Hunters, Matt Rogers [pdf ebook reader .txt] 📗

question were getting worse. The Nissan thumped and bounced over the deep potholes, rattling them to their cores. King kept his bad arm pressed deep in his lap, trying to minimise the grinding pressure on the torn muscles. Each vicious pothole drew a wince out of him. He twisted to see Slater, who had his eyes squeezed shut, still not fully recovered from the concussion in Vegas. He was clearly riding out a migraine.

They floored it for ten minutes, their concerns going unspoken. They were all aware of the stakes. Sitio del Niño fell away, replaced by stormy countryside, then the outskirts of a new town crept up on them.

A sign read: JOYA DE CERÉN.

The jeep’s headlights grew brighter in the rear view.

Gaining ground, mile by tense mile.

King asked, ‘Does the government know this is your ride?’

Antônia’s eyes flashed with fear, then she composed her thoughts and remembered. ‘No. I stole it from a lot, just in case. But if they see me…’

She trailed off, her terror internal, but she didn’t have to finish. King knew what awaited her if she was identified aiding enemies of the state.

Immediate excommunication, if not imprisonment and death if she was caught.

Her life, her career, all her potential — over.

He could see it getting to her, the hypotheticals worming their way into her brain.

They drove onto a bridge that rattled under their wheels, passing over a raging river swollen from the rainfall. King saw the rapids churning, looking out the fogged-up passenger window.

The jeep hit the bridge five seconds behind them.

Antônia jolted like she’d been electrocuted, and suddenly she was overwhelmed.

‘Fuck this,’ she said through gritted teeth.

‘Breathe,’ King said, but it was too late.

The road was a straight shot for at least a couple of miles. If they stayed on it, it was only a matter of time before the jeep closed the final hundred yards and rammed them off the road.

So Antônia took matters into her own hands.

She swerved left as soon as they were off the bridge, stamping on the brakes at the same time so they skidded into the tree line. King made out some sort of community through the trees — a cluster of buildings grouped together. The buildings were all deserted, ominous under the storm clouds. There was too much going on, but King thought it was some sort of archeological site.

Then the Nissan plummeted down a steep drop in the woods, and they plunged below the line of sight from the road.

Antônia skidded the old pickup to a halt at the base of the gully and threw her door open.

Alexis cried, ‘What are you doing?!’

Slater said, ‘Abandoning us.’

Antônia spun, her eyes aflame. ‘If they see me, my life is over. All of you run ahead. You’ve got a head start. If we all bunker down, we’ll lose them. There’s no other option.’

King focused hard, concentrating only on what he could control. ‘Weapons?’

‘There’s a few in the rear tray. All I could get my hands on.’

Then Antônia was gone, melting into the gloom.

They had no time to speculate. King said, ‘Out.’

They piled out of the pickup, soaked to the bone within seconds. Torrents of rain fell through the canopy overhead, forming miniature waterfalls as the broad leaves overflowed and dipped each time they needed to release the water they held.

Dozens of feet above the gully and encroaching hillsides, the sound of screeching tyres trickled down into the woods.

King rounded to the rear trunk and found a pile of Kalashnikov AK-47s, old-school relics that he knew Antônia had chosen for a reason. They were swimming in a few inches of rainwater within the rear tray, but what they lacked in innovation they made up for in brutish reliability. They would shoot in any circumstances — soaked, battered, thrown around, clogged.

He tossed one to Slater, who took Alexis’ hand and ran with her into the lush plant growth, heading for the strange buildings.

He handed Violetta the second rifle, then scooped up the third and abandoned the Nissan just as torch beams appeared at the peak of the hill, shining down into the jungle shadow.

Violetta stayed on his heels as they moved in a diagonally opposite direction to Slater, beelining for the opposite side of the community.

As he got closer, the gloom receded, exposing what the buildings were.

They were towering husks of metal scaffolding looming over the real prizes. The metal exoskeletons covered ancient households with thatched roofs and other similarly preserved structures.

King found himself awestruck.

It was an archaeological site, the remnants of a Mayan farming village.

The ruins of Joya de Cerén.

55

Three silhouettes stood at the lip of the jungle, the water-soaked asphalt of the road at their backs.

Not forty-eight hours ago two of the trio had been in the Oval Office, a world away from this hellhole.

But there was reward in venturing to the Northern Triangle.

Opal turned to his brutish right-hand-man. ‘Flush them out?’

Topaz grinned his trademark grin, made more sinister by the rainwater flowing down his face. All three of them were soaked to the bone, but so were the prey they hunted.

Whenever Topaz spoke, it was an event. The man was practically mute. Now he said, ‘Slater and his girl went to the right.’

‘You want him?’

‘Yeah,’ Topaz said, barely audible over the storm. ‘I want him.’

Opal turned to the third member. He was huge. At least six foot eight. He didn’t seem overweight, but it took three hundred pounds of bodyweight to fill that frame. He was vaguely Scandinavian, resembling a Norse Viking from centuries before. Blonde hair tied back, blonde beard thick enough to mask his sharp jaw, and baby blue eyes. Conventionally attractive, but all that was thrown aside by his demeanour. Opal had worked with the man for nigh on five years, and he’d only had maybe five minutes of superficial conversation with him. Everything that came out of his mouth did so with withering intensity. The giant was a strange, philosophical man. Opal didn’t judge.

Whatever you needed to do to get through the day