The Orphan Factory (The Orphan Trilogy, #2) (42 page)

Studying the new arrivals, Nine suddenly noticed a civilian among them. A sinewy Afro-Guyanese stood apart from the others, surveying his surroundings. Something about the man bothered Nine.

The orphan-operative wasn’t to know the man was Ram
Snake
Amos, a Guyanese-born Nexus agent. Known as Snake because of his lightning reflexes and speed, he’d been sent to the village as the Nexus Foundation had got wind of Omega’s interest in Quamina Ezekiel. It was in Nexus’ interests to ensure nothing happened to the official, especially as Ezekiel was a mind control victim who could be used like a puppet at any time. 

Seventeen lined up a soldier in her telescopic sight. She pretended he was the target and prepared for an imaginary kill shot. Other soldiers moved in front of the target, making it difficult for her to get a fix on him. At the same time, the rotating helicopter blades kicked up clouds of dust, briefly concealing the pretend target from Seventeen.

Perspiration rolled down Seventeen’s face and her hands felt sweaty. Suddenly, the mile that separated her and her target seemed more like two miles.

Nine, who could feel yet another headache coming on, noticed Seventeen was perspiring more than usual. He immediately wiped the sweat away with a hand towel he’d brought for just such a purpose. “You okay?”

Seventeen nodded.

As her designated spotter, it was Nine’s responsibility to support her any way he could. He went back to surveying the target zone through his binoculars, trying to get an accurate reading of personnel numbers, wind variance and anything else which could assist Seventeen to take her shot. While he did this, he maintained a steady patter, relaying the information to her in a calm voice. “Here comes Ezekiel now,” he said. Nine was referring to the third helicopter, which was descending toward the compound. “The chopper at nine o’clock.”

“I see it.” Seventeen focused her telescopic sight on the chopper just as it landed.

76

The events that followed occurred in the space of half a minute, but to the orphan-operatives it seemed much longer. To their eyes, everything seemed to happen in slow motion.

As soon as the third chopper landed, its doors opened and more soldiers piled out. Quamina Ezekiel was the last man to disembark.

Nine spotted him immediately. “I see the target. He’s wearing dark glasses and is dressed in a dark business suit, white shirt, black tie.”

“I see him,” Seventeen confirmed. 

Ezekiel, who was flanked by soldiers on all sides, strode toward the homestead. Nine estimated Seventeen had twenty seconds at most to take the shot before the target disappeared inside. If she didn’t take it soon, they’d have to wait until after the funeral and try again when Ezekiel returned to his chopper.

The soldiers respectfully hung back as Ezekiel approached the rear door of his family home. Seventeen finally had a clear shot. 

“Do it now,” Nine said softly.

Ezekiel’s head was in the center of the crosshairs of Seventeen’s telescopic sight. As she prepared for the shot, the only sound she could hear was Kentbridge’s voice in her mind. Her mentor sounded like a broken record.
Quamina Ezekiel must die
.
Quamina Ezekiel must die. Quamina Ezekiel must die
.

“Now,” Nine said with more urgency. He could see Seventeen had two seconds at most before Ezekiel disappeared indoors.

Seventeen didn’t hear him. She couldn’t even hear Kentbridge’s voice now. All she could hear was her beating heart. She emptied her lungs of air then, between heartbeats, gently squeezed the trigger.

The shot shattered the silence.

Staring through his binoculars, Nine waited for what seemed an eternity before he saw the results of Seventeen’s shot. In fact it was only two seconds, maybe three. The target’s head seemed to explode, like a ripe melon. “Target is down!” he exclaimed as Ezekiel fell to the ground.

Nine looked at Seventeen. She was still admiring her handiwork through her telescopic sight. Finally, she looked around at her partner. Her eyes were wild with excitement and triumph was written all over her face.

“Target terminated.” Nine returned his attention to the distant compound. He could see the soldiers had been thrown into a state of panic and confusion. They were running in all directions, trying to work out where the shot had come from and clearly afraid the next bullet could have their name on it.

Several soldiers could be seen dragging Ezekiel’s lifeless body into the homestead. Behind them, others were running back to the choppers they’d arrived in.

Nine saw the danger immediately. “Let’s go! They’re gonna come lookin’ for us.”

Not surprised they were about to become the object of a manhunt, the orphans crawled back into the nearby rainforest, dragging their gear and camouflage net with them. Safely in the trees, they made ready to depart for the designated extraction point where the British Military helicopter would collect them. First, they had a call to make.

#

The call Naylor, Kentbridge and Marcia had been waiting for came at three o’clock. They’d been waiting by the satellite phone in the agency’s boardroom since Kentbridge had phoned their orphan-operatives earlier that day to advise them Ezekiel’s scheduled arrival had been delayed.

When the phone buzzed, they all reflexively reached for it. Kentbridge beat them to it. “Tommy speaking.”

“We got him, sir.” The voice was Nine’s. He sounded breathless.

Kentbridge felt his heart leap. He flicked the phone over to speakerphone. “Say again, Nine.”

“Seventeen got the kill,” Nine said. His voice came through loud and clear. “It was a clean shot over one mile.”

“Stand by,” Kentbridge ordered. He flicked off the speakerphone and turned to the others. “Hear that? They got him.”

Naylor let out a triumphant yell. He picked up Marcia and swung her round, laughing.

As soon as the celebrations died down, Kentbridge flicked on the speakerphone again. “Well done you two.” He assumed Seventeen was listening in on speakerphone at the other end. “Precisely when did you take out the target?”

“Precisely three minutes ago.” It was Seventeen this time.

“Alright, don’t waste any time. You know they’ll be coming after you.” Kentbridge was referring to Ezekiel’s supporters – his Wapishana supporters in particular. The Wapishana knew the Amazon intimately. They were expert trackers, and they would dearly love to capture the people who had killed their beloved leader.

“Yessir. One of their choppers is overhead as we speak.”

“A British Military helicopter will be waiting for you at midnight your time. Don’t be late.” Kentbridge ended the call and turned to the others. They were grinning.

“We must give Lady Penelope the good news,” Naylor said. He speed-dialed a number on his cell phone.

“It’s early hours of the morning in Britain,” Marcia cautioned.

“She won’t mind. She’ll be delighted.” Naylor paused when the phone call he’d placed was answered. “Lady Penelope? It’s Andrew Naylor. I have some good news.”

As a triumphant Naylor relayed the news to a receptive Lady Penelope, and a beaming Marcia hung on every word, Kentbridge became pensive. He knew his orphans still had to reach their extraction point, and that wouldn’t be easy. The special agent hoped they would successfully put everything he’d taught them over the years into practice.

Kentbridge suddenly had a flashback to a summer’s day almost two decades earlier when seven of the orphans were just new-born babies. He recalled the trepidation he’d felt while watching Omega staff release the new-borns in a swimming pool in Chicago to see if they’d sink or swim.
They survived that.
He could still see them swimming underwater as if it was yesterday.

The more Kentbridge thought about his genetically superior orphans and the amazing feats they’d achieved throughout their formative years, the more his fears for Nine and Seventeen’s wellbeing began to evaporate.

No matter what, they will make it out of the jungle
.

77

Beneath the canopy of trees in Guyana’s Amazon rainforest, it was already dark by five o’clock. Two hours had elapsed since Nine and Seventeen had relayed the news to Kentbridge that Quamina Ezekiel was dead.

Initially, they’d made good time, covering the first mile of their five-mile journey in under an hour. Then the rain had started – and it rained as only it can in the tropics. It was torrential. Within minutes, the already damp forest floor had been turned into a sea of mud, and mountain streams into raging torrents. That, combined with the steep terrain in this remote corner of the Kanukus, made progress impossibly slow.

Nine calculated they’d only covered a few hundred yards in the past hour, so treacherous was it underfoot and so densely forested the route they followed. The deluge was accompanied by lightning. It lit up the rainforest at regular intervals, which was just as well because the heavy rain had rendered the night vision goggles almost useless.

Nightfall and rain were mixed blessings for the orphan-operatives. On the one hand, the rain washed away their tracks and the darkness all but hid whatever signs remained, making it extremely difficult for the Guyanese soldiers and their Wapishana Amerindian trackers to follow them. On the other hand, the conditions slowed their own progress. At the current rate, they knew they’d be pushing it to reach their helicopter extraction point by midnight.

Nine and Seventeen thought it highly likely they were being followed. Although they hadn’t yet encountered anyone on the ground, the Guyanese Military helicopters had been flying overhead up until an hour earlier when the storm had forced them to return to Ezekielville. The pair guessed that trackers had found the kill site and picked up their spoor soon after Ezekiel had been killed. That information would have been relayed immediately to the soldiers who, in turn, would have conveyed it to the chopper pilots.

Nine figured that before the rain had arrived it was likely the pilots would have sighted them beneath the treetop canopy courtesy of the infrared thermal imaging technology their choppers were undoubtedly equipped with. In which case, their location and the direction they were headed was now known to all and sundry. He also figured that before the choppers had been forced from the skies, they’d probably dropped off soldiers up ahead of them, so that he and Seventeen would now be sandwiched between at least two hunting parties.

Although there’d been no time to discuss any of this with Seventeen, she’d already reached the same conclusions.

Trailing Nine through the mud, Seventeen cursed as she slipped and slid down a steep embankment. Nine waited for her to climb back up to him before pressing onwards.

It was a case of two steps forward, one step backwards. Despite their superior fitness, they were both finding the going tough. Their lungs were burning and their legs felt like they were made of concrete.

The pair were grateful they now traveled light. After phoning Kentbridge, they’d dispensed with the satellite phone and with their packs and most of their gear. All they carried now was their firearms, water bottles, machetes, night vision goggles, and a small pouch containing survival rations, maps and co-ordinates for their destination. Nine also carried a hunting knife on his hip.

Between lightning flashes, the pair basically ran blind through the darkness and rain. Branches and vines clawed at their flesh and clothes as they ran.

After running blind for what seemed like a minute, Nine suddenly pulled up. Unsighted, Seventeen crashed into him.

“What is it?” She had to shout to make herself heard above the storm.

“I’m not sure.”

There was another lightning flash. It lasted a few seconds and illuminated a ravine not ten yards ahead. With the next flash, they gingerly inched toward the edge and looked down.

“Jesus!” Seventeen took an involuntary step backwards when she saw the drop. “That’s not meant to be here.” She couldn’t recall seeing the ravine on her map.

Looking down, Nine estimated it was a drop of at least five hundred feet.

“Don’t even think about it,” Seventeen said. “There’s no way down there.”

“There’s no time to back-track. We have to go down.”

Seventeen knew he was right. Retracing their steps to find a safe route around the obstacle below would only take them closer to those who were undoubtedly tracking them.

Damn it! Why is he always so right?

She stared out into the darkness beyond the ravine, knowing their extraction point was in that direction – only a few tantalizing miles away.

The two looked at each other as more lightning flashes illuminated their grim features.

For one millisecond, Nine thought he saw fear in his partner’s eyes. “Let’s go,” he said.

#

Less than half a mile behind the orphan-operatives, three Wapishana trackers doggedly followed their quarry’s trail. Each was consumed by the need for revenge. They were desperate to catch those responsible for the assassination of their tribe’s revered leader.

Two of them carried shotguns – the favored hunting weapon of modern-day Wapishana. The third carried a bow and a quiver full of poison-tipped arrows, a concession to the tribe’s traditional ways. The first two also carried heavy duty flashlights while the third carried a two-way radio in a backpack. He used this every so often to relay their location to the twenty soldiers who struggled to keep up some distance behind, and to the dozen or so others the choppers had dropped off up ahead of their quarry.

It was slow going for the trackers. The relentless rain had washed away most of their quarry’s tracks and the darkness hid most other signs. Most but not all. Every now and then, the eagle-eyed trackers spotted something in the light of their torches: a single boot print in the mud; a freshly bent branch; a broken twig; a stone out of place.

The going would have been even slower if the choppers hadn’t reported their quarry’s route. That information had enabled the trackers to second-guess where the pair were headed. The Wapishana knew the rainforest intimately. They also knew its shortcuts.