Mission Jaguar, page 7
James looked uncomfortable.
“Uh — yes? Why?”
Beck grinned.
“Because I still owe you.”
And with that, he hit James, hard.
Chapter Twenty-Six
James’s story
“Yeah, there were several of them,” James improvised. He winced as the nurse from the Jaguar sickbay dabbed something on his swollen jaw. Dang, who’d have thought a nice guy like Beck could pack such a punch? “I mean, I tried to stop them but …”
Ric’s men had found him, propped up against a tree and not having to pretend too hard about being dazed and semi-conscious. Just a couple of minutes had passed since Beck and Dian had disappeared into the vegetation. He had pointed some of them off in the wrong direction and the others had brought him back to the residence, not gently.
It had been Al who chased them off him, and who now stood protectively nearby. Ric Valcarcel paced up and down, looking like he didn’t believe a word of it, but couldn’t quite believe any alternatives either, especially given the state they had found James in. James wasn’t faking the fact that someone had clobbered him.
But even so, he got the feeling Ric could quite cheerfully put his hands either side of James’s head and squeeze what he wanted to know out of him. His eyes bored into James’s like flint arrowheads.
“Describe them.”
“They were in uniforms.” James had had several minutes to think up a good lie, and he had picked the one that should wind Ric up the most. “Camouflaged. They — ah — they spoke English, but with accents — I think they were American, and they had … you know …” He tapped his shoulder. “Little flags here. Uh — stars and stripes, I think they were.”
He was describing from memory the uniform of the last G.I. that he had seen on television.
Even Al seemed to find that too much.
“James, I don’t think American soldiers would be coming here …”
James hadn’t yet had a chance to tell him what he knew about the U.S. military. Ric, as James had intended, took it in a very different way. He could see the shutters coming down behind the man’s eyes, carefully giving nothing away.
“Her stepmother is American,” Ric said. “Crazy woman, she’ll stop at nothing. But of course they weren’t soldiers, they were just thugs she hired, probably using army gear.”
James guessed it was a performance for his benefit. If Ric thought the American army really were after him, he wouldn’t want James or Al to know it.
Al could put on a performance on as well.
“Look, Valcarcel, what’s going on? We came here in good faith, James is putting some significant funds into this work, but if this kind of thing goes on …”
Ric withered him with a look.
“Your boy wants to spend his pocket money somewhere else, that’s his choice. You’re being picked up this afternoon and that hasn’t changed. But first …” He glared down at James. “Do you have any idea where they took her?”
“None at all,” James said truthfully. The one thing he was pretty certain of was that they weren’t heading south to Beck’s rope.
Ric’s scowl deepened.
“Whoever they are, they’ll need picking up. And apart from your heli, I can make sure no chopper flies over this part of the jungle. A couple of phone calls, and they’re stranded.”
He strode out of the room without another word. Al and James glanced at each other, and Al minutely shook his head. The nurse was still there, and there was no way of knowing who else might be listening in.
“Well, I guess you should lie down in our room until our ride arrives, and tell me all about it,” Al said out loud. The pad of paper was going to come in handy again. James just nodded and probed his throbbing jaw with tentative fingers.
Good luck, Beck, he thought. Good luck, both of you.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Beck’s story
“So, where exactly are we headed?” she asked.
“Plan B,” Beck said shortly.
It wasn’t the reunion that he had foreseen. In an ideal world they would have been sitting quietly in James’s guest room, undisturbed, with all the time they needed for explanations — but as Beck knew all too well, it wasn’t an ideal world.
Having made the plan for climbing back up the cliff and meeting the helicopter, he had had to be brutally honest in his own head, and say to himself, what happens if she can’t? Which was precisely why he had come up with Plan B.
Before even entering the jungle, Beck had studied some satellite imagery of the layout of the hollow, from every angle, and come to one conclusion.
“When you’re on the ground you need to get high up to build a mind map of everything around you,” Beck quickly told her as they moved. “But it’s even better if you can look at satellite photos of the area in advance.”
“And you just happen to know someone who can provide satellite photos?” she asked sceptically. He grinned back at her.
“As a matter of fact, I do.”
They pushed their way determinedly through the undergrowth.
He noticed that she was favouring the leg she had hurt, which was only natural, but it obviously wasn’t a bad sprain. She would survive. So he made sure they pressed firmly on with a renewed sense of purpose.
From here they couldn’t see Jaguar, but they could hear it.
Beck guessed their pursuers were quartering the floor of the hollow, which was the best way to search a limited area — a steady, methodical way of working through from one side to the other, which guaranteed they would find anyone trying to hide.
It was what he would do in their place.
“Well, I don’t know what your mind map is telling you,” she said, “but you’re heading straight for the river …”
“Correct,” he said, just as they reached the bank.
The river curved just before it reached the cliff and tumbled into its natural tunnel. The bend meant they couldn’t look upstream and see the studios — but anyone who came around it would spot them at once.
And then she must have realised just what Beck’s escape route was. She stared at the hole in the rock. It was a natural arch, a bit wider than the river and a couple of metres at its highest point. Sunlight only made its way in for a short distance, lighting up harsh edges of crumpled limestone. After that the river was lost in the darkness, and all that came back was the sound of rushing, tumbling waters.
“That’s your way out?” she whispered.
“Yup. If we can’t climb out then we’re going underground,” he said. And then he realised that despite all the hard thinking, he hadn’t taken one key factor into account. “I — uh — guess it’s too late to ask if you’re claustrophobic?”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Dian’s story
Claustrophobic, no, she thought as she let herself down into the water. It gushed into her new boots and started to soak its way up her legs, cold but not freezing, like water out of the cold tap.
But, phobic about going into a dark cave full of water that might well flood, then trap my body under tons of rock and drown me, so that no one ever sees me again … well, quite possibly.
So why was she doing this?
It took her a moment to work it out. She was doing this because she trusted Beck. It wasn’t just that she wanted out, whichever way she could. There was just something — in his face, his eyes, his manner — that said she would be as safe as she ever could be with him. And so she pressed on, following Beck as he picked his way across the tumbled boulders that lined the bank, until they were right at the limit of the daylight inside the arch. She strained her eyes against the dark that waited further ahead.
“Wait here,” Beck said unexpectedly, and was suddenly scrambling past her, back the way they had come.
“Hey, what?”
“Just trust me — you’ll be safe in here for a few minutes. Stay hidden.”
He very quickly disappeared back into the trees, and she had to crane her neck to try and follow him without moving from where she was.
The rock was hard and uncomfortable underneath her, and even after she pulled her feet back out of the water they were still cold. Water sloshed about in her boots like a giant amoeba crawling over her toes.
Okay, you’ve got five minutes, and then I’m out of here and I’m taking my best chances …
She froze and her heart pounded as three men came into view out in the daylight. Silvio, and two others, who she knew by sight but not by name. One of the others was muttering.
“Quit complaining,” Silvio snapped. “We don’t find her, the Señor has all our hides. And if we do find her … I’ll tell you now, she’s going to fall accidentally against a few hard objects before we get her home.”
“The English kid said she went the other way. You think he was lying?”
“I think the English kid doesn’t have two brain cells to rub together, but she has plenty. She could have doubled back. That girl is smart.”
He was at the river bank, bending over and peering into the tunnel.
He was looking right at her.
“Very smart,” he added.
She had heard that when you have a heart attack, it’s not that your heart stops. It goes the other way — it speeds its way up until it just jams. That was how she felt now, with her heart thundering against her ribs, faster and faster, harder and harder.
Even if Silvio hadn’t seen her, he must have heard her heart.
She should do this with dignity. She began to straighten up, opened her mouth to say, “okay, I’m coming …” But then it struck her — no! Why should I? Why make life one single fraction easier for him than it has to be? He wants me, he can come and get me.
And so she said nothing.
“Silvio, she won’t have gone that way,” the other guy protested. “She’d drown.”
“That would solve a lot of problems,” Silvio replied. But he didn’t come any closer and she realised the astonishing truth — he hadn’t seen her. She would have stood out like a beacon if she was still in her white top and jeans, but the new dark clothes and the camouflage Beck had made her put on her face were working. Silvio wasn’t seeing any outlines in the gloom that he recognised as a human being.
And there was Beck! He was right behind them. She could see his leg, pressed against a tree, not moving.
“Nah, you’re right,” Silvio said. He pulled a radio out and spoke into it. “Search party one, end of first sweep, moving to second.” He tucked the radio back and the men took up regular positions along the river bank, pacing out the distance between themselves. Then they started to walk into the trees again.
Then they were gone, but Beck’s leg hadn’t moved. She began to wonder what he was playing at. Did he know something she didn’t? Had he heard that Silvio was still lurking nearby? Was he …
And then his silhouetted figure blocked the light for a moment, and he was clambering along the boulders towards her.
“Sorry,” he said, “had to get something and then they showed up. You just stayed still, right? Brave girl.”
“Get something?” she asked.
“The rope I left on the cliff was the only one I had, I needed to get a replacement,” he said casually, like he had somehow picked up a new rope in the middle of the jungle.
Beck then delved into a pocket and pulled out a thin, plastic tube which he she recognised as a glow stick. He flexed it in both hands and there was the crack of snapping plastic, and then the whole tube was lit from within by a green glow as two chemicals combined inside it to make light that would last for hours.
“You brought one of those on a jungle rescue mission? I thought they were for waving at festivals!”
“Soldiers have been using these long before any festival revellers! I brought several,” he said innocently. “Where you get limestone, you get caves, and this part of the world has some of the longest cave systems in South America. I wasn’t planning on coming down here but we have had to adapt. No plan survives contact with the enemy, I guess.” He paused. “So, shall we?”
He climbed past so that he was the one taking the lead into the darkness, and let himself slide gently down into the water so that it was up to his waist.
So, this was it. She was going down into an unexplored subterranean cavern where she very well might drown, trusting her life to a boy she had known for barely minutes.
The amazing thing was, compared to her life twenty-four hours previously, or even when she woke up that morning, she felt somehow empowered. For the first time, she felt her destiny was in her hands, rather than Ric’s.
Well in Beck’s hands technically I guess, she thought, and then smiled to herself.
“I’m ready,” she said, and followed him down.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
The water was like a cold, slick skin wrapped around her. It flowed a little more quickly than they were walking, so there was a bow wave around their waists stretching away into the dark ahead of them, and she was constantly braced backwards against its gentle, insistent pull.
Every step, she had to probe her way with her feet. She could feel that the river bed was rough with jagged, submerged boulders ready to turn beneath her weight and trip her up. And meanwhile, the rock was pressing down above, slick and damp. She flinched the first time she felt it brush her hair, and after that she kept one hand up by her forehead to soften any sudden impacts.
The river wasn’t getting deeper but the ceiling was getting lower so that she soon had to stoop. She felt the chill of the water flow further up her. They moved in a way that was kind of walking and kind of swimming, bent over, taking long strides that would have been impossible without the water to buoy their bodies up.
Beck had repeatedly reminded her to fight to keep her feet on the riverbed and not lift them up to swim. It gave her an element of control in the river current and meant she wasn’t just going to be swept away into the dark.
The tunnel wasn’t smooth, like a pipe. It twisted and bent, sometimes narrowing down to a crack that they could only have got through in single file, sometimes widening out so that they and a couple of friends could have walked side by side if it wasn’t for the low ceiling. Always ahead, guiding their way, was a faint band of light from the glow stick, a rippling semicircle that moved over the ripples and ridges in the glistening rocky ceiling above.
The only part of Beck she could see clearly was his hand, holding the stick ahead of him so that his shoulders and the back of his head were a silhouette against the light. Beyond him was just damp darkness. The sound of water running over rocks was a constant background drone, echoing out of the dark ahead.
“We’re lucky it’s not the rainy season. We’d need scuba gear to get this far.” Beck was shouting above the sound of the water. “But one good downpour and the whole water level could go up several feet.”
“So … what happens if we get one good downpour?” she had to ask.
“Heh.” It was like she could hear him smile. “How long can you hold your breath?”
“Heh,” she mimicked. “Hilarious. But seriously?”
“We go on until we can’t any longer.”
“You’re a glass half full kind of guy, aren’t you?”
“As long as the cave’s half empty, I’m fine,” he replied.
The ceiling dropped lower and she had to bend down even further so that her chin was almost in the water. Then she had to turn her head sideways to keep breathing.
She could feel her fear mounting inside her now.
Still they pressed on, until they both had to turn onto their backs to keep their mouths and noses in the centimetres of air between water and rock.
The limestone then brushed gently against the tip of her nose and she shuddered, as if it was nature’s warning of some powerful hand that was poised to come out of the dark and close over her face, pushing her under altogether.
How many hundreds, thousands, millions of tons of rock were now above her?
She dared not even imagine.
Chapter Thirty
Eventually she could tell from the increased echoes of the water that there was more air around them again, and when she put an exploring hand up she could feel the ceiling receding as they went, giving them all of at least fifty centimetres of air above them.
They were one hundred per cent committed by this stage, and had little option but to press on. After a while, the ceiling rose further and they could stand a little straighter. It was a relief to ease their backs and get their top halves out of the water.
Beck stopped, so suddenly that she bumped into him.
“Hear that?”
The sound of running water was much louder than it had been. It had snuck up on them as they made their way through the darkness. In the light from the glow-stick she could just see that the tunnel curved around a bend into the dark.
“Wait here,” Beck said, with a more serious tone in his voice. He braced his free hand against the roof of the tunnel and made his way slowly forward to the bend, then stuck the glow-stick out ahead of him and peered at whatever it was showing.
“Okay,” he said, “come on forward. But keep yourself braced like I did. Oh, and if you slip, put your feet right down at once.”
“Got it.”
She went forward slowly to join him at the bend, and when she got there she saw why the warning.
The tunnel widened out into a much larger chamber — that was the good news. Millions of years of swirling water had created a cavity that was almost spherical, though the ceiling was ragged with stalactites hanging down like decayed fangs, built up over the centuries by drips of water carrying tiny particles of calcium and lime.
