Mission Jaguar Read online

  But the helicopter showed no sign of descending. Its course altered a little so that soon they were passing Guatemala City altogether.

  Which only meant one thing. She was being taken back to Jaguar. Back to the heart of the jungle. Back to jail.

  So she made a vow to read up on those missing survival skills, first thing, because it seemed that her only chance now was to escape into the jungle itself. And to do this the hard way.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Beck’s story

  The chime rang out from the laptop, immediately followed by James’s voice doing a bad imitation of a DJ.

  “This is James Blake, coming to you from the heart of the jungle. Yo, Beckster baby, you there?”

  Beck quickly minimised the spreadsheet he had been working on, and James grinned out at him from a window on screen. The quality was lousy and James’s face was pixelated, dissolving into square dots whenever he moved more than a couple of centimetres in either direction while the signal struggled to keep up with him. It was Skype beamed by a portable satellite kit connected to James’s laptop, but it was also utterly secure.

  “Loud and clear,” Beck replied. “Well, loud at least! How are you, James?”

  James’s grin grew wider.

  “Surviving and thriving — you know me!"

  “Yes I do. Sadly. Got anything useful to say?”

  “Maybe.” James was looking past him. “How’s the apartment?”

  Beck grudgingly moved aside from the screen to give him a better view of the living room of a twentieth floor apartment overlooking Guatemala City. It was full of sunlight and a gentle breeze blew through the open windows to cut down on the need for air conditioning.

  The place belonged to Jorge and Arabella Moreno, who were the regional heads of Green Force, the direct environmental action group that Beck wanted to work for one day like his parents had. The Morenos were letting Beck stay with them while Al and James investigated the Jaguar Studios. Beck had been paying his way by helping out with some admin work — boring, but also important, as he had come to realise when he had recently interned in one of Green Force’s Swedish offices.

  Beck had been reminded that much of the work was depressingly familiar wherever you were around the world. Keeping track of illegal logging, exporting of protected species, backhanders paid to government officials to look the other way … all the usual Green Force stuff that they had to battle against.

  And from what he could see, Green Force in South America had the added complication of having to tip-toe over some very delicate politics.

  In the twenty-first century, within Beck’s lifetime, there had been two military coups in South American countries, when the armed forces had overthrown the democratic government. And this was actually progress, because there had been nine coups in the 1970s, six in the 1980s, three in the 1990s — so the number was declining. South American governments were generally becoming more secure, and every government now was firmly on the side of democracy and the law. But the forces that were against these good things were still out there, hiding.

  Rebels and guerrilla forces generally need money and equipment to operate, and a good way to get hold of those things was all the illegal activities that Green Force was concerned with. So, just by doing the usual Green Force work, the Morenos also ran the risk of sticking their noses into the activities of very dangerous people.

  “So,” Beck said, “what have you found?”

  “Hey, yeah, so. This place! It is amazing. There’s this old Mayan ruin, but the place we’re staying is totally new—”

  “Have you met Dian?”

  James looked suddenly thoughtful.

  “Ha. Oh boy… Oh yes. I’ve met her all right ...”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Dian’s story

  Silvio summoned her from her workstation with a jerk of his head. She glanced at the store’s manager but he simply glanced back. Everyone did what the Señor said. So she pushed back her chair and stood up.

  A long time ago, she had realised that a good way to look for a way out of Jaguar was to get more involved. If she saw more of it from the inside then she could study it for weaknesses. So, she had put it to Ric that maybe she could be of use? It beat just sitting in her room. She had put it in a way that would make Ric feel he had more control over her time, and it had worked. So now, after her school work — which was via videoconference to a carefully vetted private tutor in Guatemala City — she often helped the manager out, in a small cubicle at one side of the large warehouse that was Jaguar’s stores.

  The warehouse was loaded with racks of electronic gear, and further along at the back of the building was the sealed-off area where only authorised personnel went.

  There hadn’t been any further punishment since her attempted escape in Guatemala City. There was no need. The humiliation was punishment enough. She had simply got back into her old routines. She got on okay with the store’s manager, but like everyone else on the staff, he was Ric’s man and she would have no ally there.

  She hadn’t seen Ric in the flesh since she got back. It looked like that was about to change. She followed Silvio out into the daylight, and they walked across the Jaguar estate along the path paved with large, smooth stones towards the residence.

  The estate sat in a natural limestone hollow a kilometre across. The centre piece was the temple, dedicated to the Mayan Jaguar God of Terrestrial Fire and War. It was ten square platforms stacked one on top of the other to make a pyramid, each one slightly smaller than the last — until you got to a small stone hut at the top. The Mayans, the first people to live on this land before the collapse of their civilisation, had built it centuries ago.

  Ric couldn’t use the actual designated ancient monument for anything — so in classic Ric style, the Jaguar estate had been built around it.

  It looked like it should be cool and pleasant. A river poured in over the southern edge of the hollow and disappeared into a hole at the base of the northern cliff, and in between it wound its way through carefully tended grounds. The modern white buildings — movie studio, recording studio, stores, guest block, private residence — each sat in their own area with mowed lawns around them, all in a modern style that echoed the design of the temple. But the moment you set foot outside one of those buildings, humid air closed around you and you knew you were in the rain forest.

  Most of the trees had been cleared away to create the estate but a remnant of it survived around the edges of the hollow, and in every direction beyond it was the limestone cliff, twenty metres high. From the estate the entire horizon was a ripple of rock above the tree canopy. At first sight, it looked incredible, but to her it was a constant reminder of the natural barriers that lay between her and the rest of the world.

  Ric was waiting in his office on the top floor of the residence, at his desk with his back to the wide windows that overlooked the estate and the temple. In one corner of the room, a niche held a statue of the Jaguar god himself. It had bulging round eyes and wide, square jaws and actually didn’t look much like a real jaguar at all — but it did leave you in no doubt that it was a deadly, vicious creature that you treated with a lot of respect.

  He didn’t look up as Silvio ushered her in and she didn’t intend to wait for him to notice her.

  “What?” she said without any preliminary. He sat back and gave her a smug smile.

  “And it’s lovely to see you too, my fiery one. I noticed you were walking okay — glad the feet have healed up. What do you make of this fool?”

  He pushed his desk monitor around and a video started to play. It showed a gangly teenage boy with a mop of blond hair, sitting on his bed and strumming an electric guitar. At the end of every chord there was a minute pause while he repositioned his fingers.

  And then he started to sing, in a wobbly voice that was just a little too flat.

  “Ooh, yeah, you’re my girl.” A pause, for a chord change. “Come on and give me a —” Another pause. “Twirl. We’ll have a good time, I’ll make your head whirl …” Mercifully, he stopped and flashed a dopey grin at the unseen camera operator. “You know,” he said thoughtfully, “I think I’m getting better.”

  He had an English accent, which surprised her. Most English-speakers that Ric did business with were Americans. But as she spoke English, Spanish and Portuguese fluently, it wasn’t a problem to understand him.

  “He’s terrible,” she said flatly as the boy started on verse two. Ric grinned and paused the playback.

  “I know, and you’re to be nice to him. He’s here now. Flew in with his business manager this morning.”

  She stared at him in dismay as he went on to explain, with a jerk of his thumb at the frozen image.

  “That dope, believe it or not, is a multi-millionaire, name of James Blake. I’ve looked him up — he’s one hundred percent genuine. He inherited the family fortune, he’s rich enough to do whatever he wants in life, and, guess what? He fancies himself as the new Justin Bieber, and he wants to record an album, all funded by himself. He’s thinking of doing it here — hire a studio, hire the technicians, hire the band, all straight up. He wants somewhere inspiring and he is a fan of my music. And with what he’s prepared to pay, we will help him.” He smiled and tapped his head as if he believed that somehow he was smarter than the rest of the world.

  She hated it when he did that.

  “So my pretty.” He paused. “Go and make friends with him. I don’t want to lose his foolish money.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Guests were put up in an apartment block at the edge of the estate, backing onto the jungle belt. She walked there, under Silvio’s watchful eye, with a blazing fury inside her. Ric just wanted to use her to get hold of this kid’s money? Well, she wou
ld do everything she could to scare him off, lose Ric a customer, and make Ric see that the sooner he let her leave of her own free will, then the better off he would be.

  Silvio escorted her to the terrace at the front, which was built around a fountain whose spray provided a basic kind of outdoors air conditioning. The English boy was lying on a sun lounger in an untucked t-shirt and baggy shorts, staring intently at a writing pad through mirrorshade sunglasses, occasionally tapping his teeth with a pen. He seemed to be on his own and she wondered where the business manager was.

  She squared her shoulders, drew a breath. She could get this over with quickly, for both their sakes. She strode forward and pulled up a chair next to him.

  “Hi. Just for the record,” she said, “I would rather dig my eyes out with a rusty spoon than be sitting here with you, but it’s what I’ve been told to do.”

  And let Silvio report that back to her father, she thought to herself.

  James’s eyebrows went up behind the shades.

  “Just for the record, I’d hand you the spoon, but I must have left it in my room,” he said. “Hi. I’m James.”

  He seemed so unsurprised that she wondered if strange girls came up to him and insulted him all the time. And he actually held out his hand. She couldn’t remember anyone doing that before. She reached out, tentatively, and shook it.

  “Anita.”

  “Uh-huh.” For some reason he sounded half-sceptical, as if he thought she was trying out a fake name on her. He pushed himself into a more comfortable sitting position, and nodded over at Silvio, and lowered his voice. “And who’s the ugly guy?”

  She couldn’t help her grin and she lowered her voice to match. Okay, so her original plan to make him hate her was fast going off track. But hey, anything beat the boredom of this gilded fortress. She paused for a moment.

  Anyone could make an enemy. It would be smarter to make this guy a friend and put him off Ric by simply sharing the truth about him. And maybe he could help her escape …?

  No. The thought crossed her mind — but no. She knew what Ric would do to James if he found out, and she didn’t have the right to bring that down on him. This was between her and Ric and no one else.

  She preferred it this way — a little conspiracy going on, right under Ric’s nose.

  “That would be Silvio.”

  Silvio was sitting in a chair a few metres away, arms crossed, looking like he was enjoying this as little as she hoped he was.

  “Does he speak English?”

  “Enough to know that you just called him ugly. Not that I’m arguing.”

  James ducked his head to peer around her, and flashed Silvio a friendly smile and a wave.

  “Hi, Silvio!”

  Silvio grunted and looked away. “He kind of looks like he’s nannying you. Is he afraid of what I might do to you?”

  Exactly the opposite, she thought grimly.

  “Maybe he’s protecting you from me.”

  The eyebrows went up again.

  “Okay, mind is boggling. Anyway, rusty spoon and all that — why exactly are you talking to me?”

  “Because Ric — my dad — wants to make sure you waste plenty of your money here. Apparently you want to be a pop star.”

  “Hey, it’s harder than it looks! I’ve been trying to write some songs, but …” He looked down at his pad of paper, which she saw was completely blank. “I can do chords, but the words, the lyrics — I guess I’m not great at that.”

  She thought back to his demo video.

  “No kidding.”

  An idea seemed to strike him like a sunbeam on the face.

  “Say, are you any good at words? Do you think you could help me out?”

  He held the pen out hopefully and she had to laugh.

  “I wouldn’t know where to start.”

  “I read this book — it said you should just put down whatever’s on your mind. My problem is, I don’t usually have anything on my mind. Maybe you do?”

  He leaned close again, and pulled the shades off. Behind them his blue eyes were frank, intelligent and above all, sincere. He had the same trick as Ric of doing something with them that could communicate more information than any other part of his face. And he was communicating that she could trust him.

  He waggled the end of the pen, inviting her to take it. She took it, thought, and then wrote:

  Ric thinks you’re an idiot.

  He pursed his lips with an approving nod.

  “Good opening line.” He took the pen back and wrote:

  Lots of people do.

  “The great thing about a blank sheet of paper,” he pointed out as he passed her the pen again, “is you can write anything you want on it. Anything at all.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  Beck’s story

  Amazing, the difference a day makes … Beck thought.

  The jungle zipped past, just metres below the helicopter. The jungle canopy was stippled with patches of orange, where the contours of the land pushed it up into the light of the new day, and pools of shadow where the new sun had yet to reach. Time: oh-six-hundred.

  Twenty-four hours earlier, he had been sitting and fretting in the Morenos’ apartment. Then he had got the call from James, made a call of his own … and things had escalated from there. Now he was in a helicopter, finally on his way to doing something.

  We’re coming, Dian …

  They had taken off from the city, heading north east, climbing to the helicopter’s cruising height. The spread of rain forest below merged into the sunrise haze. Beck could clearly see the point where the rainforest highlands became the lowlands. A sudden change in clarity and colour showed where the land fell away. Jaguar Studios was right on the edge of the highlands.

  Half an hour after taking off, the helicopter swooped down until its skids almost kissed the treetops. Beck sat by the open side door, buffeted by the warm, moist jungle air, grim-faced and silent, thinking through the next few hours.

  Sitting next to him, Arabella Moreno spoke a few words in Spanish to the pilot, and they adjusted course slightly. Other than that, no one said anything.

  Jorge Moreno had assured him: “the pilot is used to, let’s say, unusual destinations.” She was ex-military and ex-police, which meant she had already flown some interesting operations in her time before Green Force took her on. Green Force was a direct action group, and taking direct action often meant bending the rules. Not breaking them, just … flexing them, sometimes more than the lawmakers had imagined.

  Like now, for instance. There probably wasn’t any law anywhere that said, in writing, ‘dropping a fourteen-year-old boy off on his own in the jungle is illegal’. So, technically, they were doing nothing wrong.

  Al hadn’t been happy about this, to put it mildly, but even he had had to accept that this was how it had to be. They could get Dian out slowly, doing it through the courts, which could take years and maybe not work anyway — or they could do it this way. Al knew that Beck had the skills, and they owed it to Dian and Beck’s parents to do this themselves.

  Of all the survival missions he had ever been on, whether they had been thrust on him by accident or design, this was the most personal, and that included the time he and James had deliberately gone off the radar in Nepal to bring his parents’ killers to justice. They had succeeded in that one, but of course they couldn’t bring his parents back. Now he could do the next best thing — bring the family as back together as it ever could be.

  Beck, Al, James and the Morenos had worked the plan out over the satellite connection. James and Al had provided observations of the Jaguar layout. Beck had personally chosen the gear he would take with him. He wore a long-sleeved, collared shirt — you wanted as little bare skin as possible in the jungle — and trousers, both dark green to blend in; not exactly military camouflage (he didn’t want to give anyone the wrong idea if he was spotted) but close enough. The material was lightweight but tough enough to take the beating that the jungle’s harsh environment would throw at them, and they had mesh vents to let the air circulate against his skin, so that when he sweated — and he would, in bucket loads — it stood a chance of drying out rather than turning his armpits and groin into a rapid breeding ground for all kinds of fungus.