Free The Vanishing by John Connor Page A

‘Please stop …’ He was out of breath but managed to hold on to one of her arms and swing her sideways. She stopped and raised the gun. He thought she was going to hit him with the stock, but right then, from off to the left, they heard a woman starting to scream. Sara’s face twisted in pain and she started to run at full speed along the trail, completely careless. ‘It’s Janine,’ she shouted back at him. ‘It’s Janine.’
    For a moment the options went through his brain. She was going to get killed, or captured. He was sure of it. So he didn’t have to follow her. She was no longer being rational, she was dangerous. The kidnappers’ plan was working. Get her friend screaming, get Sara out into the open. But he didn’t have to follow. He kept saying it to himself. He didn’t have to follow. He felt something scratching his arm and looked down to see three black ants – each as big as his thumb – walking across his bare flesh. He brushed them off, then glanced around at the hanging vegetation, the trailing creepers and darker areas above. There were wet, rotting plants all around him, soft beneath his feet, their smell thick in his nostrils. Already he had no idea where he was. Already his options were closing down.
    One more try, he told himself. One more. He started after her again.
    By the time he caught up she was at some kind of structure, hidden away in the trees, tall poles fastened together into a narrow platform, with a ladder going up. He couldn’t see the top clearly, but she was already pulling herself up the ladder. Was it one of the watchtowers? It looked less solid than the one he had seen from the dock, which had been a metal frame structure. He started up after her, the wooden ladder creaking with their joint weight. He wanted to shout again, to try to get her to talk to him, but he was frightened more than anything that the kidnappers were already right here, all around them.
    As he got to the top of the ladder he realised it was some kind of observation tower, built to watch the monkeys, maybe. The floor was rough boards, the jungle hanging right there over the low railing. She was flat on her stomach already as he got off the ladder, the gun out in front of her, eye on the scope, like some kind of big-game hunter. He crouched down beside her but she reached out an arm and pulled him lower. ‘They’re there,’ she hissed. ‘Straight ahead. Get down.’
    He lay flat, so that he was pressed up against her side, staring through a slit in a kind of rush fence that fronted the platform. He thought they must be about thirty feet off the ground. He could feel the platform swaying slightly. ‘What the fuck are you doing, Sara?’ He whispered the words into her ear, so close her hair was in his eyes. ‘Are you fucking mad?’ She was aiming the gun, ignoring him. He inched forward to see better through the slits and saw that she must have intended to find this place all along. She hadn’t been just running madly. The angle gave her a clear view into the area they had been watching from beneath the lab block, the area just behind the big house, though now from the reverse angle, from up behind the summerhouse. And now she had a clear field of fire. He could see figures moving around down there. The distance was about one hundred yards.
    ‘I’m going to stop them,’ she said. ‘I have to.’
    ‘If you shoot that thing they’ll know we’re here. They’ll fire at us …’
    ‘It’s a hunting rifle. It has a suppressor fitted …’
    ‘They’ll see the flash.’
    ‘The muzzle flash is suppressed too. They won’t see so clearly. They’ll hear something, but won’t know where it came from …’
    ‘If they look now they can see us, without you fucking advertising it. We’re already too close. Please listen to me. I’ve worked with these kinds of people. I have experience you don’t have. They will just start shooting blind. If you want to get us killed then fire that thing.