He burst forward, swinging the butt of the M16 into the head of the man stood by the stereo set, dropping him to the ground as he spun the rifle around and brought it down like a sledgehammer onto the skull of the next man, one of the two sitting on the ammo crates.
The others were reacting now, and Lee snapped the barrel into the face of the man on the second crate, the hard metal breaking the nose, blood flying, black, through the dim light of the tent.
Lee spotted two of the men on loungers reaching for their rifles and jumped over to them, once more using the M16 as a club, cracking it across the first man’s head while simultaneously burying his boot in the second man’s face with a hard side-kick.
He saw another man pulling a pistol, and swiped the M16 across, smacking the hard barrel across the guy’s wrist before jamming the butt into his face; at the same time, he sensed movement behind him, saw the shadow of someone moving, and turned slightly, opening his hip fast and wide and sending a high hook kick whipping out toward the unseen target.
The impact wasn’t perfect, Lee’s calf connecting with the side of the man’s neck, but it was enough to stun him, and Lee was pleased that it was, as the man was holding a knife with an eight-inch serrated blade, which he’d no doubt been about to plunge into Lee’s back.
The scene was a confused mêlée, everything chaotic and brutal in the half-light of the solitary bulb; Lee was about to club another man who appeared in front of him, when he was tackled from the side by someone else, the impact knocking the gun from his hands. It would have taken him down to the floor, but Lee reacted to the movement instantly, secured a grip on the man with his now-free hands, and turned the guy over his leg and hip in a classic judo harai goshi throw.
With that man down, Lee saw the guy he’d been about to hit with the M16 now had his own rifle up, aimed in his direction; but instead of diving to the left or right, Lee jumped into a forward roll, the 5.56mm rounds ripping the night apart just above him, and as he came down from the roll, he let one of his legs straighten, smashing the heel of his boot down into the guy’s groin in a rolling axe kick. He immediately switched onto his hip and lashed out with a round kick that sent the rifle spiraling out of the gunman’s hands, came back with the same foot and smashed him in the knee with a side kick that dropped him low, and then quickly rolled onto his other hip and whipped out another round kick, this time connecting with the side of the man’s head, knocking him unconscious.
Lee sensed movement next to him from the guy he’d thrown, and turned just as the man jumped on top of him, a knife now in his hands, forcing it down toward Lee’s face.
Lee’s hands went up to stop him, one on the man’s wrist, holding the knife at bay, the other going to the guy’s throat, gripping tight on the larynx. The eyes bulged above him, but the man was strong and held on, forcing the knife further down even as his other hand went to Lee’s throat, going for the same move.
Instantly aware of the danger he was in, Lee lifted a knee sharply into the man’s balls; it didn’t stop him, but it was a distraction, and Lee felt the bodyweight shift above him. As it did, Lee’s foot shot up into the space that had appeared between them, hooking into the inside of the man’s leg; at the same time, he pulled and rolled backward over his shoulder, dragging the man with him in a circle until Lee lay on top, the attacker underneath him.
Lee dropped his head onto the guy’s upturned face as soon as the roll finished, breaking the nose and making the man gag on his own blood; and while still distracted, Lee let go with one hand and slapped at the flat of the blade with his open palm, knocking the knife out of the guy’s hand. In the next moment, Lee dropped an elbow into his startled face, but still the man was still conscious, using brute strength to turn away from Lee. Lee let him roll, releasing him just enough so that guy got onto all fours, escape the only thing on his mind, but then Lee pulled him back down, collapsing him to the floor, bodyweight crushing the drug-runner as Lee worked hardened, stiffened fingers down the line of the man’s neck, until he could slip one of his forearm across, the throat placed in the crook of Lee’s elbow, sides of the neck caught between forearm and biceps like a pair of pliers. His other hand went to the back of the guy’s head then, first hand securing itself to the second arm’s biceps, finishing the strangulation hold.
The man began to struggle, but it was too little, too late; the powerful hold cut off the blood supply to his head almost immediately, and Lee knew the guy was unconscious within the first few seconds. He left it on a couple of seconds longer, the body slack now, and then released him, standing slowly back up to survey the carnage.
Seven bodies littered the rec area, weapons, loungers and crates scattered across the little tented courtyard.
He breathed out slowly. Seven here, one outside, plus the four sentries made twelve total, seventeen if you included the guys he’d taken out earlier.
Even Lee had to admit, it wasn’t bad for an evening’s work.
Twenty minutes later, the men were all trussed up, secured and bound in a tight circle of bodies, sat straight-legged in the middle of the courtyard.
Earlier, he’d checked the men one by one, all too aware that one or more might still be conscious, might still go for a weapon; but they had all been out of it, and Lee had pulled their arms behind their backs as he went, pulling the shirts, vests or jackets down around their arms as makeshift handcuffs until he’d found something more substantial. A quick search of the camp had produced a roll of duct tape, and he’d gone back and done a better job of it.
By the time he’d finished, some of them were conscious, but they weren’t going anywhere, not the way they were secured now. They were a captive audience, and Lee had some questions for them.
Once upon a time, he’d have taken them one by one into the bunk room for “enhanced interrogation”, that painfully optimistic euphemism that the CIA had developed to cover up what amounted to torture. He had been part of that cycle at one stage, during his time with the agency’s Special Activities Division, and the experience had changed him beyond all measure. What he had done, what he had been forced to do, had ultimately led to the destruction of his family, and a near-complete mental breakdown that had only been salvaged by his escape from the military, and his retreat to the monasteries of Thailand and China. He was getting better day by day, but it was still a work in progress, and he had no wish to be reminded of his time with the SAD by dragging these guys in for hardcore interrogation, drug-runners or not.
He would just ask them nicely, and hope for the best.
He walked around the group, the eight-inch serrated knife he’d picked up off the floor hanging loosely by his side. A picture, after all, was worth more than a thousand words, and just because he wasn’t actually going to do anything to them didn’t mean he wanted them to know that. The art of psychological warfare was pretty basic, at its heart. And wasn’t it Roosevelt who’d advised to “talk softly, but carry a big stick”?
He’d already identified that four of the twelve were probably chemists, or what passed for chemists around here. They might not have had a technical job, might have been responsible for no more than crushing coca leaves with their feet, or mixing gasoline into the resulting paste; but the main thing was that they weren’t cartel soldiers, were as close to ordinary working people as you could expect in this industry, and so might be more open to persuasion than the others, whom might have been inured to such things by a lifetime of death and violence.
He could see it in their eyes now – eight pairs were filled with anger and hate, and four pairs with fear and desperation. If he’d ripped the duct tapes from their mouths, eight men would have hurled every insult they could think of at him, would have threatened him with the vengeance of the cartels, while the other four might well have begged for mercy.
“Ladies,” he said in Spanish, “I’m about to ask you some questions, and I would like some serious answers.” He looked down at the knife in his hands, then back at the men as he contin
ued to stroll around the circle. “If I don’t like what I hear, I’m not going to hurt you,” he said, and he could see the disbelief if their eyes. “But I will separate you from the group, and leave you outside the camp, tied up. A long way away, where no one can hear you scream.” He smiled as he looked at them. “And you can’t reason with animals, you know. Maybe you could make a game out of it? Guess what’s gonna kill you first? Maybe it’ll be a goliath tarantula, maybe a boa constrictor – you know, the ones that crush your bones, then swallow you whole? Or maybe a jaguar will give you a little kiss, plunge its teeth straight through your skull?” He shrugged. “Whatever it is, it won’t be pretty. But as I said, I’m not going to hurt you.
“Now for my first question – the American research team that moved through this forest recently, where are they?”
He could tell there was something wrong as soon as he asked the question, as there was confusion on every face he could see – the genuine kind, when the person being questioned is actually caught out, and has no idea what they’re being asked. Perhaps one person could have faked it, but not all of them, not all at the same time.
He approached one of the chemists, and pulled the duct tape from his mouth. “Talk,” he said, although he already suspected what the man’s answer would be. “Where are they?”
“I do not know what you are talking about,” the man said, to Lee’s dismay.
He believed the guy, but how was it possible? A group as large as the Chicago team moving through the forest wouldn’t go unnoticed by such a group, as paranoid about security as they were. Hell, they’d been on him immediately, and there was only one of him. How had an entire team passed through without notice?
Unless this location was wrong, and they’d never been here at all.
“Two weeks ago,” Lee persisted, “a team of eleven people – six Americans, five locals, they passed through this way. What happened to them?”
The man looked at Lee with fear in his eyes as he replied, scared that his unsatisfactory answers would result in being thrown to the jaguars. “Please,” he said, “please. We were not even here two weeks ago, we are a mobile laboratory, we move location every month or so, you know, to avoid being found.”
“When did you get here?” Lee asked, his heart sinking as he realized his hopes for an easy solution were quickly vanishing.
“Ten days ago,” the man said. “Just ten days ago. Please. Please.”
Lee turned away, deep in thought.
Damn it.
Why couldn’t they have just been in the bunk house, safe and sound? It would have made life so much easier.
“So you don’t have any leads at all?” Lee heard Phoenix ask through the camp’s powerful radio.
“Well,” Lee said, “it’s maybe not as bad as that. One of the guys did admit that they’d found a hat about six or seven klicks from here, when they’d been on their way in. American-made, which might not mean much, but it’s something at least.”
“You don’t like coincidences,” she said, reminding him of one of his mantras.
“Well, in this case I like ‘em just fine,” he said with a smile. “It’s not much, but it gives me somewhere to start searching at least.”
“You’re sure they’re not just blowing smoke up your ass?”
Lee laughed, having had exactly the same thought. “Maybe,” he admitted, “but three different people pointed at the same location on my map, independently, so I’m gonna go with it.”
“Unless it’s a trap,” Phoenix said. “Maybe another lab?”
Wow, Lee thought, she’s even more paranoid than I am. “It’s possible, but I don’t think there’ll be another facility so close. Nobody came running when the guns started going off, and they didn’t speak to anyone else on the radio, as far as I can tell.”
“Okay,” Phoenix said, “then it definitely looks like a good place to start. What are the coordinates?”
Lee read them off to her, giving her a kilometer grid square; between them, that was as accurate as three separate reports could be.
“A square kilometer?” Phoenix asked. “You’re going to have fun tomorrow.”
“Don’t I know it,” Lee said. “The hat isn’t even there anymore, they picked it up.”
Phoenix laughed. “No such thing as good luck, eh?”
“No,” Lee admitted. “Not on this job, anyway. But I’ll take a single square kilometer over a few thousand of them, any day of the week.”
“Yeah,” Phoenix agreed, “I guess so.”
“Anyway, I’ll go there in the morning, try and find some sign of them, and then follow the tracks, if I can find any.” He paused, stretching his aching body. “And how about you guys? You settle in okay?”
“No problems,” Phoenix said. “Got ourselves set up with a nice place. Not a hotel, a friend of Silva’s; he’s staying here too, keeping a low profile. Doesn’t want to go back to Feijó yet, maybe not ever after escaping like we did.”
“Understandable.”
“He’s on standby to help if he needs to,” Phoenix continued. “Might be useful.”
“Yeah. Any follow-up from the cops?”
“Not much,” Phoenix said, “which might mean Rodrigues was in this alone, he doesn’t want to tell other stations about the situation, because he doesn’t want them asking questions. Still has his own men looking though, but nothing too heavy.”
“Good,” Lee said, happy that at least there was some good news today. “Any idea who killed Guzman?”
“Ah . . . yeah,” Phoenix said, and Lee understood that all the good news had been used up. “There’s something I need to tell you.”
“Go on,” Lee said cagily.
“It looks like there’s a team from Apex in the area.”
Lee’s blood ran cold at the name. Apex Security Inc. was a private security force which took on contract work across the world, for the US government, foreign regimes, and any company who had enough money to hire them. Management didn’t care who signed the checks, as long as someone did. They were a mercenary army in the worst way, like the Blackwater boys he’d come across during the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, but with less scruples in how they operated.
They drew a lot of their active personnel from special ops guys, sometimes enticing them into discharging early with the promise of golden handshakes and huge bonuses. And they also targeted troops with questionable records, even those who’d been dishonorably discharged for misconduct; the way the management say it, they wanted dogs of war, and sometimes dogs didn’t behave themselves.
“Do we know who hired them?” Lee asked.
“Not yet,” Phoenix said, “but I’m working on it, okay?”
“Thanks,” Lee said. “Now, I’ll check in with you tomorrow morning before I leave, but I don’t know when I’ll be able to get in touch with you again. This radio’s good, but it’s too damn big and heavy to carry through the forest.”
“You’re sure?” came Phoenix’s strained reply.
Lee looked at the radio, which resembled was roughly the size his entire backpack, and weighed in at around a hundred pounds. He could carry it – and maybe should, he knew – but moving through the rainforest was debilitating enough, without making it harder. If he was following tracks, he’d have to be mobile, and he’d be up and down constantly, checking for signs on the ground.
“I’m sure,” he said. “But listen. You get Silva to fly over this area, over toward the Peruvian border, just after dawn and just before dusk, okay? If I need to communicate, I’ll signal.”
“Signal how?”
“The old-fashioned way, I guess. Smoke.”
“The old-fashioned way, huh? That seems to be the way you like it.”
Lee grunted, not sure if she was talking about mission tactics, or relationships, although she might have been right on both counts.
“He can drop a radio or sat-phone for us,” Lee said, “if you can rustle one up.”
“Yeah,” Phoenix said.
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“You might need to try rustling up a helicopter or two, as well,” he added, “like we talked about.”
“You don’t ask for much, do you?”
“For the extraction,” Lee said. “The forest’s so damn thick, there’s no chance of using a plane to get those guys out, if I find them.”
“I know, I know, we talked about it before. And don’t worry, I’m already on it, I might have a couple of options.”
“That’s great. Now, I’m gonna get some sleep. You look after yourself, you hear?”
Phoenix laughed. “I will do. You too.”
With that, Lee signed off and – giving his prisoners one last little check – he retired to the bunk house, to get some well-earned rest.
Tomorrow, he knew, was going to be a long day.
Chapter Five
Lee was up with the sun, and made himself a large breakfast from the food stocks in the small kitchen, before checking in with Phoenix again.
She hadn’t learned any more about who’d hired Apex, but thought there might be as many as sixteen operatives in Brazil, still stationed in Feijó.
“What are you going to do with the people there?” she asked.
“I’m gonna let them go,” he replied. After all, he wasn’t a murderer. He’d even tell them where they could find their friends.
“And the lab?” she asked.
“Well,” he replied with a grin, “we can’t have this sort of place cluttering up the rainforest, can we?”
Daniel Forster drank a cup of strong black coffee and watched the sun as it rose slowly over the horizon, mesmerized by its beauty. It was going to be another beautiful day, he knew; and he could only hope that this time, it would have a satisfactory conclusion.
He’d been unable to control his laughter when Rodrigues had called him the day before, with news of what had happened in Feijó. An entire police department, undone by one man. But this wasn’t, Forster had to admit, just any man. This was John Lee, the “Extractor” himself. The Feijó cops hadn’t stood a chance.
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