“Let me go!”
Wade ignored her pleas. “The females can grow up to eight feet in length and they have the strongest bite force of all the sharks. I can’t imagine it will take long to tear you limb from limb. I would relish the sight, Irish, but sadly I have to move on.”
Lea struggled against the bonds. “What’s the matter with you, Wade?”
“The matter with me?” he asked, perplexed. “Why I should think nothing is. If I were you I’d be more concerned about myself. You’re the one who’s going to get turned into shark chum in a few short moments, after all…”
He laughed at the image in his mind for a few seconds and then ordered Mendoza to fire up the launch’s engine. The cartel man unlashed the mooring rope and pushed the two of them away from the jetty. Slowly, they began to chug out to the center of the enormous lake.
With bull sharks slowly moving toward the launch, and encircling them, the small boat pushed its way deeper into the lake. Lea leaned forward, her hands still tied behind her back. “Joe! Wake up, damn it!”
The sun beat down on her, burning the back of her neck and shoulders, but out on the water there was nowhere to seek shade. She squinted to protect her eyes from the high ultraviolet and kicked Hawke in the ribs. “Wake up, ya fool!”
Then she saw his eyes flicker and gave him another kick. “Joe!”
“Yes, damn it! And stop kicking me.” He opened his eyes and tried to sit up in the boat.
“Sorry — I’d have preferred to massage you awake but it just felt like the wrong moment, plus did I mention my sodding arms are tied behind my back?”
“Yes, I can see that, and mine too. What’s going on?”
“Wade says he’s going to feed us to his bull sharks. I’m hoping that’s a Texan expression for something much nicer than it sounds.”
“Sorry — Wade’s chumming bull sharks with us as the chum?”
“If that means using us as bait to lure them — then yeah!”
Hawke struggled against the rope binding his hands behind his back, but it was too tight. Every time he strained against the cords, the thin nylon cut down hard into his wrists. “I’ve woken up to better news, I’ll admit.”
Lea looked at the shore. “What are the bastard little poxes doing over there now?”
Hawke squinted in the sun and saw Mendoza pull his rifle off his shoulder.
“He’s loading the Nosler deer rifle. I knew that thing was going to be trouble.”
“I thought that sick bastard wanted to feed us to his sharks — not shoot us!”
“They’re not aiming at us, Lea — they’re aiming at the dinghy. They want to sink it so we go into the water.”
“Ah… he’s a man of his word then. I’ll give him that.”
Hawke struggled against the yachting rope and looked warily into the water. “I’ll give him more than his fucking word if I ever see him again.”
Mendoza raised the deer hunter and took aim. He began to squeeze the trigger and then everything stopped when the deep roar of another explosion ripped through the valley, only this one was much closer to the hacienda. Wade and the others instinctively ducked and ran for the cover of the lake house.
“Sounds like Scarlet and Reaper just cranked the volume up a notch!”
With his hands still lashed behind his back, Hawke increased power and directed the launch toward the jungle on the other side of the lake.
On Wade’s shore, chaos reigned as they tried to work out where the explosion had come from and what was going on, but Hawke knew they didn’t have much time to exploit before Wade saw they were trying to escape. The launch’s bow hit the shore and they jumped out onto dry land as the small craft plowed up into the sand.
“Quick — use the propellers to cut the ropes!” he yelled. “The leading edge isn’t exactly like a razor but it should be enough.”
Hurriedly they used the blade to cut through the nylon ropes and then moved as fast as they could toward the jungle tree line while Wade and his men were distracted by Reaper’s explosion.
As they climbed onto the far bank, Wade saw their escape bid and ordered Mendoza to stop them. They began taking pot-shots at them, but Wade yelled at them to stop when Hawke and Lea disappeared into the tree line. From the safety of the jungle shadows, they crouched in the undergrowth and watched Wade and the others on the far bank. After a brief conversation, Mendoza nodded and called over some of his men. He ordered them into another launch and seconds later they were giving chase.
“What the hell are they holding?” Lea said. “They’re not guns but I’ve seen something similar somewhere before.”
“So have I — back in Covent Garden. They’re holding blow pipes — the same thing that killed Barton.”
“That doesn’t sound good,” Lea said, swatting at a mosquito on her neck.
“We’ll see them off, don’t worry about it.”
“We’re being hunted by fucking Jaguar Knights armed with poisonous blow pipes through the Mexican jungle, Joe!”
“They’re not Jaguar Knights. They’re just wankers paid by Wade to hurt people.”
“I don’t know… they look pretty serious to me.”
Hawke gave her a sideways glance. “Where’s your spirit of adventure, Donovan?”
The man with the gut hook made a vicious swipe in the air with the sharp blade, narrowly missing Scarlet’s face. She dodged the attack and replied forcefully, ramming her hand up into the man’s throat, and Alex took a step back to get out of the way.
Maria was cutting her way through the favela guards with a sustained and brutal display of sambo, the Russian combat sport she had learned as a teenager in Moscow and perfected in the FSB. She piled forward into them, smacking knives out of hands and pile-driving the heels of her boots into unshaven jaws.
Camacho fought the old-fashioned way, with his two fists, driving forward through the fight with cross punches, jabs and sidesteps while Kim Taylor was only just keeping a tattooed thug at bay.
Scarlet’s opponent stumbled back and gasped as he tried to suck air through his crushed windpipe. He recovered fast and lunged forward with renewed rage. She turned to see another thug almost upon her and then she felt a heavy blow come in hard in the small of her back. Before she could respond, she felt a second punch a little higher that went into the side of her ribcage. The thug pulled a gun and prepared to fire, but she smacked it out of his hand with a downward chop on his wrist. A savage close-range scorpion kick knocked the man out and she snatched up the gun.
Further into the favela, Reaper stormed forward and took advantage of the new chaos. The bullet wound he’d sustained in Sweden was painful, but it was a matter of pride to keep going. Watching the broken men, women and children move back and forth from their canvas shanties to the coffee fields had raised an almost unquenchable rage in his heart, and now he wanted to end it.
He grabbed the man who was now gripping Kim Taylor by her throat and twisted his tattooed arm around until a loud cracking noise filled the air followed by the agonized screaming of the injured man.
When he fell to his knees and cradled his shattered arm, Reaper caught a glimpse of his own tattoo — the burning grenade. March or Die, was the unofficial motto of the French Foreign Legion and he lived by it.
“Thanks, Vincent…” she gasped.
“De rien,” he growled. “And it’s Reaper. We’re on a mission.”