Anthony Horowitz - Evil Star

“The door…!” the man began.

There was a hideous snarling and Matt turned just in time to see one of the Alsatians leap at him. It half landed on his leg and he felt its teeth snapping, inches away from his thigh. With a cry, he drew back his other leg and then kicked out. His foot slammed into the dog’s head. It howled and fell back. Matt drew himself into the car and pulled the door shut. The driver had already changed gear. The car shot forward.

But it wasn’t over yet. As if afraid of losing them, the remaining guards all fired at once and Matt yelled as glass and bullets exploded over his head. Next to him, the driver jerked in his seat and Matt felt something wet splatter across his face. He wiped his cheek with the back of his hand and looked down. His fingers were covered in blood.

He hadn’t been shot. It was the driver. It was Lima all over again except that this time the roles had been reversed. The man with the scar wasn’t firing at them, he was helping him. And he was wounded. He had been hit twice: in the shoulder and the side of the neck. There was blood on the seat and on the dashboard. More blood was spreading rapidly down his shirt. But he was still gripping the wheel, his foot pressed on the accelerator. The car swerved round the courtyard and into the darkness. The driver reached out and turned on the headlamps. The car bounced and rattled back down the track.

“They’ll follow us!” Matt said. He expected to see Salamanda’s men already following in cars or trucks.

“I don’t think so.” The man was trying to keep the pain out of his voice, but Matt could see he had been badly hurt. The blood had spread all the way down to his chest. Soon the whole shirt would be red. He muttered a few words in Spanish. Pedro leant down. When he sat up again, he was holding a handful of wires and fuses. Matt smiled. Somehow the man had reached the hacienda ahead of them. And he had disabled all the vehicles he could find.

“Who are you?” Matt demanded.

“My name is Micos.”

“How did you find us? Where’s Richard?” There were a dozen more questions Matt wanted to ask.

“Not now. Later.”

Matt fell silent. He understood. Micos didn’t have the strength to drive and talk at the same time.

It seemed to take them for ever to reach the end of the dirt track. It was completely dark and the headlights illuminated only a small area ahead. Matt knew they were back on the main road only when the wheels began to turn smoothly, on an asphalt surface. A few moments later, Micos pulled over to the side and stopped.

“Listen to me,” he said, and with a jolt of alarm Matt saw that he had been wounded even more badly than he had feared, that he had very little time left. “You must go to Cuzco.” Micos coughed and swallowed with difficulty. More blood appeared, on his lower lip. “On Friday… the temple of Coricancha. In Cuzco. At sunset.”

He seemed to take a deep breath, as if preparing to tell them more.

“Please, tell Atoc…” he began. But that was all. He was still, his eyes fixed on something in the distance. Matt realized he had just died.

In the back seat, Pedro whimpered.

“We can’t stay here,” Matt said. He didn’t care if the other boy understood or not. “Salamanda will come after us eventually. We have to go.”

The two of them got out. The car was parked right on the edge of the road beside a slope leading into brushwood. Matt turned off the headlamps and released the hand brake. He gestured to Pedro and the two of them began to push the car. It rolled off the road, out of sight.

If anyone did drive out of the hacienda, they would think Matt and Pedro had driven away. They wouldn’t know they were once again on foot.

The moon had come out, lighting the way ahead. Ica couldn’t be more than half a mile away.

“Are you ready?” Matt asked.

“Yes.” Pedro had understood. And he had replied in English.

Together, they set off along the road.

Once again, Matt found himself in the main square at Ica, and this time they were even more nervous than they had been before. It was half past five in the morning but there were plenty of people around. It seemed to him that life began early in Peru. Even so, everything was quiet. There were no tourists yet. The money changers hadn’t come out. If anyone came searching for them, they wouldn’t be too hard to find.

Matt was fairly sure that Salamanda wouldn’t look for them here. As far as the man knew, they could be a hundred miles down the Pan-American Highway – the single road that ran the full length of the country. But Matt wasn’t taking any chances. He had left Pedro to buy the bus tickets for the next leg of their journey while he squatted in the shadows. He was crouching on the edge of the pavement, his arms wrapped around himself, pretending to be asleep. It wasn’t all pretence. He was exhausted. He wasn’t sure how much longer he could keep going.

Pedro returned with the tickets and sat down next to him.

“Cuzco,” Matt said.

“Cuzco,” Pedro agreed and showed him the two slips of paper.

Matt hadn’t been certain that he would really buy them. He knew that Pedro would have preferred to continue south to the city of Ayacucho – where Sebastian and his friends would be waiting. As he took the tickets, Matt glanced at the other boy. Pedro didn’t look pleased by what he had done but he had evidently come to a decision. He was going to stay with Matt.

The two of them ate a quick breakfast of rolls and coffee, bought from a stall, then crept on board the bus at the last moment. By this time, almost every seat was taken and they had to sit apart. Not that it mattered, Matt thought to himself. When they were awake, they couldn’t talk anyway.

Cuzco.

It meant nothing to him. A name spoken by a dying man. It was a town… a city… it could be anywhere in Peru. He guessed it must be far away because the tickets had cost almost half their remaining money. As they set off, jolting through the half-empty main square, Matt looked across the aisle at Pedro who was sitting, cramped, next to the window on the other side of a plump, sweating man. What was he thinking? From the moment he had met Matt, his entire life had been thrown into turmoil. Despite everything, Matt was beginning to worry about him. Pedro had said nothing and shown little emotion since the death of the man called Micos. Of course, he was used to violence and sudden death. But he surely hadn’t been expecting so much more of it.

The Pan-American Highway was long and very straight, running through the landscape as if it had been cut with a knife. For the first couple of hours, there was no real view out of the window. The edges of the road were lined with rubbish – old tyres, pieces of plastic sheeting, tangled coils of wire and mounds of rubble that seemed determined to follow them every inch of the way. Matt had never been anywhere like this before. He had seen rubbish tips in England. There had been parts of Ipswich that were run down and depressing. But the poverty in this country was endless. It had spread like a disease.

The sun rose and suddenly it was hot. Matt looked around at the other passengers: a mixture of city people, farmers, Indians and – once again – animals. The woman sitting next to him was dressed in brilliant colours with a bright-red shawl tied around her neck and a floppy hat. Her skin looked like beaten leather. She could have been a hundred years old. She was examining him curiously and Matt wondered if she had seen through the skin dye, the clothes and the haircut and recognized the English boy underneath. He turned away, afraid she might try to speak to him.

Another hour passed. Then several more. It was impossible to tell how long he had been sitting there. Matt was thirsty. His mouth seemed to be full of dust and diesel fumes. He closed his eyes. Almost immediately he was asleep.