THE EXTRACTOR Read online

  It was a good pick the university had made, Forster had to admit. An ex-Delta Force man himself, he had great admiration for the work the PJs did, and he was impressed that Lee was transferring those life-saving skills to the civilian world. In a way, Forster was doing the same thing; only in his work for Apex Security, it was killing rather than rescuing that was required. Not as noble perhaps, but just as necessary.

  “You found out where Silva and those others ran to?” he asked Ryan Millhouse, his intel specialist.

  “Not yet,” Millhouse answered. “But I’m sure we’ll pick ’em up soon.”

  “Good,” he said. He’d been tempted to kill Silva when he’d taken out Guzman; but his orders were clear, and whereas Guzman was a liability – he knew too much, and might well have informed other interested parties, intentionally or otherwise – Silva’s piloting skills were actually needed. He was the obvious person for Lee to approach, and Forster had been pleased that things had gone as expected. Except for that business with Rodrigues; but the deputy commander had explained that Lee had accidentally seen the picture of Guzman, and he’d been forced to do something.

  That was fair enough, Forster could allow, but he’d had to stamp down on the man’s desire to pursue things further. That wasn’t part of the plans of Apex’s employer, as Forster was quick to relay to Rodrigues. The man was stood down, for the sake of higher plans.

  “Is the chopper prepped and ready to go?”

  “Yes, sir,” replied Jack Lightfoot, who’d once used to fly special ops missions with the famed Night Stalkers, the chopper pilots of the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment.

  Forster nodded. “Good. Make sure you’re good to go whenever we get the word.”

  Lightfoot confirmed the order, and Forster went back to drinking his coffee and watching the sunrise, foot tapping on the floor to a fast, incessant beat.

  He’d been waiting too long and was itching for action, and he could only hope that the word would come soon.

  An hour later, Lee was trekking through the rainforest, convinced he could still feel the heat of the explosion on his back.

  The cocaine lab had lit up like a gigantic firecracker, the gallons of gasoline used to make the final product igniting fiercely. Lee wasn’t worried that the fire would spread – the forest was simply too damp and moist for that – but the compound itself was incinerated.

  Lee had been true to his word, and had let the drug-runners go; only he’d also destroyed their radio, and had kept them bound in pairs, back to back. They would be able to escape, but it would take a considerable amount of time – time enough, hopefully, for Lee to make decent headway.

  The most sensible thing, he knew, would have been to kill them all, to have incinerated them along with their laboratory. And in another time, another life, that was exactly what he would have done.

  But he was a changed man, and he would never return to who he had been; that was the past, and had to remain buried. He knew the impulses still lay dormant somewhere within him, but he was winning the battle to keep them there, and had no intention of ever letting them out again.

  The past slipped from his mind as he travelled through the vegetation of the rainforest, some lush and green, some rotting and near-black. He was assaulted on all sides by vivid sights and sounds – the brightly-colored birds in the trees, the insects crawling up the trunks toward them as colorful flowers competed with thick vines for space, monkeys calling and chattering from above, birds singing and screeching in the branches, insects chirping from everywhere. And then there was the moist, damp, oppressive heat, the sweat rolling down his skin, the mosquitoes that buzzed incessantly around him, the putrid smell of decay, and waste, and decomposition thick and heavy in the air.

  The going wasn’t too bad, as the lack of sunlight due to the canopy above meant that undergrowth at ground level was nowhere near as bad as that of secondary jungle, which could be almost impenetrable. But it definitely wasn’t a running track, and progress was far from swift. On even ground, in good conditions, Lee could make a kilometer in under eight minutes without running, even with a heavy pack on his back; but here, he was looking at thirty minutes per kilometer, and – even though the drug-runners had made a passable trail on their way in – it was still exhausting work.

  One of the biggest problems was the humidity, which was a real man-killer, even for someone who’d spent so many years in such conditions. It sapped the energy at an alarming rate, and Lee was glad that he’d managed to resupply his water from the compound. It weighed his pack down, but it was worth it; dehydration was one of the biggest dangers out here, and he knew he had to keep on top of it.

  He also used water from the many vines he passed, careful to avoid those which exuded colored or foul-smelling sap but guzzling down the water contained in the good ones. It was sometimes sweet, sometimes bitter, depending on the vine, but it was enough to keep him going without the water he carried. Still, it was better to be safe than sorry, he knew.

  Having said that, he was glad he wasn’t carting that radio through the forest. If he was making one klick per half-hour with what he had with him, his pace would have slowed to a kilometer per hour or even worse, with the radio. He might not even have reached the target zone by nightfall.

  As it was, it took him five solid hours of hard work to get to the rough location the men had indicated on the map.

  The going was so slow not just because of the heat, but due to the necessity of keeping a constant watch of the surroundings for dangerous animals – including people – and terrain irregularities that could easily cause broken ankles or knees, something that would slow him right down. And then there was navigation, which was hard as hell in the rainforest, even with the semi-trail that he was following. He’d stolen a GPS unit from the compound, but never one to trust technology completely, he had been constantly cross-referencing it with his map and compass, to make sure he was definitely on the right track. The one thing he didn’t want to do out here was to get lost.

  Obstacles had made it harder too, making six klicks on the map into more than ten on the ground.

  Five hours, he told himself as he pulled his pack off and sat down to eat some dried biscuits, was some achievement, however slow it had felt. It wouldn’t be up there with the tribesmen who lived in the Amazon, but was probably twice as fast as most people would have managed over similar terrain, and had put him in his target location before midday, which left him several hours of daylight to locate some sign of the research team.

  As he sat, he allowed himself to relax, ever so slightly; midday in the Amazon was probably the safest time of day. He was sheltered from the strong sun by the tree canopy, and many of the most dangerous animals hunted between dusk and dawn. But he knew he couldn’t let his guard down entirely, because anything was possible.

  He listened to the forest around him, taking it all in – the screech of the howler monkeys, the loud call of the macaws, the constant thrum of the cicadas and – somewhere far off – the grunt of a peccary.

  After a few moments of straining to listen to the distant hog, anew sound came to him, one that had previously been drowned out by the rest. It was familiar, yet faint . . . so faint . . .

  Listening to the world around him had been one of the skills he had learned in the Tibetan temple. The abbot of the monastery in Thailand had recommended the place to him, after Lee had been there for several months, because he thought the Tibetan temple might be the only place where Lee could find the answers he sought.

  The abbot had been a monk of the famous Shaolin lineage, although he had spent almost his entire life at a subsidiary temple to the more famous one in Henan Province; as the abbot related it, the Henan monastery was for show, while the secondary temple, hidden in the mountains northwest of Chengdu, was where the real thing happened.

  And so Lee had begun his pilgrimage to Tibet, a trek that had taken months; and when he had arrived at the temple, perched on the edge of a cliff in the froz
en mountains, he was ready to learn.

  There had been a lot of physical training at the temple, as might have been expected in a place run by a master of Shaolin; but there had been even more time spent on meditation, both in movement, and stillness. Sometimes entire days devoted to listening to the world around him, attuning himself with nature, with the universe itself.

  He tapped into that same feeling now, occupying that zone between consciousness and unconsciousness – or perhaps even super-consciousness – whereby he could feel the sounds around him, in his heart.

  And, in a near-trance-like state, he rose, put the backpack on, and started to follow his heart, allowing it to take him where it willed, without question, without interference from his conscious mind.

  He moved through the undergrowth quickly and confidently, guided by senses he didn’t fully understand, until he came to a dense stand of trees he could barely get through. He kept trying, pushing harder and harder through the thick vines and cloying vegetation, until finally, mercifully, he burst through to the other side, the source of the sound now all too clear to him as he fell, exhausted, to the ground.

  There was a waterway there, something between a large stream and a small river, the sound of running water almost all but block out due to the wall of trees that surrounded and sheltered it. It wound its way through the rainforest, its path completely covered from above due to its proximity to the trees, the canopy covering it completely. His consciousness returning, his mind coming back to reality, he recognized that it didn’t appear on his map; and when he checked the GPS, he discovered that the battery had run out completely. Typical amateurs, he thought sadly as he tossed the unit aside, they hadn’t even maintained their equipment properly. But anyway, Lee had to assume that this waterway was only known about locally, maybe only by the indigenous tribes, if there were any.

  And yet he knew, instinctively, that it could be the route that the research team followed. It would make sense for a tribe to be located near a source of water, and it had confused him that the area being searched was so far from the obvious sources. A hidden river made perfect sense for a hidden tribe. The drug gang had passed within a few hundred yards of it, and probably never even realized it was there.

  Lee wondered about his next course of action. He didn’t have any evidence – yet – that the party had come this way, and the logical, trained part of him told him that he should go back to the grid square he was supposed to check, and look for definite sign of the research team. However, he also knew that he was now off the trail set by the drug-runners, and – without the GPS to tell him where he was – he might never make it back. His run for the river had been in a state of near-catatonia, and he had no memory of the route he had taken. If he managed to get back through the trees, he might be able to pick up his own trail, but he might not; and he could easily waste previous hours looking for something be might never find.

  Navigation through a rainforest wasn’t so hard if you knew where you were starting from; but with an inability to see more than a few yards in front of you at any given time – and sometimes much less – it was nearly impossible to use the traditional method of triangulation to establish location. If he found some high ground, he might be in with a chance, but even if he did, it would likely be covered by trees anyway.

  On the other hand, if he followed the river, it gave him something concrete to do. He might still be wasting his time, but at least he had a chance. Logically, he knew that people stayed near water, and this was as good a chance as any; but more important than that, his gut told him it was the right thing to do.

  His mind made up, he looked up and down the wide stream and thought about how he was going to do this.

  He would follow the river west, toward the Peruvian border, knowing that this was the direction the team were headed in. But how would he follow it? He could try and trek along the bank, which is probably what he would have done under normal circumstances if he didn’t have a boat; and yet the trees lined the river so closely, that there wasn’t really any bank to speak of. Another option was to push back beyond the line of trees, and follow the trees from the other side, hoping that they continued to follow the path of the river. But he knew that they might not, and such a method might only end up getting him very lost, very quickly.

  A third option, of course, was to get in and swim, but there were all sorts of dangers associated with that. Anacondas, caimans, piranha, leeches, and – perhaps the most disturbing of all – the candiru, a parasitic catfish that was known to force its way up the urethra of unsuspecting swimmers. Give him an army of caimans any day of the week, Lee thought.

  And yet, he also knew that swimming would be the fastest method by far, especially as the current was heading in the right direction. He would use the backpack as a flotation device, resting his arms and upper body on it as he kicked downstream with his legs. It was lined with a waterproof bag, so he knew that what remained of his equipment would survive.

  He looked one last time at the tree line behind him, then back at the fast-flowing waters in front.

  And then he slung the pack off his back, and jumped in.

  Chapter Six

  The current took him fast down the waterway, and – despite the dangers of hitting submerged rocks – it suited him just fine, as it meant he was much less of a target for predatory animals. Besides which, if he hit a rock, the backpack would take most of the impact.

  He tried to observe the world around him as he was swept downstream, but it was harder than he imagined, as the warm water crashed and splashed over the pack in front of him, blinding him for half the time; while during the half he could see, he was too busy steering himself through the churning rapids or looking out for passing caimans.

  But he got vague impressions of the passing rainforest, the main one being how strange it was to be in a river, completely shielded from the sun by the thick canopy overhead; for no matter how far he went, the waterway never widened enough to come out of the shade, and the trees continued to hug the river tightly, keeping it almost bankless all the way. It never seemed to narrow too much either, and kept a fairly uniform width throughout his journey, which in itself was strange. It was like a river from another world, and Lee wondered how many people had ever seen it.

  He checked Darrow’s watch – happy that, after everything he’d been through, it was still attached to his wrist – and was surprised to see that he’d been in the water for nearly two hours. How far might he have traveled in that time? He had no idea, no idea at all. Five klicks? Ten? Twenty? He might even have just been going around in circles, he had no idea of the route this river took; even now, he might only be a few hundred yards away from where he started. And yet he had the feeling that a lot of distance had been conquered, far more than he would have covered by marching through the forest itself.

  And the further he traveled, the more he began to think this whole insane story about a lost tribe, immune to illness and disease, might actually be true.

  If he ever got there in one piece to find out, however, was a different matter, he thought as he finally hit one of the submerged rocks with his backpack, an impact that sent him spinning out toward the trees that lined the river. A moment later and he bounced into the underwater bank, and span back toward the central channel, choking on the warm river water that crashed over him with escalating violence, and Lee realized he was being pulled toward a whirlpool, now just a few yards away.

  He struggled against it, fought it, but it had already caught his backpack in its outer spiral, and it was dragging him in, relentlessly, against his will, and he was powerless to stop it . . .

  He let go of the pack, sacrificing it to the power of the vortex, and he immediately started to use his arms to swim too, pulling hard, driving ever forward, kicking free of the pull of the whirlpool until he was out of its deadly embrace at last, exhausted but alive, and he let the current just take him as he relaxed slightly, the tension in his muscles ebbing away slowly as he
drifted peacefully for a few glorious moments, basking in his continued survival.

  But then he felt the current’s pull increase, and adrenaline spiked through him once more as he rounded a bend and realized he was being carried toward a vanishing edge, which could only mean . . .

  Waterfall.

  He reached out desperately for something to hold onto, a floating vine, or the roots of the nearby trees, but he couldn’t reach them, couldn’t make it that far, the edge was coming up too quickly, and all he could do was relax his body and allow the river to take him over, praying he would not be killed on the other side.

  The breath was forced out of him as he dropped, the water crashing all around him, the tree canopy still covering the sky as he plummeted downward, ever downward; and in a moment of crystal clarity, he saw everything – the rainforest looming high around him, the boulders lining the waterfall, the passage of water twenty feet down to yet more boulders blow, the water crashing against them, the same way he would crash against them moments later. It looked to be that a messy death was all but inevitable, that his body would be dashed to bloody pieces on the rocks below; but in that same moment of clarity, of heightened awareness, he saw his way out.

  He allowed his body to fold as he fell, angling slightly, sweeping toward the boulders at his side; and then he hit them with flexed ankles, bent knees, water rushing everywhere about him, using them as a platform to spring forward, to jump as far as he could, clear of the raging torrents below, and he prayed he had jumped far enough as his body plummeted through the air, until he made impact . . .

  But it was with the water alone, the boulders and the crashing waterfall less than a yard distant, and he gathered his remaining energy and swam forward, pulling himself clear of the small but deadly cascade, into the calmer, more still waters of the lower river, where he allowed himself to float as he forced himself to breathe, to breathe, to . . .