Kurt felt the helmet pulled to the side, saw a second explosion of silvery air bubbles and was tackled and forced down into the silt before he could do anything about it.
Kurt was on his back. His attacker—whom Kurt recognized as Urco’s associate Vargas—was holding him down, pressing him into the sediment as if to bury him. It was a simple strategy. Kurt would black out before long.
Holding his breath, Kurt reached for his own knife, but Vargas kicked his wrist and knocked it free.
In desperation, Kurt fired a punch upward, hoping to catch Vargas in the neck, but the blow was deflected by one of the man’s large forearms. A second punch hit Vargas in the solar plexus but did nothing to make him back off.
As Kurt fought, the struggle took on a surreal appearance: sediment swirled around them; the light strapped to Kurt’s wrist flicked this way and that. Kurt sensed his muscles growing weary from lack of oxygen. He saw Vargas pull out his own knife and raise it for a lethal blow. It came plunging down hard. At the very same moment, Kurt thrust his knee upward, slamming it into the man’s groin.
Both impacts occurred simultaneously.
Vargas spit out his regulator and doubled over in agony. Kurt felt the impact of the blade and watched the water around them churn red in the light.
With a last desperate grab, Kurt reached upward and grabbed Vargas’s mouthpiece and snapped it off with a twist.
Vargas reacted with instinctive panic. He pushed off the bottom with both feet, launching himself toward the surface and leaving Kurt behind in a swirling haze of crimson water.
42
Urco stood in the clearing in complete control. Everything was proceeding as he’d designed it.
The Nighthawk had been freed from its watery pen and laid at his feet, while agents from each of the competing nations had become his prisoners: the American men and women; the surviving Chinese agent at La Jalca, where she remained in chains until he chose to summon her; and the Russian bomber pilots, in a high cave behind the waterfall.
They were captives now but would soon become his servants—though they didn’t know that just yet.
Glancing across the water, he could see his divers in the Zodiac. “Give me the radio,” he said to one of his men.
A walkie-talkie was handed to him. “Vargas,” he said, pressing the talk switch down. “Do you read?”
It didn’t take long for a voice to answer. “I’m here,” Vargas grunted.
He sounded like he was in pain.
“What happened?”
“We have the woman,” Vargas said. “But I had to kill Austin. He fought too hard. I gutted him and left him on the bottom. I had no choice.”
Urco received that news with a trace of disappointment. He’d come to respect Austin in the brief time they’d known each other. The man had offered him the truth about the Nighthawk instead of insulting his intelligence with a lie; he’d reacted with introspection instead of arrogance when Urco pointed out the devastation caused by the European viruses to the indigenous population.
“Very well,” Urco said. “Bring Ms. Townsend to me. I require her services.”
“On our way,” Vargas replied.
Urco clipped the radio to his belt and turned his attention to the survivors. They were on their knees with their hands behind their heads. Urco’s men stood behind them with various weapons drawn.
“Kurt is dead,” he announced.
Neither of the men batted an eye.
“He didn’t have to die, but he chose to fight. I hope you take it as a lesson.”
He walked back and forth, listening to the sound of the Zodiac approach. When he noticed that Zavala was eyeing him every step of the way, he approached the helicopter pilot, crouching down in front of him for a better look.
Zavala had a quiet intensity about him. From his features, hair and skin color, Urco could tell he had a large amount of Central American DNA in him.
“Where are you from?” Urco asked.
“New Mexico,” Zavala replied.