Laura 01 The Jaguar Prophecy (16 page)

The two men exchange blows, but neither can get a direct hit, as they are evenly matched and each one blocks the other’s blows as they are thrown.

Suddenly a fire extinguisher comes down on Russtoff’s head, almost knocking him unconscious. Laura has managed to find it again after dropping it when Russtoff shouldered her out of the way.

“This is for chloroforming me!” she yells as she gives Russtoff another devastating blow to the head, so hard that she loses her grip on the fire extinguisher and it drops to the floor.

Victor makes good on his chance and grabs Russtoff by the front, pushing him backwards, between the two seats, towards the front of the boat. The semi conscious Russtoff trips over the fire extinguisher that Laura dropped and comes down in the entry way between the driver and crew’s seat, with his neck on the lip of the engine hatch.

Victor wastes no time and is immediately on top of him, delivering blow after blow to his face, and then switches to punching him three times in the side before starting to choke him.

Even though Russtoff is half dazed and cannot think, his training and killer instincts are still running at full speed. He automatically pulls his knife from its sheath on his belt and tries to stab Victor, who immediately lets go of his throat.

Victor is just in time to grab Russtoff’s arm to avoid being stabbed in the neck, pushing Rustoff’s hand and the knife down and away from him. Suddenly Russtoff grabs Victor around the neck with his left arm and starts to pull him closer while pushing up with his right hand, managing to bring the knife right to Victor’s throat.

With all his might Victor pushes with his left hand down to keep Russtoff’s blade hand down, while with his right hand he pushes off the floor, trying not to be pulled into the knife.

Slowly, Victor is winning, pulling himself away, bit by bit; unexpectedly Russtoff brings his right knee up and knees Victor in the groin, causing pain to ripple through Victor’s body and his strength to weaken. He almost collapses onto the knife, and with everything he has he fights back.

Victor has never had to fight so hard to stay alive as he does now; the tip of the knife is now touching his throat and nicks the skin. Drops of blood from Victor’s throat drip onto Russtoff, who gives a maniacal laugh at the sight of seeing Victor’s throat bleeding.

“Laura, close the engine hatch!” Victor yells.

“What?”

“Close the engine hatch; push the big green button on the console!” Victor feels the knife cutting deeper. Laura frantically looks around on the console, but cannot make out the colors of the buttons. When Russtoff crashed into the console and the switches went into his back, the light was accidentally switched off.

“Hurry Laura!” Victor knows he cannot hold Russtoff for much longer as the man is starting to recover from being hit on the head. Laura sees two buttons on the side of the console that are far larger than the others and reckons they must control the engine hatch. She pushes the top button, but the engine hatch only jumps up half an inch then stops.

“Oops, sorry, wrong button.”

Before Victor can reply she pushes the bottom button and suddenly the engine hatch starts to close.

Victor gives one final effort and pushes as hard as he can with his left arm, lifting himself slowly away from the knife, and then bends his back upwards while pulling his right arm from the floor and grabs the edge of the right engine hatch coming down, pulling himself even further away from Russtoff.

Slowly the engine hatch cover closes and the right engine hatch cover comes down onto Russtoff’s throat. For a moment, one can hear the hydraulics strain while the engine hatch stops moving, obstructed by Russtoff’s neck, then there is the sickening sound of flesh being torn and bones crushing, followed by air escaping past blood in Russtoff’s windpipe. The engine hatch dutifully continues to close, cutting off Russtoff’s head.

As his body goes limp, Victor pushes himself backwards and into a seated position.

“Shit!” is all he hears from Laura behind him. As Victor stands up and turns around, Laura screams, “You’re bleeding, your throat is bleeding!”

The salt water and rain make it look worse than it is, and Victor struggles to calm Laura down. Nathaniel has managed to swim back to the boat and is now climbing onto the swim platform. As soon as he climbs back onto the boat, he switches the lights on and only shakes his head at the headless body while asking, “What now?”

Victor bends down and searches the man. He finds a Blackberry cell phone and Laura’s pen in Russtoff’s pants pocket, wrapped inside two zip lock bags, still dry. Victor then takes the body and dumps it overboard.

After asking Nathaniel to open the engine hatch, he reaches in as soon as it is open and pulls out Russtoff’s head, then throws it overboard as well. Nathaniel pulls the fresh water shower hose from its holder, normally used by divers returning from a dive to shower the salt water from their faces, and washes the deck clean, including the engines. The bulge pumps pump out the bloody water, leaving no trace that Russtoff was ever on the boat.

After closing the engine hatch again, Nathaniel starts the engines back up and asks, “Onwards, or do you have more friends you want to say hi to?”

“Onwards,” is Victor’s only comment. Laura had by now found the emergency kit and uses cotton puffs with hydrogen peroxide to clean the wound on Victor’s throat, before putting a Band-Aid over it. When she is done she gives Victor a big hug and kiss, holding him for a while before sitting down on the crew seat. Victor stands between Nathaniel and Laura, holding her right hand with his left, while his other hand holds onto the boat for stability.

Soon they will be in Cancun, but they will need to refuel on the way using the spare diesel cans they have brought onboard.

Two and a half hours after leaving the police boat, they are 200 miles from Grand Cayman. Nathaniel slows the boat and signals to Victor that they need to top up the boat’s diesel tanks.

“Laura, can you take the wheel for a minute? Just keep the nose pointed into the waves.”

Laura is a little taken aback by Nathaniel asking her to drive the boat, but seeing Victor nod his head in approval, she takes the seat from Nathaniel and control of the boat.

Victor and Nathaniel retrieve a few of the diesel cans from the bow of the boat and bring them to the back. The internal tanks are below the steering console and the filler caps are just behind the seats, one behind the driver seat and one behind the crew seat. Victor and Nathaniel each start filling a tank from the 10-gallon diesel jugs. When they finish topping up the tanks, they store the empty cans on the bow again, securing them with ropes.

“We’ve got around 180 miles or so to go, I think it will take us around five hours to get there, let’s break for a snack.” Nathaniel takes the wheel from Laura as he speaks and both Laura and Victor eagerly nod their approval.

Nathaniel keeps the boat in slow idle to minimize any salt spray from the waves over the bow, while Laura retrieves the sandwiches out of a sealed cooler box. Victor pours them each a cup of coffee and when done retrieves Russtoff’s cell phone out of his jacket pocket. After taking a sip of his coffee, he opens the two zip lock bags and first takes out Laura’s pen. Removing the cap, he is relieved to see that the memory card is still inside. He replaces the cap onto the pen and puts it back into the bag, then removes the cell phone.

The phone is an expensive model, but still widely sold on the island. Due to the capability of the Blackberry handling web applications and e-mail with integrated business function, it is a popular model with expats coming to the island to work in the banking and legal sector.

Powering up the phone, Victor checks the call log, nothing, no incoming or outgoing calls. He then checks the message log, bingo, just what he is looking for. Russtoff had sent two messages, and received two.

Victor checks the first sent message. “Primary objective complete, additional information found, attached, advise action.”

Victor notes that Russtoff had attached the file containing the information about the lost city and scrolls to his message.

A return message was sent, “New objective, proceed to Peru, Cusco, agents waiting.”

Russtoff then sent a final message in reply, “En route to Cancun, need papers.”

A final return message was then sent back to Russtoff, “Alex. 15 Tulum.”

Victor smiles when he sees the last message. He was worried that they would pick up on him and Laura the moment they use their passports, but this gives him an easy way out.

Turning to Nathaniel, Victor says, “I’ll take the wheel from here, you still have a long ride ahead of you when going back. I’ll wake you when we’re around 10 miles from Cancun.”

Nathaniel nods and goes to make himself comfortable on one of the forward chairs, using a life jacket as a cushion. Laura makes herself comfortable in the crew seat and falls asleep.

Victor pushes the boat as hard as is safe to do. The rain is coming down relentlessly and makes a white wall in front of the boat. Although the waves are no more than 2 feet in height, Victor does not chance it by running flat-out. They average around 30 knots, and Victor checks the miles drift by.

He has a lot to think about, especially on how to keep Laura safe, and what the two of them will do when they get the scrolls and hand them over - a normal life, kids, a stable home, who knows.

There is, however, a nagging thought that does not want to disappear. It concerns the contact for the papers, does he know Russtoff or have a description of him, and even if not, what will his reactions be when Victor asks him for two sets of documents?

He decides to just wing it and see what happens when they reach the contact. Even so, he has an idea of how he is going to play the man.

Victor watches as Cancun slowly creeps closer on the boat’s GPS system. When they are 10 miles out, he stops the boat and wakes both Laura and Nathaniel. Handing control over to Nathaniel, he takes out his cell phone and opens the maps program and activates GPS function of the cell. As soon as he gets a GPS location lock, he enters the address into the cell phone. After getting an exact match, he plots a course to the address from their current location and directs Nathaniel to the closest part of the beach near the address. Laura and Victor will walk to the place from there.

Nathaniel points the boat towards Victor’s heading and opens her up. The rain had stopped and a beautiful day awaits them. Laura and Victor remove their foul weather gear and make ready to quickly disembark. Packing the last of the sandwiches into his backpack, Victor thanks Nathaniel for the trip.

“Do you need help with refueling the boat?” Victor asks when they are in sight of the beach.

“No, all ok, best I get out to the open ocean as fast as possible before being spotted, still have a good few miles worth in the tanks.”

Victor nods his approval to Nathaniel’s reply and goes to stand next to Laura on the bow. Nathaniel selects a sandy part of the beach and slowly brings the boat up until the bow touches dry land. Victor and Laura jump off and help push the boat back as Nathaniel puts the jet drive system in reverse.

The boat pulls back easily off the beach and within seconds Nathaniel has the boat turned around and heading back to Cayman. He gives them one last good bye wave then turns around and opens the boat up to full speed. Victor and Laura are now on their own.

Victor removes some of the sandwiches and hands one to Laura while eating another. They walk and eat as Victor uses his cell phone to direct them to the address. It takes them an hour from the beach to walk to the contact’s house. The address leads them to stand in front of a single-story house, with an unkempt garden in front. The garden is closed off with a chest high brick wall and has an old rusty iron gate for an entrance.

At one time, the house was painted white, now faded with most of the paint missing or hanging like dead skin on the wall, ready to fall off, showing the plaster beneath.

Opening the creaking front gate, Victor leads the way down the pathway towards the front door. There is no house number, but Victor deduces that it must be the right house from the numbers of the houses around it. The door is an old wooden one, of which the varnish had long ago come off, and water stains and damage are visible on the door. The door has a small glass window at face level, but a drawn curtain behind it blocks the view to the inside. There is no bell to ring, forcing Victor to knock on the door with his fist.

He holds his backpack in front of him with his left hand inside, pistol pointing forward at hip level. No answer comes from inside, again Victor knocks, still no answer. Victor is about to knock again when he sees the curtain behind the window in the door move an inch, someone is watching them.

“I am here to see Alex, he is expecting me.” Victor hopes using the contact’s name will do the trick.

“Password?”

“Damn, did not expect them to have a standard password.” Victor decides to change tactics.

“I do not have time to play games, you have been informed to expect me, and that I am in a hurry.”

“Piss off, no password no entry,” comes the reply from inside and the curtain is pulled shut again.

Victor decides to try something else. Removing Russtoff’s cell from his backpack, he retrieves the last message showing the address. The phone displays the phone number that sent the message as well. Victor hopes that the same person who gave Russtoff the address would have contacted Alex.

Pressing the phone against the window and tapping with his finger against the glass he says, “Perhaps I should call them back and inform them you are no longer working for them and have changed sides, maybe you will see tonight, maybe not?”

The curtain is drawn open just enough for the person to see the cell phone, and after a few seconds the curtain closes and Victor can hear locks being unlocked and chains being taken off the door. “So much for him kicking the door in.”

Slowly the door opens with a creek. A short and overweight Mexican with a bald head stands in the doorway. He is wearing an old long cotton shirt with food stains and faded blue jeans that are torn at the knees. What impresses Victor more is the sawn off double barrel shotgun he holds at hip level, pointed at Victor.