But the expedition’s saviours were his enemy and they were out there now, hidden in the clouds, closing with every second.
One thing was certain. He had to get off this mountain top before the soldiers arrived, virus, radiation or curse be damned.
Checking that the tent flap was closed behind him, he darted out into the storm.
The black plane battled through the storm, its propellers working hard as it banked lower towards the tree-line. On its radar screen, three blips indicated the positions of the enemy’s helicopters closing fast on the summit.
The leader of the assault team knew he didn’t have to be concerned about those choppers seeing them. The modified Catalina Flying Boat had been retrofitted with stealth technology, rendering it almost invisible to radar. Nevertheless, he was angry that the enemy had almost beaten them to the target, and even angrier that his attack plan had been disrupted by the storm. Had it not, his team could still have beaten the helicopters to the camp, parachuted in as planned, secured the target and evacuated before the choppers got there.
Now, however, they had needed to go to Plan B.
“I have the river in sight,” the pilot called through his communications unit.
“Okay, take us down. Get us as close to the north face as you can.”
He felt the plane drop from under him as the pilot dived through the storm towards the snaking line of the river which circled the island in the jungle.
With the summit’s heavy vegetation, there was nowhere to touch down and parachuting through the storm would be too dangerous. Now they had to land on the river and scale the north face of the mountain and hope they made it to the target before the enemy.
“Sir,” the co-pilot called. “I’ve just picked up another helicopter on radar, closing from the north.”
The leader had expected this and he felt the exhilaration of the chase begin. While his team had beaten his two competitors to the mountain, he had been hindered by the storm.
As the Flying Boat’s hull touched down upon the river and the pilot shut down the engines, the leader knew that the race was now truly on to be the first to unravel the secret of Sarisariñama.
Nathan Raine took one last look back through the mist-shrouded trees at the outline of the expedition camp. A surge of guilt swelled up through him but he forced it back down. They would be fine. The medical teams were less than an hour away now. Besides, he wasn’t a doctor. There was nothing more he could do.
Nevertheless, he had trained for years to never leave a fallen man behind. Tucking tail and running now felt wrong.
He slipped on his head-set and reached up for the Huey’s overhead controls. His control board lit up, the chopper’s wipers swished across the windshield, pushing aside the water to reveal a sodden form staring at him from out in the rain.
A gun was levelled at him through the glass.
“Don’t!” Benjamin King warned, raising his voice to be heard over the pounding of raindrops.
Raine felt a laugh escape him. He should have known that King would have been watching out for him. The archaeologist was more paranoid than he was! For whatever reason he didn’t trust Raine and, caught red handed, he couldn’t really blame him.
“Hey Benny,” he called out a casual greeting. “Need a lift?”
King ignored him and yelled back. “You heard what Nebrinski said! If this disease gets outs into a wider population, the effects could be—”
“Believe it or not, Benny,” Raine cut him off, “I wasn’t really just going to fly back to Caracas and infect the entire city’s population.”
“I suppose you were just, what… dusting, then?” King indicated with the gun the overhead controls. The movement afforded Raine a better glance of the weapon and he realised it was actually a flare gun.
“You gonna shoot me, Benny?”
“If I have to!” King’s voice was firm but Raine could see the lack of conviction in his eyes. The rain hammered down on the archaeologist, running down his dark skin and he had to keep wiping his eyes clear.
Raine sighed. “Look,” he said as he removed his headset and rubbed the bridge of his nose. The effects of the previous night’s whisky session and the hellish day since had swelled into a killer headache. “I’m not an idiot, or a selfish murderer for that matter. I’m not going anywhere near civilisation. I’ve got enough fuel to get me to a safe house I know in the jungle. There’s food and water enough to survive on for two weeks and it’s over a hundred miles to the nearest settlement. I’ll hole up for a fortnight, make sure I don’t get any of the symptoms before—”
“What are you running from?”
The question seemed to come right out of the blue, despite it being an obvious one to ask. “Who says I’m running from anything?”
King said nothing. What was there to say? Raine couldn’t deny that he was running, and it was obvious who he was running from. The American soldiers. What King really wanted to know was why he was running.
“We all have our dirty little secrets, Benny,” he replied. “You know that.”
“Sure I do,” King agreed. “But mine don’t plunge me into panic at the mention of the United States Special Forces… or the idea of a medical evac to the States.” He narrowed his eyes. “You’re a wanted man, aren’t you?”
Raine pursed his lips in thought. “Let’s just say that the U.S. Government would probably be a little on the merry-side of happy if chance landed me on a medical evac back home.” He shrugged, slipped on his headset again and turned back to start the Huey’s warm-up sequence.
“Don’t!” King repeated more forcefully this time. “Get out of the helicopter!” King practically roared the words, anger coursing through him. But Raine shot back an equally angry, equally stubborn gaze. The pressure was mounting. The soldiers would arrive soon and it wouldn’t take long for them to discover who he was.
“You’ll have to shoot me,” he told King. He flipped a switch. The cockpit came to life, the engines started whining.
“Don’t think I won’t do it.”
Raine ignored him as he worked the controls expertly. The huge propellers began to shudder into motion.
“Raine!”
The tail rotor began spinning; the main propellers spun faster and faster.
“Raine!” King screamed at him and the vehemence of his voice caught the pilot’s attention. Raine spun just in time to see the flare explode from the gun in King’s hand and shoot through the air. He reacted with razor sharp reflexes, throwing open the cockpit door and hurling himself out.
As he hit the muddy ground, the flare struck the chopper’s bubble-like windscreen and detonated. Glass exploded everywhere in a display of pink and red fireworks.
Raine rolled to his feet, covering his head until all the glass had settled on the ground. Beneath the spinning rotor blades his hair and clothes whipped around him, churning the falling rain into a vortex.
“You crazy son of a bitch!” he yelled at King.
“I warned you!” King said, dropping the now useless flare gun and staring at his hands in disbelief. But Raine didn’t notice his remorse. Anger flashed through his mind, his heartbeat thudded in his ears, mixed with sudden dread, fear and urgency! He stared at the chopper — useless now without a windshield — and then glanced at the mountaintop around him. The north face was probably scalable. If he headed off now then—