“An’ you don’ smell too good, either, cousin,” Xavier said.
Max smiled. “It’s my special jungle fragrance,” he said, his morale boosted now that there were others who would share his dangerous journey. “Things didn’t work out with your mates, then?”
Xavier shrugged. “You can’t trust nobody these days.”
“How did you find me?”
It took only a few minutes for Flint to lay the blame at Xavier’s door. The Latino boy argued as best he could, but it was obvious, from the fact that his brother’s friends back on the road were now working for someone more powerful with more money, that old loyalties no longer existed. The trail of destruction in the forest had not been difficult to follow, and Flint had picked up Max’s trail past the dead gunman crushed to death by the snake. It was obvious that Max had killed it. There was nowhere else Max could go other than the cave, and it seemed that Orsino Flint, as reluctant as he was, had to follow, because he expected the jungle roads to be swarming with gunmen sooner rather than later.
“The man at the truck had a satellite phone. He’ll be calling others,” Flint told him.
Xavier shivered. Max realized it was from more than the cave’s chill. “Let’s keep going while we have light,” he said. “There’s fresh air ahead. I can smell it.” He smiled at Xavier and put his hand on his shoulder. “It’s good to see you again, cousin.”
“You too,” the boy said without much conviction, staring nervously into the encircling darkness.
Flint settled his feathered hat on his head, looking around warily at the cave that carried such frightening legends. “Can we forget the family reunion and try to get out of here?” he said, the grizzled face yielding no sign of humor. “When we crossed the river, I could have sworn I heard a helicopter. They might be bringing people to the cave.”
“You goin’ crazy, old man. That was thunder. No one could fly in conditions like that,” Xavier argued.
“They won’t come after us in here, Flint. They know the legend of the Stone Serpent. They’ll be too scared.”
“I’m scared, and I’m here,” Flint told him. “I’m telling you, someone with more guts than I’ll ever have was flying a chopper down the valley. And there’s only one place they could be heading.”
Riga was not immune to fear. He had taken part in many vicious campaigns where his daring had been tested, but now even he felt a lurch in his stomach as he gripped the steel handrail in the helicopter. The pilot was soaked in sweat, his eyes unblinking as he gazed into the near-invisible way ahead. He prayed as the helicopter lurched when he threw it to one side, then swore, pushing hard on the rudder pedals and making the helicopter do an almost acrobatic movement it was not designed for. He had just missed the face of a cliff. Riga’s knuckles were white, but he showed no other outward sign of fear. The helicopter’s skids nearly touched the river, the blades thrashing through the tree-hugging clouds and mist. And then suddenly the pilot pulled back on the control stick and the helicopter veered sideways. He had reached a hairpin bend in the river, and he had not seen the trees in time. Riga felt the helicopter shudder as the skids tore at the treetop branches, and the screaming engine, pushed beyond its capabilities, began to falter. By a miracle, it lifted free of the treetops and seemed to dance across the top of the canopy. In the swirling confusion, Riga saw a pickup truck on the ground and a man waving a crimson flare.
It was a hard landing. The helicopter skidded and bounced and finally ran into tree stumps, veered round on its axis and came to a shuddering halt as the pilot fought the twisting impact and switched off engines and fuel supply.
Riga’s arm and shoulder ached from the exertion of gripping the handrail, but he jumped onto the ground, casting a glance back at the pilot, who sat slumped over his controls. Maybe the man had snapped his neck on impact. But then Riga saw him shudder. He was crying, sobbing with relief at surviving the hell of the journey.
The gunman threw the flare to one side and began to jabber at Riga, hoping his failure to stop Max and the others would not cause him to be punished. Riga ignored him and clipped the earpiece of his satellite phone in place as he turned for the forest. He had studied the maps and photographs and knew exactly where to go, but first he was going to tell Cazamind. Whatever lay inside those no-go mountains was dangerous enough to scare everybody. Riga needed to be prepared to face that threat if he was going in after Max.
They went farther into the labyrinth. Climbing across obstacles of rock and crumbling crevasses, they became increasingly exhausted, but Max knew they had to push on as far as they could for as long as they could. The others wanted to stop and sleep for a few hours, but Max argued that they had to keep moving while they still had torchlight.
The cave became a twisting tunnel, a corkscrew whose smooth-sided rock face became more and more treacherous. If they slipped, the steep gradient would hurtle them down to the unknown. Max felt a gust of air on his face, and the torch flared as he reached the edge of a black hole, no wider than a man’s body. Somewhere below he could hear water. Xavier and Flint caught up with him and knelt, looking into the abyss. Max leaned forward, holding the torch as far down as he could, and they saw the funnel curve out of sight. It was probably climbable, like a smooth chimney, but at some point that shaft would give way to a drop. How big a drop was the unknown factor.
“I think we have to sacrifice one of the torches-mine hasn’t got long to go anyway.” The worried look on Flint’s and Xavier’s faces reflected his own trepidation at slithering down the last curve of the Stone Serpent’s belly.
He dropped his torch. It flared and reflected the twisting chimney. They could hear it clattering as its light reflected upward for a few seconds. And then it went quiet. Max counted in his head: a thousand and one, a thousand and two, a thousand and three, a thousand and four-then they heard a splash. Max had counted four seconds exactly. He didn’t know how to work it out, but he guessed that that had to be about a fifteen- to twenty- meter drop. Into what? Shallow water that would smash their legs or deep pools with currents that could suck them under and drown them?
There had to be another way down. He just didn’t believe his mother would have come this way and taken such an un-calculated risk as to drop down this chimney into the unknown, no matter how brave she was. And there was also the skeleton that had been crawling toward the cave’s entrance. That person could not have suddenly got from river to cave by levitation. There had to be another way down.
“We have to backtrack,” Max told them. “We can’t risk jumping through there. Flint, you lead the way. If we’re above an underground river, there might be some kind of pathway down to it.”
No one had wanted to drop through the hole in the floor, so Flint and Xavier nodded. Xavier licked his lips. “
“That’s up to you,” Max said as Flint moved away toward the cave’s walls. There was nothing he could do if Xavier wanted to make his own decisions. He kept his eyes on Flint, who made cautious progress through jagged stalagmites.
The soft light from Flint’s torch cast its shadows. Xavier studied the boy next to him. His knuckles were scraped, there were scratches on his face, he was smeared with dirt and grime, his hair was matted and he gripped the spear like a prehistoric hunter. Max Gordon did not look like any schoolboy Xavier Garcia had ever known. He looked dangerous.
“That was some snake you kill, eh?”
Max nodded. He didn’t want to talk about it. He would never be able to erase the horrible image from his mind.
“OK. Maybe I stick with you. You’re gonna get us out of here.”
“I wouldn’t bet on it,” Max said.
“I would,” Xavier said. “You gotta have faith in your angels, cousin.”
Flint yelled. “Over here. There’s a way down.”
Xavier smiled. “I could make money on you, Max Gordon.”
They moved quickly to where Flint held the torchlight above what looked like a huge open stairwell. At some stage, perhaps thousands of years ago, someone had hacked rough handholds and steps into the cave’s walls leading downward.
The steps were just about wide enough to accommodate the width of a body. Max took Flint’s torch. “All
