Crisis (Luke Carlton 1) (21 page)

He swung the machete blade once more down onto the rope, the muscles in his arm straining with exertion, a vein around his biceps pulsing, and this time it connected. The blade was razor sharp and when he began a sawing motion, moving it back and forth just a few centimetres at a time, the rope began to split in two, then parted with a gratifying pop. It was as if a coil that had bound his whole body was suddenly released. At last, for the first time in hours he could move his legs, but as the blood came back to them, so did the pain. Luke fought through it, pushing it to the back of his mind as he turned the blade to point up his body, towards his chin, and sawed at the rope that bound his chest and arms. Twice he nearly dropped the machete, his hand slipping constantly with the wetness of his own sweat mixed with Beer Bottle’s urine. Because of the odd angle this was far harder and it took him nearly ten minutes, but then came the second, blissful release as the rope that had bound his chest and arms sprang apart. It was as if a voice in his head was screaming at him, ‘Go! Go! Go!’

But it wasn’t as easy as that. Luke had lost count of how many hours he had been tied to that gurney. Then there had been the beating and, of course, the drill to his foot. He was in no shape to leap up and out of the door. Slowly at first, like an old man with arthritis, he raised himself into a sitting position and rubbed his joints as he felt the circulation returning. He swung his legs over
the side and looked down at his injured foot. He could just make out a dark circle of congealed blood around the point where the drill had gone in, right at the top of the arch. He knew the last thing his body wanted was for him to put any weight on that foot, but he also knew he had no choice. At any moment that warehouse door would swing open and then it would all be over.

Luke took a deep breath, steadied himself with a hand on the gurney and put his full weight on both feet. Immediately, red-hot pain shot up his leg from the drilled foot and seemed to sear right into his brain. Jesus H. Christ! That hurt! Luke fell back onto the gurney, gasping. Then he tried again. This time he clenched his teeth and fought through it. He had to keep going or he would die, like so many others, right there in that godforsaken shed, in a corner of Colombia that no one in their right mind would ever choose to visit.

He picked up the machete and hobbled around the room, looking for an exit. There had to be another way out of the place other than the door with García’s men on the other side. His punctured foot was oozing fresh blood and he looked around for his shoes, craving the cushioning that his approach boots would give him, but the narcos had taken them away long ago, probably drawn lots for who would get to wear them. He continued his search, peering through the gloom of the warehouse interior, where the only light came faintly from a lamp outside. He dragged himself to the inside wall of the shed and worked his way along it, gasping with each step. His foot was on fire. His eyes settled on something and he reached out to touch it. It was another door and he tried it now. Locked. Well, of course it was. He was stuffed.

So, what now? He could wait behind the other door and take on the first narco who came through, maybe grab his weapon if he was lucky. But Luke knew the odds were stacked against him. There were at least ten of them, all armed, and while they might well be off their heads on drink or drugs by now, he was in no fit state to put up a fight. No, he had to find another way out.

A sound from the other side of the shed made him stand perfectly still, straining his ears to listen. It was the sound of someone
unbuckling their belt and dropping their trousers to the floor, the sound of someone using an outside lavatory. Luke shuffled as silently as possible across the darkened floor of the shed, almost tripping over what he took to be a severed hand, until he drew level with the sound on the other side of the wall. Whoever was in there was making heavy weather of their business, groaning and grunting. But Luke wasn’t listening: he had found what he was looking for. There was a door, leading from the interior of the warehouse to the outside lavatory. He readied the machete in his right hand and put his left on the door handle, turning it slowly and quietly.

Beneath the single bulb that dangled from the ceiling the man sat hunched on the toilet with his back to Luke. He was heavily built and looked older than the young thugs who had taunted him earlier with Beer Bottle. But he was still a narco, still one of García’s men – Luke could see that with just one glance at the MAC-10 machine pistol that lay on the floor beside his crumpled trousers. As Luke moved towards him a floorboard creaked and the man started to turn his head.

‘
Quien esta ahí?
’ he called. ‘Who’s there?’

Luke moved with lightning speed, his reflexes taking over. In one single movement he covered the remaining distance between them and drove the pointed tip of the machete deep into the back of the man’s neck, severing his spinal cord and his upper vertebrae. There was remarkably little sound. He died instantly, but Luke had to move round quickly to catch the body before it fell to the floor with a crash. Gently, he laid the dead man on his side, then snatched up the MAC-10. A gangster’s favourite, the 9mm version had a thirty-two-round magazine, fully loaded, and a folding stock. Luke checked that the safety was off and squatted down in a firing position, ready for anyone coming through the outer door to investigate. Inwardly, his spirits soared. He was tooled up now: the odds had suddenly changed in his favour and he was back in the game with a fighting chance.

HE GAVE IT
thirty seconds, no more. When no one came, Luke made his move. Holding the MAC-10 out in front of him, he eased open the outer door of the lavatory and adjusted his senses to the night outside. A hot, rank breeze blowing off the muddy shore, a distant dog barking, the light and shadow cast by a lamp placed just around the corner of the warehouse. Luke was still in shadow but now he could see his situation all too clearly. The warehouse was built on stilts over the water. He hadn’t noticed that before because of the blindfold he’d had on when they had brought him here. He was standing on a wooden walkway made up of crooked, uneven planks – a nail protruded from one just beyond his bare feet. He could hear some people talking in low voices, not far away, round the other side of the warehouse: García’s men, with guns, he had to assume. The problem was, the wooden walkway led directly past them, bringing him out into the pool of light given off by the single lamp hanging from the wall. The urge to take them on was overwhelming. He had a full magazine on his weapon, the advantage of surprise and, yes, if he was honest with himself, he wanted payback for the hell they had put him through. A hell that was as nothing compared to what they had in store for him when morning came.

But the burst of automatic fire he would let rip – and that was assuming the MAC-10 didn’t misfire – would rouse the whole neighbourhood in a second. He could see there were other sheds
and shanty huts nearby, doubtless housing more of García’s men. They would be swarming over to him like rats, hunting him down the moment his ammunition ran out. No, there had to be another way, a subtler way. What would he do, Luke asked himself, if he was still in the SBS? And almost as he posed the question, the answer presented itself. It was obvious when he looked down. He eased himself into a sitting position, dangling his legs over the side of the walkway, relishing the small relief it gave his tortured foot.

He had left the machete in the lavatory, preferring his chances with the machine pistol, but the gun had no strap and he had no means of fastening it to himself when he made his next move. He had hoped to lower himself into the oily black water as quietly as possible by dropping fully extended from the edge of the walkway, holding on with his hands until the last moment. But it was that or the MAC-10, he couldn’t have both, and he wasn’t leaving it behind. Would it work after it had been dunked under water? He honestly didn’t know.

Maybe he should have stuck with the machete – at least it had a carrying strap round the handle. But he wasn’t going back in there now. Adrenalin was coursing through him, pushing back the throbbing from his foot. Luke held the weapon in one hand and used the other to lever his backside off the walkway. Then he jumped.

In the stillness of the tropical night he hit the water with an almighty splash. For a brief, blissful moment he was submerged under water, cocooned in a different world, but the impact had been far louder than he had hoped and he knew that the second he surfaced all hell would break loose. So he didn’t.

Under water, he made an instant decision to ditch the machine pistol: he couldn’t swim with it so he let it drop to the bottom of the harbour as he struck out away from the shore. The water was filthy. He could taste the fuel of boat engines, but that was the least of his worries. Beams of light were probing the water around him and as his lungs screamed for air he knew he had to surface. He was a good ten metres from the warehouse when a cry went up as the torchbeams found him. A crackle of shots followed.
Bullets zipped past him in the darkened water of the bay, sending up small plumes of spray.

Luke dived vertically downwards to escape the gunfire. It wasn’t easy on a full gulp of air: his lungs were acting like a lifebelt, preventing him from descending, so he exhaled in bubbles. He had about thirty seconds left before he would have to surface again. When he came up for air a second time he thought he might, just, have got away with it. The torches were playing on a patch of water some distance behind him, and García’s men were firing blindly at the wrong place. Perhaps he could make it out to the open sea and take his chances there. But then he heard a sound that made his heart sink: an outboard engine. Once they started criss-crossing the bay in a speedboat with lights it was only a matter of time before they found him. Even his powerful swimmer’s lungs couldn’t keep him submerged for the minutes he would need to stay hidden. So he took a difficult decision, a totally counter-intuitive one. He turned and swam back towards the shore.

He had no intention of giving himself up, so he aimed for a patch of mud he could see beneath another building on stilts, the darkest place he could find. As the narcos’ speedboat swept the waters of the bay in front of him with its lights, Luke did what he did best. He vanished. He positioned himself at the point where the tidal seawater lapped against the stinking black mud of the shore and proceeded to smear it all over his face, arms and feet. He still had his trousers on so he coated them too. Soon he was almost indistinguishable from the mud that surrounded him. Only his eyes would have given him away to anyone who came close, shining with a desperate intensity as he fought to survive.

But Luke was not alone. His arrival had disturbed the rats, dozens of them. They swam around him in confusion, setting his teeth on edge with their manic, high-pitched squeaking. The less he moved, the bolder they became, scuttling towards him on the mud and bumping into his legs below the waterline. He slapped the water, just enough to send them retreating, but soon they were back, ever more fearless. How long before they started to take a few chunks out of him? He couldn’t stay there.

The narcos’ speedboat was some distance off now, scanning another empty expanse of the bay, and Luke reckoned he could make it undetected to a small fishing boat he could see riding at anchor, about two hundred metres away. He was about to launch himself back into the water when he became aware of footsteps on a wooden walkway directly overhead. Through the cracks in the planks he could see a man silhouetted against a nearby light, pacing slowly up and down, holding what looked like a shotgun. Another of García’s men searching for him? Almost certainly. He would have to put up with the rats.

After ten minutes the man coughed, hawked up some phlegm, spat it into the water below, then wandered off. Luke scanned the darkened bay for any sign of the speedboat but it was gone. He smiled to himself. All those armed narcos and they had lost their prisoner. García was not going to be happy. Someone would be punished and, with any luck, it would be Beer Bottle. But Luke was not out of trouble yet. Silently, he detached himself from the muddy shore and struck out into the bay, pushing his way through discarded oil cans and plastic bags. He was aiming for the fishing boat and taking care to disturb the surface of the water as little as possible. Polluted as it was, it acted like a balm to his injured foot, but now an unwelcome thought occurred to him. It was probably still bleeding. Sharks, he knew, could detect a molecule of blood in 25 million molecules of water and he was guessing there would be hammerheads and bull sharks in the eastern Pacific. If there were any in the vicinity they could probably close in on him in under two minutes. Still, even a shark was preferable to the horrors of García’s Chop House. He intensified his efforts, slicing through the water at a fast crawl, making for the safety of the fishing boat.

Gasping for breath, shoulder muscles burning, Luke slowed his pace as he approached the small craft. What would he do if someone was asleep on board? He was unarmed now, in no condition for hand-to-hand combat. He circled the boat, guessing it to be about seven metres in length. It had a covered wheelhouse upfront. With his head bobbing just above the surface, he ran his
eyes along a line of white, hand-painted lettering on its side. It spelled
La Macarena
. And it was then he noticed two things. His swollen eye had re-opened. And if he could read the lettering, dawn could not be far off. He was running out of time.

He made his way round to the stern and gripped the rungs of a metal ladder that hung down into the water. With an immense effort he hauled himself out of the sea and nearly howled as he put his injured foot on the lowest rung. He climbed slowly up, keeping his profile low as he rolled his body over the side and down into the well of the boat. It was empty. There was nothing in it but a crumpled tarpaulin that someone had neglected to put away. All his body wanted to do, all it yearned for, was to curl up in that tarpaulin, go to sleep – what, and wake up back in the Chop House? His body might have been close to exhaustion but Luke’s mind was still firing on all cylinders.