Jake Atlas and the Hunt for the Feathered God Read online

  It was very cool, and Pedro was being great, but none of us replied. I don’t think any of us were thinking about Pedro’s kit at that moment. We thought about Sami. It was his job to supply us with technology for our missions. We were a team, and that included him. It felt like a betrayal to be wearing the People of the Snake’s utility belts.

  “All right,” Mum said, trying to stay focused. “We’ll need two belts.”

  An alarm went off inside me. I shot a look at Pan, to see if she’d noticed too.

  “Me and Jake get utility belts too, right?” she said.

  Mum and Dad looked at each other and had another of their silent eye battles. Usually they did that when Mum wanted Dad to shut up about something. This time, I sensed they were arguing over which of them should speak.

  “We are coming with you, right?” I asked.

  “I’m sorry,” Mum said, finally. “You and Pandora are staying here with Pedro. Just for a week, while we hunt for the tomb and the tablet.”

  “What?” Pan seethed. “No!”

  “It is not up for discussion, Pandora. It’s too dangerous.”

  “We’ve been in danger before, remember?”

  “Not like this. Not here.”

  “So we’re just meant to sit around on a beach?”

  “You’ll love it here,” Pedro said. “It’s paradise. We can play volleyball, or go snorkelling. Although there are tiger sharks.”

  “No snorkelling,” Mum said.

  They carried on arguing, but I stopped listening. I knew Mum and Dad wouldn’t change their minds. They didn’t trust me, didn’t think I was up to it. And how could I claim they were wrong? It was my fault that Sami was dying. But I wasn’t going to play volleyball when I could be out there trying to save him.

  My eyes landed on a stun gun in a weapons rack. Should I…?

  No! I couldn’t knock Mum and Dad out again.

  Could I?

  I felt that volcano inside me again, lava boiling in my belly. I needed to calm down, to breathe fresh air. If I could think properly, maybe there was a way to convince Mum and Dad they needed us on the mission.

  I walked back to the beach and stared at the forest-covered hills beyond Trujillo, breathing in the humid, sticky air. Maybe this was as close as I would ever get to a jungle. Nearby, the black motorbike was here again. I saw its rider now too – black leather, black helmet, with a satchel slung over his shoulder. He sat on a low wall by the edge of the beach, watching us.

  “You should trust your Mum and Dad.”

  I turned. Pedro held his hat to his chest again, looking sheepish.

  “They should trust us,” I replied.

  “But this mission isn’t about you, is it? They will save your friend. And anyway, we will have fun here. They say there is treasure buried in a Spanish fort along the coast. Perhaps you and your sister can still cause a little bit of trouble.”

  I smiled, appreciating his efforts to cheer me up. “I doubt it, Pedro. Between you and biker boy watching us, how much trouble can we cause?”

  “Biker boy?”

  “The guy that’s been following us. One of the Snake Lady’s spies.”

  Pedro stared at me, confused. “She has no spies. I am the contact here. Who did you see?”

  I didn’t answer; I was already running. This whole time I’d thought the biker was one of the Snake Lady’s goons, keeping an eye on us. That had seemed harmless enough. But he wasn’t with the People of the Snake. So who was watching us, and why?

  The biker saw me coming and ran back to his bike. I heard my parents call out, but the shouts were drowned by engine noise as the rider spun the bike around and accelerated away in a cloud of dust.

  I still had a chance of catching up. To reach the main road the biker would have to wind his way through the town’s maze of narrow streets, but I wouldn’t. If Trujillo was a maze, I could run through its hedges.

  I sprinted from the sand and onto the road. I was in that zone again, somehow just knowing the right thing to do. I darted through the back door of one of the houses, raced through a living room yelling apologies at an old woman watching TV, and burst out the front door. I turned, ran along the street, and darted through another back door. Another woman saw me and whacked me with a broom, but I kept running – stumbling through her kitchen and staggering out of her front door. I pelted across the road, and charged through another house, and then another.

  I stumbled out onto a street and leaned against the pick-up truck selling watermelons, struggling to catch my breath. I heard cries of outrage from people in the houses, calls from Mum and Dad running after me, and the sound of the bike roaring closer.

  It was coming at me, full speed down the street. I’d got ahead of it, but I hadn’t planned what to do next. I let instincts take over again, ran to the back of the pick-up truck and yanked out the holding pin. An avalanche of melons tumbled onto the street, spilling across the bike’s path.

  The biker saw and sped up, determined to ride through. But there were too many melons. He hit one and skidded. The bike toppled over and slid on its side along the street. The biker tumbled off, rolled several times and smashed into the side of a house.

  I really hoped he was a bad guy.

  “Hey!” I gasped.

  The biker staggered up and stumbled away, clutching his side. I tried to go after him but I was too breathless from the chase. I stopped near the crashed bike, where the rider had dropped his satchel.

  Mum and Dad burst from one of the houses by the van, red-faced from the effort of catching up.

  “Jake!” Mum wailed. “What in blue blazes?”

  She saw the bike crashed against the house, the biker running away, the spilled and squashed watermelons. I think she realized what happened because she changed her line of attack.

  “You let him get away?” she said.

  I fiddled with the satchel, trying to undo its clasp. When it finally came open, several sheets of paper spilled across the pavement.

  No, not paper. They were photographs. I picked one up – and then another and another – confused at first by what I saw. The photos had been taken from a distance, but the details were crisp and clear.

  They were photographs of my family.

  12

  My parents stared at those photos for almost an hour, sitting at the bar at Pedro’s cafe. Mum kept stroking her necklace amulet, and Dad drank a coffee, adding more sugar between each slurp. Mum didn’t usually let him take sugar, but she obviously felt he needed it.

  Pan and I sat with Pedro, playing cards at a table on the beach. Pedro had his cowboy hat over his eyes and spent ages studying his cards between hands.

  “No cheats in this casino,” he said.

  “It’s not a casino, Pedro,” Pan replied.

  “And we’re playing snap,” I added.

  “Don’t trust anyone, kids,” he said. “That’s the first rule.”

  “The first rule of snap?” I asked.

  I liked Pedro, but I got the feeling he spent too much time alone with his granddad.

  He looked over his shoulder, watching Mum and Dad. They were arguing now. Their voices rose, but they were too far away to make out the words.

  “Tell me more about your parents,” Pedro asked.

  Pan played a card – no snap. “You probably know more than us.”

  “You don’t like each other much?”

  I looked to Pan, wondering if she would agree, and glad that she didn’t. Instead, she shrugged.

  I played a card – no snap. “We used to hate each other,” I said. “Before we found out about their past. Now they just don’t trust us. Me, mainly.”

  “Do you expect them to?”

  “What do you mean?”

  Pedro turned again, but this time he looked beyond the café, to the hills and the mist-covered mountains. “It looks pretty, doesn’t it? Do not be fooled. The Mosquito Coast is no test, no training simulator. It is one of the most dangerous places in the world.
You are twelve.”

  “Twelve and a half,” Pan said.

  “Even so. Your parents are experienced treasure hunters. Do you know about their discovery of the lost city of Ubar?”

  Pan and I sat up. We didn’t, but were eager to hear.

  “Tell us,” I said.

  Pedro was about to play another hand, but hesitated. “That is for them to say. But trust me when I tell you that your parents are very experienced at this. Perhaps it is more that you should trust them?”

  “You told us not to trust anyone,” Pan said.

  Pedro finally played his card and grinned. “Snap.”

  Mum and Dad had begun to walk over to us, but stopped halfway across the beach to have another argument. Whatever they’d decided, Mum was still unsure about it.

  As they approached, the sun was right behind them, so they stood over us in silhouette. Mum dropped the biker’s photos down on the table beside the cards. She’d snatched them from me seconds after I found them, so I’d not been able to have a proper look. Not that I needed to; I remembered the scenes well enough – my family in the passport queue at the airport, waiting for our hire car; me and Mum at the top of the hill, looking down over Trujillo. The biker had taken the photos with a long lens as he followed us here to the edge of the jungle.

  Pedro swore they had nothing to do with him, or the People of the Snake. So who had taken them, and why?

  “We can’t leave you here,” Mum announced. “Not after this. You will be safer with us.”

  I glanced at Pan, but neither of us smiled even though we were now going on the mission. Pedro was right: we were about to enter one of the most dangerous places on Earth. It wasn’t a moment to celebrate.

  “We should leave soon,” Pedro said. “There’s a storm coming.”

  I looked around the sky and saw it was blue in every direction.

  “I don’t see a storm,” I said.

  “Kid,” Pedro said. “There’s always a storm coming.”

  We all stared at him. “But is there an actual storm coming?” Dad asked. “Or did you just say that because it sounded good?”

  Pedro shrugged. “The other one.”

  “Which one?”

  “The ‘sounded good’ one.”

  “Can we just go?” Mum said.

  13

  My face pressed harder against a rucksack as the plane jolted and shook, struggling to climb higher over the trees. The aircraft was tiny and totally rubbish, with just two seats in the back, so the four of us were squashed together among rucksacks and kit bags. The outsides of the plane were dented – damaged, I guessed, in the same crash that had smashed off the door. Pedro had hung a curtain where the door had been, as if that somehow solved his safety concerns.

  I kept waiting for him to flick a switch, converting the aircraft into a high-tech military machine. But the plane really was what it looked like: a rust bucket. A rush of wind slapped the whole thing sideways, causing the engine to belch black smoke through the curtain and into the cabin.

  Finally we settled into a smoother flight, and were able to talk without shouting.

  “Jake, your boot’s on my back,” Pan complained.

  “Well, someone’s bum is in my face,” I replied.

  “That’s a kit bag.”

  I shoved the bag to the side, and wiped condensation from a window to see the jungle. Pedro had spoken of a clearing for us to land in, but from up here it didn’t look like there was a big enough gap in the trees for even a bird to land, let alone a plane. The green carpet stretched as far as I could see, broken only by a river that twisted in crazy loops like it was drunk and lost in the jungle. The brown thread weaved between two jagged peaks that rose from the canopy, gigantic shards of rock with waterfalls plunging down their sheer sides. Each mountain seemed to have its own weather system. Dark clouds swirled around their summits, stabbed with streaks of lightning, as if there were sorcerers on the mountains, casting spells.

  “The Storm Peaks!” Pedro yelled from the pilot seat. “Those are mentioned in the Aztec codex.”

  “That’s where the first marker to the tomb is supposed to be?” I asked. “The Place of the Jaguar?”

  “Somewhere close to those mountains,” Pedro confirmed.

  “It’s also where Alpha Squad went missing,” Pan added.

  I gazed at the Storm Peaks, watching the lightning streak around their tops. Alpha Squad had gone missing there, but someone had reactivated their tracking signal. Who, and why?

  I shifted awkwardly, adjusting my jungle suit and utility belt, trying to find a more comfortable position. But the cramped seats weren’t the problem. I was tense inside. This whole hunt was a mystery, and we couldn’t afford to fail. Sami was relying on us.

  “Do you think we’ll find Alpha Squad alive?” I asked.

  “That’s not our mission,” Mum replied. “We’re here to find the tomb and the emerald tablet. Nothing else.”

  “So were Alpha Squad,” Pedro noted.

  Wriggling among the kit bags, I managed to slide my smart-goggles from my belt and slot them over my eyes.

  “Zoom,” I instructed.

  The lenses turned into super-strength binoculars, so powerful it felt as if I’d been thrust from the plane. I swore at myself for being silly, and looked again through the plane window. Then I swore again, much louder.

  “Down there!” I cried.

  Mum and Dad forced bags aside, recognizing the panic in my voice.

  “What is it, Jake?”

  I looked again, praying I was mistaken. “On the ground. I … I think I saw someone with a weapon.”

  “What sort of weapon?” Dad called. “We’re two thousand feet up. No one could hit us with a gun from that range.”

  “Not a gun. It looked like a—”

  “A what?” Pan yelled.

  “A bazooka,” I said.

  Mum grabbed my arm. “Jake, are you certain?”

  Even with my smart-goggles, I’d not been able to pick out much detail, but I’d definitely seen someone down there with something over their shoulder that looked like the bazookas I’d seen in films.

  “Was it an M68 model,” Mum demanded, “or an RL83?”

  “What? How am I meant to know that?”

  “By studying the switch contact on the secondary trigger!”

  “Are you serious?” I screamed.

  “Something just fired!” Pedro yelled.

  A streak of smoke shot from the tree canopy. It was coming straight at us!

  “Deploy aircraft shields!” Dad roared.

  “We don’t have any aircraft shields!” Pedro shouted.

  “Brace yourself! Get hold of something!”

  Dad grabbed me, and Mum grasped Pan. They pinned us against the kit bags to shield us with their bodies. I heard Pan scream as the missile hit.

  It struck the tail of the plane, sending us into a spin. All four of us slammed against one wall and then the other. Black smoke gushed from the back of the aircraft and into the cabin, and suddenly the world was a spinning blur, like we were on a waltzer ride.

  Pedro grappled with the controls. “We’re going down!”

  At first my mind was pure panic, whirling as fast as the plane. But then it happened: that clarity I get when I’m in danger. I grabbed kit bags and hurled them through the curtain that flapped at the plane door, hoping we’d find them among the trees if we survived. Now that I could see the cabin, I spotted a panel in the side and yanked it open. Two small bags tumbled from inside.

  “Parachutes!” I called.

  Mum tried to strap Pan into one, but there was no time. The door curtain flew up and I glimpsed the jungle rush closer.

  I grabbed a parachute and shoved it between Mum and Pan. I didn’t give them time to protest, I just pushed them both through the door.

  Now there was one parachute left for three of us.

  Pedro was still in the cockpit, trying to regain control of the plane. “Go!” he ordered. “Now!
”

  Dad pulled me towards the exit, but I shook him off and scrambled closer to Pedro. I’d drag him with us if I had to. I heard a cry and turned just in time to see Dad fly backwards out of the door. The plane’s spin had thrown him out! He had the parachute!

  “For God’s sake, get after him,” Pedro insisted.

  I staggered back to the exit, coughing from the smoke and hyperventilating from fear. At least I couldn’t see how high we were – the plane was spinning too fast. I gripped the door frame, willing myself to jump, but my fingers tightened their grip as the terror of the moment struck me with full force. What was I doing?

  “Go, Jake!”

  “I don’t like heights, Pedro!”

  “Do you like crashing in a plane? Jake, now!”

  In the end the plane decided for me, its spin thrusting me from the exit in the same way that it had got rid of my dad. I shot sideways and flew through flames where the tail was on fire. Then, for a few seconds I just fell and screamed.

  Get control of yourself!

  Instincts took over again, and my mind broke my situation down into its key elements: I was falling fast, I would not survive the landing because I didn’t have a parachute, but Dad did. So where was he?

  I saw one parachute open. Mum and Pan clung on to each other as they floated down to the treetops.

  Dad would have got himself into the best position to help me. I wouldn’t be able to catch him up by falling, but if I was above him when he opened his parachute, I’d drop right past. Maybe we could grab hold of each other.

  I looked down, and there he was! He’d managed to turn over, so he was freefalling facing upwards, screaming at me. I tried to yell back, but the words were lost to the wind.

  He pulled his cord, and the parachute burst from his pack. I attempted to steer myself away, but there was no time. The parachute slapped into me, sending Dad into a spin. I just managed to snatch hold of his ankle, so I hung from his leg. The crumpled parachute caught enough air to slow us down, but we were still falling fast…

  “Jake!” Dad screamed. “How’s your first parachute jump going?”

  “Not the best, Dad.”

  “We’re going to hit the trees. Try to grab hold of a branch, anything to slow your fall. Do not let go of me.”