RACE AMAZON: False Dawn (James Pace novels Book 1) (23 page)

Twisting in his saddle, he craned his neck to see past Cosmos’s bulk.  Sure enough, Attia and Hammond were both tapping at their headsets uncertainly.  It was obviously not just him.  Pace called for Ruby but knew it was no good.  Something serious had happened to the transmitter and they needed to stop so he could take a look at it.  He signalled Hammond to pull up, with his hand raised.  Ruby, realising the headset had also packed up, pedalled back to join them a few minutes later.

‘What’s wrong with communications?’ Ruby asked.

‘Not being psychic, I’ve no idea,’ Pace replied truthfully.  ‘I need to take a look.’  The rain fell heavily all around them as they formed up into a little huddle in the centre of the mud highway.  Nobody got off their bike.

‘Can you do it in this?’ Cosmos raised his arms skyward, palms up to the falling water.

He was right.  The set might need to be pulled right out of the backpack.  It was water resistant, mainly to protect the innards against humidity.  Examining it in the pouring rain wouldn’t do it any good at all.

‘If we ride within earshot of each other until the next stop, it won’t need fixing straight away.  When we put up Lester, I’ll check it over in the dry.

‘Fine with me,’ said Hammond.  ‘Let’s keep going for now.’

Attia looked nervously at the steep walls of jungle around him, knowing the time was fast approaching for him to act.  Pace had never seen him look anything other than cool and calm and wondered idly what thoughts were running around his head.  ‘We should go.  Now,’ he insisted.

‘What’s wrong?’ asked Ruby.  She was also surprised to see the doctor looking so uneasy.

‘Nothing,’ he replied, forcing a smile.

‘Nothing?’

‘No, Cosmos,’ Attia soothed, ‘I just think we need to get going.’

Pace wasn’t convinced but gave it no more thought as they all set off again.  Ruby remained in the lead but only by a few feet.  She could shout back if needed and still be heard above the rain.

Ten minutes later, his headset burst back into life; resurrected as quickly as it had died, as did all the others.  The thought that the set wasn’t broken after all came as a relief to everyone but Attia.  When he joined in the group conversations, his tone was tense and edged with unfamiliar steel.  Something was agitating him but he wouldn’t be drawn.  

Ruby pulled far ahead the moment the headsets were working again.  Her voice stayed encouraging.

‘Remember, Tim’s team won’t be hanging around,’ she panted at one point, even her toned, lithe leg muscles straining to pedal through a sudden bog in the centre of the road.  ‘They’ll be putting as much distance between themselves and us as they can before the road conditions get too bad.  Time is of the essence, so keep pedalling!’

All normal traffic had been stopped for the duration of the race, although the road was little used in the deeper areas anyway.  The only spectators they’d come across were the odd family of settlers they passed during the foot section, watching with interest as the foreigners sweated past their tiny, corrugated iron and wooden shacks, huddled forlornly along an illusion of civilisation. 

The last few villages had long since been deserted and, by the time they reached the bikes, even abandoned huts had stopped appearing.  The only locals, if there were any about, watched from the protection of the forest walls.  Humanity, out here, was apparently extinct.  

With no people to spot, and wildlife too wary to show itself, the only constants were the pouring rain, oppressive heat, thick humidity that drew sweat with the aggression of a dentist pulling teeth, and the ever-present biting insects.  In fact, the one blessing of heavy rain was that it kept the mosquitoes at bay, allowing their bodies time to replenish depleted stocks of blood.

The rain fell steadily, hour on hour, straight down.  With no breeze it didn’t bother their night vision by being driven into the visors.  As long as you wiped them with your hand every few minutes, visibility was excellent.  In fact, Pace found it to be eerily pleasant.  

They rode as fast as they could down the centre of the road, which remained soft, but the big tyres only sank in a couple of centimetres before finding hard dirt beneath.  Muddy water splashed high up their legs as large raindrops echoed off the slightly flooded ooze slipping beneath their wheels.  An hour later, Pace called time.

The shelter went back up as rapidly as always and everybody squeezed inside.  They left backpacks outside but Pace couldn’t film anything worthwhile because his hands were shaking with sheer exhaustion, so he gave up.  They huddled together in the close confines of the shelter.  It also allowed time to cook up another hot meal.

Nobody argued, especially when he slipped voluntarily from the shelter to set up his stove.  More packs of freeze-dried food disappeared into a pot of water, to emerge thirty minutes later as delicious beef stew.  As he passed the food packs back into the shelter, Pace slipped off his visor and allowed the darkness to wash over him. 

A torch lit up the inside of the shelter but he couldn’t tell whose it was. For once, the dark jungle felt safe to him, not threatening.  The air was lighter and smelled fresh; the rain just part of the picture.  Slowly, quietly, he ate his meal outside, sitting alone and perched on top of his pack, allowing himself to think of nothing in particular.

The three hours they rested for were not enough for any of them to sleep.  When the alarm on his wristwatch buzzed him into consciousness at the end of the break period, every one of them still resembled the undead.  All grumbled in chorus about their cramps and aches but some humour remained.  It was still pitch black as they stretched away the sleep from stiff muscles.  The rain had finally died off to the lightest of drizzles.  

Hammond took over at the front, with Ruby joining Attia on his tandem.  Cosmos and Pace stayed together, with Cosmos’s powerful legs making all the running again.

The lighter rain should have helped them but the road started an almost imperceptible descent at this point, evidenced only by floods appearing at the edges within a couple of miles.  After thirty minutes of cycling, even the centre of the road was covered by a thin brown sheet of water which grew gradually deeper.  The road continued to run fairly straight but, if he did not know better, he’d have thought they were cycling along a shallow river.  When the depth hit one foot, they had to slow down to walking speed because they had no idea of what lay hidden beneath the liquid’s surface.  

Still, Pace mused as they cycled through the rain-flecked water, it gave him time for some steadier camera shots and helped ease his aching legs.  The footage he snatched was good quality; atmospheric and gritty.

It was a couple more hours before the road climbed out of the flood and they found solid ground again.  The rain hadn’t stopped now for the best part of twelve hours, maybe more.  Hammond was out of sight entirely for his leading role, riding over one mile ahead.  All around the forest was stirring; irritated by the excited itch of an eager dawn.  The relative calm of the night was cautiously broken by an avian chirrup or a primate howl.

‘Glad you could join us,’ grinned Hammond, as they hit their next rest slot and caught up with him.  He already had the shelter up, though his voice was shaky and he looked drawn. ‘I was getting lonely.’

‘Well, we’re here now,’ said Ruby, rubbing the blood back into her buttocks as she dismounted.  ‘Why are you riding so far ahead anyway?’

‘No reason,’ he lied easily, shrugging.  ‘I just love to ride along this road, it’s such a challenge.’  He couldn’t tell them the truth.

‘Something to be tackled alone?’ added Attia.

‘Maybe,’ he replied.

‘Anyway, I’m hungry,’ shrugged Pace.  ‘What stunning feast is there?’

‘It’s a surprise.’  

It wasn’t.  They drank water and munched on energy bars as the morning spilled dirty light over the treetops, showing a strip of thick, grey cloud directly above them.  The rain grew slightly heavier but had warmed with the full arrival of the day. 

Humidity was bearable and Pace decided to stay outside the shelter to eat again.  Cosmos and Hammond went inside, leaving Attia and Ruby outside with him.  Attia moved off down the road, Pace presumed to relieve himself because as he took his backpack with him.

Ruby took a bottle of shower cream from her pack, calmly stripped off a few metres from him, and started to work up a lather in the middle of the deserted road.  

Instinctively, he plucked the camera from his belt and pointed it at her.  It was meant to be a joke and he expected her to go mad.  Surprising, she just smiled as she lathered her hair, nodding that it was okay.  It took him by surprise but who was he to argue?  Naked bodies always added commerciality to television or film, especially when it wasn’t gratuitous. 

This was real, it was happening because she wanted to get clean, so it was actually just part of what he’d come here to film. 

A minute of film later, his own clothes were in a pile next to hers and he stood with her in the pouring rain, sharing some of her bubbles.  Afterwards, he dressed without drying himself and slipped his poncho back on, hood up.  Ruby bent over and slipped inside the shelter, determined to get dried off properly.  Pace felt refreshed and alive, and all of a sudden feeling a desperate urge for hot coffee.  He quickly set up his stove, filling the collapsible saucepan with rainwater, and got brewing.  After they all enjoyed a hot drink, they set off again.  

Here the mountain bike truly came into its own as the water level deepened by several inches.  The individual suspensions coped excellently with sudden potholes when they found him and it meant he could stay mounted.  Any other bike would have required him to get off and wade. 

By early afternoon a false darkness had fallen, with evil clouds piling one atop the other to form an impenetrable blanket of murk.  Pace turned the bike’s powerful lights on and wondered if the forest was turning on its rain tap in a bid to rid itself of an infection of humanity.

Eventually the road rose back up a few feet, lifting onto firmer ground, but where the road surface was eroded and pitted the enraged downpour quickly found its feet and turned the route into a quagmire.  It was here that his front wheel dipped into a really deep hole and he suffered his first spill over the handlebars, landing in an ungainly heap in the slick surface.  Landing wasn’t the problem; it was the bike following through and whacking him on the back that hurt.  He staggered to his feet, slipping over twice as he did so, and clambered back aboard, calling a warning for the others to slow down and ride even more cautiously.

After two hours, the storm finally decided that enough was enough.  The rain stopped completely and the sky cleared, giving patches of clear blue to be enjoyed.  A flock of gorgeous red-and-blue macaws hove into view, gliding across the road without a downwards glance, before being lost from view. 

To his delight, the road lifted sharply, stretching for over a mile ahead of him before veering off to the northeast.  The centre became drier, despite the rain, and there were even some small stones compacted into the dirt.  The edges remained boggy but the centre surface would stand some speed.  Immediately Pace called back to the others, who sounded relieved.

‘At last,’ groaned Hammond in his earpiece, ‘we can get a move on.  Tim’s lot are probably already drinking champagne cocktails at the finish line!’

‘This is rain forest,’ chirped Ruby.  ‘They’ll have hit earlier downpours that we missed, the same as Team Three will miss ours but hit their own.  The weather’s going to hurt everyone’s time until we pick up the hovercraft.’

‘Hovercraft racing on the Amazon,’ laughed Cosmos.  It was the part he looked forward to the most.  ‘Machines that are dry and fitted with seats a little softer than these, I cannot wait.’  Pace smiled.  It wasn’t just the untrained backsides who were feeling a mite saddle sore.

‘Don’t worry,’ called Attia lightly.  ‘My little black bag contains soothing remedies for anyone feeling the pain of riding these things for too many hours.’

Pace heard a ripple of laughter, immediately followed by a fierce burst of static in his earpiece.  It cleared a fraction of a second later to be replaced with blood-curdling screams of real terror so pitiful that they chilled the very blood inside his heart valves.  Skidding his bike to a halt, he slewed the rear wheel around a pivoting left leg, and pumped furiously on the pedals, racing back the way he’d just come.

19

Doyle McEntire stared at the laptop computer screen in front of him and felt the chilling grip of looming disaster grip his guts with vice-like certainty.  He knew it had been on the cards, but his intuition had been telling him that everything would work out well; that Cathera wouldn’t be so stupid as to make his move when his treacherous power base was still so shaky.  Now he knew that his usually accurate sixth sense had failed him.  He also realised that, because of his own miscalculation of the situation, people were about to die.

In his private stateroom aboard the
Toronto
, he sucked in a thoughtful breath and considered the facts.  The screen of his laptop was being fed with secret data directly via the McEntire Corporation’s very own satellite link; channelled through one of a network of low-orbiting, NATO spy satellites.