The Jungle

11

THE THREE REACTED AS ONE. CABRILLO TOSSED SOLEIL’S bag to Smith, since he was as close to the rightful owner as he could get, and together they raced for the stairwell up and out of the temple complex.

His supposition that Soleil and what’s his name had been attacked by rebels or drug smugglers was obviously false. The chopper had to belong to the military, which meant these were reinforcements for a patrol that had to be someplace close by. Soleil must have either stumbled onto it or run into a group that had betrayed them to the military. Either way, it was rotten luck for the two hikers, and was now just as bad for Cabrillo and his team. They raced through the main temple, flew past the dorm level, and ran up to the groundlevel entrance.

“We’ve got company,” MacD said u

The helicopter came in low enough for Cabrillo to recognize it through the canopy as an old Russian Mil Mi-8. They could pack more than two dozen combat soldiers in one.

“Okay, we’ve got one shot at this,” he said. “We’ve got to get across the river and into the forest before the pilot can find a place to set down.”

“Why not try to hide on this side and cross later?” Smith asked.

Cabrillo didn’t waste the breath explaining that guards would doubtlessly be posted on the rope bridge, and he didn’t fancy hiking days or even weeks to find another way across. “Linda, you go first, then Smith, MacD, and me. Got it?”

With the helicopter drumming the air, the four of them sprinted from the temple entrance, keeping as much cover as possible between them and the aircraft overhead. Given how dense the jungle was, it wasn’t too difficult. They only had a hundred yards to cover, but the problem would be once they reached the bridge. It was totally exposed.

The beat of the rotors changed as the pilot transited into a hover. Juan knew that meant the men were coming down fast ropes and would be on the ground in seconds. This was going to be close.

Linda reached the bridge and kept on going, not breaking stride. Her feet danced along the main cable, one hand bracing along the guideline, the other clutching her REC7. Smith let her get a few paces out before he committed himself to the rickety structure. His added weight gave the bridge a burgeoning sway. It creaked ominously, and several of the support ropes snapped free.

Cabrillo and MacD ran side by side, knowing that less than a hundred yards back the Mi-8 had disgorged its passengers and begun lifting clear, its huge rotor beating at the hot, fetid air.

A stream of tracer rounds ripped across their path, forcing both men to dive flat. Juan flipped around and opened fire, laying down a suppressive wall of lead to allow MacD to start across the bridge. Cabrillo wriggled behind a rock, and whenever he saw movement in the jungle behind them, he triggered off a three-round burst.

A grenade came lobbing out of the bush. Juan made himself as small as possible behind his rock as the poorly thrown explosive went off with a concussive whoosh. Shrapnel chewed the dirt around him, but nothing struck home. Lawless was halfway across. On the far side, Linda made it to solid ground and immediately twisted around one of the support pylons and added her own cover fire. From Cabrillo’s position, the muzzle flash looked like twinkling stars.

He changed out his half-depleted magazine for a fresh one, loosed a long burst of autofire, and exploded from his hidden position. He felt like he had a giant target pi

Bullets cut the air all around Juan as he tried to both keep his balance and run. He didn’t recall the thick-braided rope being so narrow. A hundred feet below him the water was a white frothing nightmare. Expecting a bullet in his back at any second, he kept ru

With his eyes on his feet, it was a miracle he looked up at the instant he did. A little ways ahead of MacD, bullets slammed into the cable, fired no doubt by the Burmese soldiers. It disintegrated in a furball of hemp fibers, and, as soon as the two ends parted, the guide ropes took the added strain.

“Down!” Cabrillo shouted over the din of battle, and threw himself onto the quivering main cable. MacD dropped flat, clutching at the foot-thick rope with his arms and leg.

Even when the structure was first built, the guidelines were never designed to carry the load of the main cable. They lasted the seconds it took Cabrillo to spin himself around so he was facing the temple. He had one instant to see that a pair of soldiers in jungle fatigues had also started across the bridge, their AKs slung low across their bellies.

First one guideline split apart, rotating the entire bridge in a gut-wrenching jolt. The second let go an instant later, and Cabrillo was suddenly in free fall, clinging to the rope as it arced back toward the Buddhist sanctuary, accelerating with every second. Wind whistled past his ears while the world tilted and spun. The two Burmese soldiers hadn’t seen what was coming. Screaming, one hurtled off the span, his arms and legs pinwheeling until he smashed into the rocks below. The river washed away the crimson smear he’d left on the stone and carried the body away. The second soldier managed to grab at the guidelines as they sagged like deflated balloons.

Juan redoubled his grip and braced for impact, knowing that if he lost his tenuous hold he also lost his life. He hit unyielding stone like he’d been struck by a bus. He felt his collarbone snap like a green twig and his entire left side go numb for an instant. And then his brain rebooted, and the agony struck his nervous system from his ankle to his head. Blood dripped from a gash on his temple, and it took everything he had not to just let go and be done with it all.

The soldier who’d clutched at the rope at the last second gave a warning shriek as he lost his hold and came tumbling down the cliff face. There was nothing Juan could do. The guy struck him a glancing blow that caused him to slip a little farther down the cable, and then he was gone.

Cabrillo looked down to see him sail past MacD, who had somehow stayed on even though he’d fallen farther and hit even harder. The soldier plummeted into the water headfirst and vanished. Juan never did see him surface.

He was stuck. With his broken collarbone there was no way he could climb up the cable, and he knew there was no way he’d survive a plunge into the river. He thought that maybe he and MacD could swing the rope across the cliff and somehow land on the waterwheel platform, but that wouldn’t work either. It was just too far away.

Cabrillo looked up, expecting to see the triumphant faces of soldiers aiming down at him. He could no longer hear any firing from Linda’s side of the chasm and assumed that when the rope parted, she and Smith had beaten a fast retreat. The soldiers could be choppered over in just a few minutes, so it made no sense for them to linger over a situation over which they had no control.

The cable began to shake with a slow rhythm, and it took him just a moment to realize that the Burmese soldiers, rather than shooting the two of them off the rope like flies, were hauling him and MacD up to the canyon rim, to a fate that would probably make dropping into the river seem like the lesser of two evils. But as long as he was alive and had Max Hanley and the rest of the Corporation as backup, Juan Cabrillo would never give up.