Day 50 (The DMT Series Book 2) (4 page)

And heal him Cody would.

After the politician had pledged eternal loyalty to Marconi.

“Yes,” Marconi barked into his phone. He was on his way back to camp. The operation had been successful; the well had been poisoned. They had run into a few hurdles though. The initial plan had been to poison the well of the politician’s household, but the home had turned out to be too heavily guarded. Instead Marconi had been thinking on his feet, his trademark skill, and he had decided to poison the well of the local kindergarten instead. It was actually a better plan. It would look less suspicious if some random kids died in the process - when it didn’t look like it was a targeted attack on the politician’s family. Marconi would get one of his staff to go through the name list of the kindergarten. Maybe there were other kids with powerful parents there? Marconi could quite possibly just have hit the jackpot.

“What the hell are you saying? He’s escaped? You get him back, you hear me. You get him back, or you’re dead.” Marconi rang off. Unbelievable. This was how his hospitality and generosity were repaid. Some guy with a teenage kid and a girlfriend had shown up in camp earlier in the day, with a letter from Marconi stating they had been granted free passage to his camp. Marconi vaguely remembered having given Dr Martin Drecker a letter the year before, but he hadn’t actually expected that someone would ever show up. Nobody would be stupid enough to drive straight into a cartel-operated drug camp, would they? Nobody would be naive enough to believe the word of a drug lord. Well, obviously someone was. And now they had escaped with Marconi’s biggest asset, Cody. Marconi was looking forward to finding the fuckers. He was looking forward to giving his old tools a good workout.

It felt like it had been ages since he had completed a decent torture.

“Keep up damn it, keep up.” Adam yelled to the others. He had managed to take out three guards when they fled the camp, and they probably had a good forty minutes head start. But that wasn’t much when they were moving by foot and the cartel members had cars and motor bikes at their disposal. He could already hear the sound of roaring engines from the valley below. Adam stuck his head up and peered down at the big oval that constituted the centre of the drug operation just as three cars came racing into the camp. The cars skidded to a halt just in front of a small row of sheds. “Strange,” Adam said. “Three cars just drove into camp, not out.”

“Marconi is back,” Cody said with a sombre voice. He knew what it meant. Marconi would never give up until he got Cody back. The only positive was that he most likely wouldn’t be too hard on Cody’s dad. Marconi was a chess player. He knew he would never get Cody to cooperate again if he ever hurt his dad too badly. So he would most likely just slap him around a bit. Nothing too serious. To be honest Cody felt that his dad deserved at least some punishment for having suggested what he had. “We will never be able to make it. Marconi won’t stop until he gets me back,” Cody said.

“We will make it. Just try to keep up,” Adam replied.

Cody shook his head. “This is where it ends for me. Marconi needs me alive. Give me a machine gun and I will hold the position long enough for you to get away.”

“You’re blind Cody. What good would a machine gun do?”

“Remember the CIA agent at MKULTRA? I got him didn’t I?”

Adam laughed, before handing Cody one of the machine guns he had taken from the guards. “You’re a good kid, Cody. Stay safe, and I’ll be back for you once I’ve made sure Nina and Cameron are safe.”

“I’ll be safe here.”

“You won’t,” Adam retorted. “Once this new law proposal goes through, Marconi won’t be able to protect you.”

“I’ll take my chances. Now go before I change my mind.”

Adam tapped Cody gently on the shoulder, before disappearing into the jungle-like forest. Cameron and Nina were already approximately a hundred metres ahead. There was no time for sentimental goodbyes. This was a life or death situation.

Ten minutes later Adam, Cameron and Nina arrived at the edge of a heavy flowing river. It was flowing with extreme ferocity. “We’ll have to cross,” Adam said.

“I know,” Nina replied. “But how? It’ll just drag us under. The current is way too strong.” She sat down at the edge of the river, totally exhausted. Adam knew she was about to give up. He could see it in her eyes.

“I think I’ve found something,” Cameron hollered. “She pointed to a point about two hundred metres farther upstream. “There’s a fallen log that seems to almost reach to the other side of the river. We may be able to climb across and make a jump for the last bit. It’s only about a metre and a half.”

“Let’s go,” Adam said, dragging Nina back up on her feet. He didn’t like it, but he knew he had to be assertive with her. She was about to give up. He couldn’t let that happen.

“I’ll cross first,” Cameron said when they finally reached the fallen log. She had been correct. It covered almost the whole stretch of the river.

The water splashed up against the log as it made its way underneath it. The log shifted slightly before coming to a halt.

“We’ll need to move now. It won’t stand much more!” Adam hollered, his voice almost inaudible against the loud noise of the river.

They had no ropes or other security equipment. If one of them fell in, that would be it.

The log moved again.

This time Cameron didn’t hesitate. She mounted the log, and with a few shaky steps she swiftly moved onto the middle. She stopped for a second, to regain her balance it looked like, and then she almost sprinted the last few meters before easily jumping across to the other side of the river.

“Your turn,” Adam said to Nina.

She nodded, and climbed onto the log. She moved slowly at first, clinging to the log as she gradually moved closer to the end. When she only had about one metre left of the log she got up on her knees and attempted to steady her body. She didn’t have to jump far. She could easily do it from a standstill. Cameron had landed almost a metre onto the other side so there was plenty of safety margin.

“You have to jump now, Nina,” Adam yelled. “You have to jump now.”

Nina looked up the river and noticed what Adam had just seen. Another log came crashing down the river at an excruciating speed, heading straight for the log she was standing on. Quickly she rose to a standing position, ready to make the jump. But for some reason she hesitated for a second. She glanced back at Adam. Maybe she was wondering how he was going to cross when the only passage to the other side was gone? That second of hesitation was sufficient. The speeding log crashed into her provisional bridge just as she took off from it. Cameron let out a muffled scream as Nina lost her balance and landed just short of the edge of the river. With half her body sunken into the ferocious river she desperately managed to grab onto a rock. The water was pummelling her body, threatening to force her downstream and swallow her whole. Cameron instinctively dove forward, landing right on the edge of the river. Holding onto a bush she extended her right arm, offering Nina something to hold onto. Nina grabbed hold of Cameron’s hand and managed to manoeuvre herself behind a rock that at least gave her some shelter from the rushing water. Nina looked up at Cameron with eternal gratitude in her eyes. Not far now. If she just managed to get a bit closer to the edge she might be able to pull herself up from the river. She reached for a root sticking out of the riverside just as they all heard a loud snap. It was the log that had finally caved in from the impact. As it did, half the log splintered into several large pieces that went on to pummel Nina’s head and upper body. Nina instantly lost her grip of the root and her only lifeline was now Cameron’s hand.

“Let me go,” Nina yelled. She immediately understood there was no way Cameron would be able to pull her out of the river singlehandedly. On the other side Adam was pacing. He was helplessly stuck on the wrong side of the river. Too much of the log had broken off. It was impossible to make it across. And if he tried he might cause the log to come loose, thus ensuring Nina would disappear down the river.

Adam watched the drama unfold, more scared than he had ever been in his life. Only a few meters away from him, on the other side of the river, the two most important people in his life were fighting for their lives.

“Let her go,” he yelled to Cameron. It didn’t matter how much it hurt. If Cameron didn’t let go, Nina would drag them both to their doom.

Decisions had to be made. Uncomfortable ones.

“No!” Cameron yelled out as she lost her grip on the bush and crashed into the river head first, almost landing on top of Nina. Adam didn’t even hesitate for a millisecond. From the other side of the river he dropped his weapon to the ground and jumped in. There was no time to think rationally. He knew that it was most likely a suicide mission. But he couldn’t care less.

If he could only get hold of one of those pieces of the log, or some other floating debris in the river, there was a possibility he could save them all.

Being stuck in the river was like being stuck inside a washing machine. The river pulled and pummelled Adam, and it held him in its deadly grip for what appeared to be an eternity. Adam could feel the world getting darker around him, his lungs running short on oxygen. Then suddenly the river changed its mind and spat him back up towards the surface. Adam barely managed to catch one breath of air before the river dragged him under again. His body shifted violently. A burning sensation in his shoulder told him he had just bounced off an underwater rock. Luckily it hadn’t hit him in the head. He focused on his task; to save his loved ones, and with two strong breaststrokes he broke the surface yet again. Keeping his head just above the waterline he frantically started scouting for Nina and Cameron. They were nowhere to be seen however. And the river hadn’t given up its fight. The current kept dragging him farther down the river, pummelling him against rocks. It must have transported him at least a couple of kilometres before it suddenly seemed to slow down.

The ferociousness was gone.

As he lay there, his head barely sticking out of the still fast moving river, he heard a sound he hadn’t heard in years; military choppers. He glanced up at the blue sky and spotted three Black Hawk choppers coming in low from the east, just above the tree tops.

Three minutes later he heard the first explosions.

Cody was sitting on top of the ridge when he heard the first blast. A massive explosion. Then the machine gun fire started. With horror he realised that Marconi’s camp was under attack. He got up on his feet. And with the machine gun as a rudimentary walking stick he started to feel for the ground.

He had to get back to camp.

He had to save his dad.

8

It was a warm summer morning in Washington. Tourists were sunbathing on the green grass in the park opposite the White House. Two grey-haired men, appropriately dressed in black suits and ties, were sitting on one of the park benches, feeding the birds. One of them, the older one, put his newspaper away.

“So where are we with the new drug laws?” he asked.

The younger man stared at a dog fetching a tennis ball for its owner. He couldn’t even remember the last time he had played with his own dog in the park. For the last two years he had paid a professional dog walker to do that job.

“The proposal will be presented on Friday.”

“In two days?”

The younger man nodded.

“What’s the tally? Do we have enough votes to get it through?”

“We only need two more senators on board. It’ll get done.”

“Make sure it does. And you know who to call if they prove to be uncooperative.”

“It won’t come to that,” the younger man replied.

“Don’t take any chances. We need to get this through,” the older man said, before rising from the park bench. He looked at the dog in front of him chasing the bouncing tennis ball. Dogs were simple creatures. They needed a master. They craved being told what to do, being rewarded and punished for their behaviour.

No free will.

How much easier life would be if humans didn’t have any free will, he thought. If humans simply did what they were told to do. Instead they were unpredictable. The proposal hinged on two votes. Was there a risk that those two votes wouldn’t swing their way?

He couldn’t take that risk.

The matter was too important to take the risk.

The old man crossed the road, before stepping into a black town car. He removed his over-sized square glasses and laid them on the leather seat next to his briefcase. People sometimes told him the glasses made him look like Alan Greenspan, the federal reserve chairman most people blamed for the housing bubble in 2007. He found that fact strangely amusing. People thought of him as the creator of a bubble. And that he was. He was the biggest bubble creator who had ever lived. He had created the bubble that the rest of the world lived in. The bubble that claimed humans were on top of the evolutionary ladder. Ever since they had conducted those fateful DMT experiments in 1974 he had been responsible for keeping the truth from the rest of the population. Humans weren’t ready to know what threats they really faced. They weren’t ready to know that they weren’t alone in the universe.

The old man opened his briefcase and pulled out a report. It contained the latest intel; positive identification of both targets. The agents had tracked Cameron for two weeks now, and they’d had ample opportunities to take her out. But the Director had wanted to take them both out at the same time, and it had been a wise decision. Cameron had led the agents to Cody’s hideout in the Mexican jungle, and the Director had only hours earlier received approval to dispatch a team of Navy SEALs to take them both out as soon as the new laws were in place.

The problem was that the Director couldn’t wait that long. Cameron and Adam had arrived at Marconi’s camp several hours ago. In two days they could be gone. The Director had given the order. It didn’t matter that all the legal technicalities weren’t in order yet. Action had to be taken.