Eye of the Cobra (56 page)

Emerson knew he was not safe here. He must get away before Phelps launched a search. Phelps would know that he must be hiding somewhere in the complex - it was only the day before that he’d discussed the latest consignment with him, over the phone.

Leaving Carlos with Suzie, Wyatt made his move as Phelps stepped inside the building. He padded up slowly behind the pilot and smashed his hand down hard against the man’s skull. Then he dragged him down into the jungle next to Carlos and Suzie.

The pilot came round ten minutes later, the nose of Carlos’s Colt 45 rammed in the roof of his mouth.

‘One shout, my friend, and this goes off,’ Carlos said. ‘Nod if you want to co-operate.’

The pilot nodded, peering nervou
sly at his strange assailants.

Wyatt whispered to him: ‘Tell him the take-off procedure.’

The pilot rattled off a list of complex instructions, and Carlos went over them again and again, memorising the procedure. Then they left the pilot, lying face down, his arms bound behind him, with a primed hand-grenade in his hands. One wrong move and it would spring loose, blowing him to pieces.

They moved out across the tarmac, moving quietly, watch
ing the building. Carlos slipped down behind the controls of the chopper, and breathed a sigh of relief: they were just as the pilot had described them.

‘Wyatt,’ he whispered, ‘we’re going to make it. Lie her on the seat next to me and strap her in.’

When Wyatt had done this, he kissed Suzie on the lips, then drew away. Carlos looked up.

‘Come on!’ he said urgently. ‘We must get out of here!’

Wyatt stepped out onto the ground.

‘Go,’ he said. ‘I have an old score to settle.’

‘Don’t be a fool! They’ll kill you! We must get out of here, now!’

Wyatt looked round nervously. Carlos was running out of time.

Carlos stared into Wyatt’s eyes. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘I go. But I will come back for you.’

He eased the controls of the chopper back and felt the machine lift off from the tiny launch-pad. He looked down, seeing Wyatt leap into the green jungle and disappear.

God, Estelle would never forgive him for this.

Suzie started moaning hysterically, and he powered the chopper away. The bright lights of the factory buildings faded as they disappeared down into a sea of blackness.

Then suddenly, without any warning, he felt the cold steel of a gun-barrel, thrust up beneath his right earlobe.

‘Yes,’ a voice said, ‘we are all going to make it.’

Carlos sat uneasily in the pilot’s seat, with Suzie lying next to him, moaning.

‘Let me introduce myself, Carlos Ramirez. I am Antonio

Vargas. I suppose I should count myself fortunate that you paid me a visit. At least, thanks to your assistance, I was able to leave my other unwelcome American visitors behind. And I am a generous man. I will give the young lady a shot of what she craves.’

Carlos turned, but stopped as the metal pressed hard into his ear. Vargas stuck a hypodermic into Suzie’s arm, and within a few minutes her moanings had ceased.

‘My friend, I suggest that you stick to playing polo. You are out of your depth, just like your poor brother.’

As Carlos listened, the hair stood up on the back of his neck. Memories came flooding back; memories of his brother David and the tape-recordings he had played him of the sadistic pleasures of a certain Mr Emerson Ortega. The voice was the same. He wouldn’t have realised it but for the darkness masking the features of Antonio Vargas.

‘You are Emerson Ortega,’ Carlos muttered quietly.

He felt the pressure of the barrel on his cheek lessen. The silence was chilling. All he could hear was the steady hum of the helicopter’s turbo-shafts.

‘You have just sealed your death-warrant, my friend.’

‘And you think that will save you life, Ortega? Jack Phelps has very powerful connections, not just in the United States military, as you’ve seen, but also in the CIA. So you’re a dead man as well, my friend.’

‘OK, Ramirez, I think you are right. A dead man, but right . . . Yes, I must eliminate Phelps. Take the chopper back to the base.’

‘But they’ll kill us before we land,’ Carlos said, holding the cyclic tightly.

Ortega laughed.

‘My special bodyguard will probably have killed most of them already. But we’ll just make sure that Phelps is perma
nently silenced.’

Talbot spotted Jules Ortega’s body lying next to the phone. He leaned down and held the palm of his hand against Jules’s face, and smiled.

‘Ah. Not so dead.’

He pulled out a cigarette lighter and flicked it on, toasting Ortega’s ear, and as Ortega rolled over, clutching his singed ear lobe and screaming, Talbot kicked him hard.

‘Where’s Emerson?’

‘Who?’

‘Your brother Emerson. Or Antonio Vargas, if you want to continue the charade, buddy.’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Yes, you do. Now talk.’

Talbot ripped the waistband off Ortega’s pants and yanked them down. He pulled the Colombian to his feet, flicked the lighter on and held it to his penis.

Jules gave a cry of agony, and the uncontrollable flow of his urine put out the flame. Talbot swore, adjusted the lighter and flicked it on again, this time with a long flame.

‘Please!’ Jules Ortega begged. ‘My brother is in the bunker just to the west of the main installation. I will show you.’

Phelps admired the layout of the factory complex. Talbot had done a good job, using the Ortegas. Now it was just a matter of tidying up the loose ends, and the business would run itself.

The new military junta in Colombia was successfully destroying all the cartels, so that his would be the only one left functioning. Talbot would run it well. Talbot was a killing- machine fuelled by money.

He heard screams and gun fire outside, no doubt Emerson Ortega’s elite personal bodyguard were still putting up some resistance. They stood no chance against Talbot’s men.

Jack Phelps was now the world’s sole supplier of cocaine.

The door burst open, and he found himself face to face with Wyatt Chase.

‘Phelps, you bastard. It was you who took Suzie!’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Phelps said. ‘I don’t know what you’re doing here either, but you’re way out of your depth.’

‘You had her put away because she found out too much. Just like you did my father.’

Wyatt moved towards the desk, and Phelps raised the Uzi carbine from between his legs and point it at Wyatt’s stomach.

‘Try me,’ he said. ‘I practice every day - just like you.’

Wyatt stopped in his tracks. He saw Phelps’s finger brush the trigger. He shouldn’t have been so stupid, shouldn’t have allowed himself to get into this position - but he was tired and angry.

‘Sit down, Wyatt. Enjoy the last few moments of your singularly purposeless existence.’

Talbot’s men cut down the last of Emerson Ortega’s elite bodyguard. Then they moved into the bunker, throwing a grenade into each room and blowing it apart before entering. The entire clearing operation was over in less than four minutes. A soldier ran up to Talbot and whispered something in his ear, and an ugly expression appeared on the American’s face.

‘The bastard’s flown!’ he screamed at Jules Ortega. Talbot dragged Jules still naked from the waist down, close to his face, and flicked his lighter on.

‘He was after the two men who took Suzie von Falkenhyn,’ Ortega stammered. ‘Before you came, we were attacked, and two men took her. They must have escaped in the helicopter with Emerson. He cannot fly.’

Talbot barked out orders to his men and they ran from the bunker towards the airstrip. He turned back to Ortega.

‘Let’s go down to the patio.’

Jules walked nervously in front of Talbot through the lounge and out onto the patio that looked down over the darkness of the Amazon jungle.

‘Stand on the ledge.’

‘No! Please, no!’

Talbot dropped his weapon, moved towards Ortega, then turned and delivered a side-kick into his stomach that lifted him into the air and out into the void.

The screams echoed in the darkness.

The door of the room opened and Talbot stepped in alone.

‘The operation . . .’

He stopped speaking the moment he saw Wyatt sitting beside the desk in front of Phelps.

‘You are surprised, Wyatt, at our visitor?’

Rod and Wyatt stared at each other. So many years, so much, since then - since they’d first been together in the
dojo.

Wyatt looked from one to the other. Talbot and Phelps. Phelps and Talbot. A trail of evil winding back in time to Talbot, winding its way forward to Phelps.

Where did it begin and where did it end?

Where was the eye of the cobra?

Was he looking at it here, in this room?

Wyatt saw the challenge in Talbot’s eyes and knew he was ready for it.

‘Chase . . .’

‘The operation is a success?’ Phelps asked, wondering what the connection between Talbot and Chase might be.

‘We’ll commence full-scale production in twenty-four hours.’

‘Very good,’ said Phelps, rising to his feet. ‘Then I’ll take my leave of you. I trust you’ll take care of Wyatt?’

‘Oh yes, very good care.’

‘Thank you, Rod. Just make sure he’s dead before the night’s out.’

‘I’ll get you, you bastard,’ Wyatt said softly to Phelps.

‘You’re just a pawn in the game, Wyatt, nothing more. Just like James.’

‘What do you mean?’

Phelps settled on the edge of his desk.

‘Seeing as you’re going to lose your life, I might as well let you in on one of the facts that shaped it. Your father was like you in a lot of ways. Naive, I think, is a good word to sum you two up. You remember, of course, that I was his biggest sponsor? Well, he discovered, completely by accident, that I was using his racing operation to smuggle heroin into various European countries. He refused to take a cut, which is what I thought he wanted, and then he very stupidly told me he was going to the police.’

‘You killed him!’

‘Well, not specifically me, but an associate of mine - rather like Rod. Let me unlock your memory. You were going for a drive after the race; an associate of mine actuated your steering-lock by remote control as you drove round the bend.
You just couldn’t avoid going over the edge of the cliff after that. It’s actually a miracle you survived.’

Wyatt tried not to think about it - the hell that his life had been after the accident. He felt the hatred burning in his soul. Phelps had killed his father; Phelps had caused Danny to commit suicide. And Wyatt had taken the blame.

Wyatt looked up to see the barrel of the gun Talbot was now pointing at him. He knew that if he so much as shifted his body-weight, Talbot would kill him.

The door closed, and Phelps was gone.

Talbot put the pistol down on the table and Wyatt moved into the centre of the room. In a moment they were both back in Tokyo, and the intervening years vanished as if they had never been.

‘Why?’

Wyatt asked, moving into the fighting stance.

‘Why?’

Talbot laughed.

‘You’re a fine one to talk. You’re the one who got the highest honour. That’s why I left the
dojo
first, because the highest honour went to you and you would have taken control. I didn’t want to spend my life in a sweaty old
dojo
knowing I was second choice.’

Talbot moved closer, poised to launch his attack.

‘There was no favouritism, you know that,’ Wyatt said. Talbot smiled a chilly smile.

‘Now we will find the truth.’

Wyatt looked into Talbot’s cold green eyes and saw the madness there.

‘I have used my talents as you have used yours,’ Talbot said. ‘To make money.’

Wyatt was waiting for the blow that must come.

‘You kill for money,’ he said. ‘You fight against men who are weaker than you. That is no challenge. You have betrayed everything that you were taught.’

Talbot was faster than he’d expected and the kick caught him in the side of the head, even though he tried to block it. The steel toe-cap of Talbot’s boot impacted against the side of his skull and sent him flying across the floor. Talbot whirled after him, piling blows into his kidneys.

Wyatt raised himself up and dodged the blow aimed again at his skull. He cartwheeled backwards to the centre of the room, his eye on Talbot the whole time. He spun round, and chopped the American hard below the neck.

Talbot screamed out in agony, then launched another series of blows which Wyatt deftly avoided. Wyatt launched a kick forward which smashed into Talbot’s stomach.