three off-roaders were still there – as were the corpses of the two soldiers who had been left to guard them. A rumble of engines from the direction of the road told him that the revolutionaries had left – probably going to get backup to raid the incredible wealth of El Dorado before the Peruvian authorities could secure it.
But their purpose didn’t interest him. All he cared about was catching them.
He ran to the military Jeep, the lightest and fastest of the 4×4s. No key. Who had been driving? One of the privates, he remembered; he quickly searched their bodies and found it. He jumped in and started the engine, reversing into a slithering half-turn on the muddy ground. Flattened bushes to one side marked where Pachac’s men had left their own vehicles. Three of them, the tyre tracks told him.
Eddie powered down the slope. The Jeep bounced over rocks and roots, the suspension crashing to its limits. He ignored the rough ride – and the jolts of pain it sent through his body. All that mattered was his new mission: catch the rebel convoy.
Pachac would almost certainly be in the lead vehicle. Eddie would have to fight past the other two to get to him.
No problem. He had enough bullets for everyone.
37
Nina and Macy reached the vehicles. ‘Oh, Jesus,’ said Macy at the sight of the dead men. ‘Why are we going after these guys? We should be trying to get a long, long way away from them!’
Nina ignored her, running to the Nissan Patrol. Eddie had left the key in the ignition. ‘If you don’t want to come with me, then wait here.’
‘No, no, I’m coming,’ said Macy, the presence of the corpses making her decision easier. She got in beside Nina. The redhead turned the key, then guided the big off-roader down the hill.
Pachac looked at his phone again. Still no signal. Once he got into range of the cell tower, though, he would be able to call in more men within hours. The True Red Way had an active membership of close to a hundred, and several times as many sympathisers. It would be tough to remove the Punchaco before government forces reacted, but the longer he could prevent word of El Dorado’s existence from getting out the better . . .
The road narrowed at a bend beneath an overhang of rock ahead – with a truck coming the other way.
‘Mother of God!’ the driver blurted as he braked hard. Maoism and religion may not have been complementary, but some things were too deeply ingrained to remove. Both vehicles stopped. He leaned out of the window. ‘Hey! Back up!’
The sweating, overweight truck driver scowled at him. Under the unwritten rules of the mountain road, the bigger vehicle always had right of way. ‘You back up!’
‘We don’t have time for this shit,’ Pachac growled, drawing a gun and firing it out of his window. The truck’s windscreen shattered. ‘Get out of my way or I’ll kill you!’
The terrified driver decided that unwritten rules were made to be broken and put his truck into reverse, backing up as quickly as he dared. ‘Move,’ Pachac told his own driver. The H3 set off again, almost nose to nose with the lumbering transport. The road widened round the bend, and the driver moved to let the convoy pass.
Even as far over as the truck could possibly go, the gap was actually a few centimetres narrower than the Hummer, nothing but air beneath the rims of its left-side tyres. Pachac’s driver cringed as he edged past the truck, looking down at the near-vertical drop into the clouds below. The H3’s chromed wing mirror scraped against the other vehicle’s cab, and broke off. The driver gave his leader an apologetic look. ‘Maybe we should have stolen something smaller?’
‘Just get going,’ Pachac snapped once they were clear.
Eddie saw a bright yellow Hummer disappear round the overhang about a quarter of a mile ahead, another two vehicles trundling in a line behind it: an old Land Cruiser and a big American pickup truck. Pachac and his men.
He put his foot down, the Jeep jolting over the rutted road. He would soon catch up.
The Land Cruiser slowly followed the Hummer. Even though it was several inches narrower than the American behemoth, its two occupants still tensed as they crawled along less than a hand’s-width from the precipice’s ragged edge. Next, the pickup truck squeezed through, the rebel in the cargo bed leaning out and shouting