He instantly knew what it was. ‘Shit! It’s a chopper!’
The pounding grew louder, rising to a clattering whump of rotors as a helicopter swept overhead. Eddie glimpsed it through the jungle canopy: a Russian-built Mil Mi-17.
With the yellow, blue and red stripes of the Venezuelan flag standing out from the muted green camouflage paint on its tail boom. A military aircraft.
The soldiers’ backup had arrived.
12
‘Get through the gate!’ Eddie yelled. The group was still short of Paititi’s thick outer walls. As everyone ran, he glared at Nina. ‘This is why we had to go five minutes ago!’
‘Don’t you try to put this on me!’ she shouted back. ‘You said they were coming by road, not helicopter!’
‘Well, I’m not a fucking oracle, am I?’ They reached the gate, the narrow opening forcing them into single file to pass through.
The helicopter slowed, preparing to hover. The tree cover was far too dense for it to land, even inside the settlement. ‘It’s going to drop troops,’ Eddie warned as everyone scrambled across the remains of a defensive trench. ‘They’ll be able to shoot you from about two hundred metres away through this much jungle, so keep as many trees behind you as you can. Oscar, get everyone to the Jeeps. Kit, you and me are going to cover the rear.’
‘I don’t think I like the sound of that,’ the Indian said unhappily.
Nina wasn’t keen either. ‘What are you doing?’
Eddie pointed back towards the lost town. ‘In about thirty seconds, they’ll have boots on the ground – and another thirty seconds after that, the guys we tied up’ll have told them we just did a runner out of the gate. We need to slow ’em down long enough for you to get to the trucks.’
‘We’re not going to leave you!’ she protested.
‘It’s a tactical withdrawal, not a last stand. We’ll be there, you can bloody believe it!’ She was still hesitant, so he gave her a reassuring smile. ‘We’ll be fine. Go on, see you soon.’
‘I’ll hold you to that,’ she said with a faint smile of her own, before going after the others.
Eddie watched her retreat, then turned to Kit. ‘You ready?’
‘No, but that never seems to matter, does it?’ A grim grin from the Interpol officer. ‘What do we do?’
‘Keep your gun on the gate. Soon as anyone comes out of it, fire a couple of rounds. We’re trying to buy time, so we need to keep ’em bottled up for as long as we can.’
‘Are we shooting to kill?’
‘They will be.’ The Mil tipped out of its hover, swinging round to circle the area. ‘Okay, they’re down,’ said Eddie. ‘Soon as the shooting starts, we’ll do a running retreat. You back up by twenty, thirty metres, get behind a tree and cover me while I move, then I do the same for you.’
‘Okay.’ They hunched behind an earth mound, about sixty metres from the gate. The team had been extremely unlucky, Eddie thought; the chopper must have been visiting the radar base for it to have responded to the soldier’s SOS so quickly. It also still posed a threat – it was a transport, not a gunship, but it could follow the fleeing 4×4s and report their position.
There were more pressing worries, though. He sighted the AK on the gate. How long before the soldiers reached it?
He got an answer a few seconds later. A man cautiously looked out—
Eddie fired two rapid shots. The first went slightly wide, cracking off the stonework. The Englishman immediately adjusted his aim, but the soldier had already pulled back.
‘Move,’ he told Kit, who started his retreat. Eddie kept his gun fixed on the gate. The man reappeared, unleashing a three-round burst from his AK. Bullets smacked into the mound in front of Eddie. He ducked, then returned fire – but that had been all the time another two soldiers needed to rush past their comrade and dive headlong into the trench.
The soldier at the gate fired again, the rounds whipping over Eddie’s head. He crawled back and waved for Kit to shoot. It was going to be a tough escape.
But not impossible.
Kit fired a couple of rounds, and Eddie quickly scuttled backwards. He passed the Indian, and kept moving until he reached shelter behind the vine-throttled trunk of a large hardwood tree. Nobody was in clear sight, but the jolting of a small bush told him that one man was crawling along the trench. The other was probably doing the same in the other