Chapter 42

Kurt and Joe were marched over rough terrain. Their hands were tied with vines, which made it difficult to balance as they scaled crumbling slopes of lava rock and ducked under branches and palm fronds waiting to smack them in the face.

Kurt kept his eyes moving—forward for terrain avoidance, side to side for any sign of where they were going. The course led upward in a climbing, curving motion, with the slope of the terrain rising to their left and dropping to their right.

At one point Kurt heard the sea. The sound was distant and coming at them from below. They were quite a way from the coastline at this point.

Continuing through the darkness, he added an occasional glance in Joe’s direction for a bit of unspoken communication.

Joe shrugged. He was fine, taking it all in stride. Getting Kurt’s attention, he twisted his hands back and forth in the bindings.

Kurt offered a subtle nod. The vines were tough, and with multiple loops they were too strong to break through, but the knots were an amateur’s work, and the vines themselves had a low level of friction. With a little stretching and wiggling they could slip free almost anytime they wanted. For now they allowed the capture to continue.

They scaled a steep section, during which Kurt skinned his knee. Cresting that, they followed a ridge in the topography. The tree line was thicker here, but that didn’t mean they were out of sight. As they traveled, the ominous buzzing of a drone could be heard in the sky. It came toward them from the north.

“Spider,” one of the men said.

“Down on the earth,” the leader of the group said, dropping to one knee. “Touch the trees,” she added. “The Gray Witch will hide us. She will keep us from sight.”

To Kurt this sounded like insanity. They needed cover, a cave or a ditch or a hollow in the rocks. Something to keep the drone’s infrared cameras from spotting their heat signatures.

“It’s not a spider,” Kurt said. “It’s a machine that’s looking for us. We need to hide.”

The leader grabbed Kurt and pulled him to the ground. “Put your hand against the tree,” she said. “Be part of the earth. It won’t see us. I promise you.”

Up close and whispering, the woman’s voice sounded familiar. He turned to her, attempting to see her face, but the hood of her dark green cloak was pulled up over her head, obscuring her face.

“Do as I instruct,” the woman said.

Kurt turned back toward the tree, pressed his hands against the trunk, and leaned in close to it. He considered the whole idea to be nonsense, but this wasn’t the moment to start a scuffle.

The drone closed in on them, changes in pitch telling Kurt that it was altering direction and heading their way.

He looked at Joe and began to loosen the bonds holding his hands. If the drone was armed, or it called in others that were, or a squad of Vaughn’s men, they would need their hands free to run and fight.

Joe nodded and began working his hands free.

Meanwhile, their captors began chanting something in a low harmonic tone. Kurt could hear only the woman beside him whispering.

“Protect us, Gray Witch,” she said. “Blind them to our presence once again. They are seekers of destruction. We are the children of pain.”

Kurt tried not to roll his eyes as the drone continued directly toward them. Seconds went by; the chanting continued, quieting to a whisper. And the drone passed right over the top of them.

So much for the Gray Witch , Kurt thought.

But the drone didn’t stop and hover overhead. It didn’t circle back for another pass. It didn’t open fire or drop flares, incendiary devices, or grenades. It just continued on out toward the coast, where the sound eventually vanished with the wind.

“Zigzag pattern,” Joe said, trying to explain the course change that brought it toward them.

Kurt vaguely remembered Rudi mentioning the drones patrolling in that manner. “It still went over our heads.”

“It would have come back if it saw us,” Joe replied.

Kurt knew that. But he could find no explanation for the drone passing over them and not seeing the body heat of eight people sweating in the cool jungle.

“Up,” the woman snapped, and everyone stood. “Move. Now.”

They continued along the bluff for a thousand yards before turning downslope. As Kurt was wondering how far they’d go, the woman vanished directly in front of Kurt’s eyes.

Kurt stopped in disbelief and was shoved onward by a push in the back. The ground beneath him vanished and he dropped thirty feet onto a tarp that caught him and broke his fall.

Before he could get up, several pairs of hands grabbed him and pulled him off of it. Looking around, Kurt saw a dozen people in a circle holding the tarp, stretching it back out for the next jumper.

One after another they came down until all of them stood in the entrance to a large cave. The tarp was rolled up and hidden. Kurt and Joe were marched through a pair of hanging curtains into the cave. They found themselves in a large open room lit dimly by LED bulbs. They saw boxes and crates and stacks of equipment that were covered in corrosion and rust.

Tunnels led off to the left and right.

A vertical arrangement of pipes, pressure valves, and other gear stood in the middle of the room. It was held in place over the pit, the pipes emanating from it, dropping down into the depths that were unfathomable in the dim light. The bottom could have been a hundred feet below or a thousand miles.

“This must be one of the test wells the geothermal company drilled before going bankrupt,” Joe said.

Kurt had been thinking the same thing. “Looks like they stored a bunch of their equipment down here. Better than out in the tropical rain, I guess.”

As they were brought toward the center of the cavern, additional men began to appear, coming into the room via other tunnels. They formed a small semicircle around Kurt and Joe, as if looking at a prize captured on a hunt.

While the others gawked at the prisoners, the woman who’d lead them through the jungle climbed the steps to a podium at the far end of the room. Plants and fronds from various trees had been arranged there. The platform itself was covered with soil and petals and tree nuts, as if meant to act as some facsimile of nature.

She dropped to one knee in front of a small altar and offered a quiet prayer. When she was finished, she stood. Turning to face the group, she slid the hood of her garment back, revealing her face. Full lips, large eyes, and fierce cheekbones made sharper by the gaunt look of someone who was not eating full meals on a regular basis. Her hair was buzzed to a tight stubble. It bristled in the dark.

Kurt stared as recognition hit him. He stood there baffled and surprised, his mind racing to catch up to events that didn’t seem connected to reality. From the corner of his eye, he saw recognition hit Joe, too, as he mouthed her name silently, in disbelief.

Priya.

Priya Kashmir was a former colleague and a friend, having worked with them at NUMA for the better part of five years. And while she’d spent most of her time with Hiram Yaeger and Max in the Information Technology Unit, she had ventured into the field with Kurt and Joe on several occasions, most notably accompanying them on a mission to Bermuda.

She’d gone back to MIT after leaving NUMA. To encounter her on a deserted island covered in jungle in the middle of the Indian Ocean was a jarring discovery, like spotting the school librarian leading a motorcycle gang in a bar brawl.

Still, it gave answers to a few questions. To begin with, Priya was familiar with NUMA’s operations and procedures. She’d worked with the satellite network, the computer systems, and most often with Yaeger and Max. If anyone could hack their outer systems, fabricate a tracking beacon to attract their attention, and send the messages Kurt had received, Priya could.

But even if all of that appeared to be logical, one incredibly important detail made no sense at all: Priya Kashmir had been paralyzed from the waist down months before she’d even joined NUMA. Her spine had been crushed, her liver punctured, her right knee shattered so badly the doctors had replaced it, even though she would never walk again.

In all the time Kurt knew her, she hadn’t regained even the slightest amount of feeling in her toes. Yet she’d just led them through the jungle on a grueling hike and now stood proudly at the top of the elevated platform like an Amazonian princess ruling over her loyal tribe.