by Chris Ryan
They all crawled into the snow hole out of the wind and snuggled down into their sleeping bags, which were protected by waterproof bivvy bags. Alex took the sticks he had collected from the lower slopes of the mountain and laid them on the fire shelf. He pulled his survival kit from his belt pouch and took out a twist of tinder-dry kindling and his flint. Within minutes there was a small fire crackling brightly on the fire shelf and the snow hole began to warm up.
Amber sent a text message to her uncle, then they leaned together, exhausted and panting hard in the thin air, waiting in silence for the dawn.
Hex was right. Even with a few hours of rest, they still made it to the top of the left-hand glacier fork just as the sun was rising. The wind had dropped and the glacier slope below them was quiet as they eased their way around the top of the rock outcrop. They went down on their bellies and commando-crawled down the right-hand fork of the glacier, until they reached a small ridge in the snow.
Carefully, Hex raised his head above the ridge, then signalled the all-clear. The others raised their heads to have a look. The two huts lay directly below them on a rock shelf next to the glacier. The little six-seater Dakota was still poised at the top of the landing strip, with its nose pointing down the glacier. Everything was quiet and still.
Li took the tracker device from her rucksack and pulled out the telescopic aerial. Hex leaned over and turned down the sound before Li switched it on. The green blip appeared on the screen, flashing strongly. Hex peered at the distance and direction statistics coming up in the corner of the screen, then pointed to the furthest away of the two huts. ‘He’s in that one,’ he whispered.
They nodded and retreated a little way up the slope to dump their rucksacks behind a rock and remove their crampons. Amber sent another reassuring text message to her uncle, then turned off the phone and slipped it into her rucksack. Then she quickly gave herself her morning insulin injection.
‘Ready?’ whispered Alex. ‘Let’s go get Paulo.’
There were well-worn tracks of packed-down snow all around the huts and they were able to move along them without making a sound. They moved in single file, crouching low to the ground. They reached the first hut and Alex slowly raised his head until he could peer in through the window. There were three camp beds in there, arranged around an oil stove, and three humped shapes on the beds under mounds of blankets.
Alex crouched down again, mimed sleeping and gave a thumbs-up. If things went to plan, they were going to be able to sneak Paulo and Eliza out of the other hut and have them halfway down the left-hand fork of the glacier before the inhabitants of the other hut had even woken up.
They moved on in silent single file through the snow to the second hut. Again, Alex raised his head to look through the window. The sun shone into the room beyond, lighting up a strange collection of large tubs and barrels, with siphon pipes strung between them. They had found the general’s cocaine factory. Over in one corner a clump of yellowy, powdery substance had been spread out on a tarpaulin square to dry. There were tables lined up against the back wall. Some were stacked with white blocks wrapped in clingfilm, others held collections of bottles and chemical containers. A large sink stood in another corner, next to a dirty old cooker, which was connected to a Calor Gas bottle. The far corner of the room was screened off with an old blanket, hanging from a length of washing line.
Alex gestured to the other three and they joined him at the window. He pointed to the screened-off corner. ‘They must be behind there,’ he breathed.
Hex moved up to the door and checked all around it for any sort of alarm system, then he reached out and turned the handle. The door swung open. He frowned suspiciously and turned to Li. ‘Why isn’t the door locked?’
‘They must be tied up,’ she whispered, peering into the dark hut. ‘Besides, who needs locks on doors way up here?’
Still Hex hesitated. Li pushed past him impatiently and stepped into the hut. The others followed her, closing the door behind them. They moved over to the blanket. Hex and Alex nodded to one another, then reached up, grabbed a corner of the blanket each and yanked it down.
There was nothing but a small table behind the blanket. On top of the table, arranged neatly right in the centre, was Paulo’s belt.
‘It’s a trap!’ hissed Amber.
Then the hut door opened behind them. A small cylinder came rolling into the room and the door closed again. Amber, Li and Hex stared stupidly at the cylinder, not understanding what it was, but Alex’s eyes widened. He knew what the cylinder was. It was a stun grenade, commonly known as a flash-bang.
‘Get down!’ he yelled, diving under the table. ‘Hands over your ears!’
The others dropped to the floor beside him. An instant later, the stun grenade exploded with a blast of brilliant light and overwhelming sound. The percussion hit them like a solid wall, knocking the wind from their lungs and setting their heads ringing like tuning forks. They flopped onto the floor and their hands fell away from their ears. They stared unseeingly at the ceiling, completely overcome. The pain in their ears was intense and the ringing grew louder and louder, disrupting the delicate balance-mechanism of the inner ear completely. Vertigo gripped them and a huge wave of nausea flowed through their bodies.
They were vaguely aware of being picked up and manhandled out of the hut, but they were so disoriented, they could not even stand. By the time their heads had cleared enough for them to realize what was happening, they were outside, sitting in a line in the snow. Their wrists were handcuffed behind them, and a thin chain had been threaded through each pair of cuffs, then padlocked to the propane gas tank which stood between the huts.
Amber was the last to come round. She leaned over and vomited into the snow, then looked over at the other three, blinking the tears from her eyes. They were glaring up at three men, who stood over them, smiling. Two of them were the adoption men from Quito. The third was a thin, hawk-faced man. Alex recognized him from the truck stop on the border road. He was one of General Manteca’s men.
‘Amber,’ said Alex tightly, ‘can you talk to them? Pretend we don’t know anything. Tell them we are only climbers who got lost. Tell them we just stumbled onto the huts looking for help—’
‘Do not bother,’ said the thin-faced man in strongly accented English. ‘We know who you are.’
‘What have you done with Paulo?’ yelled Li.
‘Ah,’ said the thin-faced man, pretending to be sad. ‘He was so brave. I hurt him a lot, but he would not tell us anything. Then the general suggested I should start making little Eliza very uncomfortable - and suddenly, we could not shut Paulo up. He told us all about you.’ The man sighed. ‘Poor Paulo.’
Li began to cry softly.
‘Don’t worry,’ said the man kindly. ‘It will all be over soon. There is an explosive charge on the side of this gas tank, set to go off in ten minutes. You have caused us a lot of trouble, but the trail ends here. You and the factory will . . . disappear, and we will start up a new factory somewhere else. Do you see how you have wasted your last few days on this earth?’
The man turned on his heel and headed for the plane, shouting something in Spanish to the other two. They dived into the hut to get their luggage and the last of the cocaine.
‘What are we going to do?’ cried Amber, struggling against the handcuffs.
Alex shook his head grimly. He could see the device, stuck to the side of the tank, just above his head. There was enough explosive there to leave nothing but a smoking hole in the mountainside.
The thin-faced man had nearly reached the plane when his cellphone rang. The seconds ticked by as he listened, then he flicked the cellphone shut and walked back to them, pulling out a pistol.
‘Change of plan,’ he said, aiming the pistol at Amber’s head as the other two men piled out of the hut behind him. The two adoption men came closer, grinning and eager to watch. Suddenly the thin-faced man twisted round, holding the gun at eye level. There were two blasts in quick su
ccession. The adoption men staggered backwards with surprised expressions on their faces and round, red holes in the middle of their foreheads. They fell onto the snow and lay still. Their blood seeped into the snow around them in a spreading circle.
Li screamed and screwed her eyes shut as the man turned back to them. He laughed as he unlocked the padlock holding the chain to the tank. ‘I told you,’ he said as he yanked them to their feet by the chain. ‘Change of plan. The general wants to see you - all of you. He has discovered a certain . . . lack of funds. He would like to know where his money has gone.’
They staggered and stumbled over the snow towards the plane, horribly aware of the explosive device ticking away behind them. The thin-faced man pushed them roughly into the passenger compartment of the plane and padlocked the chain linking their handcuffs to a metal strut in the framework, then he climbed into the pilot’s seat and started the engine.
The little plane trundled down the glacier slope, picking up speed all the way. The man pulled back on the joystick and the plane left the ground. He yanked it round in a tight turn, making the engines roar, then pointed it straight at the mountainside ahead. Gradually, the little plane climbed, all the while rushing towards the rock face. When it seemed as though they would crash, he pulled the plane into a banking turn which took them towards a narrow gap between the jagged peaks.
A bright orange flower of fire blossomed on the glacier below, followed by a dull crump as the sound of the explosion reached them. The little plane shuddered, buffeted by the turbulence from the explosion. Then they were through the gap between the peaks and flying up into the clear blue morning sky.
SIXTEEN
The general’s house was huge and grand - a white, Spanish colonial-style mansion set in grounds that covered many thousands of acres. Cultivated fields and gardens surrounded the house while, further out, the land was covered with forest and lakes. The estate was situated in a remote part of the Central Valley, southwest of Quito. As the plane had circled overhead, preparing to land on the estate’s private landing strip, Alex had spotted only one road, stretching away like a long, thin ribbon to the east, where he thought it must eventually join the Pan-American Highway.
Now, as the off-road vehicle ferrying them from the landing strip rolled to a halt on the gravelled circle in front of the mansion, General Manteca hurried down the steps to meet them, like a host coming out to welcome his weekend house-guests.
‘Alex!’ cried the general as Alex stumbled from the car, followed by Amber, Hex and Li. ‘How good to see you again!’
Alex glared at the general, then looked around him. There were two gardeners weeding the driveway and a housemaid moved around on the sunny veranda at the top of the steps, setting a table for breakfast.
‘Help us!’ yelled Alex. ‘Help!’
The gardeners carried on weeding. The housemaid dropped a spoon and hurriedly picked it up again. None of them lifted their heads to look at him.
‘They work for me, Alex,’ said the general. ‘They know when to be deaf and blind. Come. Sit with me on the veranda.’
The general turned away and strolled up the steps. Alex, Li, Amber and Hex looked at one another, wondering whether to make a run for it, but the thin-faced man was getting out of the car behind them and they were still chained together with their arms cuffed behind their backs. Silently, they stumbled up the steps after the general. He waved them to a long, cushioned sofa, which swung gently in its frame as they sat down on it. A gentle breeze from the ceiling fan cooled the air, dappled sunlight made the veranda boards glow and the smell of fresh coffee and bacon filled the air. It was so strange to be sitting in the middle of this peaceful scene, sweating in their layers of mountain gear, with their faces streaked with dirt and their wrists bleeding from the rub of the handcuffs.
The general sat down at the table and the thin-faced man stood a discreet distance away at the top of the steps, with his back to them, as though he was a butler in a stately home rather than a ruthless gunman.
‘So,’ said the general, helping himself to bacon and eggs. ‘Paulo told me all about how angry you were when your father cancelled your holiday, Alex. He told me how you hated being packed off like a little boy, so you called up all your friends here, to help you prove to your father how grown up you are. You thought you could teach him a lesson by beating him at his own game. Am I right?’
Alex nodded, keeping his head down. He dared not meet the general’s gaze until he understood exactly what sort of a tale Paulo had spun. It seemed that he had managed to leave Alpha Force out of the story. The general seemed to think it had all been done in a fit of childish temper.
‘I understand, Alex,’ said General Manteca, ‘and I must say, you chose your friends well for your little game. Resourceful — and wealthy too, I imagine. Tracker devices are expensive toys and the one you used must have been state of the art.’
Amber stiffened with hope beside Alex. The general did not know about the satellite images, which suggested that he did not know about her uncle! A second later she slumped again, as she realized that her uncle would not be expecting a call from her for another five hours. Even then, he would have no idea where they were.
‘You have done well,’ said the general. ‘But this was a dangerous game you chose to play, not a bit of harmless fun! And now, look at the position you find yourselves in. You have all lied to your parents, telling them you are staying at one another’s houses, so nobody knows where you are.’
General Manteca leaned forward and fixed them with his dark brown eyes. He was trying to look unconcerned, but his hands were gripping his knife and fork so hard, his knuckles were white. ‘I will make a deal with you,’ he said casually. ‘You tell me where my money is and how to get it back. Then I will arrange to have you set free.’
‘I can tell you where it is, no problem,’ said Hex. ‘Yesterday you made a large, anonymous donation to Sister Catherine’s House. It’s all sitting in the charity’s bank account right now. As for getting it back, well, that’s a different story. You can’t. Get it back, I mean. Still, it must be good to know the Rat-catcher’s money will be helping all those street kids.’
The general’s breakfast plate flew across the veranda and smashed against the white wall, leaving a yellow and red smear of egg and tomato. A maid scurried out from the house to clear it up.
‘Street kids!’ roared Luis Manteca, his face red and twisted with anger. ‘Street rats, you mean! Lice-ridden, diseased vermin!’ He shook his head like an angry bull, then took a deep breath. ‘If you think this set-back will stop me, you are very wrong. I can start a new factory tomorrow. And my business is growing all the time. I can replace those funds in less than a year!’
‘What have you done with Paulo?’ asked Li. ‘Have you . . .? Is he . . .?’
‘Dead?’ The general subsided into his chair again with a cruel smile. ‘Not yet. But he soon will be. As will all of you.’ He sighed and turned to the thin-faced man. ‘I’m growing tired of this,’ he said. ‘Take them over to the compound.’
‘What about my father?’ said Alex. ‘I left him a message about you, you know.’
‘No , Alex, you didn’t.’ The general pulled a cellphone from his shirt pocket. ‘This is his phone. I took the only call you made to him. There are no text messages either. At least, not from you. He did get one this morning, from your mother, in Paris. She was at the top of the Eiffel Tower and she sent a text to say that she was missing you both and wished you were there with her. Wasn’t that sweet?’
Alex clenched his jaw and swallowed hard, trying to get rid of the lump in his throat at the unexpected message from his mother.
‘Nobody has left any messages at the base either,’ continued the general. ‘Or at the hotel you and your father stayed in. Your father suspects nothing. When he returns from his wild goose chase around Guayaquil, grieving for his missing son, I, his good friend, will be there to support him. And when your heart-broken father shoots himself
in the head a few weeks from now — I already have it marked in my diary - I will cry at his graveside. After that, I can get on with my business undisturbed. Now, if you would like to follow me to the car—’
‘Wait! Tell me something first,’ said Alex, desperately stalling for time. ‘There’s something I don’t understand. Why use street kids?’
‘What do you mean, Alex?’
‘Why use street kids to carry drugs for you? You have so much power, you could simply fly the drugs over the border by the planeload, or drive them out in convoys of trucks. Why use kids as mules? They couldn’t carry much.’
‘What do you think, Alex? Do you have a theory?’
‘I’m not sure,’ said Alex. ‘But I think it has something to do with the Rat-catcher. He hasn’t been hunting recently, has he?’
The general nodded. ‘You are a bright boy, Alex. I enjoyed hunting as the Rat-catcher for a time, but then I grew bored. The street rats were so plentiful and so easy to find. And there was no sense of danger. The people of Quito did not seem to care about the Rat-catcher. Some of them secretly admired him, I think. None of them tried to stop him. So I retired the Rat-catcher six months ago, and instead I found a way to bring the street rats running to me.’
‘The adoption men?’ said Amber.
‘That’s right! And, Alex, once again, you are correct. I did not need to use the street kids as mules. I used them because it amused me to have them take special parcels to my most valued clients - just as it has amused me to play this game with you. And I always gave the little rats exactly what I promised them. They all ended up on a big estate with a grand house and lots of land.’
‘You mean here?’ guessed Li.
‘Exactly,’ smiled Luis Manteca.