RACE AMAZON: False Dawn (James Pace novels Book 1) (21 page)

‘Go on, James.  You are doing very well.’ He knew whoever had spoken couldn’t really see him unless they snatched a glance through the camera but he appreciated the encouragement.

Moving across the rope turned out to be far easier than he’d imagined.  Hand, hand, then slide feet together.  He repeated the mantra to himself as his body dragged itself across the hidden water some three storeys below.  The opposite tree banged into his head surprisingly quickly and he then managed a fairly competent climb down to the opposite bank.  

A bag, neatly marked for the team, was propped against the base of the tree and in no time at all he was back up the trunk, over the rope and standing again on the limb of the starting tree.  He didn’t falter on the last leg and felt very pleased with myself as his feet pressed into the soft ground.  He hadn’t slipped, fallen, or screwed it up at all, which was brilliant.

Swallowing some offered water, Pace took back the camera, checked it was still running sweetly, and recorded the others as they each overcame the task in turn.  He panned, zoomed and tracked some really wonderful shots with the night vision switched on.  Nobody fell and, in the end, the first challenge proved a little anti-climactic.  An hour after his triumphant crossing, they were all making their way back up the second track.  Nobody wanted to walk the track at night but they couldn’t hang around.  Everyone had managed to rest when it wasn’t their turn to climb; drinking and eating some fruit and energy biscuits so they wasted no time in pushing on again. 

With Cosmos in the lead, the team wound its way back inside the insidious, dark maw of choking forest.  To cope with the darkness they adopted a system of the leader and the vanguard both carrying one of the large torches.  This gave just enough light to follow the trail and nearly enough to keep unseen demons at bay.

17

They were on a high from their success and all ignored their fatigue.  At one point they even broke into an enthusiastic rendition of
Heard it through the Grapevine
, though the maestro himself would have turned in his grave to hear them murder his tune.

In time, Hammond took his turn up at the front. The rain slammed down onto the canopy with a continued ferocity and weight.  Thunder raged alongside the torrent of fairly cold water but any lightning was hidden by the dense foliage. 

Water still found its way through the gaps and down the trunks with enough force to start some serious flooding and their ragged line moved ever more slowly until progress was barely more than a trudge through increasingly deep and slippery mud.

Pace definitely needed something to take his mind off being wet and surprisingly cold.  His eyes were heavy and fatigue was beginning to eat away at him.  As his chest strained under the constant exertion, he fought away the fear as needles of hot pain prickled around his edges of his wound. 

No, he thought firmly, just ignore it and it will go away.   He still walked at the back of the line, with Cosmos in front of him.  He asked the cheery Kenyan how long he had been running.  It had been written down on the summary sheet he’d received about each of the competitors but his addled brain couldn’t remember.

‘I’ve been running for all of my life,’ came the reply, with a brief crackle of interference. 

Pace’s eyes were rooted between the man’s broad back and the intercom meant Cosmos didn’t have to take his eyes off his footing to look around at his questioner.  ‘It is a wise man who learns to be quick.  In Kenya, especially back when I was a small boy, danger looked for you everywhere.  You had to be swift on your feet just to stay alive.’

‘Hard on a child,’ Pace said softly.

‘That’s just how it was, and still is in a lot of my country.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘Don’t be.  When I was barely a teenager I witnessed a massacre.’  He spoke in an emotionless tone, his unseen eyes taking on a faraway glaze although his feet never erred along the squelching track.  ‘Even at such a young age, I’d already seen a lot of killing. The only difference was that these were white people, not native Kenyans.  They had run an eye clinic just outside my village since I was a little boy.  Just a tent and some basic equipment but the doctors became part of our village; of our family.  It wasn’t planned, the killing I mean.  Strangers came and their anger turned to murder.’

‘I really don’t know what to say,’ Pace admitted, turning sharply to avoid a sharp root sticking out across the track.  Cosmos had seen it and instinctively stepped over it, waving his hand to point it out to Pace.  Nobody up in front had called out a warning, which was a worry.  Tiredness was taking its toll on concentration obviously.  Pace called out to Hammond and warned him to pay more attention.  An apology came back over his headset, alongside a promise to look harder.

‘They butchered everyone,’ Cosmos continued.  ‘Doctors, nurses, local volunteers…everybody.’  

‘And you witnessed it all?’  Pace wasn’t sure where it was going but was intrigued to hear the giant speak of his past.  

‘The gang didn’t know about the medical team that had left four days before; heading for a village thirty miles away.  There were three nurses and two native guides who went out on a six-monthly visit.  I knew they would be on their way back and they would have walked into certain death.  I decided to get away and warn them.  Nobody spotted me because I’d hidden myself well.  After dark, when the killers were all drunk and sleeping, I ran to tell them.’

‘You must have cared a great deal to risk your life for them.’

‘One of the guides was my brother, Kaur.  The nurses were always kind to us.  For years the hospital had been helping the people from all the local villages.  It was my duty to try.’

Pace barely remembered to move his feet, so enthralled was he becoming.  ‘Did you…find them?’  He mentally crossed his fingers.

Cosmos boomed a laugh so unexpectedly loud in his earpiece that Pace startled, twisted an ankle sharply and ended up sprawling face down and wrist-deep into red, stinking mud.  Seconds later a strong hand reached down and effortlessly yanked him back onto his feet.  His eyes were so accustomed to the gloom that he could make out Cosmos’s features quite well; he was smiling.

‘I ran for hours and hours, maybe through fear but I knew in my heart that I would succeed, don’t ask me how.’  He motioned for Pace to move again, which he did, slicking the worst of the mud from his tracksuit with his downwards sweeps of his hands as he hurried to rediscover a numbing rhythm.

‘Our man here ran the entire twenty-nine miles without stopping,’ Hammond chose to pipe up from the front.  ‘Saved those people and got himself noted by the local authorities.  There was even a small article in one of America’s national papers, I believe. The hospital was mainly American Red Cross you see,’ he added, by way of explanation.

‘You’ve done your reading,’ said Cosmos, mildly surprised.  ‘A little publicity and suddenly I was offered the chance to train in Spain, at a special boarding school for foreign sporting hopefuls.  When I was seventeen, I ran in my first marathon; in your homeland, James.  I remember the cold and the rain to this day, how it soaked into my very bones on the day.’

‘So you feel right at home here then?’ chuckled Attia’s disembodied voice.  ‘Rain, rain and more rain, perfect.’

‘He won, if you haven’t guessed, and after that there was no stopping the man.’  Hammond spoke again.  Pace heard him draw in a sharp breath but whatever he was going to say died in his throat.  The entire procession stopped in its tracks so suddenly that Pace barely stopped himself crashing into Cosmos.  He opened his mouth to speak but stopped as Hammond’s voice stammered softly in his ears.  ‘Nobody move, not even a twitch.’ The words were frozen with tangible fear. 

At that moment, Cosmos swayed slightly to his left a few inches, revealing what was going on up the line.  Ruby and Attia had stepped about the same distance off of the track, but to the right, giving Pace a clear view of Hammond, who was slowly inching his way backwards.  Pace backed up a little himself, giving the retreating figure somewhere to go.  All eyes were glued ahead.

It was after the accountant had moved backwards perhaps two feet that the snake itself became visible.  And it wasn’t a baby either; it was huge, perhaps eight or nine feet in length and as thick as a man’s arm. It looked angry too, a flash of tongue flicked in and out madly, perhaps deciding whether to kill the human or not.  Hammond had already wisely dropped the beam of his torch away from the snake’s bobbing head, not wanting to provoke a panicky strike.  

The snake’s body was kept in the edges of the beam; visible but only just.  Pace noticed a few darker stripes but the poor light made accurate study impossible.  At least one of his team had no trouble with the identification.

‘Damn.’   Ruby was close enough for him to hear her words with his own ears.  ‘Pit viper, shit.’  Pace caught the fear just before her words sparked an explosion of action that he barely managed to follow.

Attia, the normally mild-mannered doctor lunged at Hammond.  He spun him around bodily and started hauling him back up the track the way they’d just come.  He screamed to all as he did so.  ‘Run!’

Pace’s mind shrieked at him that you were meant to stand still when confronted by a dangerous snake (wasn’t it supposed to be more afraid of him than he was of it?) but everyone just made a headlong dash for safety.  Confused, but bright enough not to be the only one left within biting range, he turned on his heels and headed off after them.  Attia didn’t stop until they had left the serpent over one hundred feet behind.

Hammond was livid. As soon as everyone stopped, he grabbed his torch and flashed right it in Attia’s face, almost touching his nose with the glass.  ‘You stupid fool!’ he raged.  ‘I could have been killed!  What the hell were you doing, pulling a stunt like that?’

‘Easy my friend,’ soothed Cosmos, edging between the two men and gently pushing the accusing torch aside.  Hammond was seething; Pace could see the veins knotting in his neck but he didn’t take on the giant Kenyan.  Pace was pleased for he had no idea of how such a match would turn out.

‘Instead of being foul-mouthed,’ suggested Ruby sharply, ‘how about thanking the doctor for saving your hide!’

‘What are you talking about?’  Hammond wheeled quickly to face her.  The anger hadn’t died in him and the way the torch beam flashed all around them made him seem momentarily deranged.  ‘I had it all under control.  By making those sudden movements, that bastard thing might have stuck its fangs into me, or someone else,’ he snarled.

‘This snake was different,’ continued Ruby, her own tone calm.  ‘This wasn’t your ordinary, everyday deadly jungle snake.  It was a pit viper.  

‘To be more precise,’ Attia explained, ‘out here that means the fer-de-lance, sometimes confused with a bushmaster but in reality a little smaller.  Deadly venom, very fast and that one was about eight feet long, give or take a few inches.  That’s as big as they get.’

‘And?’  Hammond was looking slightly bemused now, the anger fading away as the heat of fear subsided.

‘A pit viper is a special kind of snake; the fer-de-lance being a wonderful example of the family of vipers.  Its real name is
Bothrops Asper
, and it is one of the few snakes in the world which genuinely enjoys a high bite-to-fatality rate in human beings.’  The doctor definitely knew his snakes.  He looked completely unruffled by Hammond’s outburst and lectured so calmly that he might as well have been giving a presentation to a medical board in oak-panelled luxury.  

‘It comes from a family of snakes found all across the globe.  They’re known as lance-heads locally.  They pack a lethal bite, some more than others of course, but the venom is more potent in the older snakes.’  He cast a look back up the trail as if expecting the slithering movement of pursuit to appear at any moment.  ‘They all also possess the family trait that makes
all
of them so dangerous.’

‘Fangs?’ said Hammond sarcastically.  ‘Yeah, I saw those up real close.’

‘Not fangs.’  Attia tutted.  ‘Radar.’

‘Radar?  What on earth are you going on about?’

‘To be more precise, it possesses a heat-seeking ability that makes standing still a total waste of time with this type of snake.  It just gives it more time to find somewhere nice and juicy to strike.’

Hammond looked uncertain.  ‘Heat-seeking snakes?’

‘The joke would have been on you, my fiery friend,’ Attia remarked easily, leaning in and patting Hammond lightly on the shoulder.  ‘Look, this sort of snake can sense body heat.  It doesn’t just react to sudden air movement and strike towards it like other snakes.  Heat is how they hunt, you see.  First, they strike the prey and inject venom.  The prey is usually fairly fleet of foot but a pit viper doesn’t have to worry about giving chase.  After the bite, all it has to do is wait for the poor creature to collapse and die before locating the meal by its waning body heat.’  

Feeling ashamed and stupid, Hammond immediately apologised.

The team headed back up the trail again after a couple of minutes, when the adrenaline had passed out of their bloodstreams.  They cautiously approached the point on the trail previously occupied by the reptile but there was no sign of the snake, to everybody’s relief, and they pressed ahead, a little more alert to the danger of snakes now.  

Rain was their constant companion for the night.  The first few hours were okay but the trail soon dissolved into some lower ground that was completely flooded. 

They had no choice but to wade through the swamp, which was hellish.  As time-keeper, he calculated they spent over four hours on that dismal roller-coaster, first rising up to find the trail before dropping down back into tepid water that rose to chest height at times. 

Whenever they went wading there came a fear of attack from more deadly snakes, black caymans or even the dreaded giant anaconda.  It was a blessed relief whenever they finally clawed their way up a muddy rise for a brief respite on drier ground.

Each time they dipped back down into deep water, Pace wondered if piranha might not be lurking around nearby.   Sloshing through the darkness, still with only two torches fending off a pervading sense of evil, he tripped on sunken roots more times than he could count and gradually grew used to swallowing mouthfuls of rancid river water with each unexpected dunking. 

Thankfully, the torches were fully waterproof.

The tiny return trail cut back onto the road barely five miles further on from where they had left it.  With the oppression of close jungle lifted by the comparative openness of the thirty-foot wide roadway, Pace’s numb legs collapsed beneath him and he lay on the compacted mud and broken stone surface, face to the heavens, wheezing in great gasps of damp air.  

After ten minutes, his chest slowed to a more regular rhythm and he seemed to come out of his stupor, dragging himself upright with some difficulty.  Attia lay flat out a few feet from him,  face down while Ruby  sat  huddled,  knees drawn up to her chin, massaging her calves through her running suit.  She looked pale and drawn, coated from head to toe with a healthy layer of river slime.