The Promised One (21 page)

Pollard stopped about fifty yards down the path. The remote control had a long range but he wasn’t taking any chances. He grinned to himself.

‘Bye bye folks!’ he murmured as he pressed the button.

Even though Richard and Lucy were half expecting it, the explosion when it came was absolutely shattering. The entire camp trembled at the force of the blast and after a moment of eerie silence the forest creatures broke into a chorus of terrified noises. Lucy and Richard hugged each other tightly once again. Eventually she spoke:

‘Wow! Well done, Dad – just in time! What made you suddenly realize what he was going to do?’

Richard’s face was still deathly white but he pulled himself together.

‘He’s more cunning than he looks – though that’s not saying much!’ He managed a weak smile. ‘I always suspected that he might kill me, but that would have left you free as a witness. He knew he couldn’t catch you because of the ants and he didn’t have a gun. He guessed that as soon as you judged the remote control unit was out of range you would disconnect the gelignite from me, and he thought he’d blow us both up as you were doing it. He had to pretend to get out of range, which is why he didn’t set it off as soon as he was hidden by the trees. If he’d done it too soon he couldn’t have been sure of getting you as well. Those vital moments gave us and the animals the
opportunity to get out of range. I must say,’ he added, ‘life is certainly never dull with you around!’

‘We should be getting back to the airstrip,’ said Lucy, ‘but before we go I need to give you a big kiss!’ She stretched up and planted a kiss on his cheek.

‘My,’ said Richard, laughing, ‘a kiss as well as a hug! What’s that for?’

‘It’s for thinking about the animals as well as us. Your quick thinking must have saved hundreds and hundreds of little lives. You’re a really cool dad and I love you!’

Lucy suddenly stiffened and cocked her head.

‘Listen!’

Richard listened but could hear nothing but the gradually fading cries of the animals disturbed by the blast. He shrugged his shoulders. Lucy laughed. ‘We are getting old, aren’t we? Never mind, you’ll eventually hear it; it’s a plane and we’d better move. Come on!’

They ran to the airstrip and soon even Richard could hear the distant drone of a light aircraft. They knew that the police were coming in three planes, so if it was a single plane it would be the drug carriers. Shading their eyes they peered into the brilliant sky until they spotted the incoming plane. Once they were certain it was on its own, Lucy sprang into action.

‘Now, Dad,’ she said, ‘I know you’ve had a boring few weeks and I know you feel a bit left out when I’m talking to Michelle and Katy and Queenie, so now’s your big moment.’ She turned, and taking two palm fronds off Queenie gave them to him. ‘You’ve got to go out and wave
them into their parking spot.’ She pointed to a space near the trees where Richard now saw two tapirs waiting quietly in the bushes.

‘Quick, off you go. Don’t be a wimp, Dad,’ she said, giving him a little push in the back. Richard went out into the field feeling as if he were back at school, but what Lucy had said made perfect sense. It was the most natural thing in the world for one of the men at the camp to guide the plane in.

As the plane approached for landing Richard waved the fronds with arms outstretched, just like a member of the ground staff at a large airport, and the pilot obediently taxied to the spot to which Richard guided him and the aircraft came to a stop. As it did so the tapirs came out and sat, one just in front of the wheels and one just behind.

‘Run, Dad!’ Lucy shouted.

Richard needed no second bidding. He ran into the adjacent bushes and then circled back under cover to where Lucy sat. When he got back Lucy was staring into the jungle with an expression he was now very familiar with: the faraway look she adopted when she was communing with animals. At that moment there was another droning sound and Richard glanced up, concerned that more planes were coming in and that he had just misdirected the first police plane. He heaved a sign of relief as the noise grew louder and its source became clear. A massive swarm of hornets swept out of the jungle and zoomed like a squadron of fighter planes towards the trapped aircraft. The cockpit door was just opening and as the cloud of hornets reached the plane it was hurriedly
shut again. The swarm filled the air around the plane, so dense that it looked as though the plane was sitting in a bank of dark-brown fog.

They heard the engine start up again and saw the plane trying unsuccessfully to move against the dead weight of the tapirs obstructing the wheels. The animals were invisible to the occupants of the plane and through occasional gaps in the hornet cloud Lucy and Richard got fleeting glimpses of the anger and bewilderment on their faces as the plane refused to budge. Once again the door started to open and then it shut even more quickly than before. No human being on earth could have survived for more than a few seconds in that living, buzzing maelstrom and it was clear that those inside the aircraft were not
about to put their survival chances to the test.

Now an anaconda’s tail appeared from the bushes and coiled itself neatly around the tail fin of the little plane. It took over the job of immobilizing it from the tapirs, who moved away from the wheels, making way for four giant armadillos who emerged from the bushes and started to dig at breathtaking speed at the ground around the wheels.

‘The anaconda can’t stay there long,’ explained Lucy gleefully, ‘in case the villains dare to open the door and start shooting at it, but they don’t even know it’s there yet and by the time they do the flexishields – sorry, armadillos – will have finished; Queenie tells me they’re the world’s champion diggers.’ Lucy now thought she knew what had created the massive trenches through which the jaguars had escaped on her previous visit to the camp.

Sure enough, before their very eyes, the plane started sinking into the ground as its wheels disappeared into a trench. Earth and dust flew for yards as the armadillos worked and within a few minutes the bottom of the plane was sitting flat on the ground. The anaconda unwound its tail and disappeared.

‘We had to do this at the side of the strip,’ explained Lucy, ‘so the animals could hide, and the strip was left clear for the police planes to land safely. That’s why we had to get you to trick them into parking over there.’

Richard looked once more at his daughter in speechless amazement. There seemed to be no detail that she had left unattended.

L
ater in the day, they once again heard the drone of aero-engines and three planes approached and landed. Richard and Lucy were standing at the side of the airstrip and waved to the planes as they taxied towards the camp. As the planes came to a stop armed police jumped out and, seeing Lucy pointing to the drugs plane, ran towards it to surround it. As they drew near, the hornets, still clustered in an angry crowd around the cockpit, disappeared as if by magic into the adjacent jungle. Soon the men in the plane clambered out and the police made them turn and lean with their hands on the plane fuselage while they frisked and disarmed them. It looked just like a scene from an American police movie. The men from the other planes, including the liaison officer from Scotland Yard, then went over and talked briefly to the villains before the Yard man detached himself from the group and came over to Richard and Lucy.

‘Hello, I’m Inspector Cockayne,’ he said as they shook hands. ‘Dr Bonaventure, I presume!’ He smiled as he turned to Lucy, ‘And you must be the intrepid Lucy. Thank heavens you’re safe, my dear. Everybody has been very
worried about you.’ He turned and pointed to the drugs plane.

‘It looks as if we’ve got three of the most notorious drug dealers in the region and the biggest haul of cocaine I’ve seen in twenty years on the force. Their plane seems to have got stuck in some kind of a hole – I don’t know what the pilot was thinking of going anywhere near it. The extraordinary thing is that the wheels seem to have disturbed a massive hornets’ nest – maybe it was in the hole – and the villains say it was impossible for them to get out. Funny thing is, when our men surrounded the plane the hornets flew off. Maybe they’re frightened of humans in this remote spot – it’s a good job the crooks didn’t realize they were so harmless. Another odd thing is that our code name for this operation is “Jungle Sting”. It turned out to be more appropriate than anyone could have guessed.’ They all laughed and the inspector continued. ‘You’ve been incredibly lucky. If it hadn’t been for the hole and the hornets I daren’t think what that lot would have done to you. They’re a bunch of really nasty characters.’

‘Well, we had a problem,’ said Richard. ‘We weren’t sure who was going to get here first, you or them, so we had to stay near the airstrip to check. When we saw it was them we were terrified,’ he glanced at Lucy who put on a suitably worried expression and nodded in agreement, ‘so we hid in the bushes until you came. We couldn’t understand why they didn’t get out but now you’ve solved the mystery for us.’ He felt the fib was justified in the circumstances. ‘Tell your men to be careful when they go
into the camp,’ he continued. ‘It seems to have been invaded by an army of ants overnight and the men have all been trapped in their huts.’

‘Thanks for the warning,’ said the Inspector. ‘I’ll let them know immediately – they look as if they’re just on their way into the camp.’ He took Richard and Lucy over to the Brazilian officer in charge to introduce them. ‘This is Captain Colarinho. He’s in overall command of the operation.’ The captain was a charming man who greeted Lucy and Richard in flawless English and congratulated them on their resourcefulness in contacting José and in staying out of the clutches of the villains. Then he called two of his men over and talked to them in Portuguese, explaining about the ants. One of them crossed to the cabins and soon returned to give a brief report to the captain. He turned and courteously translated this for the benefit of his British colleague, Lucy and Richard.

‘He says the ants are clearing off even now. If the villains had got out sooner they might have discovered you two and who knows what they might have done. We obviously arrived in the nick of time.’ The captain shook his head in disbelief. ‘I just can’t get over this. What kind of coincidence gets half the insects in the Amazon trapping two bunches of thugs at the same time?’

‘We do seem to have been extraordinarily lucky,’ murmured Richard, and Lucy nodded in agreement, looking straight at the police officers, blue eyes wide with innocence. Then she slipped away to lock up the jaguars before the police came across them.

Richard and Inspector Cockayne watched as the police surrounded Chopper’s hut. One of the police force was extremely large and tough-looking, with muscles bulging under his bullet-proof vest. Captain Colarinho explained that he was an ex-commando. Richard thought that the man looked distinctly disappointed at the somewhat uneventful nature of the arrests so far. The ex-commando eagerly kicked in the door of Chopper’s hut as if anticipating a bit of rough stuff. They all gaped at the sight that greeted them.

The captain inspected the scene, then turned to the inspector and Richard.

‘They’ve obviously been fighting,’ he said, ‘– probably on drugs. That little guy must be tougher than he looks and he’s obviously a martial arts expert – fancy being able to chuck that fat one through a cupboard! And look at that nasty wound on the big fellow’s ear lobe,’ he added authoritatively. ‘You can always tell a knife fighter when you see one.’

Chopper’s injured leg was by now so swollen that it proved impossible even for the commando to extract it from the door. The captain vetoed any further attempts despite assurances from the commando that he could definitely remove it with one final vigorous tug, so the cupboard door was unscrewed and the prisoners ‘helped’ out of the hut by the commando.

As the police started to break into the next hut Sam, seeing that the ants had gone, prised the window open and escaped. There was no time for the others to follow and they pushed
the wire back to conceal his absence. Crouching below the window Sam glanced hurriedly round and, seeing no big cats, dashed to the nearby edge of the forest and then ran towards the jetty. Halfway to the river he was astonished to see the devastation caused by the dynamite. He had, of course, heard the massive blast while trapped in his hut and had assumed that Pollard must have had an accident with his gelignite pack. In a way he was right, but he couldn’t understand what Pollard had been doing on the path to the creek. Over a wide area the trees had been completely flattened and those around the perimeter of the blast area were broken and splintered. As Sam crossed the new clearing he tripped over a boot and to his horror saw that it was still occupied by a foot. No leg – just a foot ending in a bloody mangled stump where the ankle should have been. Sam was looking at the largest remaining fragment of Pollard. Fighting back waves of nausea he stumbled on to the jetty.

The giant cayman opened one eye at the sound of approaching footsteps. She watched as Sam crept up to the boat recently vacated by Lucy and Richard and started to fumble with the moorings. She slowly raised her snout a fraction and sniffed appreciatively. Most lumberjacks and camp workers seemed to use soap, shampoo and even deodorants nowadays. She had not smelt a human being so thoroughly organic as Sam for a very long time. She slid into the black waters of the river with barely a ripple as the boat pushed off from the makeshift jetty. It was beginning to look, even to her simplistic reptilian mind, as though the destruction of the previous boat would prove to have been
an invaluable educational experience.

The inspector in charge had decided that all the captured men should be evacuated by boat, and a police craft was already coming up the river to join them. Because of the remoteness of the area the nearest town with a police launch was …
*

This launch would not reach them for at least
twenty-four
hours so in the meantime the men were herded into the mess hut, the largest building in the camp, so they could be kept under armed guard. The drug peddlers from the plane had been disarmed and taken to join the others. After they left the plane the pilot kept looking back at the trench into which the wheels had disappeared; he passed his hand across his eyes and shook his head repeatedly in bewilderment, muttering incoherently to himself as he was marched to the mess hut.

As the villains all stood in a group waiting to be shepherded into the hut the police were helpless with laughter, for the prisoners looked like a troupe of clowns in a travelling circus rehearsing for their next village show. Barker was standing with both feet in a bucket of water to relieve the pain of the ant stings; the pilot of the plane had been stung by hornets on his nose and both ears, which had swollen to the size of ripe tomatoes; Bert still had the bucket stuck firmly on his head, the captain having, with some difficulty, prevented the commando from trying to
prise it off with his combat knife. He had already made several failed attempts to remove it with his bare hands by gripping Bert’s neck between his knees and twisting the bucket vigorously in both directions. The handle of the bucket had now fallen neatly over so as to form a chin strap, making Bert look like the tin man in
The Wizard of Oz
. Chopper stood speechless with rage, a towel wrapped like a giant nappy around his injured bottom, a handkerchief pressed to his bleeding ear and the cupboard door still around his leg. Looking at him Inspector Cockayne turned to Richard and said drily:

‘Well, he’s not in prison yet, but he’s certainly got one foot in the door.’

Lucy, who had by now returned from the jaguar compound, made a mental note to pass this gem on to Clare. She knew that the villains deserved everything that had
happened to them, but she was a kind-hearted girl and couldn’t help feeling a twinge of sympathy for the dejected group. Then she thought of the miserable state of the three jaguars she had just left, tortured for greed; the months of pain ending inevitably in death that they and all those she had released would have faced; the destruction of the precious rainforest with its irreplaceable animals and plants; the destruction of thousands of species by the contamination of the rivers with mercury and other poisons from illegal mining; and the destruction of countless lives and societies by the filthy drugs these men were distributing throughout the world, and any vestiges of sympathy that she felt for them evaporated. She only hoped that it wasn’t too late for them to mend their ways and start again with more useful lives.

With the villains all now grouped together, Lucy noticed immediately that Sam was missing and told the inspector. The police ran down to the jetty to find that both he and the boat were gone.

‘He wouldn’t have dared start the engine because of the noise, so he’ll be floating downstream until he’s out of earshot,’ said the astute captain. ‘That means the police launch will meet him on its way up. I’ll call them to warn them.’ When he emerged from the radio shack he beckoned to Richard.

‘There’s a call for you on the radio,’ he said. Richard and Lucy went to the radio shack and Richard switched the receiver to ‘open’ so that Lucy could also hear. It was José.

‘Richard? I’ve managed to set up a radio link with the UK. I’ve got some folk here who would very much like to
have a word with you.’ Lucy’s heart leapt and a few seconds later she heard her mother’s voice. Richard and Lucy spoke excitedly to her and Clare and Sarah, then to Grandma and Grandpa, Lucy’s aunt and uncle, and Ben, Henry and Christopher. Lucy had never felt so happy in her life, reunited physically with her father and now with the rest of her family by radio.

Soon they said goodbye, looking forward to a grand reunion when Lucy and Richard returned, as they hoped, within the next few days.

Lucy then went to the jaguar compound to take water to the animals she had locked up when the police arrived. There were three jaguars awaiting treatment from the vets. They had lain low in the nearby forest and had been fed by their fit companions as Lucy had requested.

‘All the evil ones will soon be gone,’
she told them,
‘and in one sunsleep some Tailless Ones will come to make you well. They may put a sharp straw in your leg and this will make you sleep. I will be with them and speak to you, so have no fear.’
She then returned to the main camp and rejoined her father.

‘Well, young lady, it’s time we started off home to see Mummy and the girls …’ Richard stopped as he saw Lucy’s face.

‘We can’t go today, Dad. I have to stay and comfort the sick jaguars when the vets are here – please,
please
, it’s only one more day and the animals helped us so much I
have
to stay.’

‘Well, we do owe our lives to all these creatures,’ he said, ‘and I suppose after all this time one more day or two is
neither here nor there. I’ve a lot of business to discuss with José and I can start writing my botanical notes up. The main thing is that everybody at home now knows we are safe.’

‘Thank you, Daddy, thank you!’ She flung her arms round him and hugged him.

‘… and, while we’re on such matters,’ he continued, ‘I really don’t think you can take Michelle with you.’ He looked at the cute little creature. ‘She would have to spend a long time in quarantine – it could be most of her remaining life span – and it would be cruel to take her away from her natural environment.’

‘I know you’re right,’ said Lucy. ‘I wouldn’t really have taken her but I will miss her terribly.’ She scratched the marmoset under the chin and Michelle held her finger between her paws and licked it with her tiny pink tongue.

That night Richard and Lucy were able to sleep in a hut – their first night under proper cover for weeks. The captain had allocated them Chopper’s old hut but Lucy took one sniff at the hammocks and declared that she wasn’t going anywhere near them.

‘They’re disgusting, Dad; heaven knows what you’ll catch if you go in one of them.’ And so saying she took them out and burned them. She washed her hands afterwards, much to the amusement of her father.

‘You must have come across every known bug and parasite in the last few weeks – and even more unknown ones,’ he said. ‘Why the sudden fuss about hygiene?’

‘Jungle dirt is clean dirt,’ she replied, ‘and this is
Chopper
dirt. And as far as I’m concerned there’s all the difference in the world.’

They slept on the floor on sweet-smelling leaves and branches just as they had in the jungle, Michelle and Katy snuggled up close to Lucy. She slept in complete contentment for the first time since she had been kidnapped and dreamt of seeing her home and family again.