PRECIPICE (23 page)

He thought about calling to his men on the radio but worried that if one of the radios had been taken, it would give away the fact that he was still alive. The enemy might think he was dead, which was the best thing he had going for him at this point.

Suddenly, harsh lights shone from the house and patio above him, piercing the night and reflecting off the canyon walls. He could hear men running and shouting in Spanish. Spotlights shone over the edge of the cliff, their beams roving across the surface of the water far below. Harris hunkered against the wall in the cover of the fern leaves praying that he wouldn’t be discovered, worrying about his men, and wondering how he was going to get out of this one alive. What in the hell had gone wrong?

The sound of the automatic weapons rattled Chip for a moment. It meant that things had gone horribly wrong. The team’s weapons were all suppressed, so these shots had to be coming from someone else. The radios had gone silent, and he was worried about his friends. He hopped out of his kayak, grabbed the MP7, and ran to the base of the cliff. Without thinking, he slung the weapon over his shoulder and began climbing up the crevice in the rock face.

He ignored the rope, fearing that if someone above discovered it and cut the strand he would tumble into the river and be swept over the falls. The climbing wasn’t that difficult for someone of his experience, and he soon pulled himself into some bushes at the top of the cliff. He gasped for breath and tried to calm himself and assess his surroundings. Through the dark to his left he could see an open, round, thatch-roofed building. To his right a spire of rock rose above the level of the canyon’s rim. The gunfire had stopped, but he could see movement near the building and hear men running and yelling in Spanish. He carefully crept over to the spire and climbed up to get a better view. He reached the top and ducked behind the pinnacle to conceal himself then peeked out with his night vision goggles.

He heard the roar of a diesel engine coming to life and was suddenly blinded by the blaze of a dozen floodlights stabbing through the goggles. He dropped them and blinked his eyes, trying to recover his sight.

When his eyes re-adjusted, he could clearly see the patio about thirty-five yards away under the floodlights. Men in fatigues were dragging two camouflage-clad, blood-covered bodies from the palapa onto the patio where they dropped them unceremoniously to the stones. Even from this distance, Chip could discern that one was the wiry Mendez and the other the bulky Roberts. A wave of dread clamped like a fist around his heart. Those men were the very best. If they hadn’t made it, how could he expect to survive this? He watched as two more men emerged from the house, each dragging the arm of another camouflaged man. It was Duval. He was unable to support himself and covered in blood, but he was moving and clearly still alive. Chip extended the stock and raised his MP7 to his shoulder. He trained it on the patio, unsure of what to do to save his friend. The men dropped Duval near the bodies of Mendez and Roberts and stood guard with a variety of assault rifles. Other men formed an outward-facing perimeter on the far side of the patio, staring hard into the darkness beyond the circle of light.

A minute later, Chip saw another group enter the open area from a path that led from some buildings farther back in the jungle. In the front walked a formidable man in his mid forties with dark hair and a thick moustache. Chip recognized him from the photo in the meeting. It was the drug lord, Cardenas. The man who was now supposed to be dead.

Behind Cardenas was a younger man in perhaps his mid-thirties with a long black ponytail. He wore a short-sleeved silk shirt, jeans and cowboy boots, and he strutted like he thought he was hot shit. He carried a large silver pistol in a military-style shoulder rig and was pulling a girl along with him by her arm. The girl was tall and thin with long blonde hair and a flowing white Mexican dress. Chip could tell even from here that she was pretty hot. Her blonde hair looked totally out of place in Mexico, and he wondered who the girl could be. She was looking around nervously, her eyes darting this way and that. The guy with the ponytail led her over to the table and told her to sit down in one of the chairs.

Where was Harris? Chip felt a small surge of hope at the idea that his leader might still be alive and free. Harris was always steady. He was the best. He would get them out of this and save Duval. Chip was ready to cover him as best he could.

Chip watched as Cardenas positioned himself near the chair where the blonde girl sat. The drug lord pulled a pistol from the back of his pants and stood waiting while the man with the ponytail walked over to the palapa and cut the ropes that dangled from its legs, letting them slither over the edge and disappear. Then he pulled out an iPhone and held it up. It looked like they were going to take a picture. This was getting weirder all the time.

Chip watched in fascination down the length of his gun. The glowing tritium sight-post eclipsed the center of the drug lord’s chest in his view. He could feel clammy sweat on his palm as he held the weapon’s pistol-grip. He had no idea what to do next. Should he shoot now and try to save his friend? The odds weren’t good. The guy with the ponytail was there too, and Chip knew that he wasn’t a good enough shot to take out both bad guys before they reacted. There were also a half-dozen other armed men down there—more than a match for Chip’s single gun by any measure; but what if acting now was the only possible way to save Duval’s life? And what about the girl? She seemed to be a prisoner as well, and he didn’t want to jeopardize her safety by acting impulsively either. And what if he missed? He wasn’t exactly an expert with the weapon yet. Chip’s vacillations were interrupted by Cardenas addressing the camera loudly, and surprisingly, in English.

“You think you can send men to kill
me
?!” the man shouted indignantly, brandishing his pistol in the air. “You think that will get you out of our deal? Here are your men!” He turned and waved his gun at the bodies of Roberts and Mendez with Duval sitting and staring defiantly near his fallen comrades. There was a loud report and the gun jumped in Cardenas’ hand. Chip was wracked by a wave of angst as he saw his friend slump to the ground. Cardenas had shot Duval. It was so sudden that he’d had no time to react.

“There are the men you sent,” the drug lord raged on, turning his gun to train it on the girl. “You took my money! If you do not honor our bargain, I will kill her!”

Chip had seen enough. He’d wondered how he would feel if the moment came when he had a man lined up in his sights. He was surprised to feel no doubt, no regret—just a firm sense of purpose dictating what he had to do. Demanding it. He shut out all distractions and steadied his breathing, casting his mind into the familiar calm place inside the chaos that allowed complete focus on the task at hand. Then he slowly squeezed the trigger.

He was gratified to see a red spot appear as if by magic in the center of the drug lord’s chest. The man looked down in astonishment, then he began pulling the trigger of his pistol. The first bullet shattered the glass top of the table where the girl sat. She screamed and jumped up as the man kept firing, trying to raise his arm to get her in his sights as the life rushed out of him. “I’ll fucking kill her!!” he screamed. A string of bullets pinged off the stones, chasing the girl as she frantically ran away from the barrage of bullets and right over the edge of the cliff.

Cardenas continued shooting as she disappeared, emptying the pistol as he let out an insane laugh that turned to a gurgle of blood that sputtered from his mouth. Then he collapsed on the stones and died.

Men rushed to the edge of the cliff to look for the girl. Chip took no time to contemplate the first man he’d ever killed; he figured it was time to get the hell out of there. He scrambled quickly down the rocks and into the bushes at the top of the cliff. Just as he got there, bullets exploded on the rocks where he had just been. It wouldn’t take them long to figure out where he’d gone. He clipped onto the rope that the team had climbed up and did a fast rappel, then he unclipped from the line and scrambled quickly to his kayak. He took a moment to cut the rope that held the raft which was floating on the pool far below. There was no sense leaving them an easy way to get to the bottom of the falls and chase him downstream.

As he slid into his kayak he could hear voices coming down the crevice he had climbed. In a frantic hurry to get away he dropped his gun on the ledge, quickly pulled the spraydeck over the cockpit of his kayak, grabbed his paddle, and slid into the water. He heard gunfire erupt from the ledge behind him as he turned and floated over the brink of the massive falls.

It only took two and a half seconds, but it seemed like he was falling for an eternity. It was long enough for him to know that he was over-rotating on the way down. This was going to hurt. He pummeled into the water at the base of the falls on his head, the force of the impact ripping him instantly from the kayak. The plunging water forced him deep into the dark bottom of the pool. It seemed like he was under forever. His lungs were burning and bright spots were dancing in front of his eyes when he finally felt the buoyancy of his lifejacket begin to tug him upward. He broke the surface and gasped in a lungful of air.

Bullets were splashing into the pool around him. They hadn’t seen him yet and were just firing wildly, but why give them a chance? He fought the buoyancy of his lifejacket and dove back under, kicking furiously to get as far under and downstream as he could. He had to surface briefly two more times before he swam from the pool into the rapid below. His legs were screaming in pain as he kicked. They’d been badly bruised when he was ripped from the kayak on impact, but luckily nothing felt broken.

As Chip rounded a bend in the canyon, the noise of the gunfire faded away into the roar of the river. He got into the ‘whitewater swim position’ with his feet in front of him on the water’s surface to ward off rocks, and then backstroked toward the edge of the stream. He finally crawled onto a gravel bar along the shore, startled to find a gasping white figure near him in the faint light. It was the girl from the patio. She was on all fours, retching onto the rocks in front of her. Her hair was a disheveled mess, and the soaked white dress clung wetly to her body.

Chip sidled over and put a hand on her back to comfort her, but the girl was so out of it that he wasn’t sure she even noticed. He could feel her body trembling wildly under his touch. The tropical river water wasn’t that cold, so he figured it must be fear or shock that made her shake.

“It’s OK,” he said reassuringly. It sounded lame even as it came out of his mouth, but he had no idea what else to say. He tried to pull the wet hair out of her face so she wouldn’t puke on it. ‘
It’s OK
,’ he thought? His friends had been killed. They were in the middle of a remote Mexican canyon with a bunch of crazy, heavily-armed drug dealers trying to kill them. He’d just landed a seventy-five foot waterfall on his head while being shot at with machine guns and had lost his kayak and paddle. The girl had fallen off a hundred foot cliff. It was about as fucked up a situation as Chip had ever been in, and he’d been in some tight spots before. It was anything
but
OK.

When the bout of nausea had passed, the girl looked over and gave him a wan, grateful smile.

“I’m Chip,” he offered.

“Sam,” she choked out the one word reply.

He gave her another few seconds to catch her breath.

“We’ve gotta get moving,” he finally told her. “It’s only a matter of time until they find us here.”

She looked at him dejectedly for a moment and then gave a resolute nod.

Chip led into the cover of the trees, and they began working their way down the canyon, struggling through thick jungle and over rocky terrain. Sam had lost her shoes in the river and could only move very slowly, gingerly stepping over the sharp rocks with her bare feet. It took them twenty minutes to make it only about two hundred yards. It was just starting to become daylight when Chip noticed a blob of darkness floating on the water downstream. The raft that he had cut free had drifted down, and the rope it was trailing had hung on some branches along the edge of the river just ahead. He had a sudden hope that they might actually make it out of here. Chip scrambled out to cut the boat free, and both of them climbed aboard. The going would be much easier and faster now.

They picked up two of the paddles that were still lashed into the raft, and Chip quickly explained to Sam how the process worked. It was a talk he had given thousands of times to his rafting customers, and he knew the best way to explain things by heart. She only needed to know two paddle strokes: forward and back. Soon they were cruising down the river with Chip calling out to her which paddle strokes would weave them safely through the rapids.

Chip thought things through as they paddled steadily for an hour, trying to grapple with the next dilemma. He needed a plan. It seemed likely that the whole mission had been a set-up. Whether that was true or not, the cartel definitely knew that he had escaped downstream. He was worried that Carlos would not be there waiting when they reached the road. What if that was a trap too? Part of him wanted to race down the river as fast as they could and try to reach Carlos before the cartel did.

He glanced at his companion. Although the girl was trying hard, she was struggling. In the two hours they’d been paddling, her shaking had gotten worse. Her energy seemed to be dwindling, and he knew she couldn’t go on much longer. After another hour she became unable to paddle and huddled trembling in the bottom of the raft. Although it was more difficult, Chip was still able to slowly steer the raft downstream. He’d had plenty of clients over the years who were not good paddlers, so moving the raft on his own was something he could handle as long as the rapids didn’t get too big.

Chip was torn about what to do. Should he pull over with the girl and camp until she recovered, or should he push on and try to reach Carlos? And what if a trap was waiting for him at that road instead of his driver? A few minutes later he saw the stick he had jammed into the sandy beach just upstream of where the truck should be waiting. His heart rate increased, and he made sure his pistol was handy. As he quietly floated over the small falls near the parking spot, he could hear the sound of a motor coming down the hill. Was it Carlos? Was it the drug lord’s men?