Operation: Amazon

- 8 -

Buller’s sobbing told Banks that the conversation was over, for now. That was probably for the best, for Banks could make little sense of what the man had been trying to explain. All Banks knew was that somewhere down the line he’d miscalculated the situation, and lost control of it. It was time to take it back, or at least make a start in that direction.

First up was to get their kit back from wherever it had been taken. The only way to do that was to get out of the cell quietly. And there was only the one exit that wasn’t being watched.

He stepped quickly over to the window and leaned out. The wall was vertical both above and below, and stretched away on either side. He had a fair idea of how far they had descended from the top, but had no idea how far the structure might extend, or how far it was down to the canopy or river far below. He heard the cascade again, louder now. When he leaned out farther he felt spray, wet on his cheeks. That was going to make any attempt at a climb even trickier. He ran his hands over the stone where he could reach it. It was rough and eroded; plenty of finger and toeholds, but wet meant slippery.

Buller spoke softly.

“There’s no way out that way. It’s a 200-foot vertical drop,” he said.

“Thank fuck for that,” Banks replied. “I thought for a minute it was going to be fucking dangerous.”

“You can’t seriously be considering going out there?”

“Not considering, no. I’ve already made my mind up. If anybody comes looking for me, tell them I snapped and jumped.”

Without waiting for a reply, he stepped up onto the window ledge, turned to face inward, then reached for a handhold he hoped was there. His fingers found what his eyes couldn’t see, and he gripped, stepped, and reached with his other hand with the easy movements of a practiced climber.

The only way to do this was to act as if it was little more than a practice exercise. He visualized it as a wall in a gymnasium, where the only fall would be a short, non-fatal one, for to think of anything else would lead to doubt, and that would be a killer on such an ascent.

He’d climbed solo and unfettered before, free ascents of rock faces in the Cairngorms and Snowdonia, but this was a first — naked and already damp with spray from the cascade off to his left. His toes went in the place his fingers had been, his right hand went up, searched, found another hold, and pulled. He was getting into the rhythm of it now, allowing himself to lean away and not hug the wall, trusting his muscle memory and strength to keep him on the move upward. He considered dropping down to one of the other windows, to alert the others to his plan, but changing direction now would be risky; so upward it would be, fast enough to keep ahead of the worry.

His eyes had adjusted to the night completely now. The rock in front of him glistened where the stars danced in the fine drops of spray. Off to his right, the shimmering snake of the river seemed to writhe and squirm and now that he was higher he saw, to his left, the long silver cascade of a thin waterfall, some 30 yards away, tumbling noisily down into the darkness.

He reached for another grip as the sky blazed orange and red and the soft hiss, then thump, of an exploding flare lit up the wall in a blinding flash. For a bad second, he thought he might slip, but his toehold held, and he was able to reach and pull, and regain his momentum as gunshots rang out loud from somewhere far below him. Giraldo and Wilkes were in trouble, but there was nothing he could do to help them and seconds later, the flare had fallen away into darkness and the night fell silent again. He could only hope that the guide had managed to affect an escape.

He turned his attention back to the climb.

He moved as quickly as he could allow himself to without taking undue risks. His arms felt the strain now, the ache settling in his muscles, but he refused to acknowledge that, or the pain from flayed skin on fingers and toes. His knuckles also bled, from where he’d had to ram his fist into one particular hold to take his weight as he scrambled. But more than anything else, he felt alive, and realized he was grinning widely even as he hauled himself inch by inch up the wet wall.

He lost track of time. There was only the rhythm of hand and toehold, the wall and the movement. He was surprised to finally reach up and find not a hold, but a ledge. He hauled himself up onto the very top of the structure, on the roof of the cube that sat on top of what he’d thought to be a pyramid, but was obviously only stepped on the other three sides. The wall he had climbed fell away sheer below him, and now that he had the benefit of the height, he saw that it was a single face, all the way down to where it butted against the canopy far below.

He noted too that he was now above the source of the torrent, which was below him to his right where he stood on the ledge. The rush of water was still the only sound in the clear night air. Looking over the edge, he could only see the darkness of the jungle, and the silver of the shimmering snake of the river. He turned and made his way across the roof of the altar room, creeping slowly forward to get a view over the village, hoping that all would be quiet and that he might get a chance to search for their kit.

That hope was dashed almost immediately. He had got far enough across the roof to see down the length of the main causeway along the ridge of the hill and saw, at the far end, the flicker of approaching firebrands. He got down on his belly, feeling cold wet stone along the length of his body, and kept low. He shuffled as far back as he could while maintaining a line of sight, and could only watch as a crowd of 20 came toward the pyramid. Banks’ heart sank when he saw that they had Wilkes with them, the big man being half-pushed, half-carried in a stumbling, limping walk.

Banks looked through the approaching crowd in vain for their guide, but there was no sign of Giraldo. Yet again he could only hope that the man had, somehow, made an escape. But for now, he only had eyes for Wilkes. There had obviously been a fight. The man bled from his nose, and a scalp wound above his left eye that had left the whole of that side of his shirt wet and red. There was also something wrong with his right leg, giving him a pronounced limp that was almost a slump, forcing his captors to push and shove him roughly to keep him in a straight line.

Banks checked for weapons. The villagers carried more of the long knives and spears he had seen earlier but there was no sign of the squad’s rifles, or Wilkes’ handgun. Banks hoped that it was the case that the villagers had no concept of modern weaponry and had simply discarded the guns, and that the kit would be stashed somewhere in the structure below him. But there was no way to get at it immediately. The small procession was already making its way up the pyramid steps, with Wilkes being poked and prodded ever more roughly as he faltered on the climb.

Banks stayed hidden. He was naked, weaponless, and any attempt at heroic rescue would only lead to a quick death under the knives and spears. He had to crawl backward as the oncoming crowd approached to avoid giving away his position, and wasn’t far enough forward to see anything once they pushed Wilkes ahead of them into the cubic room below.

He didn’t have to see to have a good idea what was going on. The screams started almost immediately and having already seen a body on the altar earlier, Banks could see all too clearly in his minds’ eye the atrocities that were now being inflicted on the big man. Once again, he had almost overwhelming urge to intervene, to leap down and throw himself into the fray. But he’d been trained better than that, well enough for sense to override instinct, and he lay there, still and quiet as Wilkes’ screams turned to frantic, animalistic howling that was, thankfully, not long lived.

Another noise replaced the screams, a slithering, moist, wetness that Banks thought must be what remained of Wilkes being hollowed out like the earlier man. Then he smelled it, an acrid odor in the air, like hot oil and vinegar. It was accompanied by more slithering, louder now, a sound that so perplexed Banks that he had to crawl forward several inches to sate his curiosity.

He looked down to the entrance of the room below him in time to see the first of them emerge. It was a snake, a huge, rainbow-hued thing some fifteen feet in length, and as thick as a man’s thigh at its thickest point. It slid down the pyramid steps and away into the night while Banks was still trying to process what he’d seen. There was no hope of considering it a hallucination. In short order, another, then another, then more of the massive snakes slid and slithered out of the room below, off down the steps and scattered into the shadows in the ruins.

He counted 20 of them.