RACE AMAZON: False Dawn (James Pace novels Book 1) (2 page)

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To say he found the monumental leap, from certain death to stardom, a difficult adjustment was akin to seeing the first moon landing as merely a good day for space exploration.

Three days in intensive care at the local hospital had been followed by immediate incarceration within a pleasantly decorated private room, well away from the compact wards housing the sick masses.

Fresh flowers came every day, together with cards and gifts by the sack load, all fuelled by the media’s need for a good story. In him they had the selfless hero, cruelly gunned down by children in a sick reminder of how British society was failing its youth.

The police interviewed him on the fourth day, barely an hour after he was transferred to his plush sixth-floor room. Pace didn’t know a great deal at the time, just that he was a lucky man. 

He learned he had been rushed straight into theatre on arrival and undergone emergency surgery. His attacker’s bullet had struck the sternum and deflected internally, clipping the top of one lung before lodging itself deep inside his chest cavity.  His breastbone remained intact due to the angle of penetration but several splinters of bone had torn away at his insides, one lodging barely a centimetre from his aorta.  

Miraculously no major organs were damaged. Even more miraculous was the presence, on the day, of a renowned thoracic specialist; on a personal visit to colleagues at the hospital.  She had undertaken his surgery herself. Without her expertise in gunshot wounds, gained from several years serving in the Israeli army, Pace might easily have died on the table. 

It had taken her an hour longer than even she expected to retrieve the missile, so awkwardly was it placed.  The only bonus was the absence of an exit wound.  After surgery the only visible sign was a neatly stitched vertical incision, about six inches long, running straight down the centre line of his chest.  Pace had to trust their word because his entire chest was encased in a sheath of bandaging. 

Political response to the shooting was swift. Gun laws would be tightened further and increased sentences for firearms offences would accompany the public inquiry. European protests over plans to allow children to stand trial as adults in firearms related cases were quashed by a furious Parliament who warned against any further meddling in affairs of British law and sovereignty.

Pandemonium, to be precise, led to the highly significant move on the part of the government to bow to years of pressure and finally issue firearms to all serving police officers. The only thing they didn’t do was catch the culprits.

Then they started a fund for him. 

Pace couldn’t believe it.  Either the newspapers were sorely short of other stories or his misfortune had triggered a deep-rooted social fear across the country. Whichever it was, and he suspected a bit of both, he was an overnight celebrity. Illicit photographs of him, taken as he lay in critical condition immediately after the operation, were published. Source of the photographs was unknown but he had to admit he looked ghastly, plumbed as he was with several tubes and lines, and completely surrounded by machinery.  He definitely looked more dead than alive.

All press contact was barred save for the daily progress report by the hospital. On the eighth day Pace gave his first interview and it totally exhausted him despite it lasting barely five minutes. Three photographs were taken before the two reporters and photographer were firmly ushered out by Sally, his highly efficient nurse.

Pace was very grateful and slept, with the help of an intravenous infusion of tranquillizer, like the dead. It was another three days before he felt ready to give his next interview. 

This time he wanted to give a full account of himself so he could be left alone and forgotten.  The single journalist had obviously been primed and was careful not to overtax him.  For his patience he went away with all the comments and pictures he needed.

Sally, Pace’s wonderful Mauritian angel, was in her mid-twenties and apparently the youngest sister in the hospital. Normally she wouldn’t have had time to care for patients herself.  That had all fallen by the wayside to be replaced by an increasingly administrative role. Apparently he was a special case and the hospital management had assigned her and a team of junior nurses expressly to his care.  Who was he to argue?

It was seven o’clock on Tuesday morning, twelve days after the shooting, when she came into his room, as usual, to see if everything had been okay overnight.  Pace grumbled it had been as well as could be expected.

‘You have a visitor coming to see you later this morning,’ she told him breezily, opening the floral print curtains and flooding the room with the subdued sunlight of what appeared a gloomy, overcast morning. The window wore a set of plain net curtains beneath the main drapes but he could still see the fine coating of water droplets on the outside of the glass. Either it had rained and stopped, or it was drizzling so softly it made no sound against the windowpane.

‘Which newspaper is it today?’ Pace enquired grimly.  ‘I thought members of the press were going to leave me alone from now on.’  His throat rasped and croaked the words.  He hadn’t had his first drink of the day yet.

‘Not a newspaper this time, although I’m sure the reporters won’t be far behind.’  She crossed over to his bed and proceeded to plump the pillows, supporting his head deftly with one hand as she did so. Pace wasn’t able to sit upright at all; he had to remain flat so it was as much as anyone could do to make him more comfortable.

Psychologically it worked well and the waft of delicate perfume that crept from the neck of her crisply pressed uniform succeeded in brightening his mood. 

She was pencil-slim.  The coffee-coloured skin on her face housed intelligent, dark eyes and a full sensual mouth that was nothing short of torture for an immobilised male, subject to the humiliation of bed baths and bedpans. Sally never undertook those herself thankfully, she left that to her staff.  Maybe she sensed she wouldn’t be able to build the rapport necessary to ease his long stay if she personally attended to such basics. 

Pace idly wondered if she saw him as anything other than another patient.  Did she notice that he had thick dark brown hair and clear blue eyes, or that his jaw line had been separately described as strong and jutting?

He willed his stirring groin to stop rising, with only partial success, and pumped her. ‘So who is it?  The Prime Minister, or a naked chorus line?  Hopefully the latter but not the way my luck’s running at the moment.’ 

Sally smiled in response, saying nothing. Pillows suitably plumped, she moved away to the end of the bed and picked up the chart that inevitably hung there.  She scanned down the medical notations. 

‘Those people haven’t made their appointments yet,’ she chided his flippancy with her tone, ‘and you’re not up to chorus girls right now.  Still a very important person he is that’s coming.’  Ah, Pace thought.  At least he knew the gender.  ‘I only hope that whatever he wants will lift your spirits and get you out from under my feet more quickly.’  Her stern tone was underscored by a twinkle of radiance in those beautiful eyes.

‘So who is it?’  Pace asked his question again.  ‘I’ll be a good patient, I promise.’

Totally ignoring his plea, her face clouded. ‘Journalists and photographers will be crawling everywhere again, upsetting my nurses and ruining any attempt I make at keeping things orderly.’  She was obviously talking to herself, having not heard him.

    ‘Remember me?’ Pace asked sarcastically.  He would have waved his arms at her if he could. Even after nearly a fortnight he was unable to move either of them particularly well. Any attempt to lift them up past the base of his throat rewarded him with a sensation akin to a herd of African elephants dancing the tango on his chest.  

Eyes flicking back up the bed towards him, her feigned frown broke into a half smile.  The corners of her mouth lifted and a glimpse of pearl appeared briefly between parted lips. 

‘That is the price we pay for looking after a hero, I suppose.’  Still not answering the question, she smoothed down her uniform. ‘I have to go now.’  She nodded her satisfaction at whatever she’d read on his chart and replaced it.  ‘I’ll send one of the nurses in to attend to you before breakfast.’

Then she was gone, replaced almost seamlessly by Margaret, a portly white nurse in her late fifties.  Somehow this made his embarrassment more tolerable. A breakfast of limp toast and lifeless porridge came and went, closely followed by a bedpan and sponge bath. Pace couldn’t even shave himself; Margaret had to do that as well. She was highly proficient too, not even a nick or a slice in the whole procedure, but it still served to emasculate him just that little bit further.

His secret visitor came, without the feared hordes of journalists and cameras, at dead on eleven o’clock. If anyone was with him they must have been stopped from coming within thirty feet of his room because Pace heard nothing at all from beyond the door as it quietly opened and Sally ushered the man into his room. He noted a brief smile of encouragement from her, perhaps even of anticipation, before she closed the door softly and left them to it. 

The shock of his instant recognition must have registered plainly because the man lowered himself onto the orange plastic chair at his bedside, smiled wanly and gave him a reassuring pat on the shoulder. Pace was very pleased to have been dressed in a fresh set of hospital-issue blue pyjamas. He knew he looked vaguely presentable.

The face that smiled at him and the hand that patted him spent more than their fair share of time being plastered around the world, in magazines, on billboards and in business reviews.

His was one of Britain’s greatest entrepreneurial success stories of the last two decades. He was not one for personally undertaking personal challenges; he often admitted to being far too scared to risk himself like that, instead he spent a great deal of his free time organising publicity events to highlight his own private concerns for the planet’s health.

He made a great deal of money through his business ventures and was quoted as saying that ecological crusading was his way of relaxing.

Doyle McEntire, soon to be Sir McEntire if the media’s constant speculation of late was based at all on fact, was a man pushing sixty.  The hair on his head was full and healthy, grey turning white at the temples.  His heavily lined face suggested a man who’d spent far too many years working way too many hours.   McEntire was also burdened with a paunch that suggested he enjoyed living the good life. 

Standing only a shade over five feet six inches, his stilted height made his stomach seem more pronounced yet he had a public reputation for possessing a razor-sharp intellect and of being a very astute operator.  He was dressed in a smart, dark green suit, white shirt and silk paisley tie.  His shoes literally gleamed and despite the absence of jewellery or gold watch, he exuded an aura of relaxed wealth.

The real puzzle was that he was inside Pace’s hospital room without any reason he could fathom. He said as much.

McEntire’s smile broadened into a grin and he settled back further on to the chair, regarding him over the top of expensive gold-rimmed spectacles like a father about to lecture a wayward offspring. The grin faded and he grew serious. When he spoke there was absolutely no trace of the Scottish accent he’d allegedly been born with. His English was crisp and smartly delivered. 

‘Mr Pace, or may I call you James?  James,’ he didn’t wait for permission, ‘look, let me explain myself straight away.’

‘That would be good,’ Pace agreed, his curiosity rising.

‘You know who I am of course.’ There was no trace of pretension in his voice.  It was just a statement of fact and Pace found himself warming to the man.

‘That’s the problem.’ 

McEntire gave an acknowledging nod.  ‘You,’ he swept an arm out over his bed in a very theatrical motion, ‘have become the focus of a great deal of attention from the media of late.  All of it has been good, I might add.’

Pace hadn’t had any brainwaves at that point and saw no reason to interrupt the man’s flow. 

McEntire breezed on. ‘I don’t know if you are aware of my new project, James, but I am here to try to enlist you as a member of the team. That’s the reason for my visit.’ He was not a man to beat about the bush. 

‘Your new project?’ Pace wondered if he sounded as stupid as he imagined. ‘The only thing I’ve read about you lately is that you’re setting up some kind of eco-race in South America.’ He hadn’t paid a great deal of attention to the article itself and the details that came back to him were sketchy.

‘That’s the one.’ McEntire was surprised the man knew anything about his race at all.  He needed to snare this one and so lit up his tone with enthusiasm as he leaned forward excitedly. ‘A challenge race designed to test human endurance, and protect the world’s many endangered habitats.  The theme, young man, is one of mankind striving to protect, instead of destroy.’ 

McEntire paused to study Pace’s reaction. The patient strove hard to keep his expression neutral.

‘The idea is that I organise the race,’ McEntire went on.  ‘I stump up the cost of kitting the teams out and providing the considerable logistical support needed. In return, the international business community gets to collectively put up the equivalent of five hundred million American dollars to establish and preserve certain habitats around the globe.’