Survival
Authors: Russell Blake
JET VIII – Survival
Russell Blake
Copyright © 2014 by Russell Blake. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used, reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, without the written permission of the publisher, except where permitted by law, or in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information, contact:
Cover Photo by: Regina Wamba of
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Contents
Thrillers by Russell Blake
FATAL EXCHANGE
THE GERONIMO BREACH
ZERO SUM
THE DELPHI CHRONICLE TRILOGY
THE VOYNICH CYPHER
SILVER JUSTICE
UPON A PALE HORSE
The Assassin Series by Russell Blake
KING OF SWORDS
NIGHT OF THE ASSASSIN
RETURN OF THE ASSASSIN
REVENGE OF THE ASSASSIN
BLOOD OF THE ASSASSIN
REQUIEM FOR THE ASSASSIN
The JET Series by Russell Blake
JET
JET II – BETRAYAL
JET III – VENGEANCE
JET IV – RECKONING
JET V – LEGACY
JET VI – JUSTICE
JET VII – SANCTUARY
JET VIII – SURVIVAL
JET – OPS FILES (prequel)
The BLACK Series by Russell Blake
BLACK
BLACK IS BACK
BLACK IS THE NEW BLACK
BLACK TO REALITY
Co-authored with Clive Cussler
THE EYE OF HEAVEN
Non Fiction by Russell Blake
AN ANGEL WITH FUR
HOW TO SELL A GAZILLION EBOOKS
(while drunk, high or incarcerated)
About the Author
A
Wall Street Journal
and
The Times
featured author, Russell Blake lives full time on the Pacific coast of Mexico. He is the acclaimed author of many thrillers, including the Assassin series, the JET series, and the BLACK series. He has also co-authored
The Eye of Heaven
with Clive Cussler for Penguin Books.
“Capt.” Russell enjoys writing, fishing, playing with his dogs, collecting and sampling tequila, and waging an ongoing battle against world domination by clowns.
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Chapter 1
San Cristóbal, Chocó, Colombia
Six black Chevy Suburban SUVs bounced along the muddy road to San Cristóbal, nineteen miles from the northern border in the infamous Darién Gap, a stretch of inhospitable rain forest that separated Panama from Colombia. The lead vehicle swayed as it hit a particularly ugly rut, spraying a shower of brown water into the air, and then straightened as it accelerated down a clear section.
Cotton puffs of clouds drifted from the east, following the course of the Rio Atrato as it wound its way to the Caribbean, the sky robin’s egg blue, the surrounding jungle a surreal green. The big vehicles lumbered along the track, almost impassible under the best of circumstances and made worse by the morning cloudburst that had blown through at sunrise.
Steam rose from the moist edges of the trail as the equatorial sun rose above the rainforest, its blistering rays intense even at the early hour. Soon the temperature would climb into the triple digits; but now, on a Tuesday morning, it was bearable, although all of the Suburban’s opaque windows, tinted inky black, were rolled up, the occupants unrecognizable behind the covering.
The convoy came around a bend and neared a scattering of shacks, no more than twenty squalid dwellings built along the banks of the winding river, a strip of forgotten misery that was the hamlet bearing the name of a forgotten saint. Smoke rose from the dented tin chimneys of four of the buildings. Fading green and blue paint peeled from their weathered plank walls, a luxury from a more prosperous past now all but forgotten.
A congregation of children, their clothes barely more than rags, stood beneath a tree with their fishing lines in the water. At the unfamiliar sound of motors they looked up, eyes luminescent in their dark faces, expressions already the wary and somber cast of adults. The oldest, perhaps eight, sprinted for one of the shacks as the younger ones stood transfixed at the approaching procession.
The SUV doors flew open and two dozen men leapt from the vehicles, brandishing AK-47 assault rifles, a favorite in Central and South America. Durable and cheap, hundreds of thousands of the ugly weapons were left over from the wars that had ravaged El Salvador and Nicaragua decades earlier.
The men fanned out, weapons at the ready, and marched deliberately toward the buildings. Only one of the passengers didn’t carry a rifle – a tall man with slicked-back black hair, tiny beads of perspiration on his high forehead and skin the color of freshly dried tobacco. His white silk Armani shirt was out of place in the rustic setting, as were his obviously expensive linen trousers and the platinum Rolex Masterpiece on his wrist, but if he noticed, he gave no indication.
It was the engraved Colt M1911 .45-caliber pistol in his right hand that the lone villager who stepped out of one of the buildings was staring at as the gunmen approached. When the tall man with the handgun was ten yards from the villager, he stopped and looked at his watch, then spit in the muddy red dirt at his feet as the riflemen on either side of him swept the buildings with their barrels, eyes alert.
“Did you really think you could screw me, Alonzo?” the tall man asked in a menacing purr. “You think I’d see product disappear like that and not figure it out?”
Alonzo’s eyes were wide, but he squared his shoulders and stepped forward. “You’ve got it wrong. We were robbed by another group. I told you that.”
“Who would dare rob you? Knowing that you work for me?”
“I don’t know. I think it’s a rogue group that’s up in the Darién. They hit us hard. Before we could do anything, they’d disarmed us and made off with the powder.”
“And nobody was killed? You expect me to believe that?”
A muscle in Alonzo’s jaw pulsed as he ground his teeth, and his eyelid twitched. “It’s the truth. I swear it.”
The man with the pistol chuckled. “I let you get away with this, and I’ll be able to hear the laughter all the way from Bogotá.”
Alonzo held his hands up in a defensive stance. “Don’t do this. I’ll make it up. Somehow.”
The gunman turned to the nearest man and grunted. “Kill them all.”
Alonzo’s gaze moved to the children by the tree, who were frozen in place as they watched the altercation. He screamed at the top of his lungs, his voice a tortured rasp. “Run!”
The .45 barked three times and Alonzo’s chest exploded. Red blossoms stained his shirt as he flew backward. The riflemen opened up on full auto, firing bursts into the houses with methodical precision. A young man ducked his head out from one of the shacks, pistol in hand, and fired a panicked volley at the approaching shooters. One of his rounds punched into a squat man with a braided ponytail, catching him high in the chest. The wounded man jerked before straightening and continuing to fire; his second burst took the top of the villager’s head off.
Three young women ran from a building close to the river and were nearing the bend that would shield them from the killers when more rifle fire rang out and cut them down. Their screams echoed off the rushing water as their bodies tumbled like puppets with their strings cut. The gunman who had shot them ejected his spent magazine and slapped another in place, and then continued his systematic shooting, kicking down doors, sparing no one.
The children were waist deep in the river when the pistol rang out. One of the boys hurtled face forward, the slug having slammed into his back and blown half his chest out. His companions watched him float in the current, his life seeping around him in a red stain, and then another child fell to the handgun’s wrath. The remaining children screamed in terror and splashed further into the river as a gunman brought his assault rifle to bear on them and churned the water into a bloody froth.
A shotgun boomed from one of the most distant shacks, once, then again, and two of the attackers dropped to the ground, the closest still firing his rifle as his finger spasmodically squeezed the trigger, spraying bullets indiscriminately. Another gunman cried out as a round hit him in the thigh, shattering his femur, and collapsed as if in slow motion, his leg buckling beneath him even as he fired into the air. Three others ran in a crouch toward the building, firing as they neared. Their slugs sent showers of splinters into the sky as they unloaded their weapons at the hovel.