Mission Jaguar, page 14
“Dian? You okay?”
She heard the worry in Beck’s voice, but she picked herself up and wiped leafs from her front. Nothing broken, no harm done except to her dignity.
“I’m fine …”
She broke off with a gasp as she saw the face of the jaguar, snarling back at her where she had pulled the shrub away.
“Problem?” Now he sounded even more worried.
“No.” After the initial shock, she could laugh. “Just your friend the jaguar.”
“What?” She could almost hear his thoughts spinning. “Okay. Don’t move …”
“Beck, he’s made of stone.”
She had seen this face almost every day in her old life. The Jaguar God of Terrestrial Fire and War, after whom Ric had named the studio. She would recognise it anywhere: the square staring eyes and a row of bared rectangular teeth. Then she pulled at the foliage next to it. It was part of a stone carving.
She stepped further back and craned her neck up at the mound. This wasn’t just a lump of limestone at all. It was artificial.
How hadn’t she seen it? It was clear to her now: the lower coverage of trees; the mounds sticking above the canopy — more buildings like this one, of course. The regular ridges that had helped them climb the side of what she now realised was a stepped pyramid.
“Beck!” she called, excitement welling inside her. “This whole thing we are on — it’s a city! It’s an old Mayan city!”
“Correct,” said Ric, a lean figure in jungle slacks, stepping around the corner of the pyramid. “You know why I named my outfit after the jaguar? Why I chose a jaguar temple as my base? Because it’s a hunter. Because it never stops. Because it always gets its prey.”
He paused for effect. “And so do I.”
Chapter Fifty-Eight
“You can see how early explorers just walked past places like this, can’t you?” Ric added.
He strolled slowly forward, hands in his pockets, a slight swagger to his hips.
“The jungle just retook them after they were abandoned. This place — archaeologists uncovered it about thirty years ago, but there’s nothing of major importance here and it’s too far from the tourist tracks so they just let it go again, and it hasn’t yet had quite long enough to get fully covered up again.”
“What …” she breathed. “How did you …”
Her mouth had gone dry as dust. Her pulse raced, priming her body to run away, somewhere, anywhere, but she couldn’t make her feet move. And then hands seized her arms from behind like a pair of steel gauntlets, so that her top half couldn’t move.
Her lower half could. She raised a foot and raked her heel down the inside leg of the man behind her. Her attacker gasped and his hold weakened just enough that she could squirm free of him. She flung herself away and found herself staring at Silvio, straightening up and favouring his injured leg.
“Stay back, Silvio.” Ric sounded amused. Maybe he was remembering that he was the one who had made her take self-defence lessons in the first place. “She’s going nowhere. And nor’s the other one.” He raised his voice to call to Beck, still not taking his eyes off Dian. “Come on down, kid.” He barked a laugh. “American mercenaries, my foot. That Blake boy was full of it.”
Beck was halfway up the side of the pyramid, and showed no intention of getting any lower.
“You didn’t hunt us,” he commented, as though he had just worked out the answer to a mildly interesting crossword puzzle. “You just got here first.”
Ric bowed his head in acknowledgement.
“Jaguars don’t just stalk, kid. They set ambushes. Now, I could have charged around the jungle looking for you, like the search parties. Or I could be scientific about it. There’s no way you evaded the guards back on the estate and managed to climb out, so the only possible way you got out was through the cave. Neat trick, which you must tell me all about. So you went north — in which case you’d need pickup.” He paused for effect. “So, where might be a good pickup point to the North? Well, I knew about this place — and since whatever I had to do involved waiting for my prey, I thought I’d wait here. Worst case scenario, I am in a high ground position to spot any attempted rescue helicopter, and then be able to call in our own. Best case … well, here we are. So, you coming down or staying up there?”
For an answer, Beck pointedly held the handset up to demonstrate it to Ric, then put it to his mouth.
“Mayday, mayday,” he said. “Hostiles are here. We need immediate evac.”
“Ooh, sure, the marines are coming in a six-seater heli,” Ric mocked. “Turn it on again, kid.” He raised his voice. “Whoever’s listening, my name is Ric Valcarcel and I’m rescuing my daughter from an obvious kidnap attempt. Do not try to interfere unless you want a whole lot of trouble with the law.”
“I’m not your daughter,” Dian snarled.
“Every court you care to name — Guatemalan, American, British — will say that you are.”
“You know what I mean!” She remembered something Beck had said. “There’s DNA tests which will prove it, and they have the guy who sold you to me.”
At this Ric paused.
“So you two have been busy with your fantastical ideas. Either way, they have to get hold of you, and they have to have your DNA to prove it, and they won’t get either. Silvio, call our lift in.”
Silvio nodded and pulled out a larger, more powerful handset similar to Beck’s. He spoke into it and they all heard the reply.
“With you in half an hour, Señor.”
“Well,” Ric said after a moment. “Isn’t that interesting.”
They were all doing the arithmetic, and it wasn’t hard. Beck’s helicopter there in twenty minutes, Ric’s ten minutes after that.
“So what it comes down to,” Ric added thoughtfully, “is your boy scouts versus my people. I’m going to hazard a guess that the kind of amateurs who send a teenage boy in to do a man’s job aren’t going to be armed to the teeth.” He paused again. “Whereas we …”
He nodded at Silvio, who smirked and patted the heavy leather holster at his hip.
“So that kind of evens up the ten-minute imbalance. You and your people are welcome to hang around, kid — this is public land, after all — but if they so much as think of interfering with my perfectly legal attempt to bring my underage daughter back home, they will be resisted. So, do we all understand each other?”
Chapter Fifty-Nine
Ric cocked an eye up at Beck.
“My joy at being reunited with my daughter puts me in a mellow mood, so when your friends get here, you’re welcome to leave with them. I won’t press charges — this once. But if you set foot in this country again, you’ll be opening up a whole new world of trouble for yourselves. Now before we go, one of you two has something on them that belongs to me.”
He looked from one to the other. Both just met his stare with looks of blank innocence. He shrugged.
“You …” He looked at Dian. “I’ll search later. But you, kid, Silvio needs to search you now.”
Silvio and Beck looked at each other, and Silvio grinned, mentally weighing up his hundred kilo weight and extra height versus Beck’s wiry frame.
“Silvio wants me, he can come and get me.” She heard the flat tension in Beck’s voice, with not a hint of a tremble. Silvio took a step forward, and paused, sizing up the situation. Beck was some metres above him, not able to move fast, but much nimbler, maybe able to lash out with a foot if Silvio got near …
But Silvio just had to grab hold of that foot and it would be game over …
Her heart seemed to stop as Silvio’s hand went to the butt of the gun at his waist.
“No,” Ric said sharply. “None of that. We always play the good guys, remember?” He had a wry grin at the corner of his mouth.
Silvio grimaced, but he took his hand away and advanced towards the first layer of the pyramid. Man and boy squared up to each other like gladiators braced for the attack. Ric smiled and strolled over to a vine covered boulder. He reached down to brush away the foliage so that he could sit down and watch the spectacle.
His scream cut through the jungle. Silvio span around, hand automatically going back to his gun. Ric staggered away, clutching his wrist, and then seemed to trip over his own feet and fall to the ground.
Something moved in the mass of vines where he had been about to sit. A separate vine, much thicker, uncoiling from the rest. Shades of brown, grey and black in the shadows of the foliage coalesced into a thick, scaly body. The snake unfurled itself and slithered towards Ric.
Chapter Sixty
Beck’s story
BOOM!
The gunshot echoed through the trees as a small explosion of dirt threw itself up next to the snake.
Silvio advanced on it, revolver in front of him, grasped professionally in both hands as he emptied its chamber in a matter of seconds. Bullets tore through the snake’s body, splattering blood, flesh and bone along the brown diamonds on its back. It writhed under their impact and then lay still.
It had been a long animal — well over a metre that had emerged from the vines, and Dian guessed there was still plenty of it hidden from view.
Silvio stared wild-eyed at the wreck of the snake’s body, then turned to Ric.
“Señor …”
And then Beck, who could count and who knew how many bullets there were in a revolver, landed on him — a running jump from above, booted feet together hitting him between the shoulders. Silvio flew forward and landed on his face, arms and legs sprawled.
Beck went straight into a parachute landing roll and was then instantly on his feet while Silvio was flat out, muscles twitching, and struggling for breath. Beck jumped onto his back, landing knees first for extra measure to make sure he stayed down, and fumbled in Silvio’s pockets. He produced a bundle of plastic ties which he whipped around Silvio’s wrists and ankles before the man would regain his wits.
“Figured he’d bring something like that, if this was to be a ‘retrieval’ mission,” he commented to Dian. And then he drew his machete and advanced on Ric.
Ric pushed himself backwards along the ground. He clutched his wrist to his chest and stared up at Beck.
“Don’t be stupid, boy,” he barked, “Let’s sort this out properly, but first I am going to need medical help …”
Beck wasn’t even listening. He simply knelt by him and sliced the sleeve of his shirt away.
“Fer-de-lance,” he said crisply. “Up to two metres long, very aggressive if you get within its strike range and it feels threatened. Haemotoxic, and the flesh in your arm will basically start liquefying if we don’t get you to the hospital.”
He studied Ric’s arm below the elbow. The twin puncture wounds in his skin were dark pits against a background of red, swelling flesh, and they were bleeding freely.
“Breathe slowly,” Beck ordered. He demonstrated. “In … out … in … out. You need to get your heart rate down as much as possible.” He slid a hand under Ric’s shoulders. “Try to sit up. You want to keep the bite lower than your heart.”
Dian fumbled in Silvio’s pocket while the man struggled feebly.
“I’ll get another of those ties,” she said. “You can use a tourniquet…”
“No, no.” Beck shook his head abruptly. “That’s only in the movies. Obstructing the blood flow just causes more problems than it solves. Look around for a kind of plant. Bullhorn acacia — spikes as long as your finger …” He held his index finger out to demonstrate. “Very thin and sharp, and probably covered with ants which live inside it. Don’t mess with the tree because the ants will come out to protect it. Go!”
He stood up and put the machete away.
“And you, just stay down there,” he said to Ric. “We’re looking after you. Remember that. And don’t patronise me ever again.”
Ric stared up at him with eyes that had difficulty focusing.
“Thank you.” he whispered.
“Your time for that will come.”
Dian found a plant closely matching Beck’s description within a matter of minutes, and she called him over. He nodded in approval when he saw it.
“Smart girl. Well done.”
He worked the machete blade in between the spikes and started to shave off peelings of bark. As he had promised, the dark figures of ants swarmed towards him out of small cavities in the trunk. He held the shavings between thumb and forefinger and tossed the remains of the plant away with the ants.
He then flicked any remaining ants that had reached him away onto the ground.
“Symbiosis in action,” he said. “The tree gives the ants a home, and if anything attacks it, then they come out to defend it.”
They hurried back to Ric. Silvio had got his wits together to struggle into a sitting position, but his wrists and feet were still bound and they ignored him and his cursing.
Beck pressed the bark into Ric’s mouth.
“Chew on this. The acacia slows down the heart rate until you can get proper medical attention, and the other stuff is a painkiller.”
Ric had a water bottle on his belt. Beck held it to Ric’s mouth.
“Try and drink — this will help you chew, mixing the acacia with saliva and fluids.”
Then he pulled out his radio.
“Arabella? You there? Over.”
“Ten minutes, Beck. You’ll be able to hear us soon.”
“Cool. Call the nearest hospital and tell them we have a snakebite victim. Fer-de-lance. And it’s not Dian. We’ll need to bring him straight in.” He shot Silvio a look. “Don’t worry, you’re coming with us. Although it is kind of tempting to leave you here, to be honest.”
He stepped back and surveyed the two men on the ground — Ric, still pale and holding his wrist, Silvio glaring hatred and murder up at him — and smiled a benevolent, satisfied smile. He turned to Dian.
“You’ve got the widget?”
She nodded, with a wide smile of her own, and pulled the circuit board from her pocket. Ric groaned even more loudly.
He held the radio back to his mouth.
“And also, Arabella, get onto the U.S. embassy, talk to someone in their intelligence section, and tell them to meet us at the hospital because we’ve got something really interesting to show them.”
Beck crouched down to look Ric in the eye. He was still smiling.
“You know, when I first touched down, I was wondering to myself what a jaguar would make of you. Would it recognise a fellow hunter? Or would it despise you: a creature that takes more than it needs, that hurts for the fun of it? Put it another way — whose side would a jaguar god take?”
He stood up and dusted his trousers.
“Guess we got the answer to that one.”
The first distant sound of Arabella’s helicopter buzzed in their ears.
Chapter Sixty-One
Airport Arrivals lounges were probably Beck’s least favourite place on earth, and the one at La Aurora airport was no different.
Hundreds of people milling about, waiting for the next inflow of passengers through the gates. If the incoming flight was delayed for whatever reason — storms in the Caribbean in this case, apparently — then there was nothing to do but wait in the crowd.
But then it was like a lightbulb lit up inside Dian’s face, and she was waving fit to bust.
A lean middle aged woman with strawberry blonde hair and a cream linen trouser suit was waving back and pushing through the crowd to get to them. She and Dian ran into each other’s arms, while Al and the boys, plus the government official, waited, shuffling their feet in the background, smiling at each other.
Kim Bretscher had arrived in Guatemala.
Beck didn’t know exactly what had happened back at Jaguar. But there was no doubt that Ric Valcarcel had a lot of friends in high places. It had taken some serious convincing with the embassy even to carry out a raid on the estate in the first place. But once they heard all the facts and saw the evidence, the raid all happened very fast.
It would be a much longer process getting to the very root of the criminal activity and the other masterminds involved, but the lid was well and truly blown now, with Ric having been proven to be at the centre of it all.
‘What goes around, comes around’, as Dian had calmly noted to the police and embassy staff when the raid had been completed.
Al’s application to have Dian’s ancestry formally checked, and her adoption annulled, was fast-tracked by the government agencies, once they realised that Senor Valcarcel was crooked. She and Beck had each provided a DNA sample — nothing more elaborate than a cotton bud rubbed against the inside of their mouths before being dropped into a sterile test tube — and the results would be known shortly.
With her legal ‘father’ in jail, the Republic of Guatemala was officially her guardian, but once all the legal business had been done with, Al would officially take over the position.
But Al knew that Dian had dreams of her own. It didn’t matter who Dian’s parents officially were. The fact was, there was someone in her life much closer to her than Beck or Al were, and someone she had always hoped to be able to live with.
Eventually, Dian was able to break free and drag Kim over to meet the others. All three of them were pulled into a hug, with an extra strong one reserved for Beck.
“So, this is it,” Dian said. Her eyes still shone. A chemical analysis would reveal nothing but pure happy, Beck thought to himself. What more can you wish for someone you love?
He smiled back. It was as if his smile was endorsing her departure from him once more. It broke his heart, but he would not show it.
It felt like the bravest thing he had ever done.
“I guess it is,” he said.
Maybe she had figured what was on his mind, because she pulled him into another hug.
“We’re brother, sister, remember — that doesn’t change now. We don’t have to live together for that to be true. You found me and rescued me. There’s a natural bond there stronger than any distance can overcome. It’s just right for me now to be with Kim. Can you trust me like I trusted you in that jungle, Beck?”
