Max’s ears popped. His hearing came back. That was when he heard the unmistakable sound of a helicopter’s blades starting up. But he was almost too exhausted to care. The air thundered with a raging fire that swept across the edge of the forest. Smoke and dirt swirled; it felt as though the world were ending.
Riga yelled at him above the firestorm. “You want the man who let your mother die? He’s getting away. Get up!”
Max could not move. There was no strength left to fight with. The explosions had battered him. He tried to drag himself to his feet.
Riga grinned. “You know you won’t make it out of here.”
“If you don’t stop me, I will.”
“You just never give up, do you, boy? OK. It’s not over yet,” Riga said. “Here. You need a weapon.” And he tossed the machete toward Max.
Max stared at the man paid to kill him. He was giving him the final piece in the puzzle about his mother’s death. “I want him; you want him. And he’s here,” Riga said.
The assassin extended his hand to help him up. Max knocked it away and staggered to his feet unaided.
He had to see this through.
Riga looked meaner than Max had ever seen anyone look before. There was a beastlike quality to his face. It scared Max more than he thought possible. Riga nodded at Max in unspoken admiration for his determination.
“Payback time, kid.”
26
Cazamind sat in the helicopter, with the pilot waiting nervously to see which way the flames would turn in the wind that blew unpredictably from different directions. Two muscular bodyguards, men from eastern Europe, stacked the last of four sample cases into the helicopter’s hold. These were Cazamind’s own people, brought in to make sure that he had the best chance of survival should those in power doubt his ability to keep matters under control.
Cazamind’s chewed and torn fingernails hurt. He had no idea whether Max Gordon had reached the ancient Mayan site or whether he had perished in the jungle. But he had every reason to be fearful. Riga was still on the loose. Between him and the boy, Cazamind’s life had taken a turn for the worse. He had ordered the usual thugs from the City of Lost Souls to secure the area, had offered them a huge bonus to kill anyone who tried to get through the supply route. He could hear that the gun battle was now little more than sporadic gunfire, a mopping-up operation. But who were the attackers? And who had won the battle?
The slightest breach of security, or even the threat of such a breach, had demanded a complete shutdown of the operation. These were the orders given to Cazamind by his “people.” The faceless men in power were not sitting here in the shuddering helicopter in the stinking heat, soaked in sweat, while an inferno raged around them. And he knew, even as he recovered the blood source material from the jungle laboratory, that others were searching his own private databases and bank accounts, in fact every scrap of his personal life, in case he had made copies of what he knew to be as explosive as that huge tree that had just disintegrated. The pilot yelled at the men to hurry the hell up because they had to get out of here. Now!
Cazamind felt the handcuff bracelet bite into his skin. The slim aluminum briefcase, barely the size of a small notebook computer, held half a dozen sheets of facts and figures and the breakdown on a computer disk of those he knew to be involved in this massive conspiracy. It was no use trying to hide it in electronic databanks-those people would root it out. Even if they only suspected that their loyal servant had covered his back, then he would stay alive as long as nothing was discovered. When it came down to good old-fashioned safety nets, handwritten testimony was always the best bet. He hugged it to him.
Another explosion made him wince. The charges had gone off prematurely because of the unexpected volcanic activity, and now the whole world seemed to be on fire. The helicopter had been hidden in one of the caves, and when they brought it out onto the plateau where the small helipad was located, the ground was already shuddering, threatening to plunge them down into the scalding valley. Cazamind wiped the sweat from his face. The storage compartment door banged shut; the men were getting into the helicopter. He would soon be safely away.
And then he saw the apparitions.
Two filthy, sweat-streaked creatures powered up the edge of the plateau as if they had risen from the underworld. One of them he recognized as his rogue killer, Riga. The other was a boy whose tattered clothes clung to him like a second skin. The flickering light from the wall of fire behind him made his ash- and dirt-covered body look like a jungle cat, head down, muscles rolling in a seemingly effortless movement of attack. Cazamind wiped his eyes and looked again. It was no jaguar; it was Max Gordon. And Riga had let him live. That meant they shared one purpose. They were coming for him. One of the bodyguards was still trying to clamber aboard when Cazamind screamed the command to take off. The man fell to the ground; the other slammed the doors closed. Survival was the main thought on all their minds.
The heat was intense, but Cazamind felt as cold as if he were on the ice face of a Swiss mountain. The helicopter lifted slowly and hovered momentarily as the pilot fought the gusting wind. Cazamind allowed a sigh of relief. But there was something wrong. The helicopter lurched.
Riga was stronger and faster than Max and had pushed ahead, but his injured leg meant he was less agile, and Max could see that they were not going to reach the helicopter before it lifted off. The man who had tried to climb aboard had fallen badly, tumbling down the slope. Riga shouted for Max to be careful of the rotor blades, but Max was already beneath the swirling dust. He could have reached up and clung to the helicopter’s skids, but instead he looped a wrist-thick ground vine round its leading edge, yanked hard and twisted it round itself, so, at least for a few seconds, the helicopter would not be able to take off. It was up to Riga to do something.
Max felt the monster falter. If he did not let go of the vine, the helicopter would slam back down onto the ground and crush him. It swung crazily, as if trying to rid itself of whatever held it earthbound. Max rolled clear but saw the nose sideswipe Riga, who fell heavily.
In an instant Max stood alone as the helicopter ripped itself upward. Its nose tilted and he gazed up at the monstrous bug. A man sat in the backseat, leaning forward, commanding the pilot and pointing toward Max. The nose tilted farther and the rotor blades began to thrash the swirling smoke. They were going to hack him to death.
Riga was pulling himself away, but Max had nowhere to run. In a desperate but determined gesture of defiance, he threw the machete at the high-tech monster that was trying to kill him.
It clattered into the rods at the base of the rotors, and over the din of the whirring blades, Max heard the satisfying
Riga had backpedaled as fast as he could from the crashing helicopter. The destruction settled quickly. The beast of a machine was dead. He looked toward Max. Unbelievable. The boy had destroyed a million-dollar aircraft with a machete worth a couple of dollars. The men inside the aircraft hung upside down from their seat belts. The tough-looking one recovered quickly, kicked open the door and helped to drag the man in a suit, with the attache case chained to his wrist, out of the crash. Cazamind.
Riga went for him. The bodyguard blocked his attack, and Riga had a hard fight on his hands. Riga was a lethal opponent, but the other man had not endured what the assassin had gone through these last few hours. For a couple of minutes he got the better of Riga with hard, muscle-tearing blows.
Cazamind stumbled away. Max tried to see him through the smoke, but then the ground shifted and began to break up. Like liquid, the earth slewed a few meters. Max kept his balance. There was a thrill of fear-he had been in an avalanche before and knew how terrifying it was-but when half a mountain moves, there is little chance of
