BLOOD GURKHA: Prophesy (James Pace novels Book 5) (11 page)

'What is your name and why are you here? You realise this is a secure area but if you have truly come to destroy this old place, you need to help me understand. You realise by now, of course, that this entire zone has been evacuated. There is nothing, and nobody, to destroy.'

'I won't argue with you there,' Hammond smiled good-naturedly. As he did so, another soldier stepped forward and relieved him efficiently of all his weapons. Feeling suddenly vulnerable without them, Hammond decided to redouble his bluffing efforts. 'This was an ARC facility. We came to destroy it.'

'You speak Spanish very well but you have an accent that belies you,' commented Jorges. 'Is this how the British government treats its friends now; sending men in to another sovereign nation to wreak havoc?'

'Sorry,' countered Hammond, 'but you're wrong there. We don't work for the British. My comrade and I hire ourselves out to whoever has a well-paying job that needs taking care of. Before you ask, I'm not going to tell you who hired us either.'

'You have a death wish then, I assume?'

Hammond forced a confident grin that he did not feel, and then added a steely edge to his next few words. 'Look, sunshine. I don't care to stand here chewing the fat with you and your men.' He nodded around at them, as if to recognise their presence. 'We don't have long and I knew the risks when I signed up. My wife and kids will be fine without me; I've made sure of that. They will have enough money to live well.'

Hammond had never been married, nor ever seriously contemplated such a restrictive relationship, but humanising himself to the enemy was a well-known tactic for garnering sympathy and preventing anyone from arbitrarily shooting him.

Jorges regarded the hard eyes and took note of a slight slump in Hammond's demeanour. Deliberately done, it did the trick and introduced just enough doubt into his disciplined mind that he knew he could not afford to ignore the threat. It was probably a desperate ruse, he thought, but what if it wasn't? He had always prided himself on treating his men well; gaining their respect by being a strong, effective leader.

Begrudgingly, he gave the order for his men to retreat back up a winding path, shepherding Hammond tightly in the middle between them.

The path was only wide enough for two abreast travel and it hugged the contours of the cliff face, mirroring the road's approach but several hundred metres away and angling north east whereas the road headed south east. Both routes hair-pinned back and forth religiously, climbing barely ten metres with every completed, eighty metre traverse.

The night air remained cool and a strong wind suddenly whipped up, blowing in from the sea to send angry breakers crashing down over the impervious harbour wall, which shrugged them off with contempt.

The skies remained starless, thick with unseen cloud, and it started to rain. Strengthening in a heartbeat, it pelted down on top of them with surprising viciousness, dissolving visibility down to barely more than five metres; making the going treacherous and slippery within moments on the thinly-gravelled path.

Jorges immediately ordered his men to don their waterproof ponchos before continuing their march.

As with any cliff path, one side felt safe, hugging the naked rock, whilst the other became increasingly more perilous the higher you climbed; a sheer drop down to certain death after any more than about twenty metres. Hammond judged they were already forty metres high by the time the rain hit but the cliff rose to a dizzy one hundred metres at the back of the harbour so there was a way to go still.

Instinctively, all the soldiers edged closer to the cliff face before realising that the rain was falling so hard that only a single-file approach would safely get them back up to their nice, warm guardhouse at the top of the cliff.

Suddenly strung out in a longer line, crunching and sliding as they moved, nobody spoke. The soldiers had their orders and knew the terrain. It was only Hammond who had no real idea of what awaited him when he got to the top. The key, he knew, was not to ever get there.

Having been in more hopeless situations than he cared to remember, and never yet being unable to find a way out, Hammond applied his powerful intellect to the dilemma. At their increasingly snail-like pace, he guessed they wouldn't get to the top for another ten minutes. He had to try an escape quickly while the weather was on his side. Even so, the man behind him kept nudging him in the lower spine with the muzzle of his rifle every few steps, possibly to discourage him from doing anything foolish.

In reality, his choices were poor. He couldn't move forwards or backwards through the single line. He could not move up because the sheer rock prevented it. His only choice was to go down; throw himself over the edge and hope he was able to scrabble a life-saving hand hold on the rock as he fell, to try and arrest his fall before he crunched fatally down onto the beach far below. Even if you do try, he told himself, it would take a second or two to get to the edge and disappear over it. More than enough time for his spine-jabbing friend to squeeze off a couple of rounds.

Nothing else presented itself and Hammond made up his mind to try. Strangely, he also knew it would be better to throw himself off the cliff when they got much higher as it would give his falling body more time to grab for the rock face on the way down. At the height they'd already reached, if his hands failed to grasp an anchor hold, he would be as dead now as if he jumped another fifty metres higher.

Trudging on, starting to slump his shoulders even more noticeably for the benefit of the soldier directly behind him, Hammond bided his time and wondered if his final moments of life were going to end up being spent climbing up this damned Uruguayan cliff path.

Five minutes passed and the wind became so strong that the entire line was forced to stop and crouch down. Still buffeted by rising gusts, and hammering, icy rain, it gave Hammond a few more minutes of thinking time.

They waited, getting thoroughly soaked and cold, for a few minutes before Jorges; leading from the front as always, ordered them to continue. The weather had not improved and he saw no reason to wait any longer; in fact it might get worse and his men would be in even more danger on a path that he knew was notorious for claiming pedestrians in bad weather. Although not his men, the previous team who had originally been sent in to remove the ARC team and secure the site, had lost two of their number on the very same path; falling to their deaths on routine transit walks between the upper camp and the ARC harbour facility.

The guard at the very rear of the line was charged with ensuring nobody came upon the patrol from behind. Normally this was not an issue for Miguel Farraha, a private who had eyes on a corporal's stripe some time in the near future. Young, dedicated and passionately patriotic, he could always be relied upon to follow orders to the letter.

Unfortunately, the heavy rain had turned the path into a death trap and Farraha knew about the poor men who had fallen to a sticky end the month previously in similar weather conditions. Unable to walk backwards for any length of time without losing his footing, Farraha opted to walk normally, stopping and checking behind him every minute or two. All he saw was rain and darkness whenever he stopped.

Moving on after the brief stop, he carefully checked the rear again, peering intently into the curtain of falling water as if hoping sheer willpower would somehow part the water in biblical fashion. Of course, it didn't and he had to content himself with listening instead. He heard nothing over the increasing drum of the rain, hammering against rock and gravel.

Five minutes passed and Farraha guessed they must only be about twenty metres from the cliff top. Three more turns and they would be back. He had barely turned his head to look forwards again, after completing another dutiful check behind him, when he felt the momentary shock of something heavy crunching against the back of his neck before the world solidified into blissful darkness.

12

After waiting in the darkness, Pace's eyes adjusted to the gloom. His heart pounded, more from fear of what Hammond was facing than any threat to his own safety. Torn between wanting to charge up and help his friend and waiting to find a less violent way to help him, he knew he had to resist.

They had come to infiltrate ARC, which by all accounts was now back in the hands of legitimate people. They needed information on Josephine Roche's whereabouts and had come armed in case they needed to defend themselves against any possible remnants of her mercenary security forces. He had seen, first hand, how ruthlessly they had murdered to protect their employer.

Uruguay was not the enemy here. A modern, forward-thinking democracy; it was the envy of most other South American countries. Regaining democracy in the 1980s, after years of military rule, its economy was growing and its limited population benefited from some of the most liberal laws anywhere in the world. Same sex marriage, religious freedom, free education, access to technology and genuine freedom of the press had all been steps that the second smallest nation in South America had often taken long before its much larger neighbours of Brazil and Argentina.

The thought of ending up in a gun battle with the Uruguayan army was not a prospect Pace wanted to think about. It had always been a risk but he and Hammond had already agreed to do everything in their power, short of surrendering, to avoid a confrontation if they were ever discovered.

Now, kneeling in the dark passageway, the reality of this agreement kept Pace rooted to the spot, alert and frustrated but still only prepared to fire his weapon if he had no choice. Of course, he reasoned, the soldiers had no idea who they were, or why they had come, so were very likely to shoot first and ask questions afterwards. Pace hoped he was wrong but it did not change the fact that he needed a new plan, fast.

Deciding that nobody seemed in any hurry to charge down the passageway, guns blazing, Pace straightened up, eyes still straining at their limits. The voices had stopped, leaving only silence. He waited a few moments longer but they did not restart.

'Could be a trap,' he whispered to himself aloud, feeling a strange reassurance to hear a voice, even his own. 'They might have all moved away and just be waiting to shoot you down the minute you come through the door.'

This logic didn't stop his feet from carrying him back to the door, which still stood wide open, revealing the lighter blackness of the outside. Pausing, breathing softly, Pace listened again, his finger curled lightly around the trigger of his WWII submachine gun. The only sound he heard was the wind, far angrier than before, followed by the patter of heavy rain.

Within a few seconds, the rain grew so heavy that it sounded more like a running bathroom shower than a rainstorm, reminding Pace of his many days spent slogging through the mosquito-infested mud of the Amazon Basin the year before. Never before had he experienced such heavy rainstorms, almost incessantly, day after day.

Pace had been in Brazil to run in
Race Amazon
, a charitable race to raise money for Brazil's wildlife and forest conservation projects, and to act as his team's video diarist. The first attempt to run the race had nearly cost him his life, which was hardly surprising seeing as how Doyle McEntire was using it as a front to hunt for a lost aircraft filled with weapon's grade plutonium that the Corporation had secretly purchased from an ex-Soviet state in its secret, ongoing effort to remove as much of the stuff as possible from circulation i.e. keep it out of the hands of crazy terrorist organisation who might want to use it on prized western targets.

With the race hijacked by mercenaries of a vicious local politician; Cathera, he had experienced terror and jubilation in equal measure, meeting friends and foes who had defined his decisions to join the McEntire Corporation as its newest covert operative. Being in love with Doyle McEntire's daughter had definitely helped with his decision.

To his own credit, he had then successfully competed in the re-running of the race, which had nothing to do with anything other than his own pride and him needing to honour the dead friends who did not make it out of the sweltering jungle alive. Like Cosmos.

For a moment, a brief image of his sister, Amanda, flashed before his eyes but he forced it away. Now was not the time to weaken and her image was one that still haunted him. Because of his own participation in the race, Cathera had ordered his pet assassin, Wolf, to murder her. Pace had received the news of her death, by phone, while preparing for the starting gun. It was a call he would never forget.

Drawn back to matter at hand, he listened for a few more minutes before taking the chance of slinking forwards on his belly to snatch a quick look around. No hidden soldier was waiting for him. The whole area around the cliff face was empty.

Pace stood up and stepped outside, gun raised. Still, nobody emerged to challenge him, or shoot at him. Just as he lowered the Sten a little, a flash of light up the cliff face, a few hundred metres away, caught his eye in the darkness. He could not make it out at such a distance, in the increasingly heavy rain, but he immediately knew what it was.

Before launching their surveillance operation, he and Hammond had analysed satellite imagery of the site. He knew there was a road and a walking path leading up from the harbour to the cliff top. The road headed south east, where it headed inland for a few miles before joining a main road. The path led the opposite direction, meandering up the steep cliff side until it reached the top where an old warehouse and workers' residential building had been commandeered by the army. It was now, they had decided, the army's base of operations while they protected the ARC site.

Pace wasted no time in running as fast as he could towards the starting point of the path, taking the couple of roughly-hewn steps leading up to the gravel surface in a single bound. Spurred on by determination and a healthy dose of fear for his friend, he ran up the path. Keeping as close as he could to the rock, slinging his gun over his shoulder so he could focus on his footing, his eyes soon ached from concentration while his clothes became soaked.

Unable to feel the cold through the heat of his exertions, Pace jogged uphill as fast as he could, slipping over a few times in his haste but determined to catch up to whoever was climbing the path. They would have Hammond with them.

At least in the storm, without using a torch, he would be shielded from view until he got very close. Of course, he wondered, if they have any kind of thermal imaging equipment to hand, the rain wasn't going to keep him hidden for too much longer; and that's if the rain decided not to stop and suddenly leave him exposed in plain sight anyway.

Sweating and panting from the creeping exhaustion, Pace gritted his teeth and forced his aching legs onwards. Without any light to guide him, his only guarantee not to run off the edge by accident was to keep his shoulder almost pressed to the rock face as he ran, which snagged his clothing and jarred his shoulder countless times as he banged into outcrops and protruding bulges. Still, he carried on, and was eventually rewarded by the sound ahead of boots crunching on gravel.

Dropping to his knees, sucking in huge lungfuls of air that burned inside him, Pace realised that sound travelled both ways. He had got too close, at a run. If he had heard their footsteps, they were bound to have heard the pounding of his own boots on the path. Opting to leave the Sten slung comfortably over his shoulder, his right hand dropped to his side, where his fingers pulled open the Velcro flap on his pistol holster. Seconds later, the reassuring weight of his Webley revolver was in a hand that trembled from over-exertion almost uncontrollably.

Steadying the gun with his other hand, Pace aimed the gun ahead of him, at the dark curtain of rain, ignoring the water that was being blown painfully into his eyes by an increasingly spiteful ocean gale.

But nobody materialised out of the darkness and he could barely believe his luck. How had they not heard him? Deciding it was probably the right time to keep the gun to hand, he stood back up and shook out his legs. Every muscle ached and shrieked in pain; his entire lower body felt leaden and glued to the path.

Forcing himself to move, keeping his steps brisk but careful to make as little sound on the gravel path as he could, Pace continued forwards. He turned another of the many hairpin bends and started up the incline again, moving back on himself but climbing inexorably towards the top of the cliff. Up ahead, somewhere close by, were the people who had taken Hammond.

Pace was summoning his thoughts and mentally preparing for the conflict that was imminent when he almost walked into the back of Farraha, even his slower speed clearly far exceeding that of his quarry.

Throwing himself backwards just enough to prevent a direct collision, Pace wobbled unsteadily on the backs of his heels for a split second before regaining his balance and making a snap decision. He had no way of knowing how far in front the next man might be, or if the man he'd nearly slammed into was the only person walking in single file. Incredibly the rain had grown more ferocious than before. Combined with the darkness, it closed down visibility to barely two metres.

Spinning the Webley expertly in his fingers, Pace reversed the gun and delivered a well-aimed blow at Farraha's neck, connecting firmly with the butt. Pace knew that head blows often bounced off and that an effective pistol-whip scene from the movies rarely worked out in real life. The most exposed, vulnerable point was the base of the neck. It was a gamble, he knew. Too much force and the neck could be broken but just enough force applied would render immediate unconsciousness.

Farraha dropped like a stone, on legs that crumpled beneath him. Stepping forward, Pace managed to slip his hands beneath the soldier's armpits and support his weight, gently lowering him to the path; pulling him in tightly against the rock wall and well away from the lethal sheer drop on the opposite side of the track. Pausing to check for a pulse in his neck, Pace smiled grimly to feel Farraha's life force blipping firmly beneath his fingertips.

Despite the rain and increasing chill he felt, as the heat from his uphill run began to dissipate, Pace stripped Farraha of his poncho and soft military cap, pulling the sodden peak down low in front of his face. He discarded Farraha's weapon over the edge of the track before slipping the unconscious man into a recovery position, allowing him to breathe freely. Pace might have needed him down but he was not a murderer.

The next three minutes seemed to last an eternity, as Pace made his way up behind each man in turn, discreetly knocking them all out with the Webley's heavy butt before manhandling them against the wall; each left in a similarly helpful breathing position. Five soldiers were unconscious, at different points along the track by the time a very welcome, and familiar, shape hove into view. Hammond was trudging along, his manner dejected and resigned. Another soldier was right behind him, prodding him irritatingly in the back with the muzzle of his automatic rifle. At each jab, Hammond made no response; not even a twitch. Pace knew that this must have been going on for a while. He also knew Hammond well enough to know that he'd never give up so easily.

Hammond decided it was time. They must nearly be at the top; they had been walking for over an hour. Summoning every last ounce of strength, he flicked his eyes down to the nearby edge of the path and the sheer death drop that lay over its side. In the next few moments, he would leap at it.

Hopefully he would manage to get clear before the guard behind him could react. Then, it was simply a matter of trying to grab on to something that might not even be there, on the way down. His chances were bleak but he stood no chance if he let them get him back to their barracks. Government figures and state security would be called, interrogations held, and his links to Doyle McEntire would come out. That, he would not allow.

At least James managed to get clear, he thought, stopping dead and throwing his impressive shoulders backwards in a surprise move that sent his sentinel's weapon skittering out of his hands and into the rainy night. Spinning on his heels, positive that he was about to be gunned down by the soldiers he knew were coming up from behind, he suddenly found himself staring directly into pair of intensely blue eyes, filled with a mixture of admiration and exhilaration.

'Finally,' said Pace, voice wavering with restrained emotion. 'I come all this way and you decide not to act until I've cleared out all the bad guys. Typical,' he chuckled.

'James? What the hell?'

'Come on, no time to explain, let's get back down this path before they know what's gone on back here. How many more of them are there anyway?'

'Another half a dozen, I think,' answered Hammond, bewildered but recovering his senses and following hard on Pace's heels as his friend disappeared back into the storm, retracing their steps down the treacherous cliff trail. Every few metres, an inert form of an unconscious soldier came into view, snugly tucked in against the rock, but they did not stop. Travelling far quicker than was safe, they slipped, skidded and scrambled their way back down a dozen hairpins until they finally found themselves back in the warehouse complex.

''They must be on to us by now,' puffed Hammond, feeling the grumbles of a stitch beginning under his ribs but shrugging off the pain. He was still trying to adjust to the change in reality that meant he was actually still alive. 'I was planning to jump,' he said to Pace quickly. 'I couldn't see another way. I was going to jump and just pray I could grab a handhold or two on the way down to break my fall.'