Deadfall: Agent 21 (15 page)

And he certainly recognized his voice as he shouted above the noise of the thundering rain.

‘I’m going to give you a choice, Harry,’ Cruz bellowed. Harry Gold was the name he had used back on his first mission when he had infiltrated Cruz’s house in Mexico – the name by which Cruz knew Zak. Zak couldn’t help feeling a sense of dread when he heard it on his adversary’s lips.

Cruz drew a gun.

‘Go ahead and shoot me, Cruz,’ Zak shouted. If this was the end, he wasn’t going to face it
begging for his life. ‘That’s what you want, isn’t it?’

‘Not just yet, Harry. Not just yet.’ Another figure was thrown onto the ground in front of him. ‘This is Latifah,’ Cruz shouted. ‘She’s eleven. And, if you don’t do as I say, she’s dead. I’ve noticed you have a rather charming reluctance to let innocent people die, so I’m sure you wouldn’t want that to happen. My men, on the other hand, would rather enjoy shooting her.’

Silence. The rain pounded down.

‘What do you want me to do?’ Zak shouted.

‘Jump, Harry. Just jump. My men will catch you and then you and I can have a little chat. I’d say it was long overdue, wouldn’t you?’

Zak’s eyes were flitting left and right. His mind was turning over. What else could he do? What were his other options?

He had none.

Two of Cruz’s crew were moving to the bottom of the wall. They had their arms spread out, ready to catch him.

Zak felt his jugular pulsing. Bile in his stomach and in his chest. His clothes heavy with rain, he spread out his own arms, took a deep breath and fell, face forward.

Latifah screamed.

The ground flew up to meet him.

It wasn’t a soft landing, but it was a safe one.

Cruz’s boys caught Zak with strong arms. But as soon as his fall was broken, they dropped him heavily to the ground and Zak felt the air shoot out of his lungs as his abdomen hit the wet earth. Winded, he gasped for breath.

‘Pick him up!’ Cruz yelled through the constant noise of the heavy rainfall. ‘And get the girl back to the hut.’ He had a high-pitched, slightly manic edge to his voice. As though he was excited.

Zak felt a hand grab a clump of his hair and he winced in pain as he was yanked upwards. Once he was on his feet, he saw that his scar-faced assailant had an ugly grin on his face as he twisted the hair tighter and pulled his head back.

Cruz was bang in front of him, his dark
eyes glinting, water streaming down his face.

Zak opened his mouth to say something, but Cruz raised a finger to silence him. ‘I want you to hear something,’ he said. His voice almost hissed, like the sound of the rain sizzling against the ground all around them.

They didn’t have to wait long. Five seconds. Maybe ten. Then the sound of two gunshots rang through the air in quick succession. They came from outside the camp.

From the direction where he had left Raf, Gabs and Malcolm.

Cruz’s lip curled into a sneer. ‘Nobody’s coming to rescue you, my friend.’ He bent down, and picked up one of Zak’s makeshift grappling hooks from where it had fallen to the ground. ‘Pathetic,’ he said, before throwing it away and addressing his associates. ‘Get him inside.’

Cruz marched quickly towards the largest of the camp buildings. Zak was dragged by his hair in his wake, his mind a whirlwind. He had left three companions back in the jungle. There had been two shots. The conclusion he had to reach was sickening. At least one of his Guardian Angels was dead.

If not both of them.

Zak felt his knees buckle at the thought. Cruz’s guards laughed, then continued to drag him roughly
into the building, where they threw him once more to the floor.

For a moment, Zak didn’t move. He was stunned. Paralysed. He listened to the sound of the rain hammering against the corrugated-iron roof. After thirty seconds he rallied as best he could. Dripping wet, he pushed himself to his knees.

He was in a room about fifteen metres by fifteen. There were no windows, nor any chairs or tables. Wooden crates – perhaps twenty of them – were piled up along one side. At the far end was a bright lamp facing towards Zak. It dazzled him, but as he squinted he could just make out the silhouette of two people behind it. Zak could tell that one of them was Cruz. He was dragging the other person by one arm. As they grew nearer, the features of this second person grew clearer.

It was a woman, about the same height as Cruz, but more solidly built.

White skin. Her hair in a bob.

It was the same person Zak had glimpsed from the treetops. Her face was a picture of terror. Desperately, Zak tried once more to place her. But he simply couldn’t.

‘Take her outside,’ Cruz instructed.

One of his boys took the woman’s arms and dragged her out into the rain.

Then Cruz turned to Zak. ‘I thought you’d never get here, Harry,’ he said.

‘What do you mean?’

Cruz barked a short, humourless laugh.

‘You’re so impressed with your own cleverness,’ he said. ‘It makes it so easy to lead you around by the nose.’

Zak peered at him. He felt faintly sick. ‘What do you mean?’

‘You’re so
predictable
, Harry. I knew that if I showed my face you’d come sniffing after me. I must say, it was a surprise that you got caught so easily at the toy shop.’ He smiled thinly. ‘And I suppose you spent all your time in the jungle looking up for deadfall. So typical of you, Harry, to do that and not see what’s right in front of your eyes.’

‘Maybe you should keep one eye open for deadfall yourself, Cruz. When my friends come to get me, you won’t know what’s happening till you’ve been crushed.’

‘I really don’t think so, old friend. I’m afraid you’ve done your last Houdini impression. How
did
you break out of the warehouse, by the way?’

‘We’ve all got to have some secrets, Cruz,’ Zak barely whispered, unable to keep the fear from his voice. His mind was turning over, trying to get ahead of Cruz, but deep down he knew that
somehow his enemy had got the better of him.

Cruz shrugged. ‘If you
hadn’t
got away, we wouldn’t have needed to go through all this pantomime of getting you
here
. Though I must say, that would have been a
bit
of a shame.’ He swung one arm around the brightly lit room. ‘Do you like my little jungle hideaway? It’s been in the family for some time, you know.’

Zak didn’t want to reply, but he knew that the longer he could keep Cruz talking, the better. Because if he was talking, he wasn’t killing.

‘It’s charming,’ he said.

Cruz gave a bland smile. ‘I’d like you to see someone,’ he said. He turned to one of his guys. ‘Bring him in.’

The scar-faced boy left the building. He returned moments later. This time, he had company.

It was Malcolm.

Zak’s companion was also soaking wet. He was trembling. Infection, or terror? His glasses were misted up, but Zak could still make out an expression of utter fear. It wasn’t clear, though, whom he was more scared of: Cruz or Zak. His gaze flitted, terrified, from one to the other.

‘What the . . .’ Zak whispered.

But he didn’t finish his sentence. He had noticed something else. Malcolm’s guard had carried in
another gun. Zak recognized it immediately: Gabs’s AK-47 with the Maglite still taped to the body.

He felt unsteady on his feet again. Like he was living in a horrible nightmare, and nothing around him was real.

‘Did you not stop to think, Harry – or should I call you Zak? – that Malcolm managed to locate my flight just a little
too
easily?’

Zak paused. ‘I know how good he is . . .’ he started to say, but again the words died on his lips as he realized how badly he’d been outmanoeuvred.

Cruz gave a sarcastic sigh. ‘Such loyalty! No, I’m afraid he knew my flight details all the time. I must say, though, that I wasn’t quite convinced that he would be able to send us the signal that you were about to break into the camp. I mean, look at him. He’s not very impressive, is he?’

Zak tried to stay calm. ‘What signal?’ he asked in a level voice.

Cruz pretended to look surprised. ‘Jamming our radios, of course. It needed to be something that you wouldn’t suspect . . .’ His voice trailed off as he looked cruelly at the miserable Malcolm. If he hadn’t been bubbling up with anger, Zak might have felt sorry for his former companion. Malcolm was wringing his hands and he refused to catch Zak’s eye.

‘Why?’ Zak breathed.

No answer.

‘
WHY?
’ he shouted, all the anger bursting out of him.

‘Shall we show him why, Malcolm?’ Cruz asked.

No reply.

‘I’ll take that as a yes,’ Cruz murmured. He looked over at one of his crew. ‘Bring her in.’

Moments later, the frightened woman with the bobbed hair was dragged back into the room, soaking wet and bedraggled.

‘Malcolm,’ she whispered. She struggled, trying to run towards him, but was held back by her guard.

And then it all clicked in Zak’s brain. He knew where he recognized her from.

The photograph in Malcolm’s house in Jo’burg.

This was Malcolm’s cousin. Matilda. The woman who had looked after him. Perhaps the only person in the world who Malcolm really cared about.

‘This is—’ Cruz started to say.

‘I know who she is,’ Zak interrupted him.

For a moment, Cruz looked surprised. Wrong-footed. But he quickly regained his composure. ‘It took a little while to persuade Malcolm to reveal her whereabouts, didn’t it, Malcolm?’

Malcolm stared, dejected, at the floor.

‘But these East Side Boys can be very persuasive. Once I’d abducted her, I knew our little hacker
would do whatever I wanted. By which I mean, Harry: bring you to me.’

The woman was crying. Desperate sobs. Cruz wandered up to her and put one hand lightly on her cheek. ‘Don’t worry,’ he whispered, and Zak struggled to hear him over the noise of the thundering rain. ‘It’s all over now. I have what I want.’ He looked over his shoulder at Malcolm. ‘The other two, the man and the woman. They’re dead?’

Zak felt his stomach twist again. Malcolm didn’t move a muscle.

‘
Are they dead?
’ Cruz bellowed.

Malcolm looked up. There were tears dripping down his face. ‘Yes,’ he said, his voice wavering as he spoke. ‘I stole their gun and shot them, like you told me to. Both of them. They’re dead.’

It happened so quickly. Just as Zak felt his whole world imploding, Cruz pulled a gun from inside his clothes. Before Zak could even move, he had placed it up against the head of Malcolm’s cousin.

He fired a single shot, the sound of the gunshot making Zak start violently.

The woman’s head exploded in a flurry of blood, bone and brain matter.

Cruz walked out of the building, the gun still in his hand.

And Malcolm shrieked, ‘
NO!’

It was a desperate, pitiful sound. Like all the pain in the world was distilled into that one, single word.

The rain had stopped. It was quiet outside. But in Zak’s head, it was very, very noisy.

Raf and Gabs: dead.

Malcolm’s cousin Matilda: dead.

Malcolm himself was crouched in a far corner of the building, clutching his knees, his head buried in his chest. His whole body shook, as if he was crying. But there was no sound coming from him. He was a silent, quivering wreck. For a moment, Zak felt sorry for him. He had obviously thought he was saving his cousin; he had no idea just how ruthless Cruz could be.

But then Zak remembered the chilling sound of the two gunshots from the rainforest. He pictured Malcolm shooting his Guardian Angels, who had sworn to protect him, and he felt his jaw set firm.

They had bandaged Malcolm’s arm and given him antibiotics. That boded well for Malcolm, kind of. It meant they wanted to keep him alive. Zak was by no means sure that the same was true for him.

Three of Cruz’s scar-faced guards were loitering by the entrance to the building. The bare skin on their arms was glistening with sweat, and they all carried assault rifles. One of them had dragged Matilda’s body out into the camp, and he still had her blood smeared on his hands. It didn’t seem to worry him. He was laughing with his friends, and nodding gently in time to the harsh gangsta rap that had started blaring out from somewhere in the camp, even though it was still night.

Zak looked at his own hands. They were shaking. He was scared. More scared than he’d ever been.

He was angry with himself too. If only he and Raf had listened to Gabs back in Jo’burg. She hadn’t wanted to take Malcolm with them. If they’d followed her advice, if Zak hadn’t been so dead set on fronting up to his nemesis, he wouldn’t be in this situation.

His Guardian Angels would still be alive.

His body shook with nausea at the thought. He remembered Gabs’s farewell hug. The words she had mouthed: Be careful!

Zak tried to bury his fear. He strode up to
the guards. ‘You speak English?’ he demanded.

The guards grinned. The one with blood on his hands faced up to Zak. He raised one stained finger, and was about to smear the blood over Zak’s face when Zak quickly knocked the boy’s arm away. The grin instantly fell from the boy’s scarred face. He stepped back and raised his weapon.

It was cocked, and Zak could see that the safety was off . . .

‘Leave him alone.’

Cruz’s voice came from the doorway, where he was half shrouded in darkness. Zak saw indecision in the boy’s face. He was clearly feeling violent, but didn’t dare disobey Cruz’s order. He stepped aside.

‘Harry, come with me. The rest of you, make sure that halfwit in the corner doesn’t move.’

The boys were no longer grinning. Zak felt their hot eyes on him as he walked towards the exit where Cruz was waiting, leaving Malcolm to his thoughts.

‘I have something to show you, Harry,’ Cruz said conversationally, as if they were just two old friends chewing the fat. ‘I hope I can trust that you won’t try to escape. My East Side Boys – that’s what they like to call themselves – are everywhere, and I’ve noticed that they
are
rather trigger-happy.’