Shadow of the Jaguar Page 6
Abby found their presence reassuring, given the uncertainness of what awaited them.
Viewed from above, the single concrete runway of Velazco Astete Airport looked like a gash in the earth. The small plane banked, adjusting its approach as it bumped down through the thermals toward landing.
The Captain’s voice came over the loudspeaker, instructing them to take their seats for a landing that would take place in ten minutes.
The plane banked again, the left wing dipping toward the earth, and came around to line up with the concrete strip. Abby watched the terminal building, a low, flat single-storey structure, come into view. She could see red letters on the side of the terminal, and she assumed they said ‘Welcome to Cuzco’ in both Spanish and Quechua, the two official languages of the country.
Through the metal of the hull, she felt the landing gear engaging, the reverberations shivering up through the bulk of the plane and into her chair. Squeezing her hand over her nose, Abby popped the pressure that had built up inside her ears during the gradual descent.
She fastened her seatbelt, sank back into the leather, and closed her eyes, waiting for the bump of the wheels on the ground.
Esteban Estevez heard screams.
He was out in the rainforest with his fellow rangers Rafe and Joaquim. They had stumbled into another one of those peculiar cones of silence, only this time the silence had not lasted.
The screams were gut wrenching. He pushed through the trees, fighting back the thick leaves that had grown across the track.
A few minutes later three women burst out of the smother of branches, shrieked at the sight of the rangers, and fled to one side even as Rafe tried to calm them. He marked the fear in the women’s eyes, and a glance at the other two men told him that they had seen it, too. They weren’t the first people the rangers had encountered.
There was a settlement less than half a mile from their location, he knew. It didn’t take a genius to put two and two together. He unclipped the walkie-talkie from his belt and radioed in to the reserve office.
Esteban was at the very limits of the radio’s reception. It took him a few moments to find a place where the crackle of static was reduced sufficiently for him to hear his half-brother on the other end.
He told Nando what they had found.
“There are a number of peculiar tracks all over sector echo twenty-seven. They appear to be leading down toward the village of Helevuia. I don’t like it, Nando.” He removed the fedora from his head and wiped away the sheen of sweat that clung to his brow. “There’s something wrong here. We hit one of those silent patches again a little while ago. This time it isn’t the animals that are fleeing; it’s the tribesmen. A dozen women and children have fled past us in the last five minutes. We are less than half a mile from the settlement. I am going to take Rafe and Joaquim and investigate.
“I don’t like this, little brother,” he continued. “I saw fear in those women’s eyes. I swear it was as though they had come face to face with El Diablo himself.”
“Be careful, Este.”
“When am I not?”
“I can think of plenty of occasions. Just be careful.”
“Worst comes to worst, we are armed. We can take care of ourselves.”
“Keep your eyes open.”
He turned the radio off and joined the others.
“Ready?”
They were.
Together the three rangers trekked toward the settlement of Helevuia.
A short time later, they walked into a slaughterhouse.
It was beyond eerie; they walked in utter silence. Even the crush of deadfall beneath their feet, which gave way to dirt and gravel as they emerged from the trees, seemed to dampen in deference to the carnage. Esteban walked slowly along the path that led to the houses.
He understood the screams now.
There were bodies sprawled in the dirt, bloodied and torn. It wasn’t the dead that drew his eye: it was the huge cat prowling amongst them.
Suddenly the beast stopped, inclining its head as it scented the intruders on the air, then it turned to look Esteban square in the eye. It growled once, low in the throat. This was the first sound he had heard since the screams. A heartbeat later the growl was answered by a roar that seemed to rumble all around them.
Esteban fumbled for the radio and dropped it even as he tried to unholster his service revolver. His hand shook so violently that he could barely drag it clear without dropping it.
Gunshots rang out as the great dark beast charged toward them. Echoing his fellow rangers, Esteban raised the revolver, the muzzle roving wildly with his trembling hand as he squeezed off a round, then another. The shots flew high and wide. He stared horrified, enraptured by the huge blood-soaked fangs bared as the cat roared its death-challenge, and pulled the trigger again and again.
There was at least one hit; he saw the spray of blood as the metal slug buried itself beneath thick hide.
It wasn’t enough.
The huge animal slammed into him, pinning him down and delivering a fatal bite to his throat, even as he fired off another shot.
Stephen Hart was the last man off the plane.
The heat hit him like a physical blow as he stepped out onto the shaky metal stair the ground crew had pushed up against the side of the small jet. Every muscle of his body ached from being cooped up on the cramped aircraft. He stretched, knuckling his hands into the base of his spine, then ran a hand through his short but unruly brown hair. By the time he was at the bottom of the stair, sweat had already begun to trickle down the side of his face.
The flat-baked concrete finished twenty feet beyond the steps and gave way to tarmac. The asphalt-like stuff was hot and sticky beneath his feet. The temperature must have been up in the mid-thirties; he felt the raw heat in the air on the back of his throat as he inhaled.
They had a welcoming committee: a large black SUV with tinted windows was parked fifty feet away on the hardstand. There was a small cavalcade of vehicles lined up behind it. A man in a wrinkled off-white linen suit leaned against the SUV’s bonnet. He was unshaven, tanned to an almost olive complexion, his well-defined physique showed through the thin material. He moved with an economy of movement and grace that betrayed military training.
He greeted Cutter with a laconic smile and an outstretched hand. This was obviously Sir Charles Bairstow’s ‘man on the ground’.
They exchanged words Stephen couldn’t quite hear, then the man made a slight bow before Abby. He took her hand and raised it to his lips. Before he could repeat the move with Jenny, she shifted her grip and shook his hand briskly.
“ARC, I presume,” he said. His voice was that classic nasal Etonian that reeked of old money.
“Little Gods,” she responded. The exchange made no sense to Stephen.
“I prefer Alex Chaplin, and only my mother calls me by my full name.”
Jenny laughed at that. But as he turned away, Stephen noticed that she gave him a strange look. She doesn’t like him.
Chaplin inclined his head toward Stephen and Connor.
“Damned good to have all of you here. Sir Charles has said good things about you.”
“He’s said almost nothing about you,” Cutter replied.
“The old man can be a little tight-lipped, I’m afraid. It’s a throwback to a Cold War mentality most of his generation haven’t been able to shuck. All right, then, first things first. You’re booked into the Hotel Del Prado in the main city for the first two nights of your stay. I’ll take three of you in my car, the rest of you will go with Fabrice in the second one. Your gear will follow in the remaining vehicles. I imagine you’re tired, but I suggest trying to stay awake for a few more hours before you turn in for the night. It will make the jet-lag less intrusive tomorrow.”
“Thank you,” Cutter said, starting to walk toward the first car. Over his shoulder he said, “Jenny, Stephen, you’re with me. Abby, Connor, you take the second car along with Jack, Sean and Andy.”
“That’s fine — just means we have to cosy up,” Connor said. His glance at Abby said he didn’t mind at all.
“I don’t think so,” Stark said, resting a friendly hand on Connor’s shoulder. His hands were like ham-hocks. Stephen grinned, while Connor writhed.
“Yeah... erm... no, that’s not what I meant,” he mumbled, much to the amusement of the other two soldiers, Sean Lucas, and Andy Blaine.
“Oh, I don’t know, Stark, it might be fun,” Blaine chuckled, slapping the bigger man squarely on the back.
“I’d squash you like a bug, Blaine.”
“What about customs?” Stephen asked, shifting the focus away from a squirming Connor. “Passport control? Surely we can’t just drive off into the sunset.”
“Hah! Hardly. The agent will be waiting at the security gate to check your documents. The situation is a bit sticky out here. It all looks very polite on the surface, but scratch a bit deeper and, well, I wouldn’t advise trying to skip the security checkpoint without showing your papers. They’re likely to shoot you in the back. It’s a little different from Heathrow.”
“No kidding,” Connor said, tugging at his collar. Sweat already stained the material around his throat. “Mind you, they’d probably try and shoot you at Heathrow these days.”
Behind them, the ground crew opened the seal on the hold door andwent to work unloading the equipment.
“Looks like you guys plan on settling in for the duration,” Chaplin observed, watching the steel coffins slide out of the plane.
“If this is going to look like it’s being done properly, it might as well be done properly,” Cutter said, opening the SUV’s passenger door.
“Agreed,” Chaplin nodded, getting in on the driver’s side.
Stephen climbed into the back seat and closed the door behind him. He had hoped for air conditioning, but inside the SUV was hot and stuffy. Jenny climbed in the other side.
“Buckle up,” Chaplin said.
“Don’t tell me, they’ll shoot you for not wearing your seatbelt,” Cutter said as Chaplin gunned the engine to life.
“No, but I drive like a clumsy Lewis Hamilton. I’d hate to have to explain to Sir Charles how you fell out the passenger door and rolled down the side of a mountain because I turned a corner a tad too sharply.”
They pulled away from the hardstand and drove slowly towards the terminal building, following yellow lines painted onto the tarmac. The dark tint to the windscreen and side windows leached the colour from the world around them. The sun glinting off the huge plate windows of the terminal building was reduced from a dazzling light to a series of white spots, like stars that had gone supernova.
As they approached the gate, Stephen took his passport from the breast pocket of his shirt.
The car was surprisingly loud, a third sound throbbing beneath the caged power of the huge v8 engine and the annoying whir of the air-conditioning fan. It took him a moment to realise that the sucking sound was the rubber of the wheels sticking to the road beneath them.
“So what do we need to know?” Cutter said, cutting straight to the chase.
Chaplin turned slightly in his seat. Stephen watched his eyes through the rear-view mirror.
“The official story is that young Cam staggered out of the jungle five days ago, delirious and near death. He had no identification, and no idea who he actually was or that half of the British government was looking for him. His only coherent words were: ‘They’re all dead.’ Not the most reassuring thing to say to the authorities.
“He now claims he and his brother Jaime were set upon by some sort of wild animal while they were out playing explorer in the Madre de Dios. His wounds seem to back up the story.” Chaplin sounded dubious.
“You don’t believe it?” Cutter asked.
“I don’t get paid to believe, Professor. There are a lot of wild stories floating out there. My personal favourite is that the boys were the victims of El Chupacabra, and that greedy government officials have brought the curse of the beast down upon the region because of their plans to turn the rainforest into a tourist trap. The vengeful Chupacabra, they say, won’t stand for that sort of nonsense.”
“Are we sure it wasn’t poachers? Perhaps his injuries were caused by dogs.”
“We aren’t sure about anything,” Chaplin admitted, slowing the SUV to pull up beside the customs gatehouse. A flimsy wooden barrier barred their way. A short, grim-faced guard, clutching the distinctive muzzle of an Uzi 9mm to his chest, stepped up to the side of the car and rapped on the tinted glass.
“Papers?” he said in pigeon-English as the window hummed down. The nametag pressed up against the glass read ‘Cristóbal’.
Chaplin collected their passports and handed them across to the guard, who examined them slowly, then leaned in through the window to match each of the photos to the passengers.
“What is your business in Peru?” he demanded.
It was a straightforward enough question, but what exactly were they supposed to say? That they intended to smuggle a British citizen out of the local hospital before the local killers got to him?
Hardly.
“We’re scientists,” Cutter said, leaning toward the open window. “We’re here as part of an expedition within the Madre de Dios.”
“You have papers for this?” the guard asked, the muzzle of his submachine gun rattling against the side of the SUV, as if to remind them all that it was still there.
“Yes, of course. Jenny?”
She leaned forward, holding out a sheaf of paperwork. The officious little guard took them, thumbing through them page after page as though they made a lick of sense to him. Stephen would have laid down a decent-sized bet that the man couldn’t read half of it, and was just looking for a stamp and a scribbled signature that would make it someone else’s responsibility.
A moment later he seemed to have found what he needed to reassure him, and handed the papers back into the car, then returned the passports, each with a ninety-day visa stamped into them.
“Thank you,” Cutter said, taking them back from the man.
The guard stepped back and signalled to someone inside the guardhouse. The barrier rose, then he waved them through. A short time later they were on the open road.
The ‘open road’, however, was hardly fit to bear the name. Every dozen or so yards the concrete was broken, causing the SUV’s suspension to judder alarmingly. Chaplin changed up through the gears, easing through the traffic of flatbed trucks and paint-flaked Fiats, the regular dub-dub-dub of the cracks sounding like an erratic heartbeat.
The air-conditioning was broken, Chaplin explained apologetically, and it was sucking the hot air of the outside into the compartment and heating it in the process. Whereas the tinted glass had kept out the sun before, now they found it preferable to open all four windows to let the wind blow through. Stephen felt as though his eyeballs themselves were sweating.
“Now, you were saying, you don’t think it was poachers?” Cutter said, speaking loudly as they merged with the faster moving traffic in the outside lane. Driving on the wrong side of the road was unnerving, especially since flatbeds with rattling tailgates and bald tyres were bouncing along barely in control beside them. Crates of produce were stacked up and tied down, along with people crushed and clinging on for dear life as they sped down the uneven roadways.
“Not having examined the boy’s wounds too closely myself, I can’t say for certain,” Chaplin responded. “But no, I don’t think it was.”
He told them a little more of what he knew: Jaime Bairstow’s body had yet to be recovered, but his brother’s description of the slaughter left no room for hope that the boy might still be alive.
“I was only able to talk with Cam for a moment, but he described their attacker as a sleek powerful big cat. That doesn’t sound like poachers or dogs.”
“A puma or jaguar perhaps?” Cutter offered.
“Anything is possible,” Chaplin agreed. “Between you and me, he is hardly the most reliable witness. Three times he mentioned seeing diamonds in the sky.”
“Really?” Cutter said, a look passed between him and Stephen as he looked behind him. It was the first conclusive proof they had found that the two stories were linked. He felt a small thrill of triumph. It disappeared quickly when he noticed the lack of surprise on Jenny’s face, and made a mental note to ask her about it later, in private.
“They’ve got him dosed up on morphine right now, so I wouldn’t take anything he says as the gospel truth, especially the notion that he found some air that was filled with crystals and diamonds that glittered and shone and made all these beautiful colours as they refracted the light. It sounds more like a drug-induced hallucination,” Chaplin concluded. But three of the four people in the car knew better. He was almost certainly talking about the first anomaly to be found off British soil.
That gave them plenty to think about on the long drive from the airport. And a welcome distraction from the cloying heat.
“So you think he’s lying? Covering something up?” Jenny shouted, leaning forward between the seats.
“I wouldn’t bet against it,” Chaplin said.
“How so?”
“There could have been a falling out, the boys coming to blows. One thing leads to another, and suddenly we have black cats and hallucinations. It isn’t impossible.
“And further more, it would be a damned sight more convenient for the Peruvian authorities to declare it the truth. Much better to have a couple of tourists trying to kill each other, rather than have to try and explain away either poachers or wild animal attacks in their precious eco-reserve.”