‘Sylvie!’ shrieked the dark-haired woman in genuine anguish. She swung her AA-12 at the bar and fired. ‘You bastard, you killed her!’
Bottles and glasses exploded above Eddie. ‘Jesus!’ Ricocheting pellets rained down on him like embers.
The firing stopped. Twenty rounds gone. Eddie vaulted the bar. The woman was still uselessly pulling the trigger, in her anger only belatedly realising she was out of ammo. She tried to club Eddie with the shotgun, but he easily dodged the blow. There was a time and place for chivalry, but this wasn’t it: he punched her in the face, knocking her down on the couch.
He grabbed her by the throat. ‘Where’s de Quesada?’
‘Fuck you!’ she spat.
He squeezed harder. ‘Where is he?’
‘Go fuck yourself!’ Eddie pulled back his fist, then thought better of it and released her, hurrying back to the bar. With a brief chill of revulsion, he took hold of the octopus by its body and plucked it off Sylvie’s breast. It squirmed, suckers clinging to his skin. The little monster writhing angrily, he went back to the couch. The other woman struggled upright; he pushed her down again and held the octopus just above her face.
Tentacles lashed out and stuck to her, the creature’s venom-filled beak snapping less than an inch from her cheek. She shrieked. ‘Tell me where he is, or I’ll let it bite you!’ Eddie shouted.
‘In there!’ she wailed, pointing at some shelves behind the bar. ‘He’s in there!’
She was too terrified to lie, Eddie decided. He pulled the octopus away and tossed it across the room into the tank’s remaining water – then punched the woman again, knocking her out. ‘Sucker,’ he said as he went to the shelves.
Close up, they were revealed as a disguised door, the sharp stench of melted plastic coming from inside. No way to know if de Quesada was armed and waiting within. He yanked it open, ready to dive—
The room was empty. Smoke belched from the smouldering remains of a computer, a hole burned right through it. Thermite; de Quesada had been in here to destroy anything compromising on his hard drive.
He wasn’t here now, though. But he was sure the woman hadn’t lied – and why would she and her friend have been defending an empty room?
A panel not quite flush with the wall, a cord attached . . .
He pulled it. The panel swung outwards, revealing a rocky passage leading downwards.
The coughing grind of an engine came from somewhere far below.
‘Oh, you are not doing a fucking runner after all this,’ Eddie growled, ducking through the opening.
Nina also heard the noise. Eddie had been right – the drug lord was using his own men as a decoy while he escaped in a hidden boat.
Only it wasn’t a boat that slid down the rails, but a light aircraft, riding on elongated pontoons. It reached the water’s edge, a brief snarl of power to the propeller pulling it into the channel. A door opened and the pilot clambered along a pontoon to detach the runner that had guided it down the tracks.
Even from high above, Nina recognised him. De Quesada.
Descending through the narrow tunnel, Eddie dropped on to a ledge. He was high up in a large cave, its mouth opening into the channel. A glance through a wide crack in the rock revealed the source of the noise: a floatplane bobbing on the water outside. De Quesada ducked beneath the rear fuselage and hopped from one float to the other, crouching to unfasten something from it. As soon as the drug lord finished whatever he was doing, he would be able to escape.
He had to be stopped.
A piece of equipment was bolted to the rock wall – an electric winch, hooked to a painted tarpaulin that had been pulled away from the cave mouth. Eddie checked the rope. Brightly coloured marine line, strong and hard-wearing.
He looked back outside. De Quesada was returning to the cockpit.
Eddie unhooked the rope from the tarp, then switched on the winch, reversing it to unspool the line. He looked back through the opening. Below, the Colombian climbed into the plane. ‘Come on, come on!’ he snarled, tugging at the rope. He needed more slack—
The engine revved. Out of time.
Pulling the line after him, Eddie leapt from the crevice, aiming to land on the fuselage—
The rope pulled tight, stopping him short. He hit the wing’s trailing edge and fell backwards, landing hard on the tail of the port pontoon.
De Quesada, startled by the unexpected impact, turned