‘Shut up, get fucking back,’ was his only reply. Behind him, the other two men had forced the struggling historian into the car. Gun still raised, the last of the three jogged backwards and clambered into the remaining seat. Before he had even fully closed the door, the Audi peeled away, snow spraying up from its tyres.
Eddie ran after it, but knew he would never catch up. The S4 had four-wheel drive, easily finding grip on the ploughed road. He searched for another car he could flag down to give chase…
The only approaching vehicle was not what he had in mind. ‘You’re fucking joking,’ he said under his breath, checking the other side of the boulevard for something, anything better. But he was out of luck.
No choice. He ran into the street, waving furiously for the driver to stop.
Nina had taken out her iPhone to alert the police, but saw that others on the plaza were already making emergency calls. Instead, she ran after her husband. To her dismay, she realised that he intended to pursue the kidnappers — and her alarm only worsened when she saw what he was about to commandeer. ‘Eddie, what’re you doing?’
‘I’m going after them!’ he shouted back as he pulled the startled driver, a young man in thick-framed glasses and multiple layers of trendy clothing, from his vehicle. ‘Hope you speak English,’ Eddie told him, ‘’cause I need your car.’
‘That’s not a car,’ Nina protested as she reached him. ‘That’s a golf cart!’
It was actually a Renault Twizy, a minuscule electric buggy with a futuristically styled — and open-sided — pod-like body. It had only two seats, a small passenger space directly behind the driver’s position. ‘It’s all we’ve got,’ insisted Eddie. The driver made a flustered objection; the Englishman pushed him away. ‘Sorry, Bjorn. Just call the police. Polis, polizei? Whatever they are in Swedish, call ’em!’
Nina was already squeezing into the cramped second seat. ‘You seriously think I’m going to let you leave me behind?’ she said, anticipating her husband’s response.
‘Yeah, I should’ve bloody known by now.’ He dropped into the front seat, ignoring the continuing squawks from the Twizy’s owner, and stepped on the accelerator.
The little electric car’s response was not exactly Ferrari-quick, but it was better than running. Eddie saw the kidnappers’ car rapidly disappearing down the boulevard. Pushing the accelerator pedal as far as it would go, he set off in pursuit.
6
‘Welcome to the jungle!’ sang Chase tunelessly as the mercenary team began their trek.
They were some fifty miles west of Da Nang, Sullivan’s local contact having driven them from the city to their drop-off point in an elderly Volkswagen minibus. The road they took was marked on the map as a major highway, though Chase considered it no more than a country lane by British standards. But it was paved, so the journey was relatively straightforward — even if Vietnamese traffic discipline was far looser than anything in Europe.
The minibus had turned south off the highway on to a dirt track, heading through a small village and continuing on as rough farmland gave way first to scrub, then actual jungle. Once they entered the dense woodland, it did not take long before the track petered out entirely. After checking their surroundings to make sure they were not being observed, the team armed up with the gear Bluey had provided. The weapons were AK-47s, almost certainly dating back to the Vietnam War, but Chase found that the Australian had been as good as his word. The rifles were still in working order.
The rest of the gear was also as promised. Once everyone was kitted out, the VW departed, heading back north. Hoyt watched it go as he lit another cigarette. Sullivan checked a map, then directed his men deeper into the jungle.
‘If our info’s right,’ said the New Zealander as he took the lead, ‘we should go five or six klicks before we get into our bandits’ area of operations. But watch out before then, eh? We don’t want to run into any sentries.’
‘If that storm reaches us, it could make them hard to spot,’ Castille said.
‘Could work for us, though,’ Chase countered. ‘It’ll give us some cover too, and if it’s pissing it down, the bad guys’ll want to stay in the dry.’ He peered up through the overhanging canopy. The weather had definitely started to turn, the sweltering tropical heat falling as the sky clouded over and the wind picked up. The storm was due to make landfall in a couple of hours; if it continued along its predicted course, the worst of it would strike them about an hour later. ‘But yeah, I’ll keep my eyes open.’
They continued south, Sullivan checking the map every so often. The terrain was rough and crumpled with hardly a flat piece of ground to be found. The jungle itself also slowed their progress; there were no paths, so thick undergrowth frequently needed to be hacked through. All the team members had been on missions in similar conditions, accepting the strenuous nature of their progress with weary shrugs.
There was something about this particular jungle that set it apart from the others Chase had traversed, however. It was impossible to escape a constant sense of foreboding — a feeling that death was all around them. Part of the infamous Ho Chi Minh Trail had run through the region during the war, feeding North Vietnamese troops and supplies into the South, and as a result the whole area had been subjected to massive herbicidal assaults by American forces to kill the vegetation and strip away their enemies’ cover. Even though the environment had recovered to an extent after over three decades, dead trees still lurked all around, rotting monuments to chemical warfare. The Englishman was the first to admit that he was not burdened with an overactive imagination, but there was still something unsettling about the poisoned land.
After two hours, the light had dropped considerably, and not just because evening was approaching. ‘Wind’s really pickin’ up,’ said Lomax. Heavy clouds roiled ominously above. ‘Storm’ll be on us soon, I reckon.’
‘Looks that way,’ Sullivan replied. ‘I’d say we’ve got no more than ten minutes before the rain hits us. You might want to put on your gear now.’
‘Sounds good to me,’ said Chase, shrugging off his pack and taking out a hooded nylon poncho with a mottled green camouflage pattern. ‘Although if the storm’s turned into a typhoon, we’ll get wet no matter what.’
‘I will take a little dryness over none at all,’ said Castille, donning his own poncho before taking a plastic bag from his pack.
Chase sighed. ‘What weird fucking fruit’ve you got now, Hugo?’
Sullivan retreated, making a face. ‘It’d better not be a durian. They smell like a chimp’s arse.’
‘Ah, you people,’ said Castille with cheery disdain. ‘You never want to discover new tastes. No, it is not a durian. It is a longan.’ The Belgian took one of the brown spheres from the bag and squeezed it to split the shell, revealing the pale, almost eyeball-like fruit within. He popped it in his mouth and chewed. ‘Delicious.’
‘I’ll stick with Golden Delicious,’ Chase told him, producing a mocking snort from his friend.
Rios checked his map. ‘If the bandits are in this area, where will they be?’
The others joined him. ‘If they’re stupid,’ said Hoyt, ‘they’ll be in this valley here.’ He pointed it out. ‘It’s flat ground, so it’d be easy for them to make camp — but they’ll have boxed themselves in.’
‘I doubt we’ll be that lucky,’ Sullivan told him. ‘If they know the jungle, which I imagine they do, they’d know somewhere like that would flood in typhoon season. But…’ He ran his finger across the map from the valley to an area above its steep western side. ‘That would be a better choice. The ground’s fairly level, it’s defensible — but there are avenues of escape if they need them.’