Agent Juno in "An Angel Falls"

Agent Juno's mission is to climb a huge rock face in the Amazon and stop a mad scientist.

Agent Juno in

AN ANGEL FALLS

(The third book of Agent Juno Hayes)

Chapter One: Two Brandies and a Briefing
"Agent Juno, we have a problem."
Juno Hayes leaned back in the leather chair opposite Chief Debora Pattronelli's polished mahogany desk, one leg elegantly crossed over the other. "Yes, Ma'am, how can I help?"
Pattranelli removed her glasses and leaned forward, resting her elbows on the desk, her cold blue eyes locking onto Juno with the weight of a thousand unsaid reprimands. "Agent Juno, just because you have been promoted to Lieutenant-Commander doesn't mean I am any more inclined to tolerate your cheek than ever before."
Juno's pretty blue-grey left eye flickered down as she swirled the cognac in the crystal glass resting easily in her hand. The black eye-patch over her right eye made her difficult to read. "No, Ma'am. Sorry, Ma'am." The apology was professional, measured--just enough respect to keep Pattranelli from snapping, just enough insolence to remind her who she was dealing with. After all, Pattranelli may have been the Head of Emmerson University's Campus Security Intelligence Branch, but Juno, already at 26, had become something of a legend amongst the women of the CSIB.
She swirled the cognac again, then downed it. Pattranelli, bound by old-school politeness, and the unbreakable laws of civilized alcohol consumption, poured her another. Juno took it with a gracious nod, a small smirk curling at the edge of her lips.
She was dressed for trouble. A short, tight green dress that clung just enough to suggest sin, paired with green high heels that accentuated the curve of her calves and gave her a few extra inches, although what the 5'2" agent lacked in stature she more than made up for in presence. The ensemble was a masterpiece of deception--too impractical to suggest anything but leisure, too carefully calculated to be anything but war paint. Her short-cropped light-brown hair was parted neatly on the left, allowing an unruly loop of fringe to soften the look of the eyepatch.
Pattranelli didn't comment on the outfit. She had long since stopped questioning Juno's choices.
"We've got a situation," Pattranelli began. "His name is Dr Ernst Valther. Formerly of the European Space Agency, now self-appointed architect of global catastrophe. Remarkably fit for seventy, wiry as hell, and smart enough to be dangerous. He's spent years deciphering orbital vulnerabilities and altitude parabolas, and he's worked out that at a precise time and date, he'll be able to access the British government's weapons systems via the Gabriel 007 satellite. The catch? He can only do it from one place in the world--the top of Auyan Tepui in Venezuela."
Juno raised an eyebrow. "The one with Angel Falls on it?"
"The very same. Even now, he's en route. He's flying in on a microlight, setting up camp, waiting for it to pass overhead. If he succeeds, we're looking at a full-scale disaster. Your job is to make sure that doesn't happen."
Juno took an elegant but long sip of her cognac, processing. "So, just to clarify--I'm being sent alone into the Amazon, where I'll be dropping out of a plane, trekking through the jungle, climbing a sheer table-top mountain, and taking out a seventy-year-old terrorist before he hacks into Britain's arsenal and starts World War Three?"
Pattranelli gave her a thin smile. "Correct. And you leave in five minutes."
Juno exhaled slowly, waves of alcohol fumes refracting the air, setting the empty crystal glass back on the desk with a soft clink. Then she stood, rolling her shoulders as if shaking off the last remnants of civility.
"Well," she said, smoothing her dress, "at least it's not a dull day at the office."
She turned on her heel and strode towards the door, her heels clicking against the polished floor. As she reached for the handle, Pattranelli's voice cut through the silence.
"Agent Juno, I haven't -"
Juno glanced back and flashed a mischievous smile: "Don't you worry Ma'am - I'll bring you a set of alpaca-wool ear-muffs."
And with that, she was gone, the door closed behind her.
Pattranelli sighed. "Dismissed," she said to the empty room.



Chapter Two: A Drink Before Dying
Juno Hayes sat in the dimly lit belly of the CSIB aircraft, the steady hum of the engines thrumming through the metal floor beneath her. The Amazon stretched out below, an endless, undulating sea of green, broken only by the jagged, mist-wrapped cliffs of distant tepuis. It was the kind of view poets dreamed of, explorers feared, and cartographers cursed.
It was also, in Juno's experience, the kind of setting that encouraged entirely too much thinking.
She reached for her hip flask, slipping it from the side pocket of the massive kit bag beside her. The thing was monstrous--nearly as tall as she was and packed with enough gear to fight a small war. It was half her own weight, maybe more, but she barely noticed. Not until she had to run with it, anyway.
The parachute straps pressed against her shoulders, cutting into the shimmering fabric of her green evening dress. The ridiculousness of her outfit for a jungle infiltration wasn't lost on her. But there had been no time to change after Pattranelli's briefing--besides, there was something appealingly perverse about dropping into the Amazon dressed for cocktails rather than combat.
The whiskey burned its way down, a welcome fire in the artificial chill of the cabin.
"Having a party back there, Juno?"
She looked up, her single blue-grey eye locking onto the young pilot who had turned slightly in his seat, flashing her a grin. He was good-looking, in a boyish, overconfident way.
She rolled her eye, half-exasperated, half-amused. "That's Commander Hayes to you, Lieutenant. And you should be keeping your eyes front, so we don't crash into a tepui."
The pilot chuckled, undeterred. "Don't you worry, Commander, these steady hands are--"
The plane lurched, the words torn from his lips as turbulence rocked the cabin.
Juno braced with the easy instinct of someone who'd spent too much of her life in places exactly like this--cramped, vibrating tin cans hurtling through the sky, carrying her toward some fresh brand of insanity. She took another sip from the flask, her last for a while, and screwed the cap back on before sliding it into her pocket. Then she stood, rolling her shoulders, straightening the hem of her dress as if she were about to step onto a ballroom floor rather than into the unknown.
The turbulence smoothed. The pilot steadied the plane. He glanced back once more, grin returning. "As I was saying--"
But the back of the plane was empty.
Juno Hayes was already gone, vanishing into the night, gliding silently toward the emerald abyss below.
Chapter Three: Through the Green Abyss
Juno's fall was less a graceful descent and more a reckless collision with nature's obstacles. The canopy, thick and unyielding, shattered around her as she crashed through a tangle of branches. Her parachute snagged on high boughs, leaving her suspended in a precarious dance between sky and earth. Below her, her massive kit bag--almost as tall as she was and a veritable arsenal in itself--had cushioned her impact with the rough branches, its bulk a silent guardian in this chaotic entry.
Instinct took over. Juno's hand slid to the knife strapped to her thigh. With a few swift, precise cuts, she freed the bag from its leafy prison. It dropped with a heavy thud onto the jungle floor far below. Sighing at the abrupt end of her airborne glamour, she kicked off her green high heels. The short, shimmering dress that had made her look like a femme fatale in a cocktail lounge was still practical enough for jungle travel--if a little less stylish than before.
With practiced efficiency, she cut herself free from the parachute's entanglement. Plunging towards the ground, she rolled expertly upon impact, absorbing the shock with a fluid motion. When she finally came to a halt, the dense foliage of the jungle around her revealed the perfection of her chosen moment of exit from the plane: she had landed near the Carrao River.
Wiping dirt from her face, Juno hefted her kit bag and located the inflatable raft tucked away among her gear. This was just the first leg of her journey--a three-hour upstream paddle on the Carrao, then a switch to the Churun River to edge closer to Auy Tepui's daunting slopes.
Barefoot and unburdened by heels, she stepped into the raft. As she began paddling out to the middle of the river, she paused to drain the last of the whiskey from her hip-flask. The liquid burned a farewell note as it slid down, mingling with the humid air. For a moment, she allowed herself a brief respite--a quiet, solitary gaze over the glowing, verdant expanse of the rainforest.
Tempted by the cool promise of the water, she lowered a hand to trail in the river's pristine current. But nature had a rude awakening in store. A sudden, sharp pain jolted her as a piranha snapped at the back of her hand, leaving a small, bloody gash. Juno stifled a surprised yelp--she was not one to indulge in such theatrics. Clenching her hand to staunch the bleeding, she quickly fished a bandage from her kit and applied it with efficient precision. The moment of vulnerability was brief; she refocused instantly. This was no leisurely river cruise.
Three hours later, the Churun River narrowed. The banks began to rise, the current quickening into an insistent rush that rendered further paddling futile. Juno steered the raft to the river's edge, jettisoning the inflatable and hefting her gigantic backpack over her shoulder--a weight of 45 kilograms that felt like both a burden and a promise of the mission ahead.
Ahead, a faint trail wound toward the distant roar of Angel Falls. But Juno didn't have the luxury of following recognised trails: her approach to the base of the tepui, and to its summit, had to be unnoticed; instead, she opted for a more gruelling off-track route. For two brutal days, she would trudge through thick jungle, wade through mud, and scale steep ravines under a punishing humidity and the relentless assault of mosquitoes.
As dusk crept over the jungle, her legs gave way after just two hours of relentless trekking. Collapsing into the dirt, exhaustion threatened to overwhelm her. Yet sleep on the ground was a luxury she couldn't afford--not with ravenous insects, giant spiders, and venomous snakes lurking in the shadows.
Drawing on every ounce of her resourcefulness, Juno began rigging a hammock from her kit. Every knot was tied with the precision of a seasoned operative, every loop and lash a barrier against the dangers of the night. When the hammock was finally secure, her body and mind surrendered to the exhaustion. For the first time in as long as she could remember, Juno Hayes fell into a deep, sober sleep, cradled by the relentless, enigmatic heart of the jungle.
Chapter Four: The Edge of the World
Two-thirds of the way up a sheer eight-hundred-metre rock face, high above the endless green sprawl of the Amazon Rainforest, Juno Hayes clung to a shallow dihedral of red rock. The vastness of the world stretched below her--a dizzying, breath-taking abyss of trees, rivers, and silence.
Her fingers, white with chalk, crimped sideways into a thin, stubborn crack. Her feet, locked into impossibly tight rubber climbing shoes, sought purchase against the blank rock. Her left shoe smeared against the face, pressing hard for friction, while her right foot curled precariously under her, the edge of her shoe balanced on the razor-thin lip of a fragile flake.
She reached up, stretching for the point where the crack widened, muscles taut, her breathing slow and even. Then--
Snap.
The flake beneath her right foot shattered.
For a single suspended heartbeat, she was weightless. Then she fell.
A shriek of surprise--then exhilaration--tore from her lips as she plummeted. The wind roared in her ears. The rope looped ten metres below to her last protection anchor, stretching, then snapping tight. The jolt caught her mid-air, and she swung inward, bouncing gently against the rock face, her heart hammering in her chest.
And she laughed.
For the first time in years, she laughed like she had when she was seventeen--carefree, fearless, before the weight of duty, before war, before whiskey, before an eye-patch replaced the clear, bright gaze of a girl who had once thought the world was hers to conquer. She had laughed often back then. Her hair had been long, her future boundless.
But happiness didn't lie in the past. She knew that much.
She shook her head, exhaled sharply, and gripped the rope. Hand over hand, she jugged back up, muscles burning with the familiar rhythm of ascent. At the high-point where she'd fallen, she chalked her hands, fingers working the powder in deep. Then, inch by inch, she crawled back up the steep dihedral.
At the crux, where the flake had broken, she reached up again. This time, her fingers locked firm into the crack. Her body strained, core tight, legs pressing, shifting, steadying. A final push--and she was through.
Moments later, she was anchored, hanging securely beneath a vast overhanging roof of rock. The worst was over.
With practiced efficiency, she clipped into the pulley system and hauled up her monstrous kit bag, its weight a familiar drag against her harness. Once it was secured, she leaned back, rigging her hammock beneath the massive rock overhang. The stone, streaked in bands of red, black, and white, radiated warmth from the fading sun.
Juno exhaled, letting herself melt into the embrace of the webbing, her limbs aching, her pulse steadying. Far below, the jungle stretched to the horizon, a living, breathing ocean of green. The air shimmered with mist. Evening swallows darted along the rock face, slicing through the golden-purple sky. The world felt impossibly vast, impossibly still.
For the first time in what felt like years, Juno Hayes felt her spirit pause to breathe. The CSIB was far away. Dr Ernst Valther was nothing but a name whispered in some distant, shadowed office. There was only the rock, the sky, and the endless abyss below.
And for now, that was enough.



Chapter 5: Valther
Dr Ernst Valther leaned back against the crinkling fabric of his tent, sighing as he licked the last remnants of his thin, joyless porridge from his spoon. He set the bowl aside, wiped his fingers on his damp trousers, and exhaled through his nose, long and slow. Outside, the ever-present mist of Auy Tepui curled and shifted, a dense, clinging shroud that coated every surface with a fine, relentless sheen of moisture. It was his sixth night on this godforsaken summit, and his patience was wearing thinner than the porridge.
He turned to his laptop, its glow a cold intrusion against the mountain's oppressive darkness. The calculations remained unchanged: in precisely two days, four hours, and twelve minutes, the British satellite, the Gabriel 007, would pass through the window of its orbital vulnerability. At that moment, with a few keystrokes, he would seize control, locking out all other access. It would be his plaything, a tool to unleash mayhem upon the world. The thought warmed him more than the miserable gruel in his stomach. He chuckled to himself, the sound low and indulgent. It would be worth it. The sleepless nights, the damp tent, the stinking, mist-choked air--all of it.
But the frogs. Oh, the goddamned frogs.
They were starting again. The moment the sun dipped below the horizon, the tiny, insufferable creatures emerged from their hidden recesses among the rocks, filling the night with their ceaseless, high-pitched croaking. It wasn't even a rhythmic or predictable sound; it came in erratic bursts, a chorus of random, mocking chirps that drilled into his brain with the precision of a dentist's drill.
Valther clenched his teeth. He had tried everything. He had buried his head beneath his sleeping bag, pressed his hands against his ears, even blasted white noise through his laptop speakers. Nothing worked. The frogs were impervious.
A shrill, drawn-out croak cut through the night, closer than before.
"Enough," he muttered, unzipping his sleeping bag.
Another croak. Then another. They were getting louder.
"Enough!" he barked, sitting upright. He swore the frogs had waited for him to lie down before beginning their vile serenade.
A long, deep breath did nothing to soothe his nerves. His fingers twitched. He had hacked into the classified systems of world governments. He had bypassed firewalls built by the most brilliant minds in cybersecurity. And yet here he was, powerless against a horde of thumb-sized amphibians.
Something inside him snapped.
With a furious growl, he tore open the tent flap and stomped out into the swirling mist, his boots slapping against wet stone.
"SHUT UP!" he bellowed into the darkness. "SHUT UP, FROGS! SHUT UP!"
For a moment, silence fell over the summit. The air was still, the fog thick and unmoving. Even the wind seemed to hesitate, as if startled by his outburst.
Valther closed his eyes and smiled. Sweet, blissful silence.
He turned and crawled back into his tent, settling onto his side with a satisfied sigh. Perhaps now he could get some rest.
A single croak pierced the night.
Then another.
And another.
Within seconds, the full chorus had resumed, louder than before. He clenched his jaw, whimpering softly as he pressed his hands over his ears.
Taking over the world had better be worth it.
Chapter 6: Gabriel Landing
Juno Hayes stood barefoot on the summit of Auyan Tepui, her toes sinking into the cool, damp earth. The wind howled around her, mist curling like ghostly fingers at her ankles. Behind her, the jungle stretched to infinity, an undulating sea of darkness broken only by the gleam of moonlight on scattered waterways. Above, the sky shimmered, a vast, infinite canvas. Then, a star began to move.
She exhaled, slow and steady. This was the moment.
From orbit, the Gabriel 007 plunged, slicing through the atmosphere like an avenging angel. A streak of fire, its heat shield flared into a furious orange glow, a false sunrise in the dead of night. Juno's stolen commands took hold, overriding its original trajectory. It was hers now.
The satellite roared closer, a rolling sonic boom blasting across the jungle canopy, rattling the very bones of the earth. Birds shrieked, exploding into the sky in frenzied flocks. The wind shifted, the storm of descent ruffling Juno's short light-brown hair and tugging at her now-scruffy green evening dress. Then, with an almost surgical precision, the ion thrusters flared blue, burning through the night, correcting the descent with a calculated series of bursts.
Juno's pulse remained steady. She had spent two days scaling this glorious rock, one night suspended in a hammock, muscles screaming from the effort, all to reach this moment. And now, here it was--
The satellite deployed its final manoeuvring thrusters, pillars of plasma kicking up a tempest of dust and debris. It descended in fits and starts, shuddering in defiance of gravity until, at last, it settled, battered but intact, in a shallow crater of scorched earth.
Juno let the wind buffet her as she stepped forward, the heat of re-entry still rolling off the satellite's blistered hull. The metallic scent of scorched alloy filled her nostrils. She tilted her hip-flask to her lips, took a long, slow sip of rum, and exhaled with satisfaction.
"Now that's how you steal a satellite."
A voice cut through the night.
"Thank you, Strange Young Lady, but I will take it from here."
Juno turned, her instincts shifting instantly from triumph to threat. Dr Ernst Valther stood a few yards away, his silhouette stark against the glowing wreckage. He held a pistol, steady, level, aimed directly at her heart.






Chapter 7: Angel Falls
Juno stood with one hand on her hip, her weight shifting lazily as she watched Dr Ernst Valthar point a pistol at her chest. "What are you going to do, Valthar, shoot me?"
The old man's fingers twitched around the gun, his skeletal frame stiff with barely contained triumph. "Do you know how long I've planned and waited for this moment? To take control of this satellite? To take control of this miserable world? Now step aside."
Juno smirked. "You know when you were having trouble with those frogs last night?" She let the words hang in the humid air.
Valthar's expression faltered. "What?"
"While you were out shouting at frogs, I infiltrated your tent, found your pistol under your pillow, and removed the bullets." She held up a handful of brass cartridges, letting them slip one by one through her fingers into the muddy ground.
Valthar's eyes bulged. He yanked the trigger. A hollow click echoed across the mountaintop. He tried again. Click. Click. He let out an enraged snarl and stormed toward her, his bony frame trembling with frustration.
"Step aside, you little frog! Or I will... I will push you over! And then nothing will stop me opening that maintenance hatch and inflicting my justice!"
Juno raised an unimpressed eyebrow. She twirled a small object between her fingers--gleaming in the weak light of dawn. "But Doctor, how will you open it without this?"
Valthar's eyes locked on the key. For a moment, he froze. Then, in a move so anticlimactic it took Juno by surprise, he snatched it from her hand and turned on his heel, sprinting away.
Juno let out a slow breath and watched him go. "Seriously?" she muttered to herself, "Interrupting the orbit of a government satellite is in the job description, but chasing a seventy-year-old lunatic across a mountain top seems a little beyond the call of duty."
She took off after him, the damp earth cold beneath her bare feet. Valthar, despite his years, was alarmingly fast. She recalled the mission briefing with Debora Pattranelli--how she had casually mentioned that Valthar was in remarkable shape. Juno now cursed herself for brushing off the detail.
The chase carried them across the rugged tepui, wind whipping at her now-tattered green evening dress. Mud splattered her legs as she ran, the heavy mist of Angel Falls rising in the distance.
Valthar veered towards the precipice, where the river thundered over the edge of the cliff, plummeting eight hundred meters into the dense jungle below. Juno slowed to a stop, her breath ragged, as she saw him standing at the very edge.
"Nowhere left to run, Doctor!" she called, bracing herself for a fight.
Valthar turned to her, a slow, triumphant grin spreading across his gaunt face. "You still don't understand, do you?" And with that, he hurled himself over the edge.
Juno blinked. "Oh, for God's sake." Without hesitation, she launched herself after him.
The world blurred into a whirlwind of mist and rushing wind. She hadn't thought this through. Not unusual for her, but even by her standards, leaping off the highest waterfall in the world in an evening dress was pushing it.
Then, through the roar of the falls, she saw Valthar's parachute snap open. His reedy voice barely reached her over the deafening cascade: "I have the key, Little Frog! Nothing can stop me now!"
Juno narrowed her eye. "Oh, we'll see about that."
Tucking her arms close to her body, she dipped into a steep dive, free-falling toward the floating figure below.

-----------------------------

Some years later, the piranha-picked bones of Dr Ernst Valthar would wash through the mouth of the Orinoco River on the East Coast of South America and into the Atlantic Ocean.