‘What’s happening?’ Lili whispered.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Max said, but he had a bad feeling. He couldn’t take his eyes off the Blackshirts, who were pointing back towards the hostages and nodding. He glanced at Sami and Abby, who were also staring across the clearing. Lukas, however, stared, motionless, at the ground, almost as if he was in a daydream. Max thought he saw his hands shaking.

  One of the Blackshirts had a bag slung over his shoulder. He opened it and removed a shirt. It was red. Babaka took it and walked over to the hostages. He held it up and spoke. Roland, who was sitting next to Max, whispered a translation. ‘He is asking who wants to become a Redshirt.’

  Babaka turned to two of his fellow Blackshirts and nodded at them. They stepped forward. At first Max thought they were approaching all the cadets, but they homed in on Abby and Lili. The girls glanced nervously at each other as the Blackshirts untied them and forced them to their feet.

  ‘What’s happening?’ Sami demanded. ‘Hey, what are you doing with them?’ At the same time, Max jumped to his feet. Babaka swiped him hard around the face, and Max fell to the ground again. On Babaka’s command, the girls were led to the far side of the jungle pool, while Max watched helplessly, his head ringing. The Blackshirts positioned the girls so that they were facing the cadets. They raised their weapons and pointed them at the girls so they couldn’t run away. Then Babaka spoke again. He marched along the line of hostages as he talked. Some of the younger ones started to cry. Roland, who seemed to have forgotten about hiding his face, stared at him in horror.

  ‘What’s he saying?’ Max demanded, not bothering to lower his voice. ‘What’s going on?’

  Roland could barely get the words out. ‘He’s offering a red shirt to the person who …’ His voice cracked. ‘To the person who will shoot them.’

  ‘No!’ Max bellowed. He struggled against the ropes tying him to the others. Sami did the same. But they weren’t going anywhere. They couldn’t go anywhere. They were helpless.

  Babaka kept on talking and Roland hesitantly translated. ‘He says … he says they are being punished for attacking his comrades back in the village. He says this is what we must expect if we fight Oscar Juwani’s people.’

  ‘Tell him it won’t happen again,’ Max said. ‘If they let Lili and Abby go, they won’t hear a peep out of us.’

  Roland started to translate, but Babaka shouted over him. ‘He’s … he’s saying it again,’ Roland said. ‘A red shirt for the person who will shoot both girls.’

  Desperately, Max scanned the line of hostages. With some relief, he saw that nobody was taking Babaka up on his offer. They avoided his gaze and visibly shrank from him. Then one of the hostages – a boy of perhaps thirteen, who was tied four places along from Roland – stood up. Max felt an icy sensation in his stomach as he realised the boy was volunteering. ‘Don’t be stupid,’ he hissed. ‘Sit down. Roland, tell him to sit down.’

  Roland mumbled something, but Max couldn’t hear what. Babaka appeared delighted. He approached his volunteer with open arms, almost as if he was going to hug him.

  ‘I’ll do it.’

  At first Max was confused. He thought the volunteer was speaking English and wondered why he hadn’t heard him do that before. But then he realised it wasn’t the volunteer who had spoken. It was Lukas.

  ‘I’ll do it,’ Lukas repeated.

  Babaka turned. He was no longer interested in the original volunteer, and it was plain that he understood what Lukas had said. He strutted over to him. When he reached Lukas, he bent down and pulled the cadet to his feet. Lukas stood shakily, but he held Babaka’s gaze.

  ‘What are you doing, mate?’ Max said carefully.

  Lukas didn’t reply to him. He merely repeated the same words: ‘I’ll do it.’

  Babaka hesitated. Perhaps he was wondering whether this was a trick – a way for Lukas to get himself untied and with a gun in his hand. Max was wondering the same thing. He held his breath as Babaka called one of his comrades over and instructed him to untie Lukas. While this was being done, he raised his submachine gun and pointed it directly at Lukas’s head. He didn’t speak – but he didn’t need to. His meaning was clear: try anything stupid and I’ll kill you.

  The Blackshirts led Lukas to the edge of the pool. The two girls had narrowed eyes. Like Max, they obviously suspected that Lukas had some kind of plan. But what was it?

  Nobody spoke. Even the buzzing of the insects above the pool seemed quieter. Max’s muscles were tense. He searched the clearing for points where he could quickly exit into the jungle. But that was impossible while he was still tied to the line of hostages. You’d better have something good, Lukas, he thought.

  One of the Blackshirts handed Lukas his assault rifle. Lukas shook his head, handed the weapon back and pointed to something hanging from the Blackshirt’s belt. It was a handgun. The Blackshirt looked askance at Babaka, who shrugged and nodded. The Blackshirt gave Lukas the handgun. Lukas held it expertly. The gang members, with their assault rifles and submachine guns, shifted nervously and retrained their weapons directly on Lukas. Only Babaka seemed unconcerned. He watched almost greedily as Lukas switched off the handgun’s safety catch, raised his arm and pointed his weapon at the girls.

  But something wasn’t right. When he was tied to the other hostages, Lukas’s hands had trembled. Now he seemed completely calm. His right arm, which held the gun, was relaxed. He supported the weapon with his left hand like the expert he always was whenever Max had seen him on the gun range back at the training ground of Valley House.

  He was preparing to take a shot.

  ‘Ah, c’mon, Lukas,’ Abby said. ‘You’re not thinking of doing anything stupid, are you?’

  He didn’t reply. He just kept his gun raised and his hands steady.

  Abby and Lili stared at him, horror-struck. An expression of horrible realisation crept over their faces. An expression that said: he’s going to shoot.

  ‘Lukas!’ Max and Sami shouted in unison. ‘No!’

  Lukas didn’t seem to hear them.

  Abby and Lili stared at each other. Something seemed to pass between them. Then they stared back at Lukas. They closed their eyes and drew deep breaths – so deep that they looked barrel-chested.

  Lukas fired two shots in quick succession. The girls crumpled to the ground.

  8

  Murderer

  Max didn’t know whether to scream or cry. Truth was, he couldn’t do either. He could barely breathe. He just stared, disbelieving.

  The gunshots echoed in his ears. Crowds of birds rose up, disturbed by the shots, and the calls and screeches of the jungle animals died away. Lukas lowered his weapon. He turned to Babaka and handed it over. Babaka returned it to its owner then put his arm around Lukas’s shoulder. It was a welcoming, brotherly gesture. Lukas glanced at Max but couldn’t hold his gaze. One of the gang members gave Lukas the red shirt.

  Numb, Max stared across the pond to where Abby and Lil lay, motionless. To his left, Sami was straining against the ropes, desperate to get to the girls, tears streaming down his face. But, like Max, he was held fast. In any case, with their hands tied behind their backs, they were in no position to administer first aid.

  ‘Lukas,’ Max whispered, ‘CPR … stem the bleeding …’ His voice was so hoarse he could barely hear himself. Two of the younger hostages were crying. Lukas didn’t even glance at them. He was too busy putting on his red shirt. Babaka said something to a couple of his Blackshirts. They started to stroll around the pool to the girls, looking relaxed. One of them even laughed. A ferocious anger welled up in Max. If he’d had a weapon to hand, he’d have used it. He wanted to scream at the Blackshirts to leave Abby and Lili alone. He didn’t want them anywhere near his friends. What were they going to do? Something awful? Or just dump them in a shallow grave?

  They didn’t get the chance. They were halfway to the corpses when they suddenly stopped, statue still. Slowly, they started to back away, treading gingerly. At first, Max couldn’t see why. Then he saw what was blocking their path.

  It was a snake, and it was rising slowly into the air. It must have been long because its head reached the men’s waists. It swayed hypnotically. Suddenly it hissed. The two Blackshirts backed away more quickly. Max could see they were terrified. This was plainly a highly venomous snake. Max was so desperately angry he found himself wishing that the snake would strike.

  It did.

  The Blackshirts were six or seven metres from the snake when its head darted forward and a more aggressive hiss filled the clearing. The Blackshirts jumped back as a spray of liquid jetted from the snake’s mouth. Their caution deserted them and they sprinted back to the others, leaving Abby and Lili’s bodies where they lay. The snake coiled itself back down to the ground but stayed where it was – like a guardian stopping anyone from approaching the girls.

  The snake had scared the gang members and the hostages alike. There was a good deal of shouting. The hostages were forced onto their feet, Max and Sami included. Max’s knees buckled as he tried to stand. The horror of what had just happened had overwhelmed him. Two of his closest friends – who was he kidding? Two of his only friends – were dead, killed by another friend. It couldn’t be real. He felt bile rise to the back of his throat and thought he was going to vomit.

  Lukas was not returned to the line of hostages. He was surrounded by other gang members. Despite their hurry to get away from the clearing, some of them slapped his back and shook his hand. He was now trusted by them because he had performed the ultimate act: murder in cold blood. The gang members’ glee only served to make Max angrier and more desperate. His friends were dead. Dead …

  A Redshirt with a stick was next to him, threatening to beat him if he didn’t start moving. He staggered forward. Sami, apparently as horrified as Max, did the same. The Redshirt shouted at Max to keep moving. He stumbled on.

  Max moved as if he was in a trance. The vegetation was just as thick as before, the air as humid and the insects as voracious. He noticed none of it. Sweating and exhausted, he followed the line of hostages, unable to think of anything but what had just happened. He kept reliving it, hoping that somehow the tape in his mind might change and give him a different ending. But the ending was always the same: the sound of the shots, Abby and Lili collapsing to the ground, and Lukas receiving praise from his new friends.

  Then the tears came. Once they had started, they didn’t stop. They burned his cheeks. He was gulping for air like a distraught child, his shoulders shaking, his nose streaming. He had seen people die before, but this was different. Abby and Lili were like sisters to him. They were gone, and he felt as if his world had ended.

  He didn’t know how far they walked or for how long. Sometime in the early afternoon they stopped again for a swig of water and a mouthful of plantain that was growing nearby. Max and Sami found themselves crouching together on the ground, their hands still tied behind their backs. Sami’s face was a mess. Tears had smeared the dirt on his cheeks and his eyes were red and sore. Max guessed he looked the same. ‘I … I don’t believe it,’ Sami whispered. Like Max, he was having trouble holding it together. ‘If I hadn’t seen it happen, I wouldn’t believe it.’

  Lukas was sitting with the Blackshirts. He had taken his plastic Ziploc bag of biscuits out and was offering them around. Somehow that simple, friendly gesture sickened Max. ‘Me neither,’ he said. ‘I thought he had been acting weird, but …’

  ‘Is he brainwashed?’ Sami said. ‘That’s what happens to people in this cult after all.’

  ‘He must be.’

  ‘Will he try to kill us?’

  Max had no answer. But thinking of how calm and collected Lukas had been when he took the shots made him shiver. ‘I don’t know,’ he said.

  ‘The mission is over,’ Sami said. ‘Lukas will eventually tell them who we are and what we are doing. And then …’ He couldn’t finish the sentence.

  ‘And then we go the same way as Abby and Lili,’ Max said. The thought had already occurred to him, but it didn’t make him scared. His grief was too overpowering.

  Sami nodded. ‘If you had the watch, you could activate it,’ he said.

  That was no help. Max didn’t have the watch. It was strapped to Babaka’s wrist. It was out of play unless he could somehow get it back, and he saw no way of doing that.

  ‘I wish I could speak to Lukas,’ Sami said.

  ‘I don’t,’ Max said. ‘He’s a murderer. I don’t want anything to do with him ever again.’

  Sami inclined his head. ‘You sound like Roland,’ he said.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘What was it you told him? That this is what Oscar Juwani does. He takes ordinary young people and forces them to do terrible things. That he changes who they are. That it could happen to any of us.’

  ‘Lukas isn’t an ordinary young person,’ Max said. ‘He’s a Special Forces Cadet.’

  ‘Even Special Forces Cadets get it wrong. We’re living proof of that, hey?’

  Max scowled at his friend. He knew he was behaving badly, but the pain of losing Abby and Lili was too raw. He started to feel angry at his earnest young friend for not sharing his new-found hatred of Lukas. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘if you hadn’t insisted on attacking those thugs back in the village, maybe they wouldn’t have chosen Abby and Lili as their victims.’

  Max instantly felt guilty for what he’d said, but was too angry to apologise.

  Sami took a deep breath. ‘I think that if we could speak to him,’ he said, much more quietly than before, ‘we could get him back. The Lukas who did that isn’t the real Lukas. He’s an imposter … Wait, what’s that?’

  Sami pointed urgently into the vegetation. Max turned quickly. At first he saw nothing but the familiar tangle of broad leaves, tree trunks and vines. ‘What are you talking about?’ he said. Then he saw it – or thought he saw it – just on the edge of his vision.

  Eyes.

  In an instant they were gone.

  Max felt a surge of insane hope. He had only seen those eyes for the tiniest fraction of a second, but they had looked human. He squinted hard, trying to see through the vegetation, wildly fantasising: could the eyes have belonged to Abby or Lili? He told himself not to be stupid. He had watched Lukas shoot them. He had seen them fall to the ground. Anyway, he wasn’t even certain what he had seen. The eyes had disappeared and there was no sign of any movement in the vegetation. He turned back to Sami, but didn’t get the chance to speak. One of the gang members was approaching, holding a knife with a gleaming five-inch blade. Max tensed. The gang member held up the knife and said something. The hostages who understood him started to murmur. The gang member approached Roland and cut him away from the ropes that tied him to the others, before cutting the cable ties that bound his wrists behind his back. He moved on to the other hostages, then finally to Max and Sami. He seemed reluctant to cut them free, but he did. Max rubbed his wrists, which were sore and scratched. Roland sidled up to them.

  ‘Why are they untying us?’ Max asked.

  ‘So we can move more quickly. He told us not to bother running away because, if we do, we’ll get lost in the jungle and die. He’s right.’ He frowned. ‘I am sorry about your friends.’

  There was no time to reply. The gang members had started shouting, and they were being forced to march on.

  They had no chance to speak. The Redshirts and Blackshirts mingled among them, keeping them quiet and forcing them on if they stumbled. They had only gone a few paces when Max saw, on the ground, the empty Ziploc back that had contained Lukas’s biscuits. Quickly he bent down, picked it up and shoved it in his pocket. Maybe he’d find a use for it, but he didn’t know what that might be.

  Lukas and Babaka stayed at the head of the column, well away from Max and Sami. Soon the path began to slope gently downhill, which made the going a little easier. For that, at least, Max was grateful. He was also grateful to have finished his conversation with Sami, whose understanding nature had made Max feel worse about himself. But he couldn’t deny his hatred of Lukas, or his sudden understanding of why Roland despised the Redshirts so much …

  Movement in the vegetation. Again, for just a fraction of a second, Max caught sight of something. A human shape, camouflaged in the greenery.

  Then it was gone.

  Or had he imagined it?

  He shook his head. His mind was surely playing tricks. It was the stress. The grief. The vegetation was too thick. This part of the forest was deserted. And face it, Max, he told himself, you’re not seeing who you think you’re seeing. Abby and Lili are dead.

  Aren’t they?

  Nobody else seemed to have noticed anything. The hostages tramped along, their heads down. Many were rubbing their painful wrists. Some sobbed with fear and exhaustion. Even the gang members were more subdued. They seemed nervous. Perhaps it was the sight of the aggressive snake that had done it. Perhaps it was something else. They seemed as tired as the hostages, and just as eager for this journey to be over.

  Max wished he had a plan. As soon as they reached their destination, Lukas only had to reveal their identity and surely Juwani’s soldiers would kill him and Sami. If only he could find some way to grab his watch from Babaka. Then he could raise the alarm. But that was impossible. They were dominated by the armed gang members, who would kill him without a second thought, he knew that. Anyway, the harder he tried to work out a strategy, the more muddled his mind became. All he could think about was Abby and Lili. His thoughts filled him with such grief that his head wouldn’t clear. It was all he could do to put one foot in front of the other.