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As soon as eye contact was made, the two men abandoned any semblance of subtlety. The younger man dug into a pocket and produced a butterfly knife, which he opened with a theatrical flourish. “Hand over cup,” he said, “And nobody will get hurt.”
Maddock retreated until he was standing just a few steps from the eyes. Bones however, stood his ground. “Looks like somebody hasn’t heard the old saying about bringing a knife to a gunfight.”
Maddock shot him an incredulous look, but Bones just nodded. “You know... The gun you brought along? In your backpack?”
Maddock finally got it. “Oh, that gun.” He jammed his hand deep into the backpack, curling his fingers around the stem of the cup, and then without drawing it out, pointed it—pack and all—at the man with the knife. “That’s close enough.”
The man balked, clearly not willing to call Maddock’s bluff, but his partner just laughed. “Is no problem,” he said, and then reached down and raised the hem of his polo shirt to reveal a revolver stuffed into his waistband, right above his fly. He drew the gun and brandished it. “I bring gun to gunfight. But I don’t think you did.” He jabbed the weapon at Maddock emphatically.
Bones shrugged. “Well, it was worth a shot.”
“Plan B,” Maddock murmured, barely loud enough for Bones to hear, and then extended the hand holding the backpack out to the side, conspicuously positioned over the edge of the hole. “You got me. Come and get it.”
The man visibly recoiled in alarm as the implicit threat sank in, which was exactly what Maddock had been hoping for. As the gun barrel dipped, Maddock spun on his heel and darted across the narrow bridge, then took off running, angling around the perimeter of the eyes toward the southwest. Bones, correctly interpreting Maddock’s message—in such situations, and without an established contingency, “plan B” was code for improvise, adapt, or simply run like hell—followed in Maddock’s footsteps to the opposite side of the eyes, but turned toward the southeast. This had the desired effect of dividing the gunman’s attention, hopefully buying them a few critical seconds to get out of range and find concealment in the woods.
But in the instant that Maddock turned away, he realized that the two mutri thugs were not alone. During the brief standoff, four more mobsters had approached from the south, guns drawn, to block Maddock’s intended escape route.
He immediately pivoted heading northwest to skirt around the formation, and saw the man with the revolver moving to cut him off. The fact that he had not fired his weapon seemed like a positive sign to Maddock, but there was no telling how long the mobster would continue to exercise restraint, so instead of trying to evade the man, Maddock adjusted course and charged toward the man like a guided missile.
The mobster’s eyes widened in surprise and fear as Maddock bore down on him. He tried to bring his gun up, but before he could take aim, Maddock plowed into him, bowling him off his feet. Maddock didn’t wait around to see how long it would take the man to recover, but kept going, sprinting toward the woods.
Harsh shouts followed him, but then a different voice intruded—Corey’s. “Dane, what’s going on there?”
“Can’t talk now,” Maddock rasped, not slowing, but then realized that his friend might be able to offer some help. “Is Bones all right?”
“He’s running through the woods like you,” Corey responded. “That’s about all I can tell you.”
A moment later, Bones’ voice, slightly breathless, came over the line. “I managed to draw a couple of them off,” he said. “But I think they know you’ve got the cup.”
“Who knows?” Corey asked. “Who’s chasing you?”
Before either Maddock or Bones could answer, Slava spoke up. “Mutri.” She spat the word like a curse. “They followed you from Sofia. Don’t go back to your car. They’ll probably try to ambush you there.”
That seemed like sound advice to Maddock, but it wasn’t a solution to his immediate problem. “Well then, where should we—”
The question was left unfinished as Maddock abruptly broke through the trees and found himself facing another group of people—not Bulgarian mafiosi, but Lycra-clad eco-tourists. One of them, a young woman, had a thick, padded shackle around her ankles, and attached to it was a long yellow cord that disappeared into a serpentine coil.
He angled to their left to avoid a collision. It was a reflex action, but even as he shifted course, the significance of what he had just beheld sank in. Then he saw the precipice before him and the emptiness beyond.
He arrested his stride, but his momentum carried him forward, skidding toward the drop. Hoping a fall onto his backside might save him from a fatal plunge, he threw his arms wide and arched backward. Whether the desperate maneuver would have worked became irrelevant as one of the men standing at the edge caught hold of his outflung hand and hauled him back. The abruptness of the move caused them both to lose their balance. They landed in a tangle of limbs behind the other two.
Maddock was grateful for the assist but there wasn’t time to thank the man. Squirming out from under his rescuer, he bounded to his feet and looked around until he spied the trail leading back down to the bottom of the drop off and the large entrance to the cave. But before he could start toward it, two of the mobsters erupted from the foliage, waving pistols and looking for someone to shoot. One of them was between Maddock and the trailhead.
Maddock considered trying to bulldoze past the man, but immediately rejected the idea. If it had been just him against the gunman, he might have risked it, but the presence of three innocent bystanders changed that calculation. In a flash of inspiration, he realized there was a way to take himself and one of those bystanders out of the equation.
As the gunman took aim, Maddock slung the backpack over one shoulder, and turned to the female adventure tourist standing on the edge of the precipice. “Sorry,” he said, and then without any further explanation, pushed her out into nothingness.
Even as the woman disappeared from view, Maddock snatched up a loop of the bungee cord that was snaking out after her, and then leapt from the precipice as well.
As gravity caught hold of him, he whipped his body around the cord, hooking his right ankle around it. He was only a few feet above the woman, but because the cord was attacked to her ankles and she had already turned upside-down, he couldn’t see her face, but he could hear her screaming.
Maddock had never bungee jumped before, but between multiple parachute jumps in the SEALs and years of rock climbing, he had plenty of experience with long falls and a good sense of what was about to happen. His training and experience did not entirely nullify the instinctive adrenaline rush that accompanied a high jump, but it did allow him to think clearly and utilize the very brief interval of the fall to improve his position and plan for the next step of his insane escape plan.
When the slack—probably a good fifty feet of it—was gone, the elastic cord began to both stretch and tighten around Maddock’s body. Simultaneously, the rate at which he was falling began to diminish, though not nearly as much as with a parachute opening or a climbing fall. In the latter instance, the dynamic rope used for belay lines only stretched about twenty or thirty percent, which caused a noticeable, though not usually injurious jolt. Judging by what he’d seen during the jumps he and Bones had witnessed, he guessed the bungee cords had at least a hundred percent elasticity—doubling in length under the weight of an average person. He probably wouldn’t even start to feel resistance until it reached fifty percent of its unstretched length. The one thing he could not even begin to estimate was how far the cord would stretch under the weight of two people.
The cord grew tighter around his waist and leg, like a python just starting to squeeze the life out of him. The ground was rushing up faster than he would have liked, but he could tell that the resistance from the bungee was increasing, slowing his rate of descent, though not nearly enough. The addition of his weight to that of the young woman actually attached to the cord had increased the stretch-length beyond the distance separating the top of the cave entrance from the ground below, which in practical terms meant that she would plow headfirst into the rocks—an unquestionably fatal impact—and a fraction of a second later, he would hit feet first—potentially survivable, but not without serious injuries.
Neither outcome was acceptable to Maddock.
He quickly unhooked his foot from around the cord, and then thrust himself away from it, surrendering entirely to a free fall.
The bungee cord immediately went taut, completely arresting the woman’s descent. Maddock thought he heard the pitch of her scream change a little, and worried that his stunt might have injured her, but there was nothing to be done about it now. She flashed past him, shooting back up into the air at the end of the cord while he completed his descent without any restraint whatsoever.
It was only about twenty feet to the ground—the equivalent of stepping off the roof of a two-story building—but because he had already been falling, albeit at a greatly reduced rate, the impact was brutal. He knew to pitch himself sideways at the instant his feet made contact, utilizing a technique known as a parachute landing fall, which helped to distribute some of the shock, but it still hurt like hell. A lightning bolt of pain shot up from the soles of his feet to his lower back, followed almost right away by a series of hammer-like blows as the rest of his body made contact with the uneven rock terrain just outside the cave entrance.
He was still alive, but for a few seconds, that was the only thing of which he was certain. The initial pain accompanying the shock receded, but only a little. He felt like he’d been stabbed bone deep and all over with electrically charged blades.
But he knew he had to get moving. It would only take the mobsters a few minutes—five at most—to descend the trail. He needed to be long gone when they arrived.
With a near-superhuman effort, he rolled over onto his stomach and then managed to push up onto hands and knees. He still hurt all over, and while none of it felt like the pain he associated with broken bones, when he tried to stand up, a stabbing sensation shot up from his left ankle. It bore his weight, but running on it would be impossible. The best he could hope for was a fast hobble, and that wouldn’t keep him ahead of the mobsters for long.
Ilsa and some of the other adventure tourists approached cautiously to see if he was all right, but he brushed aside their inquiries, looking past them until he spied a better means of escape.
Gritting his teeth against the pain, he pushed through the group and limped over to where their mountain bikes were parked in two orderly rows. The bicycles were all the same color, with shock absorbers on the front forks, but those were the only common features they shared. About half of them featured the drop tube design for female riders, and there was a range of frame sizes. They weren’t locked up, but one Lycra-clad rider appeared to be guarding them. He watched Maddock approach with a raised eyebrow and a bemused expression.
Despite his grimace of pain, Maddock did his best to affect a look of nonchalance as he walked in front of the bikes. When he arrived at one that looked to be about the right size, he looked over at the man and asked, “Is it okay if I borrow this?”
The man shook his head, clearly not comprehending the question.
Before Maddock could even attempt an explanation, a disturbance from the direction of the trail leading back to the top seized the man’s attention. Maddock looked too, just as the young, tattooed mutri thug blundered out of the vegetation, searching for his escaped quarry. The man was flushed and breathing heavily from the exertion, but his carriage remained erect, poised for action.
With the attendant and everyone else fixated on the man with the knife, Maddock saw his opportunity. He grabbed the handlebars, pulled the bike toward him, then sidestepped, and swung his leg over the bike’s top post, settling onto the seat. He got his left foot on the corresponding pedal, and pushed off with his other foot, propelling the bike forward.
A harsh shout chased after him, though whether it was the mobster or one of the tourists realizing the bike had been stolen, Maddock couldn’t say, and he had no intention of looking back to check. He found the right pedal with his foot, and pedaled furiously away from the cave entrance.
His ankle throbbed a little when he pressed down, but it was far less painful than walking. In a matter of just a few seconds, he reached the trail leading into the woods. Once he was somewhat concealed by the trees, he twisted the gear selector on the left handgrip, which caused the front derailleur to push the chain over onto the smallest chain ring. As he expected, the amount of resistance from the pedals diminished almost to nothing, and he had to pedal furiously just to keep moving forward, but this allowed him to ride up the incline without expending a lot of energy or aggravating his ankle injury. The ascent was mercifully short. He soon emerged from the woods onto a flank of the hill that covered the Eyes of God cave. He guessed that riding up the hill would bring him to the highway and eventually to the parking lot, but that was the first place the mobsters would probably think to look for him. They might even be lying in ambush.
It was time to ask for a little guidance. “Corey, help me out here,” he shouted.
When there was no immediate answer, he called out again. “Corey, I need a direction. Are you still with me?”
Once again, the only response was silence. It occurred to him that he might have lost his earbud, but a quick check confirmed that it was still plugged into his ear canal. Reluctantly, he applied the brakes, and when he was fully stopped, reached into his pocket for his phone. As soon as his fingers made contact with it, he could feel that something was wrong with the device. Evidently, it had been caught between him and one of the rocks in the landing zone following his improvised bungee leap. Despite being nestled inside a protective OtterBox case, his phone now had a nearly forty-five-degree bend in the middle.
“Well, crap,” he muttered, shoving the useless phone back into his pocket.
Without Corey to guide him, he would have to simply pick a direction and hope for the best. He pointed the bike downhill and shoved off, letting gravity do most of the work. In seconds, he was flying down the slope.
The hillside was dotted with trees and shrubs, and the terrain was rocky and uneven, but the bike was designed for just such conditions. As he whipped the handlebars back and forth, slaloming through the trees, Maddock resisted the impulse to ride the brakes. Instead, he shifted his weight backward, with his arms fully extended, until his backside was off the seat and hanging just a few inches above the rear tire. This lowered his center of gravity so that, in the event of an abrupt stop, he would not be catapulted over the handlebars. That was a good thing since he was picking up speed and the landscape ahead was a veritable minefield of rocks, holes, and tree roots. Some were big enough to require a course correction, but most could be taken head on, provided he lifted up on the handlebars popping a modified wheelie in the instant before contact. Rather than fixate on every obstacle in his path, he instead tried to keep his focus on the ever-changing spot about fifteen to twenty feet directly ahead, which gave him just enough time to decide whether to go over or around each hazard.
Unfortunately, it also meant that he didn’t see that the slope ended in an abrupt drop-off, until it was too late to stop.