The prisoner stood naked against a wall, his arms splayed wide, every inch of his moonlit body taut, tense muscle. A thick iron chain ran from the tight manacle-like cuffs on his wrists through a ring set overhead in the stone. Scars were all that showed where he had been slashed at with a knife so that his blood would attract the rats, but many new gashes made up for the healed ones, evidence of the torture the man had recently undergone.
His bare feet were a bloody mess, for all but one of his toenails had been pried out. His powerful thighs bore the mark of the soldiers” heavy boots; and his chest and even his genitals showed evidence of brutality. Dirt crusted his lips, and blood from a cut on his forehead had congealed on the strong brows that framed closed eyes. Despite it all, the man stood firm, fingers wrapped around the chains that secured him, as though he were holding the iron aloft.
Two burly men, soldiers in the pandillero’s private army, were on guard at the site. One of them came forward to hand over a bundle to his leader. “His clothes, jefe. Nothing unusual. His passport and cell phone are there too.”
The mobster looked to his bodyguard, who handed over a small, unassuming stone statuette that had been appropriated from the prisoner before he had been given over to the rats. He then reached out for the prisoner’s passport and flipped it open, reminding himself of his captive’s name. “Professor Bharadvaj,” he began. “Your reputation as a treasure-hunter precedes you. I was assured that you would, without doubt, lead me to the famed lost idol of Viracocha, and it was proved right. But I was not informed that you were a man of other…talents.”
The prisoner slowly opened his eyes. They gleamed; a flash of gold fused into the brown in what could have been a trick of the moonlight. The soldiers shuffled, inexplicably uncomfortable. Then he spoke, his voice deep and calm, “I am a historian, jefe, not a treasure-hunter. But you didn’t come here to discuss the difference.”
“You’re an interesting man, Professor. Indestructible? Is that the right word for you? Something tells me you, with your splendid abilities, would be worth a lot more than this relic here... I might be persuaded to make a deal of some sort. What do you think?”
“I think,” the prisoner growled, “that you’ve made a huge mistake.”
“Cojudo! What do you mean, you asshole?”
“The only reason I haven’t walked out of here already was because I want the statue back. You see, unlike you, I’m a man of honour and when I say I’ll do a job, I deliver. It would have been most inconvenient to have to search half of Bolivia for you, and it was way easier to make you bring it to me, as you just have. You should know better than to believe in tales of indestructible men…cojudo.”
One of the soldiers laughed and made a disparaging comment in his native tongue. The chief guffawed and then addressed the prisoner. “Do you know what he said? He said you speak too much for a man in shackles.”
In response, the prisoner looked straight into the pandillero’s eyes. Letting go of the chains, he tightened his left hand into a fist and smashed it into the old stone behind him, once, twice, three times till the metacarpus shattered, collapsing within the skin in otherworldly formlessness. His body shuddered and his chest heaved as his breath caught against the excruciating pain that followed, but the man seemed to make little of his discomfort and waited, letting it pass. He glanced down, considering his hand and its manacle. Then he smashed again at the stone, this time doubling over and grunting through clenched teeth as the bones of his wrist and upper forearm took the impact.
Standing up straight, the man took a deep breath and pulled his deformed hand through the manacle around his wrist till his left arm hung at his side. Free of the counter-weight, the chain that had secured him to the wall rustled musically through the stone rings till his right arm, still in the grasp of its metal cuff, also hung at his side. Satisfied at the outcome, the man allowed himself a brief, cold smile.
The chief and his soldiers watched, open-mouthed. “Madre de Dios!” one of the men hissed. He swung forward his M90 semi-automatic gun and racked the slide, the action prompting the other men to do the same. But it was too late.
The prisoner darted forward, deflecting the nearest gunman’s weapon with a right forearm block. In the same move, he drove the point of his elbow into the man’s throat, the action bringing instant death. Using the dead soldier in front of him as a shield, the prisoner advanced on the others, pressing the soldier’s lifeless finger down on the trigger.
Bullets riddled the limp corpse, spurts of blood drenching the prisoner. The noise of gunfire rang off the stone, ebbing only when the prisoner shot down the chief’s bodyguard and then emptied the clip into the second soldier. That left the chief, and his gun, now also empty. The prisoner pushed aside his human shield and readied to face his adversary.
The chief was not a man to be cowed; his fearsome reputation was justifiably earned. He charged at the unarmed prisoner, swinging his empty rifle into the man’s face. The prisoner caught the blow head-on and went flying back to land on the ground. Making good on the opportunity, the chief moved in to drive the butt of his weapon into the prisoner’s stomach, drawing from him a guttural yell. At that, the chief grunted in satisfaction, but it came a little too soon.
As the next blow descended, the prisoner caught the butt of the rifle with a single hand. Opposing the chief’s weight with brute force, he thrust the gun upwards till the muzzle bored into the other man’s gut, pushing him back. Springing to his feet, the prisoner tackled the pandillero, pinning him against the wall he had been bound to moments ago. Then he grabbed the chains that still hung from the manacle on his right wrist, wound the links around the chief’s neck and drew tight.
The chief strained against the pressure, clawed at the air in a desperate attempt to breathe. His face contorted, fear coursing through his being, he rasped, “Que…what…are you?” And then he went limp.
The prisoner kept the pressure up for a good five minutes, waiting for the subtle pulse at the chief’s neck to ebb before letting the man fall to the ground. He moved swiftly, retrieving first the key to the manacles from the bodyguard’s person, then his belongings from where the chief had let them fall. Tucking his clothes under his mangled left arm, he used the recovered cell phone to dial a memorized number.
“Come get me, Manohar,” he said into the phone before hanging up and sliding out the SIM card. He broke the SIM into two with his teeth and slipped both pieces into the pocket of his shirt along with the phone, all to be disposed of later. He pulled on his clothes and his boots, grunting as he failed to tie his shoelaces as neatly as he would have liked with just one hand. After a couple of attempts, he gave up the effort with a wholesome laugh; the sound echoing through the ruins. All the while, the chief stared at him with wide, lifeless eyes and a slack-jawed grin.
The prisoner walked over to the cadaver. What ought to have been a mundane historical expedition had turned into a bloodbath, the very kind of carnage that he had managed to avoid for years. In moments, everything had changed. He had known it was bound to happen.
It is time.
He pushed the intuition aside, setting his mind to more immediate concerns. After all that gunfire, he had little chance of a quiet escape or an easy journey to the predetermined extraction point by the lake. More of the chief’s henchmen were likely to come storming in at any second, and he would have to deal with them the only way he could. In any case, he could not risk leaving a single man alive to tell the story – his story. The story of the man who would not die.
Excerpted with permission from Immortal, Krishna Udaysankar, Hachette India.
