along the road we’d just come up.
I peered at Mike. ‘What are you thinking?’
‘It certainly sounds promising. And if another quake hits whilst we’re here, I’ll stop and take a reading to see if it’s the source of the monowaves.’
‘At least Choquequirao itself should now be empty of people,’ Jack said.
‘Hopefully, but we should turn off our headlights and use the night-vision systems built into the helmets just in case.’
‘Bloody hell, do you two have a death wish or something?’ Mike asked.
‘You know us,’ I replied.
‘Yeah, I do,’ he said with a hint of a chuckle in his voice.
My heart lifted at the sound. Maybe Mike was starting to surface from wherever he’d been.
The three of us killed our headlights and dropped into the growing darkness.
I hunted through the menu system on my HUD and activated the night-vision mode. At once the gloom around us became shaded with greens, revealing details in the shadowed areas. Even the faint stars that had started to appear now shone as vivid points of light.
‘Great kit – probably military grade,’ Jack said.
‘Would you expect anything else from Sky Dreamer Corp?’ I asked.
He chuckled. ‘Hell, no.’