to be a mistake: As I ran, and constantly shifted direction, the missiles came closer and closer together … Then—I later learned—one of them locked on to the heat signature of another. There was an explosion that tore the jungle apart.
I’d been knocked off my feet, and now quickly scrambled up to see that I was now in the heart of an inferno.
For a second all I could do was stand there, shocked, and then through the smoke and flames I saw the copters again, hovering just above the treetops. As I watched, one by one the copters peeled away.
Within a few minutes, the jungle was almost silent.
As soon as I escaped from the fire, I dropped down next to a tree to catch my breath, and tried to understand what had happened. Had they been ordered to pull out? Maybe they realized I wasn’t a bad guy after all. Or maybe the Venezuelan government had learned that a foreign military power was conducting an operation in their country.
That last thought triggered another: Why was I assuming that the gunships were American? For all I knew, they belonged to the Venezuelan military, or some other country.
But whoever they were, they now knew where I was. I pushed myself to my feet, and kept moving.
It was about half an hour before I realized why the gunships had called off the attack. They had been shooting at me almost nonstop for a good five minutes…. They had run out of ammunition.
And that told me that they would be back.
Five days passed before the copters came again. This time there were fewer of them—not more than five or six—and they came from the south.
I’d been running since the first attack, always heading north. I figured I’d covered more than a hundred miles—a lot more than I’d usually cover in five days, because I was no longer concerned about being seen, about carefully skirting around villages or waiting until nightfall before I crossed an open area. I was just running like crazy, and if that meant charging straight through a town in the middle of the day, so be it.
My goal was to get back to the USA, but I hadn’t decidedexactly what I would do when I got there. The attack had changed that: Now what I wanted above all was revenge on the people who had imprisoned me for a year in Antarctica. I’d made no plans for the form that revenge would take, but I was determined that it would be big, and devastating, and very, very public.
At least this time they kept their distance and hadn’t started shooting yet.
Instead, it turned out that they were herding me into another trap. I should have seen it coming, but sometimes—especially when I’m boiling with fury—I find it hard to think past the immediate situation.
The gunships steered me right where they wanted me to go … out of the forest and into a huge plowed field that offered nowhere to hide.
Over the field a dozen more copters had set down in a wide semicircle, their rotors slowing to a stop. In front of each one, five or six soldiers stood with machine guns trained on me. And directly in the middle Harmony Yuan was waiting.
The soldiers hadn’t opened fire immediately—that was something—and I knew that if I returned to the forest, the gunships would come after me and this time they wouldn’t stop.
I slowed to a walk, and tried to look unconcerned and casual as I approached Harmony.
With her expression as dour as ever, she said, “So. Gethin. Or Brawn. Or
Barnaby
, if you prefer … You owe us almost eight and a half billion dollars.”
“Yeah? How do you figure that?”
“That’s what it’s cost to find you. Two years we’ve been searching. Two
years
.”
I sat down cross-legged in front of her. “You could have saved yourself all that money if you’d just given up after the first few days.”
“It was worth it. We’ve finally caught you.”
I looked down at my wrists, then back at Harmony. “Really? I don’t see any handcuffs. You haven’t caught me
yet
. As I see it, I’m still free.”
“How did you
I’d been knocked off my feet, and now quickly scrambled up to see that I was now in the heart of an inferno.
For a second all I could do was stand there, shocked, and then through the smoke and flames I saw the copters again, hovering just above the treetops. As I watched, one by one the copters peeled away.
Within a few minutes, the jungle was almost silent.
As soon as I escaped from the fire, I dropped down next to a tree to catch my breath, and tried to understand what had happened. Had they been ordered to pull out? Maybe they realized I wasn’t a bad guy after all. Or maybe the Venezuelan government had learned that a foreign military power was conducting an operation in their country.
That last thought triggered another: Why was I assuming that the gunships were American? For all I knew, they belonged to the Venezuelan military, or some other country.
But whoever they were, they now knew where I was. I pushed myself to my feet, and kept moving.
It was about half an hour before I realized why the gunships had called off the attack. They had been shooting at me almost nonstop for a good five minutes…. They had run out of ammunition.
And that told me that they would be back.
Five days passed before the copters came again. This time there were fewer of them—not more than five or six—and they came from the south.
I’d been running since the first attack, always heading north. I figured I’d covered more than a hundred miles—a lot more than I’d usually cover in five days, because I was no longer concerned about being seen, about carefully skirting around villages or waiting until nightfall before I crossed an open area. I was just running like crazy, and if that meant charging straight through a town in the middle of the day, so be it.
My goal was to get back to the USA, but I hadn’t decidedexactly what I would do when I got there. The attack had changed that: Now what I wanted above all was revenge on the people who had imprisoned me for a year in Antarctica. I’d made no plans for the form that revenge would take, but I was determined that it would be big, and devastating, and very, very public.
At least this time they kept their distance and hadn’t started shooting yet.
Instead, it turned out that they were herding me into another trap. I should have seen it coming, but sometimes—especially when I’m boiling with fury—I find it hard to think past the immediate situation.
The gunships steered me right where they wanted me to go … out of the forest and into a huge plowed field that offered nowhere to hide.
Over the field a dozen more copters had set down in a wide semicircle, their rotors slowing to a stop. In front of each one, five or six soldiers stood with machine guns trained on me. And directly in the middle Harmony Yuan was waiting.
The soldiers hadn’t opened fire immediately—that was something—and I knew that if I returned to the forest, the gunships would come after me and this time they wouldn’t stop.
I slowed to a walk, and tried to look unconcerned and casual as I approached Harmony.
With her expression as dour as ever, she said, “So. Gethin. Or Brawn. Or
Barnaby
, if you prefer … You owe us almost eight and a half billion dollars.”
“Yeah? How do you figure that?”
“That’s what it’s cost to find you. Two years we’ve been searching. Two
years
.”
I sat down cross-legged in front of her. “You could have saved yourself all that money if you’d just given up after the first few days.”
“It was worth it. We’ve finally caught you.”
I looked down at my wrists, then back at Harmony. “Really? I don’t see any handcuffs. You haven’t caught me
yet
. As I see it, I’m still free.”
“How did you
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