PRECIPICE (31 page)

Chip was momentarily blinded by glaring sunlight as he left the building’s shade and stumbled over a rock, almost falling to the ground. He lurched forward and frantically blinked his eyes to try and clear them. He could make out the shapes of a crowd of soldiers that parted before him, and then he and the other man were roughly shoved over the edge into a dirt pit.

Chip fell about six feet and landed hard, the wind knocked from him by the impact. He put his hands on the ground and pushed himself up, cringing as his palms found sticky wetness. He sprang to his feet and disgustedly wiped caked blood and dirt onto the thighs of his dark Mexican jeans.

He was in a crudely-dug six-foot-deep hole in the ground surrounded by jeering men. On the ground a few feet away lay the mangled body of a Mexican peasant with a bloody machete resting near his hand. It looked as if the man had walked into a giant paper shredder. Long, ghastly wounds laced his arms, torso, and legs, and a giant cut at the junction of his neck and shoulder gaped like some grisly monster’s smile. His dead eyes stared blindly up into the sun, still wide with surprise at his destruction. Chip turned to face his living companion in the pit, whose face registered equal horror at the carnage into which they’d been cast.

One of the men on the rim of the pit tossed a machete into the dirt at the other man’s feet. As his opponent bent to pick up the weapon, Chip understood the game. There was no time to contemplate the horror of his situation. He had to act or he would wind up like the dead guy. He dove across the pit toward the corpse and rolled, coming up with the other blood-soaked blade in his hand. He and his opponent began reluctantly circling one another, neither interested in pursuing the fight. As he came around the circle, Chip was careful not to get his feet tangled up in the corpse on the ground. He tried to settle himself down and come up with a strategy.

Although the other man was almost Chip’s height, he didn’t move with any grace. His steps were plodding and mechanical, which gave Chip hope. The man looked more like a farm laborer than a soldier, and he hoped that would work to his advantage. Chip’s reflexes were highly trained and lightning fast. Surely that would make up for his lack of skill and experience with a blade. It had to. Confidence was the only way he would survive, and he had to make it through this if he wanted to save himself and then save Sam.

He slowed his breathing as he circled, shutting out the rest of the world around him. The roar of the crowd faded away, and he no longer noticed the sun’s relentless heat against his skin. He searched for his quiet place inside the storm, bent his knees slightly, and raised the blade to guard between himself and the other man. Chip’s opponent lunged and clumsily swung, his machete whistling through the air toward Chip’s head.

Chip dodged the swipe easily and swung his own blade, tracing a shallow slice down the outside of the other man’s right arm. His opponent dropped his blade in surprise, and the crowd went wild chanting, “¡Acábelo! ¡Mátelo!”
Finish him! Kill him!
They stamped their feet and brandished large beer bottles over their heads. Chip took a step back, reluctant to kill the poor man. The farmer realized his mistake and used Chip’s hesitation to recover his blade. He and Chip began circling again, both more focused now that blood had been drawn.

The bout fell into a deadly rhythm. They would circle and the man would swing at Chip, but he never connected. Chip’s reflexes were too good, his reactions too fast. Pitting a farm laborer versus an extreme athlete simply wasn’t a good match. Chip limited his counter attacks, responding with only half-hearted swings that left small cuts on the other man’s arms and legs. Although he had killed Cardenas with no remorse, this was another thing entirely. This man was an innocent, and Chip was reluctant to take his life.

Gunfire rang out from the barn, startling Chip. Before he could recover, the farmer swiped wildly with his blade and drew a long gash across the front of Chip’s thigh. He could feel the blood trickling out and soaking the leg of his jeans. He shut out the pain, shut out the crowd, and ignored the sound of another three shots coming from the barn. There was no time to worry about what might be going on in there. If he didn’t win this fight, he would be killed. Now that he was bleeding, he focused on finishing the duel through any means necessary. If one of them had to die to end this, let it be the other guy.

Samantha kept her eyes down as the guard stood from atop the other woman and pulled up his pants, the harsh rip of his closing zipper sounding like a death knell in her ears. She had seen them take Chip out into the sun, and she wondered what fate he was meeting at the mercy of the cheering crowd. Could things get any worse? She wondered if she should have done something to help him. She could feel the weight of the gun stuffed in the waistband of her pants, its hard metal gouging uncomfortably into her skin. She was wracked with guilt that she hadn’t used it sooner. She had let him down. He had saved her life and offered her a new one—a life far from the abyss of self-destruction that she’d been trapped in. She had been doomed long before the kidnapping. The hope and promise of the future that Chip had painted for her had touched her even more deeply than his bravery in the jungle had. Things had finally gone so well and been so perfect. How could the world possibly have turned so bad? Why did it have to end like this? What had she done to deserve this?

She noticed the guards snapping to attention as they looked toward the far end of the barn. Her eyes darted up to see what had them so alert, and her heart almost stopped at the sight. It was her nightmare in the flesh walking from the bright sunlight outside. She could see the silhouette of his ponytail framed in the light and the bright puffs of dust that rose from the footsteps of his crocodile skin boots. He walked to a table inside the door and put down a large brown paper bag, and then he turned and walked toward Sam. The vulgar sway of his hips as he walked disgusted her and raised a primal fear in her. As he came nearer she saw him notice her and cringed as his face broke into a wide, lascivious leer. He ran his eyes over her huddled body like groping dirty paws, and the dread that Sam felt became complete. He reached into his pocket and pulled out an iPhone to snap a picture of her and the guard standing nearby with an AK47, then he pulled out another larger mobile phone and began typing on it. It seemed to Sam like he was sending a text message.

It would not end like this
, she thought. It
could
not. She had come so far and escaped from so much. Fear and panic rose in her until it boiled into an explosion of raw emotion and hatred. She would not allow herself to be hurt again by this man. She suddenly ripped the pistol from her pants and raised it, taking aim on the center of the demon’s head. A rattle of gunshots thundered through the barn.

The pistol fell from Samantha’s slack fingers as she slid to the floor and collapsed in a puff of dust. She searched inside herself for some feeling and was surprised when she was greeted by neither fear nor pain. A quiet peace enveloped her as she closed her eyes, and she slowly smiled. The demons could never get her now. She hoped that Chip would escape too. She thought about his smiling face as her consciousness slowly slipped away. She imagined them in South America. She saw volcanoes and beaches, and then everything went blissfully black.

Héctor Fernandez looked in shock at the man still aiming a smoking rifle at the blonde girl who was rapidly bleeding out on the floor. Rage boiled through him. He dropped the phones back into his pockets, snatched the silver .45 from beneath his arm and fired three rounds into the other man, gratified to see his head explode into a spatter of wet chunks and a cloud of mist. That idiot had just killed his insurance policy. From elation at his luck to instantaneous despair, the rollercoaster of emotions almost unhinged him. He fought to regain control and barely reined himself in before he shot the other guard. After recovering his composure, he reholstered his .45 and strode toward the crowd behind the barn.

Although Harris was elated to see that Chip was still alive, things had just gotten much more complicated. Instead of simply trying to escape, now he had to rescue the kid as well. There was no way he was going to leave the last member of his team behind. But how could he get to Chip through that crowd? He racked his brain for a plan. He had several flash bangs in his pocket that he’d carried with him since the attack in the jungle. The small explosives would create enough light and sound to startle and blind his foes. Maybe if he could get close enough to throw them, he could create enough confusion to get Chip out. He could toss a weapon to his friend and improve their numbers, although fourteen against two was still pretty long odds.

With the men distracted by the fight in the pit, Harris began low-crawling closer, trying to get in range to throw his flash bangs. He hadn’t made it fifty yards when he heard gunfire from inside the building. He stopped and made sure he was well concealed then strained his eyes to get a look at what was going on. He had barely gotten settled when he was shocked to see a familiar face storm from the building and into the crowd of men. It was the cowboy he’d seen in the jungle with the ponytail and the big silver .45. That must be who Harris had ridden here with. His presence at the pit could not be good news for Chip. There was no more time to prepare; Harris had to act now if he was going to save his friend.

He tried to get a bead on ponytail guy, but the milling crowd obscured his view. Harris hoped that if he dropped the guy between them first, he could then quickly take out the boss with his second shot and give Chip a fighting chance. He aimed at the soldier who was eclipsing his view of the cowboy and gently squeezed the trigger. The man’s head exploded and his body tumbled against the boss. Harris swiftly shifted aim and tried to find the boss’ head through his sights, but the crowd erupted into chaos at the sound of the gunshot. Some wildly returned fire while others surged and frantically ran away. Unable to locate the ponytailed cowboy, Harris simply took out as many men as he could, rapidly squeezing off rounds and moving to new targets before the previous ones even had time to fall. His mind shed any outside thoughts and merged with his hands, eye, and gun into a dynamic killing machine, methodically walking death through the ranks of his foes.

When the next round of gunshots sounded, Chip wasn’t distracted at all. This time it was his opponent whose concentration was broken. In the blink of an eye Chip lunged forward. Stepping toward the side away from the man’s blade, he swung a tremendous blow that almost cleaved the man’s head from his shoulders. Blood flew everywhere in a hot wave of heavy liquid that spattered across Chip’s shoulder and barely missed his face. He stepped back, stunned and disgusted as his opponent fell to the ground, and was barely missed by the falling body of another man who tumbled into the pit and landed on the ground at Chip’s feet.

The world around Chip shifted into surreal slow-motion. In almost dreamlike clarity of definition he saw the man at his feet roll and reach for a shiny pistol that hung from a holster under his arm. Even as the realization hit Chip that this was the man he had vowed to hate—the man who had kidnapped Sam—Chip grimly shifted into motion. He couldn’t let the cowboy draw his gun. This wasn’t some innocent who he was reluctant to dispatch. He was an enemy, the remaining symbol of all that had gone wrong on this ill-fated trip. This was a man that Chip wouldn’t hesitate to kill. In fact, he’d vowed to do it. He took two steps forward, wound up like a major league batter and swung as hard as he could for the man’s throat. As the shiny gun came up, the blade connected.

Chip’s swing was not the death blow that he intended. He felt a shock shiver up his arm as the blade hit the hard metal pistol, numbing his fingers and sending the machete spinning from his grasp. Then the world tilted crazily as his feet flew from under him, and for a pregnant instant all he could see was blazing sun and blue sky. Air whooshed from his body as his back wetly impacted on the muddy ground. Blinded by killing rage, he’d slipped on the bloody earth and lost his footing. He knew he didn’t have time to be stunned or to feel pain. Instead, with all of his energy he embraced an elemental purity of purpose that lived deep within his psyche. He had to survive.

Chip rolled over and lunged from all fours, landing on the back of the ponytailed man as he scrambled across the bottom of the pit to retrieve his pistol. They rolled across the bottom of the pit soaking up gore and grime as they went. When they bumped against the body of a dead man, Chip was thrown off the cowboy’s back. His eyes roved for the nearest weapon and settled on a machete less than six feet away. He dove for it but was pulled up inches short by a hand wrapped around his ankle. He kicked with his other leg and felt the grip relax as his foot connected a glancing blow. He scrambled to the blade, snatched it up and spun around. He dropped into a wary crouch and then scooted over to put himself between his adversary and the gun. Then, holding the blade up to keep the other man at bay, Chip cautiously backed toward the big silver .45, careful to keep his feet firmly planted on the slippery ground.

Seeing his opponent’s plan, Héctor knew he had little choice. If the American reached the gun, it was all over. He lowered his head and charged like a raging bull, raising his arms to fend off the inevitable blow. He knew he would bleed, but hopefully he wouldn’t die. He couldn’t die. He’d come too far and worked to hard to wrest control of his new empire to let it slip through his hands like this.

Chip saw the charge coming and waited it out, wary of swinging too soon. He planted his feet firmly and took a mighty swing, connecting with the arm that was raised to block it. The man’s arm severed cleanly below the elbow, and the momentum of his charge carried him headlong into Chip. Both men sprawled in a tangle against the wall of the pit. They groped for the gun, struggling to grasp the weapon in the smear of blood and mud.