Wade laughed. “I’m not afraid of you, little man. Eighty thousand people were sacrificed to Huitzilopochtli when a new temple was dedicated to him in 1487. Today, I will dedicate my new temple to him, and sacrifice over one hundred times more people. Does that sound like the actions of a man who can be easily intimidated?”
“A hundred times more?” Lea said, shocked. “That’s eight million!”
“There’s nothing wrong with your math, Irish.”
“Get fucked,” Lea said. “You need a psychiatrist!”
“Feisty,” Wade said with a grin. “I like that in a woman. It’s just a shame you’ll be dead in ten minutes.”
“You’re not going to get away with any of this, Wade,” she said. “It’s not just us who are onto you. The Americans are on your case too.”
“The Americans are on everyone’s case, but they’re gonna have a shitload more to worry about than me in a few hours.” He gave a low laugh and whistled. “Shit yeah, boy.”
“What does that mean?”
“Have you never wondered how these ancient civilizations knew so much more than us? Look at people today! Concerned only with buying their junk and getting drunk and living in total ignorance of their own world, and yet men and women who walked this earth centuries ago knew more than they do!”
“Oh, come off it,” she said sharply. “People like you think you’re so much cleverer than the rest of us, but you’re wrong!”
Hawke watched the clock.
Right about now…
Then Wade’s dreamy state was broken by a sudden explosion and the sound of submachine gunfire. “Right on time,” Hawke said, giving Wade his best piss-taking grin.
Wade leaped from his seat, panicked, but before he spoke the door smashed open. The scarred face of Silvio Mendoza appeared in the doorway. He was gripping a Nosler deer hunting rifle and looked rattled.
“What is it?!” the Texan snapped. “What’s going on?”
“It’s the favela, sir… it’s under attack.”
Wade looked alarmed for a moment, but then composed himself. “Send Soto and Garza and the men and kill them all. He turned to Hawke and Lea. “You take these two outside. You know what to do.”
Mendoza gave a businesslike nod and padded over to the prisoners. Raising his revolver above him, Hawke saw the pearl-handled weapon sparkle in the sunlight. Then he saw Mendoza bring it down hard on his head and he was out for the count.
Scarlet led the assault on the guardroom and a few short seconds later the melancholy peace of the favela exploded into a savage battlefield, with the former SAS woman and her team rushing toward the buildings and engaging with the enemy guards.
The plantation workers screamed and scattered like coffee tea leaves in a hurricane, hiding inside the shanties and slamming shut the plywood doors.
A man with a paramilitary uniform raced toward Scarlet, obviously shocked by the surprise attack but still ready for a fight. As he pounded closer to her he ordered the other guards into the fray and then raised his fist to strike her.
Scarlet sidestepped and dodged the blow, but returned fire with the butt of her gun which she plowed into the man’s jaw. She heard a cracking sound and he cried out, but not before she brought her left hand up and planted a vicious tiger punch in his windpipe. He crashed to the floor in a wheezing heap and she finished the job off with a solid kick in his face.
A guard saw the attack and raised his gun to fire at Scarlet, but Reaper ran forward and grappled him to the ground. The guard’s automatic rifle fired off a few rounds in a lethal, uncontrolled arc as the two men fought, but the former legionnaire brought matters to a conclusion with a devastating head butt which knocked the man out cold. Reaper then yanked the rifle out of his hands and emptied the magazine in the direction of more of Wade’s goons.
Lexi Zhang had decided to use the assault as a workout and was currently cutting her way through several armed men. They fought with knives but their efforts to keep her away from the favela were in vain.
Kim and Camacho were making their way toward the east end of the guardroom, but Alex Reeve was hanging back for a moment, fazed by heat of close-combat after so many years behind a desk. One of the guards saw her and clambered on a motorbike. He kick-started it and drove toward her with a pistol in his left hand.
This was the moment to prove herself ready for the field again.
She aimed her gun and fired at the serpiente as he raced toward. Her shot was good and hit the Michelin Scorcher tire on the front, tearing into the silica-enriched rubber compound and exploding it off the aluminum wheel rim in a burst of sparks and smoke. The bike spun out of control and skidded off the dirt track between the favela and the coffee fields. It smashed into a low fence and propelled the guard through the air in a cloud of dust and exhaust fumes. He landed in the gravel with a heavy whack.
The former CIA agent had been out of the field a long time, but it looked like she hadn’t lost her touch. And proving it in this part of the world was extra sweet, because it was down here in Latin America that she had been shot and paralysed.
She recalled the mission with a shudder. She was part of a unit rescuing hostages from a FARC outpost south of Bogota when it happened. The mission had been a success, but she never got to celebrate. She was on a chopper to the nearest hospital and hours later awoke from an operation to be told she would never walk again.
And she hadn’t — not for years… not until Joe Hawke walked back into her life and handed her the mysterious elixir they’d found in the Ethiopian Highlands. If all that seemed like years ago, then the shooting in Bogota was another lifetime. Either way, it felt good to be back in the saddle, even if Richard Eden had taken some convincing that she was ready to go back into the field. She was trained for more than just intel work and she wanted to show it.
But then she felt the stabbing pain in her legs again.
It receded.
But came back… probably nothing, she told herself, and charged into the fray where Scarlet was deconstructing someone’s face with a ferocious salvo of heel kicks.
“Need a hand?” Alex shouted.
“Hardly, darling… but thanks for asking.”
Scarlet spun around once more, striking the man off his balance. He staggered back, dazed, but then yanked a gut hook from his belt. With blood pouring from his lips, he stormed toward Scarlet and Alex, swearing revenge.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Lea felt the fear rise in her stomach as Silvio Mendoza pressed the muzzle of his gun against her neck and whispered at her to get moving along the jetty. The cold touch of the steel pressed on her warm flesh and was accompanied by the feeling of his breath on her ear. She recoiled at the hoarse chuckle of the Mexican as he revelled in the power he had over her. Ahead of them, three men struggled to haul the unconscious body of Joe Hawke into an inflatable launch where they dumped him unceremoniously on the rear seat.
“Your turn,” Mendoza said.
Lea stepped down into the boat as Wade joined them on the jetty, hands in pockets and eyes shaded by his crumpled Reiner hat. In the background they heard the distant chatter of gunfire and the occasional grenade explosion as Scarlet’s team continued its assault on the favela. Wade was starting to look anxious as he slipped his hands out of his pockets and lit a second cigar. “Like Professor Barton, it is now time for you depart this world. In this lake are my sharks, and now you are going to be fed to them.”
“Sharks? This is a lake, Wade! Sharks swim in the ocean because of the salt.”
“Correct, but sadly for you only partly so. The third most dangerous shark in the world is the bull shark. It is a truly remarkable creature, able to alter its osmoregulatory system in order to ensure its survival in either fresh water or salt water.” He paused for effect. “There are bull sharks in this lake.” He grinned and moved his eyes up from Lea to the surface of the lake. “I wonder where they’re swimming today?”