Blood Sun (23 page)

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 circle 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.

“Faster, Xavier!” he shouted. “C’mon!”

Max abandoned any thoughts of crocodiles being in the water. He reasoned, and hoped, that the swirling current and
boulders would keep them at bay. His leg muscles felt as though they were being torn apart by the effort—the weight of the raft and Xavier together made it enormously difficult to push it across the current. The knot of fire in his shoulder felt like a hard-boiled egg beneath his skin, a small pocket of heat that would erupt at any moment. He kept kicking, shifting the angle of the raft, making it steer more easily. Xavier worked hard, trying to complement Max’s strength by controlling the direction, jabbing the pole against boulders and riverbed as desperation fueled their efforts.

Max angled himself between the raft and the opposite bank; one more shove would get them out of sight. The front of the raft found its way into the cave; Xavier ducked, then lay flat as it went beneath the overhang and nudged into the chill half-light. The current pushed the rear end of the raft away, threatening to suck it out of the hole and take it back into the main stream. Max yelled, urging strength to transfer from his legs to his chest and arms as he made one last desperate shove to get the raft under cover. No sooner were they in the cave than Xavier screamed. A flurry of small bats, like a swarm of starlings, squeaked out of the cave. Max reached up and grabbed Xavier’s shoulder. “Stay down! They won’t hurt you. They’re not vampire bats.”

He could hear Xavier’s smothered breathing as he buried his face in his arms. Max was less concerned about the bats and more worried about the swarm being spotted by whoever was in the helicopter, because now the thundering engine and whirring blades reverberated inside the cave as it drew level. Max saw the helicopter flash past, so low that the skids were less than a meter from the surface. Both doors were
open, and he caught a glimpse of someone sitting on the other side, feet dangling over the edge. The aircraft was so close to the water that, had the man been facing the cliff wall where Max and Xavier were hiding, he would have seen them.

They listened as the helicopter noise receded and stopped echoing around the small cave. Finally, it went quiet. Now Max had to make a decision. They either stayed in the cave and waited a few hours, which meant they would be there all night, or they pushed back into the river and took their chances that the helicopter would not return.