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.She moved swiftly through the underbrush, keeping down, doing her best to jostle as few leaves as possible.She could hear their steady progress and she sped up.The waterfall grew louder and louder, and suddenly the clearing was in sight.She reached the edge, just about to break through, when something slammed her to the ground, something huge and crushing, smashing her face into the dirt as a hand clamped around her mouth.She knew that hand – it had covered her mouth before.She was getting to know the body as well, heavier than the gaunt frame would suggest.“What the fuck are you doing?” His voice was no more than a breath in her ear.“No, don’t answer that.Do you want to get yourself killed?”She didn’t bother answering that either.She let her body relax, so that he’d know she’d recognized him, wasn’t going to fight him, and he slowly took his hand away from her mouth.The soldiers had reached the clearing, and they were arguing, angrily, looking back toward the way they came.She turned her head, just able to see them.“You expect to get out of here, you need to give us MacGowan,” the older man said.“We don’t get him, you go back to the camp.”“He’s here,” the voice came back.The German accent made it unmistakable.“He must have heard you coming.It’s not my fault if you’re clumsy.”Carlos was looking at the German out of narrowed eyes.And then, to Beth’s shock, he raised his gun and fired, three times.She couldn’t see Froelich fall, but she heard the thud, just as she saw an older man cuff Carlos along the side of his head.“Stupido! You wait for orders! They could have heard your shots and hidden.”Carlos looked sullen.“He was of no use to us.He lost us the man and the gringa.Better to leave him here.”MacGowan levered himself off her body, slowly, and Beth felt a sudden panic.What the hell was he planning to do? She reached out a hand to stop him but he was already gone, circling around the clearing, and she let her face drop against the dirt with a silent groan.The men kept arguing, only half of the words intelligible to her untrained ears, and she wanted to cover her head with her arms to shut everything out.She could smell death in the thick, hot air, and she wanted to gag.She closed her eyes and breathed through her mouth, slow, deep breaths, as she tried to shut out what lay in the clearing.A moment later there was an explosion of sound, gunfire, and she jerked her head up to see MacGowan on the ground with the older man, locked in a furious struggle.Carlos had been knocked back against a tree, and he was lying there, dazed, as the third man circled the combatants, trying to take a shot.MacGowan’s leg shot out, sweeping the other man, and he went down, hard.MacGowan surged up, leaving the older man unconscious or maybe dead, and leaped onto the second, catching the man’s head in his hands and giving it a quick, vicious jerk.She didn’t need the sound of crunching bones to know he’d broken his neck, killing him instantly.He rose, looking down at the first man, reaching for the gun in his dead hand, when Carlos came at him, his machete raised high, too quick for MacGowan to stop him.“No!” Beth screamed, moving on instinct, slamming into Carlos, knocking him off balance before he could hack into MacGowan’s exposed back.Carlos caught her against his skinny body, bringing the machete up to her throat, so tight she could feel it begin to bite into her skin, as MacGowan turned around, the dead soldier’s gun in his hand.“Let her go, hermano,” he said in rough Spanish.“You can’t win.”“I’m not your brother,” Carlos spat.“And I think it’s you who are the one who can’t win.”“Don’t make me kill you.You’re just a kid.” MacGowan’s voice was unutterably weary.“You shoot me, I go over the falls, and I take her with me.You want to risk that?” Carlos taunted him.MacGowan shrugged.And pulled the trigger.Beth felt the recoil of his body before the explosion of sound in her ear, deafening her.The machete dropped, but his grip on her held, and a moment later he sank back, falling into thin air, dragging her with him.“Shit,” MacGowan said wearily, kicking off the poor remnants of his boots and dropping the gun beside the dead body.And a moment later he dove after her, his body slicing through the heavy rush of water.It was bitter cold, melted ice from the peaks of the Andes, and the shock took his breath away.He cursed himself all the way down.The force of landing wrong would probably kill her, if she managed to avoid the stone sides of the canyon.The water was so cold she’d go numb in short order and be unable to swim.He was doing this for nothing.Some quixotic gesture that if he’d stopped for a moment to think about it, he would have stayed where he was, mopping up after Froelich.His body cleaved the water neatly, lessening the shock, though immersion in the icy river was hard enough.He surfaced, looking around him for a body floating face down.There was one, but it was Carlos, half of his head blown away by the gun he’d taken off the dead rebel [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]