“No,” she said. “It’s okay. Let’s just drive to Cajamarca.”
“Pull the car over!”
From there, everything happened in a flash. Reyes shouted again and leveled the pistol at her head. She realized this might be her only chance to act and slammed hard on the brakes. The sudden deceleration caused his extended arm to swing forward. His hand smacked against the dashboard and the pistol discharged into the windshield.
As the glass shattered, Emma swung her right arm toward him. Her hand was stiff, her fingers outstretched. The edge of her palm caught him in the throat, a perfect backhand to his Adam’s apple.
The blow crushed his windpipe and Reyes dropped the pistol.
Her foot went to the accelerator, slamming it to the floor. He fell back now, thrown off balance again.
As he reeled in the seat, she reached down for the pistol, trying to pluck it off the floor. Her fingers brushed it, but before she could pick it up, he did the unthinkable, lunging for the steering wheel and pushing it hard to the right.
The wheels turned sharply. The Toyota skidded and then went over on its side. The windshield blew out and the old SUV slid toward the far edge of the road and the cliff beyond. It went halfway over the edge and crashed headlong into a gnarled tree that grew from the side of a steep slope and stopped.
The impact knocked Emma unconscious. Whether it was seconds or a minute or more, she didn’t know. When she woke up, she was lying on her side and pinned by the steering wheel. A hissing sound could be heard, and she was surrounded by a cloud of steam that was venting from the Toyota’s shattered radiator.
Reyes was nowhere to be seen. And with the damaged windshield completely missing, she assumed he’d been ejected.
“That was foolish,” she grunted, angry at herself. Angry at him as well, wherever he was.
She twisted around, felt a spike of pain shoot through her ribs and laid eyes on the containment unit. It remained in place, strapped down as it had been.
Emma stretched far enough to reach the control panel. As her fingers touched the screen, it lit up. The indicators were all green. Power was still flowing through the unit. The magnetic bottles were intact and the cryogenic system was still operating.
“Thank God, they didn’t give this contract to the lowest bidder,” she whispered.
For obvious reasons, the units were incredibly durable and well made. They’d been designed to survive years in space, cosmic radiation, extremes of heat, cold and pressure, not to mention the turbulence and vibration of reentry and landing or even a minor crash.
Fortunately, the one car accident was not more severe than those conditions.
All Emma had to do was get out of the Land Cruiser, find her former guard and hope that the phone in his pocket had survived his ejection and landing in the road.
She pushed against the steering column that had been loosened by the blow against the tree until she was able to shove it far enough to slide her legs free. Then she pulled them up toward her and eased into a sitting position.
With the Toyota over on its side and the front windshield gone, the easiest way out was forward. Sitting where the driver’s window had been, she swung her legs forward. They stretched through the empty space where the windshield had been and touched . . . nothing.
Emma froze. Her legs were dangling as if she was sitting on a swing . . . or a ledge. She looked beneath her. There was ground against the cabin where her side window had been, but it fell away near the front edge.
She leaned forward, grabbing the seat belt for stability. As the steam from the radiator began to dissipate, the rooftop lights played out into the darkness, touching the ground three hundred feet below.
The Land Cruiser was already pointed downward at an angle. The only thing keeping it from dropping was the gnarled tree i
t had run into.
Emma pulled her legs back in and shifted her weight to climb out the top. A barely audible crack from the tree trunk and a subtle shift in the Toyota’s position told her that moving was a bad idea. She went still, wondering how long the tree would hold.
56
Kurt and Joe made excellent time in the Zodiac. They ran with the engine wide open and the current at their backs. A few sets of minor rapids caused little problem and they’d soon traversed twelve miles on the looping river, enabling them to move nearly seven miles as the crow flies—or the Nighthawk flew.
“This is as close as we’re going to get,” Joe said, navigating based on his memory of the chart and the time.
“I’m ready,” Kurt said. “Let’s go on foot.”
Kurt had changed into regular clothes, and both men were wearing their boots. As soon as Joe beached the Zodiac, they leapt off and began a hike that would be more of a sprint than a walk.
Darkness had fallen, the night air had cooled dramatically and the stars had come out. They shone up above like diamonds on black velvet. Using the stars to navigate, Kurt and Joe continued to cross the rocky ground, moving toward the airfield.