by Andy Lucas
'Let's say you're right. Where does it leave us? We can't access the intelligence here. We have nothing to go on. No leads. This place is cleaner than a nun's habit.'
Pace considered the statement for a moment, casting an eye outside the pool of their own light into the solid wall of blackness around them. The silence remained total. 'There is one way of finding out where they went,' he started slowly. 'It's risky but I'm not sure Baker would give us any information he has at the moment.'
'I'd agree with that. If he's trying to save us from ourselves, anything else we get from him could end up leading us astray all over again. So,' Hammond asked seriously, 'where are you going to magic up the destination information for a group of people that we've never seen, who have vanished at some point but we don't actually know when?'
'The military are still guarding this site, right?'
'According to Baker. That may have been a lie though.'
Pace shook his head. 'No, I don't think so. He would not have bothered allowing us to draw out all the kit if he didn't think we needed it, especially the boat and water-approach equipment.'
'If you remember,' Hammond reminded him swiftly, 'we didn't ask permission to take the stuff, or grab the plane.'
'He would have known what we took and where we were headed. Maybe,' Pace wondered, 'he even counted on it. My guess is that he let us go, knowing we would avoid the Uruguayan military and focus on the old science base. I mean, why would we tangle ourselves up in a firefight for no reason?'
Hammond saw where this was going now. He smiled inwardly. The night was definitely not about to finish early just because the other party guests had not turned up.
'Ah, so we're going to walk up to the first soldier we can find and politely ask him to tell us where everyone has gone? Simple and clean.'
'I thought so,' agreed Pace evenly. 'Although it might mean having to be a little persuasive.'
'Don't forget, the guys guarding this place are unlikely to be standard infantry. The Uruguayan government wants to keep snoopers like us at bay while they sort out the mess of their own part in the ARC nightmare.'
'And try to find any of the remaining gold that rightfully belongs to Her Majesty,' Pace added smugly.
'That goes without saying. If they're lucky enough to turn up some of the gold that we know is still missing, it will help them out enormously.'
'And I wouldn't begrudge them a penny of it either, ' agreed Pace. His voice was softer now. 'You know me well enough by now, Max, to realise that I take no pleasure in hurting people. My plan is to get the information and then get out the same way we came in before anyone notices.'
'What if they don't want to tell us, or maybe they don't even know? What then, James?'
'Then, we go home and take our chances with Baker. Convince him to let us get involved and make sure he tells us the truth this time.'
Hammond knew his companion was correct. It was likely that someone knew something. Either high above them in the clifftop barracks or guarding the head of the single road that wound its way up the steep incline in a series of sharp cuts. They had come too far to slink back into the sea with their tails between their legs. They had to try and get some information.
As it turned out, the local military were no slouches when it came to security. As Hammond had correctly suggested, they were also far from ordinary infantry.
Stepping out of the exterior door, this time with Hammond in the lead, all need for stealth evaporated at the simultaneous clicking of several semi-automatic rifles, sending a shiver of dread coursing through both of the McEntire men.
''Do not move,' came the barked order, in crisp Spanish. 'My men will shoot you if you try.' Then a pause, followed by a nastier addition. 'Please, feel free to try. It is far easier to deal with dead intruders than living ones.'
The door was surrounded by a small group of hard-eyed, professional soldiers. About a dozen men now stood with weapons levelled on Hammond while Pace remained hidden inside the doorway, shielded by his friend's body. Clad in green uniforms, with soft caps and standard-issue military boots, each man also sported a thin grey waterproof poncho, tucked neatly into their gun belt.
Quickly, Pace slipped back inside the passageway, turned on his heels and moved as fast as he could, back the way they'd just come, without making any noise. He could not help Hammond at that moment and neither of them wanted to get into a shooting war with innocent soldiers. This was not their fight after all. When he was twenty metres inside, he dropped to his knees and brought the Sten up to his shoulder, aiming back up towards the door; just in case.
Killing his torch beam served to plunge him into total darkness. The passage had curved slightly so he could not see the doorway directly, not that it mattered. It was dark outside and Hammond was in the doorway anyway. But he could still hear, very faintly, the murmur of the exchanges between Max and whoever had just caught him. Pace assumed that it was most likely to be a patrol of military guards. He was too far now to identify the language being spoken.
'Where's the other one?' asked the same voice; Hammond had not yet zeroed in on who was doing the talking. 'Come out from there. Do it now!' At receiving no response, he repeated his question to Hammond.
'He stayed down in the mess hall,' lied Hammond, replying in perfect Spanish himself; very glad that Pace had been behind him and hoping that he wasn't planning anything foolish. 'I left him setting some charges.'
'Charges?' This time the voice wavered a little. 'How much? How long before they blow?'
'I'm not going to tell you that, sorry. But,' Hammond added with a conspiratorial wink, 'I think we should all move away from this cliff pretty quickly.
Stepping forwards smartly, the owner of the voice turned out to be a small man, in his early thirties. As bald as Hammond, but possessing eyebrows and an untidy sprout of nasal hair unlike his captive, Captain Jorges was in no mood to play games. He had been a soldier for a decade and risen to command a small troop of crack guardsmen in record time. Typically assigned to protection duties and anti-terrorism roles, although nowhere near the skill level of Special Forces operatives, his men were all tough fighters and loyal to a fault. He would not take any unnecessary risks with their lives.
'What is your name and why are you here? You realise this is a secure area but if you have truly come to destroy this old place, you need to help me understand. You realise by now, of course, that this entire zone has been evacuated. There is nothing, and nobody, to destroy.'
'I won't argue with you there,' Hammond smiled good-naturedly. As he did so, another soldier stepped forward and relieved him efficiently of all his weapons. Feeling suddenly vulnerable without them, Hammond decided to redouble his bluffing efforts. 'This was an ARC facility. We came to destroy it.'
'You speak Spanish very well but you have an accent that belies you,' commented Jorges. 'Is this how the British government treats its friends now; sending men in to another sovereign nation to wreak havoc?'
'Sorry,' countered Hammond, 'but you're wrong there. We don't work for the British. My comrade and I hire ourselves out to whoever has a well-paying job that needs taking care of. Before you ask, I'm not going to tell you who hired us either.'
'You have a death wish then, I assume?'
Hammond forced a confident grin that he did not feel, and then added a steely edge to his next few words. 'Look, sunshine. I don't care to stand here chewing the fat with you and your men.' He nodded around at them, as if to recognise their presence. 'We don't have long and I knew the risks when I signed up. My wife and kids will be fine without me; I've made sure of that. They will have enough money to live well.'
Hammond had never been married, nor ever seriously contemplated such a restrictive relationship, but humanising himself to the enemy was a well-known tactic for garnering sympathy and preventing anyone from arbitrarily shooting him.
Jorges regarded the hard eyes and took note of a slight slump in Hammond's demeanour. Deliberately done, it did the tri
ck and introduced just enough doubt into his disciplined mind that he knew he could not afford to ignore the threat. It was probably a desperate ruse, he thought, but what if it wasn't? He had always prided himself on treating his men well; gaining their respect by being a strong, effective leader.
Begrudgingly, he gave the order for his men to retreat back up a winding path, shepherding Hammond tightly in the middle between them.
The path was only wide enough for two abreast travel and it hugged the contours of the cliff face, mirroring the road's approach but several hundred metres away and angling north east whereas the road headed south east. Both routes hair-pinned back and forth religiously, climbing barely ten metres with every completed, eighty metre traverse.
The night air remained cool and a strong wind suddenly whipped up, blowing in from the sea to send angry breakers crashing down over the impervious harbour wall, which shrugged them off with contempt.
The skies remained starless, thick with unseen cloud, and it started to rain. Strengthening in a heartbeat, it pelted down on top of them with surprising viciousness, dissolving visibility down to barely more than five metres; making the going treacherous and slippery within moments on the thinly-gravelled path.
Jorges immediately ordered his men to don their waterproof ponchos before continuing their march.
As with any cliff path, one side felt safe, hugging the naked rock, whilst the other became increasingly more perilous the higher you climbed; a sheer drop down to certain death after any more than about twenty metres. Hammond judged they were already forty metres high by the time the rain hit but the cliff rose to a dizzy one hundred metres at the back of the harbour so there was a way to go still.
Instinctively, all the soldiers edged closer to the cliff face before realising that the rain was falling so hard that only a single-file approach would safely get them back up to their nice, warm guardhouse at the top of the cliff.
Suddenly strung out in a longer line, crunching and sliding as they moved, nobody spoke. The soldiers had their orders and knew the terrain. It was only Hammond who had no real idea of what awaited him when he got to the top. The key, he knew, was not to ever get there.
Having been in more hopeless situations than he cared to remember, and never yet being unable to find a way out, Hammond applied his powerful intellect to the dilemma. At their increasingly snail-like pace, he guessed they wouldn't get to the top for another ten minutes. He had to try an escape quickly while the weather was on his side. Even so, the man behind him kept nudging him in the lower spine with the muzzle of his rifle every few steps, possibly to discourage him from doing anything foolish.
In reality, his choices were poor. He couldn't move forwards or backwards through the single line. He could not move up because the sheer rock prevented it. His only choice was to go down; throw himself over the edge and hope he was able to scrabble a life-saving hand hold on the rock as he fell, to try and arrest his fall before he crunched fatally down onto the beach far below. Even if you do try, he told himself, it would take a second or two to get to the edge and disappear over it. More than enough time for his spine-jabbing friend to squeeze off a couple of rounds.
Nothing else presented itself and Hammond made up his mind to try. Strangely, he also knew it would be better to throw himself off the cliff when they got much higher as it would give his falling body more time to grab for the rock face on the way down. At the height they'd already reached, if his hands failed to grasp an anchor hold, he would be as dead now as if he jumped another fifty metres higher.
Trudging on, starting to slump his shoulders even more noticeably for the benefit of the soldier directly behind him, Hammond bided his time and wondered if his final moments of life were going to end up being spent climbing up this damned Uruguayan cliff path.
Five minutes passed and the wind became so strong that the entire line was forced to stop and crouch down. Still buffeted by rising gusts, and hammering, icy rain, it gave Hammond a few more minutes of thinking time.
They waited, getting thoroughly soaked and cold, for a few minutes before Jorges; leading from the front as always, ordered them to continue. The weather had not improved and he saw no reason to wait any longer; in fact it might get worse and his men would be in even more danger on a path that he knew was notorious for claiming pedestrians in bad weather. Although not his men, the previous team who had originally been sent in to remove the ARC team and secure the site, had lost two of their number on the very same path; falling to their deaths on routine transit walks between the upper camp and the ARC harbour facility.
The guard at the very rear of the line was charged with ensuring nobody came upon the patrol from behind. Normally this was not an issue for Miguel Farraha, a private who had eyes on a corporal's stripe some time in the near future. Young, dedicated and passionately patriotic, he could always be relied upon to follow orders to the letter.
Unfortunately, the heavy rain had turned the path into a death trap and Farraha knew about the poor men who had fallen to a sticky end the month previously in similar weather conditions. Unable to walk backwards for any length of time without losing his footing, Farraha opted to walk normally, stopping and checking behind him every minute or two. All he saw was rain and darkness whenever he stopped.
Moving on after the brief stop, he carefully checked the rear again, peering intently into the curtain of falling water as if hoping sheer willpower would somehow part the water in biblical fashion. Of course, it didn't and he had to content himself with listening instead. He heard nothing over the increasing drum of the rain, hammering against rock and gravel.
Five minutes passed and Farraha guessed they must only be about twenty metres from the cliff top. Three more turns and they would be back. He had barely turned his head to look forwards again, after completing another dutiful check behind him, when he felt the momentary shock of something heavy crunching against the back of his neck before the world solidified into blissful darkness.
12
After waiting in the darkness, Pace's eyes adjusted to the gloom. His heart pounded, more from fear of what Hammond was facing than any threat to his own safety. Torn between wanting to charge up and help his friend and waiting to find a less violent way to help him, he knew he had to resist.
They had come to infiltrate ARC, which by all accounts was now back in the hands of legitimate people. They needed information on Josephine Roche's whereabouts and had come armed in case they needed to defend themselves against any possible remnants of her mercenary security forces. He had seen, first hand, how ruthlessly they had murdered to protect their employer.
Uruguay was not the enemy here. A modern, forward-thinking democracy; it was the envy of most other South American countries. Regaining democracy in the 1980s, after years of military rule, its economy was growing and its limited population benefited from some of the most liberal laws anywhere in the world. Same sex marriage, religious freedom, free education, access to technology and genuine freedom of the press had all been steps that the second smallest nation in South America had often taken long before its much larger neighbours of Brazil and Argentina.
The thought of ending up in a gun battle with the Uruguayan army was not a prospect Pace wanted to think about. It had always been a risk but he and Hammond had already agreed to do everything in their power, short of surrendering, to avoid a confrontation if they were ever discovered.
Now, kneeling in the dark passageway, the reality of this agreement kept Pace rooted to the spot, alert and frustrated but still only prepared to fire his weapon if he had no choice. Of course, he reasoned, the soldiers had no idea who they were, or why they had come, so were very likely to shoot first and ask questions afterwards. Pace hoped he was wrong but it did not change the fact that he needed a new plan, fast.
Deciding that nobody seemed in any hurry to charge down the passageway, guns blazing, Pace straightened up, eyes still straining at their limits. The voices had stopped, leaving only silence. He
waited a few moments longer but they did not restart.
'Could be a trap,' he whispered to himself aloud, feeling a strange reassurance to hear a voice, even his own. 'They might have all moved away and just be waiting to shoot you down the minute you come through the door.'
This logic didn't stop his feet from carrying him back to the door, which still stood wide open, revealing the lighter blackness of the outside. Pausing, breathing softly, Pace listened again, his finger curled lightly around the trigger of his WWII submachine gun. The only sound he heard was the wind, far angrier than before, followed by the patter of heavy rain.
Within a few seconds, the rain grew so heavy that it sounded more like a running bathroom shower than a rainstorm, reminding Pace of his many days spent slogging through the mosquito-infested mud of the Amazon Basin the year before. Never before had he experienced such heavy rainstorms, almost incessantly, day after day.
Pace had been in Brazil to run in Race Amazon, a charitable race to raise money for Brazil's wildlife and forest conservation projects, and to act as his team's video diarist. The first attempt to run the race had nearly cost him his life, which was hardly surprising seeing as how Doyle McEntire was using it as a front to hunt for a lost aircraft filled with weapon's grade plutonium that the Corporation had secretly purchased from an ex-Soviet state in its secret, ongoing effort to remove as much of the stuff as possible from circulation i.e. keep it out of the hands of crazy terrorist organisation who might want to use it on prized western targets.
With the race hijacked by mercenaries of a vicious local politician; Cathera, he had experienced terror and jubilation in equal measure, meeting friends and foes who had defined his decisions to join the McEntire Corporation as its newest covert operative. Being in love with Doyle McEntire's daughter had definitely helped with his decision.