Ramsey's Gold (Drake Ramsey Book 1) (29 page)

They crept to the riverbank and looked over the camp area. It was quiet, with no evidence of a struggle. If it hadn’t been for the shooting, they would have believed it was just another afternoon following a tedious search.

Except there was no sign of Allie. She wasn’t in her hiding place between the two trees.

She wasn’t anywhere they could see.

After several minutes of watching, waiting for any movement, Spencer emerged from the brush and moved down the bank to cross the river. When he’d made it to the camp side, Jack followed, Drake waiting until they were both out of the water to join them.

When they reached the campsite, a quick hunt through the bush yielded nothing. Their gear was still hidden, undisturbed, but there was no sign of Allie.

She’d vanished without a trace.

Chapter Thirty-Two

The evening meal was a grim one. It was as though Allie had disappeared into thin air, leaving only three brass shell casings and nothing else. All three men had their pistols strapped to their belts and their rifles by their sides, and Spencer and Jack had been quietly discussing how to proceed, with no agreement.

The final rays of waning sun streamed through the overhead canopy as they ate surplus MREs, none of them having the will to fish, their imaginations working overtime on what might have happened to Allie.

A muffled thud sounded from nearby. They were instantly on their feet, rifles at the ready. The vegetation across the river rustled and Drake was drawing a bead when Spencer pushed his gun barrel aside.

“No. Look. Over there.” He pointed to a white square fastened to a grapefruit-sized rock.

Drake retrieved it. A folded sheet of paper was tied to the stone with twine. He unsheathed his knife and sliced the cord, and then unfolded the note. The handwriting was neat, the message brief.

Greetings Drake Ramsey. We have the girl. We want the journal. A trade. The journal for her.

Think long and hard about refusing this. The girl will die, and you next.

Do not fire on my man when he come there tomorrow morning for your answer. Do not attempt any ambush. You and your two companions be where you sit now. Any deviance will result in the girl’s immediate death.

The note was unsigned.

“What the hell…” Drake muttered and gave it to Jack, who read it once and handed it disgustedly to Spencer.

“The Russians.” Jack spat his contempt on the rainforest floor.

“Are you sure?” Drake asked.

Jack squinted at the far riverbank. “They tend to favor the brute-force approach. No finesse. And kidnapping is about as brute force as it gets.” Jack thought for a moment. “We need to figure out a way to deal with them and get her back.”

“Deal with them?” Drake asked.

“Of course. They’re going to kill her no matter what. Even if you give them the journal. That’s how they work.”

“But I don’t have it.”

“Right. And at that point, they’ll want you. What’s in your brain. They’ll torture it out of you and then kill you, too. It’s their standard operating procedure.”

Spencer’s eyes narrowed. “Seems like you know an awful lot about these Russians.”

Jack nodded. “I should. I made it my mission to find out everything I could about them after they killed Drake’s father. You could say I’m an expert on their behavior by now.”

“How did they know we were here?” Drake asked.

“I told you we were racing the clock. They obviously recorded the spot, just like I did, and bet that we’d come back to it eventually. Turns out that was a good bet,” Jack said.

“What are we going to do?” Spencer asked, deferring to him.

Jack paced, fingering the trigger guard of his rifle as he did so, a nervous habit he was unaware of. Eventually he stopped and turned to Spencer.

“How good are you at tracking?”

~ ~ ~

The next day they rose before dawn and sat around the stones they’d circled to create a fire pit, their faces drawn from a night with no sleep. Nobody spoke, their demeanors serious, dark circles beneath their eyes evidence of their fatigue as the gray shower fell around them, the silence broken only by an occasional bird or a monkey screeching overhead.

When the messenger arrived on the far side of the river, they bristled, guns in their laps. The man on the other bank was reed thin, Jack’s age, dressed in tropical camouflage pants and shirt, his gray hair trimmed tight to his skull. He had a Kalashnikov of his own slung over his shoulder, but seemed completely calm. Jack was almost certain it was Sasha, but it had been a long time…

“Drake Ramsey,” he called, his Russian accent obvious.

“That’s me,” Drake said, standing.

“You read note?” the Russian asked, the words more a statement than a question.

“Yes.”

“Good. You give me journal, yes?”

“No.”

Sasha looked puzzled, but only for a moment. “Then girl dies.”

“I don’t have the journal.”

“Lies.”

“It’s true. I don’t. I left it in the United States.”

“I don’t believe.”

“Doesn’t matter what you believe. I don’t have the journal, and I can’t give you what I don’t have.”

“Then why are you here?” Sasha fired back.

“To find the Inca city.”

“Using journal…”

“No. Using the
information
in the journal.”

“Is same thing. Where is it?”

“The info? It’s right here.” Drake tapped his head with his free hand.

They stood staring at each other for a few beats. “You write it down. Give to us.”

“I can try. But there’s no way of guaranteeing it will be complete. Just what I can remember.”

The Russian seemed to make a decision. “Then girl is dead.”

“And you get nothing,” Drake said, his tone mild. “Seems stupid to me. Are you an idiot?” He tapped his forehead with his hand while scowling.

Sasha’s eyes narrowed. “We keep the girl till you remember everything.”

Drake shrugged. “Hey, do whatever you want.”

The discussion obviously hadn’t gone the way the Russian had expected, and he seemed unsure of what to do. A sly look flashed across his face and he nodded.

“Then we wait until you find city.”

“That might be a while, buddy,” Jack said, speaking for the first time. “It’s not like youngblood here has a map where X marks the spot.”

Sasha didn’t understand. “We trade girl for map.”

Drake nodded. “I can try.”

“No try. Do it.”

“I’ll need some time.”

“You have one day.”

“Wait…”

But the Russian had spun and run back into the jungle, obviously distrustful of them.

“How much of a head start do you want to give him?” Jack whispered.

Spencer looked at his watch. “Five minutes. He doesn’t look like he knows much about negotiating the jungle. Wrong kind of boots, for one. And his hat. He didn’t have one. Which is poor planning in a rainforest for a host of reasons.”

“You’re confident you can track him?”

“As long as it’s fresh, which is why I advised against killing him and trying to follow his trail back to the camp. And assuming it doesn’t rain hard and erase his footprints. As it is, the ground’s soft and moist, so he should leave a trail as obvious as an elephant.”

“Okay. We’ll be right behind you,” Jack said.

“It’s smarter for me to track him on my own and return once I’ve located their camp. Why don’t you give me the GPS and I’ll set a waypoint when I find it, and then sneak back?” Spencer suggested.

“I don’t like only one of us going,” Jack said.

“Even if a slip from one of you results in your daughter being killed?”

Jack brooded for a moment and then pulled his GPS free from his backpack and handed it to Spencer. “You win. But for God’s sake, be careful.”

“I will.” Spencer eyed them both. “But don’t try to follow me. I need to know that if I hear something behind me, it’s an enemy. I can’t be second-guessing. Clear?”

Jack and Drake nodded. “Clear. You really think you can do this?”

“I’m positive.” Spencer bent down, hefted his backpack, and slipped his arms through the straps. He adjusted his hat and, after taking a last look at his watch, jogged down the bank to the shallow part of the river. “I’ll be back. Stay put.”

Chapter Thirty-Three

The anxiety coming off Jack was palpable, creating an unpleasant aura as he and Drake waited for Spencer’s return. An hour after the Russian’s disappearance it began raining again, and Jack’s shoulders slumped – if Spencer hadn’t found the enemy camp by then, he likely wouldn’t at all, and their gambit would have been for nothing.

They never heard Spencer – he just appeared in the middle of the river, like a specter in the gray downpour, seeming to glide across the surface of the water with no visible effort. Jack jumped to his feet and moved to meet him. Drake remained where he was, figuring that if there was bad news, he’d rather Jack heard it first so he could digest it alone.

When they approached, Spencer looked grim but determined.

“There are eight of them. They’re about a half hour from here. By the same river, from what I can tell. Looks that way on the GPS. Anyway, I made out six locals and two Russians, counting the one that showed up here. So…difficult, but not an impossible number for us to take.”

“Did you see Allie?” Drake asked.

“Yes. She’s tied to a tree. They’ve got two tents set up. But if they’re smart, they’ll have a guard posted at night. Especially at night. Everyone’s armed to the teeth, so it won’t be easy.”

“How do you think we should do it?” Jack asked.

“We wait until dark. We’ve got night vision scopes, hopefully they don’t. But I’d rather not go in heavy – a lot can go wrong when the shooting starts.” Spencer appeared to consider the problem. “There are a few ways to approach it. For my money, the best will depend on where the guard’s sitting. Assuming he doesn’t patrol the perimeter.” He returned his attention to Jack. “You’ll need to see the layout. I say we head over there an hour before dusk, scope it out, and be ready to hit them once everyone’s asleep.”

“How competent do the locals look?”

Spencer frowned. “They look hard. My guess is they work with traffickers. They know how to handle their weapons. You can tell.”

“That would figure. The Russians would want seasoned help. Men who wouldn’t bat an eye about kidnapping or murder. Birds of a feather.” Jack looked around their camp. “We better pack everything up. We won’t be able to stay here if we get Allie back, unless we kill everyone – and that might not happen. So we should move our gear now while we have downtime. Probably stash it closer to the final outpost. That clearing looked as good as any.”

Spencer nodded. “We can go in light, with just weapons and whatever else we deem necessary. The bare minimum.” He studied Jack’s drawn face. “You have an idea?”

“Tell me about the river and the layout.”

~ ~ ~

The cloudburst stopped twenty minutes before they arrived at the Russian camp. The air felt thick as they crawled to a position upstream, the vegetation hiding them as they eyed the gunmen, who were eating dinner – fish, by the smell. Drake’s mouth watered as the aroma wafted on the breeze, and he was reminded that he hadn’t eaten anything but an energy bar since choking down a few mouthfuls of breakfast twelve hours before.

The Russians sat near the fire, with the natives grouped nearby, eating separately. Allie had a bandanna tied around her mouth, muzzling her so she couldn’t cry out, and nobody made any attempt to offer her food. As the late afternoon light faded, the natives finished their meal and went to relieve themselves. The taller of the two Russians approached Allie and pulled the bandanna down. He poured a few gulps of water into her mouth before putting it back in place. Drake’s anger swelled at what she’d probably been through all day, tied to the tree, no food, at the mercy of her captors. He had to force it down, and emulate Jack’s dispassionate precision.

The sliver of sky overhead turned vibrant orange and red, high wisps of clouds like trails of white smoke as the sun set, and then it was dark, the transition from twilight taking only a few minutes. The Russians entered the two tents, leaving the native gunmen to sleep outdoors under a tarp they’d strung from several trees on the opposite end of the grotto. One of the men took up a position on the perimeter near the fire pit, his gun across his lap as he sat cross-legged beneath a smaller tarp.

They waited an hour and a half. Jack watched through his rifle’s night vision scope as the locals rolled into sleeping positions and dozed off. Unfortunately, even after a long wait the guard still looked alert, which didn’t bode well for a surprise attack.

Jack put the gun down and faced Drake and Spencer, his voice barely a whisper. “Here’s how we’ll play this. I’ll go in and take out the guard. Spencer, you cover the others. I want to avoid shooting unless we absolutely have to, but if we do, make every burst count. Drake, once I’ve neutralized the guard, get to Allie and cut her loose. Take her to the river and follow the bank to where we are right now while Spencer and I cover you. We’ll be able to move faster than they can once we’re clear of their camp. I didn’t see any NV gear on their weapons.”

Spencer nodded at Drake. “Take the night vision goggles so you can see what you’re doing with Allie. We’ve got the rifle scopes,” he murmured. He extracted the goggles from his backpack and handed them to Drake. “The strap goes around your head. Try them on. Get used to them, because when it’s showtime, they’ll be your lifeline.”

Drake did so, and Spencer flipped a small switch on the side of the goggles. “There.”

The night lit up in a yellow-green haze. Drake’s eyes adjusted, and soon he could make out the guard and the sleeping gunmen – and Allie, who looked like she’d also fallen asleep.

“I can see pretty well.”

Jack nodded. “All right. Spencer, follow me in. Don’t get too close – let’s try to do this without waking anyone up.”

“How are you going to eliminate the guard?” Spencer asked.

“Knife. The old-fashioned way.”

Spencer nodded in the gloom. “Too bad we can’t use the crossbows.”