Black Coke (31 page)

He pulled himself closer to the wall. The sewer gushed past. He braced himself as more blocks of debris bashed into him, threatening to dislodge him. He waited for what felt like ages. The flood showed no sign of abating. An animal crawled over his hands and up his arms. It gnawed at his ear. Nathan tried to shrug it off. It dug its claws deep into his clothes. Nathan grabbed it and flung it into the darkness.

Just then, something hard struck him in the back. His grip slipped. He was pulled back into the flow. He flailed around, but the current was too strong. He scraped his head against the ceiling. The air space was vanishing. He turned to face forwards. He stretched his hands in front. The noise of the water was deafening.

He banged into a wall again. The sewer was making another turn. Something dug into his side. He clutched it. It was another metal handlebar. He hung on as more bits crashed into him. He reached up, trying to gauge where the ceiling was. His hand found another bar. It was cold and slippery. He pulled himself up, and reached up again. A third bar. He kept on going, hauling himself up what must have been the rungs of a ladder embedded into the wall.

He reached a ledge. He felt around with his hands. It was a couple of metres wide. He knelt down, forehead on the cold stone floor, hands covering his head, his chest wracked with fits of coughing. He spat out small chunks of waste that had lodged themselves in his mouth.

The roaring subsided, until all that remained was the trickling of water over stone. Nathan sat up and leaned against the wall. He patted his body. Apart from some more bruising, he was still okay.

He had no idea how long he lay there. Maybe minutes, an hour. Small, disorganised fractal-like patterns shifted before his eyes, like a translucent overlay on the darkness around. Nathan shook his head to stay awake.

His thoughts wandered back to Lucia. Was Amonite telling the truth that they’d captured her or was she bluffing? He pushed away the image of Caitlin’s dead body that kept creeping back into his mind. No, he couldn’t let something like that happen again.

He shivered, and realised he was cold. His clothes were drenched and filthy. He wrapped his arms around his chest to make himself warmer. He went over his options. He’d been following the flow of the sewer, which meant it would eventually reach a river or a waste facility. That was one avenue of escape. Or he could go back the way he’d come from, against the flow, and try to find an exit that way. But that involved going back past the ASI’s secret prison again.

Better to continue the same way.

He was gathering his strength to get going again when a speck of yellow-orange light appeared to his left. At first, he thought it was another of these fatigue-induced hallucinations. It had the same dreamy quality to it, generating thin trails of light that danced and pulsed in the darkness. But it grew steadily, bobbing left and right like a firefly, its glow intensifying.

Then it stopped.

Flickered.

Once. Twice.

And burst into blue flame.

Bogotá, Colombia
14 April 2011

‘W
hat the hell you waiting for?’ Amonite said as she stormed into the room. A crowd of Colombian secret police was peering into a manhole like tourists who’ve dropped a penny down a wishing well.

‘Get in there,’ she yelled. ‘Catch the fucker.’

General Zathanaís, short, balding, dog-faced in his black suit, glared at her.

‘My men don’t crawl around in sewers like rats.’

‘You’re gonna have to make one big exception this time, buddy. This guy is a lot more than your average Joe terrorist.’ She jabbed a finger at the other men, who were puffing on cigarettes and joking with each other. ‘Come on, boys, kit up. You’re going down.’

Zathanaís planted himself in front of her. ‘There’s no way my men are going down there.’

‘Oh yeah? How long’s he been gone?’

‘Nearly an hour,’ said one of the secret police, a broad man with muscles rippling down his neck like huge boulders down the side of a mountain. ‘Anyway, we’ve drowned him.’

‘You’ve what?’

‘We called up Empresa de Acueducto de Bogotá. They manage the water and sewer services.’

Amonite looked down the manhole. A river of sewerage rushed past.

‘Do we know the exits?’ she said.

‘Some,’ the man said. ‘Not all.’

‘Block ‘em off.’

‘But the sewer’s huge,’ Zathanaís said. ‘Anyway, he’s dead.’

‘Wait for the water to go down.’ Amonite turned to Zathanaís. ‘Whoever finds him will get a fat wad of cash.’

‘How much?’

‘That’s not up for negotiation right now.’

Zathanaís’s eyes lit up. He turned to his men and barked some orders. They scurried off down the corridor, chattering, cackling and chuckling like a troop of monkeys.

‘Hey, where you going?’ Amonite shouted.

‘To get our equipment,’ Zathanaís yelled back. ‘Back in five minutes.’

Amonite sighed. Colombians could be so difficult to work with. Disorganised, unmotivated, corrupt. She punched Dex’s number on her phone.

‘Yeah, what’s up?’

‘He’s disappeared into the sewer,’ Amonite said.

‘Oh, shit.’

‘Very funny.’

‘No pun intended. Whaddya want me to do?’

‘Hook up with your boys and get over here asap. These ASI chimps are dumb as a box of rocks.’

‘Okay, boss, on my way.’

That was more like it. Dex wasn’t the most competent man around, yet he was way more reliable and efficient that Zathanaís’s bunch.

Amonite stared into the manhole at the sewerage gushing past below, wondering how anyone could survive in that underground hell. Then Don Camplones’s words came back to her: don’t ever underestimate this guy.

‘It’s God’s way of doing social cleansing.’

Amonite spun round. Zathanaís was standing next to her, a sinister grin on his ugly face.

‘Street kids,’ Zathanaís said above the sound of rushing water below. ‘They steal from good people. We flood them, then send squads to cleanse the survivors.’

‘So you
do
go down there.’

‘Sometimes.’

Boots stomped on the stone floor. The ASI troops were trudging back to the manhole, kitted up with black plastic boots, black boilersuits, M-16s, flareguns, grenades, torches, knives and ammo belts. One of them was holding a jerry can.

‘That’s more like it.’ Amonite flicked open her phone again. ‘Dex? You on your way?’

‘ETA in half an hour. Got twenty-two guys, night goggles, dogs.’

‘Change of plan. Don’t come here.’

‘Why not?’

‘Hold on a sec.’ Amonite beckoned to Zathanaís, who strolled over. ‘What’s the name of those guys who run the sewers?’

‘Empresa de Acueducto de Bogotá.’

Amonite turned away. ‘Did you catch that, Dex?’

‘Yep.’

‘Get a map from them. Round-up more troops. Block all exits within five clicks. Some of these ASI guys will join you. Kill anyone who even shows the tip of their nose.’

‘Will do.’

‘Ring me if you get him.’

‘Sure, boss, but what you doing?’

‘I’m gonna hunt him down.’

Bogotá, Colombia
14 April 2011

N
athan crouched low, tired eyes strained, aching muscles tense. The blue light was a dozen or so metres away. It burnt dancing, roving patterns into his retina.

It was the flame of a butane gas lighter. Someone was holding it. A dark silhouette with a hood. Shadows flickered like thieves across sunken, grimy cheeks, a crooked nose, a man’s forehead etched with a sea of wrinkles. And his eyes. As black as tar. Unblinking. Burning as intensely as the flame. Focused on the half-crushed can of Coke with the empty tube of a ballpoint pen sticking out, a homemade crack pipe laced together with elastic bands, that he was holding up to his thin, cracked lips.

Smoke billowed out. The man coughed, bent over, stumbled, leaned against the wall with his shoulder, his body wracked by coughing and wheezing, still clutching the can and the lighter. It lit up the area around it, revealing a corridor lined with crumbling brick and cement walls covered in patches of moss. Stalactites hung from the ceiling, oozing greasy liquid onto an uneven floor strewn with stones and garbage.

Nathan clasped a rock the size of a fist. If he could overpower the junkie, he might be able to get him to show the way out.

Another silhouette drifted up to the first. Nathan could make out a baseball cap and a long, tattered overcoat that fluttered around a skeletal frame like rags on a corpse. They spoke in a low voice—too low to understand. They put their faces close, cupped their bony hands.

Nathan decided to wait. Overpowering two junkies high on crack would be difficult. If only they’d separate, or if one came closer and the other stayed further away…

The first man put the tube to his mouth, approached the flame and inhaled deeply. He stumbled again, collapsing to one knee, then the other, then slid slowly, unhurriedly, to the ground. The can slipped from his fingers and rolled towards the edge of the darkness. His companion, who had just been standing there, staring, dived forward and grabbed it. He plucked the lighter from his unconscious friend’s fingers. He sat down against the wall, took a long drag, and slumped sideways, dropping can and lighter.

Nathan crept forward on all fours, eyes on the lighter, which was still burning and hissing away. The two junkies had rolled onto their sides. The one with the hood convulsed. His legs jerked. His eyes rolled. He clutched his chest, let out a raspy groan, thrashed around. He was overdosing. Then he lay still, the blue light flickering in his milky eyes, which had large black spots in their whites like those Nathan had seen on the junkies in London.

Nathan inched closer. He reached for the lighter, but a hand grasped his. The junkie with the cap was all over him. Nathan lurched backwards, spinning sideways. The junkie tumbled after him, hands turning into a flurry of knuckles and claws. Nathan clubbed the junkie’s head with the rock, knocking off the cap, feeling skin split, but it had no effect. He shoved his palm under the addict’s chin and pushed upwards.

The junkie twisted his face away. He scraped Nathan’s cheeks, elbowed him in the ribs. Nathan dropped the lighter. He pushed his hands onto the junkie’s mouth and nose, smothering him.

Nathan yelled.

The junkie was biting him, his mouth a salivating mass of rotten, sharp teeth. Nathan yanked his hands back. He wrenched the junkie away, forcing him off him. He spun his body round and climbed onto the junkie, who was now face down in the dirt.

Nathan grabbed both the junkie’s arms, tugged them out and put his knees on them, pinning them down. The junkie was squirming around with surprising strength. Nathan grabbed his hair and yanked it back.

‘I’ll snap your neck,’ he hissed into the junkie’s ear.

The junkie kept thrashing around. Nathan pulled back as far as he could.

The junkie gasped. ‘Stop, stop, you’re hurting me.’

Nathan released the pressure slightly. The junkie went limp. Nathan let the man’s head flop to the floor. He frisked his overcoat. In one pocket was a small torch and something that felt like a sharpened screwdriver. In another pocket was a small cube, rugged to the touch.

The junkie was moaning. ‘Please don’t kill me. I have a wife and two daughters.’

‘How do I get out of here?’

‘That way.’ The junkie indicated to the left with his head. ‘Don’t kill me. Please.’

‘How far?’

‘Maybe an hour.’

‘I’m going to get up.’ Nathan put the screwdriver to the junkie’s throat. ‘If you try to attack, I will kill you.’

The junkie sobbed pathetically. Nathan stood up. He shone the torch at the junkie, who flipped onto his back and sat up. His gaunt cheeks were blackened with grime. Trails of thin veins formed a web across his eyes. One of them was glazed and gazed at an angle into emptiness. He too had large black spots in the whites of his eyeballs. His ears were black-blue, as though bruised.

Nathan twirled the cube in the light of the torch. It was the same size and as black as the one he’d found in the underground lab in the jungle. But while the other one had been smooth, this one was chipped at the corners and bumpy.

‘Black Coke,’ the junkie said, eyeing the cube hungrily. ‘New drug. Very strong.’

‘This is Black Coke?’

‘Better even than basuco.’

Nathan nodded grimly. Basuco was the mixture of crack residue, gas and chemicals smoked by Bogotá’s street people. He weighed the cube in the palm of his hand. It felt as light as the volcanic rock he’d brought back from Mexico when he’d trekked up an extinct volcano in a fruitless attempt at finding one of Amonite’s hideouts.