by Rick Chesler
“Somebody got to him.” Ethan eyed the collapsible poles the flags had been wrapped around, again, the same as the one he had tried to use. “I have no idea why, but he’s been bought and paid for to make it look like the Tongans claimed this island first.”
While Ethan stuffed the flags into his own pack so as not to leave a false Tongan presence, Skylar pulled Richard’s backpack toward her and began rummaging through the rest of its contents. She unzipped a compartment inside the main pack. She wrapped her fingers around smooth steel, looked down and tensed when she recognized what she was looking at.
Skylar glanced up at her two teammates. Both of them still conversed with each other about the ramifications of the flags and who it was that Richard could have been working for…The Tongans?…the U.N.?…the CIA?!…
The geologist slipped the gun from Richard’s backpack—it was some kind of pistol, but she didn’t know anything beyond that—and dropped it without showing it to the others into her own pack. She casually closed the top flap and was turning back around to go back into Richard’s pack when Ethan suddenly grabbed it and pulled it toward him.
“Let’s see if we can find anything else that would tip him off to being some sort of spy.”
“Or mole,” Anita added. “Maybe he was bought off by the Tongans. Could be they gave him some cash to plant those flags and to look the other way if evidence was found that proved they weren’t the first to land here.”
Ethan’s hands froze on the pack, and he looked up at Anita. “But the sole survivor we found so far, from the landing party, was confirmed to be a Tongan by our translator.” He closed his eyes for a moment as he mentally relived Kai’s gruesome dinosaur death, before adding, “Why would Tonga pay him to plant flags when they were actually here?”
Ethan held her gaze for a moment longer, a moment during which Skylar never took her eyes from his, and then he shook his head and delved once again into Richard’s bag.
“Maybe something in here will provide more clues…” He pulled out a few more odds and ends from the pack—nothing incriminating or even interesting at all—toiletries, extra batteries, a fire starting kit…
“Ah, wait a minute, what have we here…” He dug deeper into the pack, inside yet another zippered compartment, beneath a foil emergency blanket. He said nothing further as he removed the object from the bag with a smile and held it in his palm for the two women to see.
“Well, well, well, it seems Richard—God rest his soul—saw fit to bring his own mode of outside communication.”
Skylar and Anita stared wide-eyed at the Iridium 9555 satellite phone in Ethan’s hand. At first, their expressions reflected mild anger at having been misled by Richard. Skylar put a voice to what they were all thinking. “If he had a phone all along, why didn’t he use it before, especially with his injuries?”
“No reception down there in the tunnels.” Ethan flipped the device over in his hand, looking for the power button. “He watched Lara trying to get a signal and figured, if she can’t, then he probably can’t either, so why risk it?” He thought about it for a moment and then added, “Or maybe he was planning to get a call out while he was planting his flag back there when I walked in on him.”
Anita stared at the phone in Ethan’s hand. “Or….maybe he did get a call out. How would we know?”
Ethan lit the phone up and waited for the boot-up screen to indicate it was searching for satellites. “How about if we figure out what Richard was up to later and just see if we can get a call out now?”
“Good idea,” Anita said.
“I second that.” Skylar cinched up her pack as though ready to hitch a ride out of here right this second.
But it didn’t take long for an expression of anger to build on Ethan’s face.
“What’s the matter?” Anita leaned in over the phone, and Ethan angled the screen so that she and Skylar could see it.
“It’s passworded.”
“Try taking the battery out and putting it back in,” Skylar suggested. “Maybe the password will reset if it loses power?”
Ethan shrugged and carried out that suggestion, but when he powered the device back on, the pesky password prompt was still there. “Now what?”
“Maybe try a couple typical passwords.” This from Anita. “His name? ‘Password1’? ‘1234’. That kind of stuff?”
Once again, Ethan followed through with the suggestions, also adding ‘explorer’ and ‘Gaia’ to the list, but nothing worked. “I think we’ve spent enough time on this for now.” Ethan dropped the phone into his pack. “We’ll take this back with us so we can figure out what he was doing with it. Neither of the two expedition sat-phones were passworded, but he sneaks a phone along he didn’t mention to anyone and it’s passworded?”
Skylar nodded. “It’s got to have to do with the Tongan flag business, whatever that is.”
The troubled trio gathered their belongings and donned their backpacks. With a last look around at the scene of so much devastation, they set off up the mountain while smoke belched from the top of the volcano.
Chapter 24
United States Embassy, London, England
The CIA case officer known to Richard Eavesley as Baxter picked up the encrypted satellite phone from his desk. He turned it over in his hands, as if considering whether he should use it. He hadn’t heard from his mole on the Gaia expedition for an uncomfortable period of time—not since he’d called in shortly after arrival, when they’d found the Tongan survivor. He still didn’t even know if that man had been saved.
While aware that too much communication with his man in the field placed him at risk for discovery (he wasn’t supposed to have his own sat-phone, first of all, and his expedition teammates would wonder who he was talking to and what about), at the same time, he had that sixth sense about things now. If pressed to explain it, he wouldn’t be able to put it into words very well, but it was sort of an ESP that those who spent a lot of time in tradecraft developed. It was time to make contact.
Baxter keyed the phone and put it to his ear. He heard a series of clicks and then a ring tone indicating that Eavesley’s device was being notified of the call. Come on, you old mountain man, pick up…
Baxter wanted to be able to assure his higher-ups in The Company—the ones in charge of the political goals for the Neptune’s Inferno project—that a Tongan presence on the island had been established beyond a shadow of a doubt. That was Baxter’s sole responsibility, to make sure the Tongans established ownership of the new isle, because if some other country got it, then all bets were off for an American military base in the region.
The news he’d received from Eavesley’s first—and so far, only—call had seemed promising indeed, and if pressed by his superiors, he would certainly let them know what he had learned. But if he was to go to them and declare success before the expedition returned, well then he needed a little more information first so as not to make a fool of himself later.
The Tongan, for one thing. Was he alive? Because if he had died, and no other survivors from that first landing party—the one he’d pressured field agent Esau into cajoling the Tongan King to sponsor—had been discovered, then the implements he’d given Richard were paramount. And he had no way of knowing for certain they’d been deployed yet. Would Eavesley get the chance to use them? Would he even try to use them, if given the chance?
Baxter disconnected the call and redialed in order to give Eavesley a second chance to answer. The guy was in the field, after all, with the phone probably jammed down somewhere in his backpack. Give him a chance to get to it…
He lapsed back into his situational thoughts, darker musings. You don’t think Eavesley chickened out, do you? It was a very serious transgression to simply not uphold one’s end of the bargain after entering into an agreement with the CIA, yet it had been known to happen on occasion. People got scared, thought they’d be able to talk their way out of it or just ignore it altogether, as if it would go away. Somehow, though,
Eavesley didn’t strike him as that type. Back in that pompous club in London, he’d hardly batted an eye before accepting the proposition. Makes no difference to me who gets that damn rock, he’d said.
The call went to a generic voicemail, and Baxter decided to leave a message. “As soon as you get this, return the call. Update required.”
Chapter 25
Skylar took the lead on the hike up. The going was extremely difficult as well as treacherous, the group having to scale mini-mountains of lava while skirting steep drop-offs. Ethan kept watch for boats out across the ocean whenever he could do so without compromising his hiking abilities, but he saw only blue water dotted with whitecaps.
They reached a section where once again, a spire of twisted lava rock necessitated an agile climb out over the edge of the perilous track they followed. To fall off would mean certain death, likely being flayed alive while coming into contact with razor sharp lava rock over and over until falling into the sea below. But even allowing for an overabundance of caution, Ethan could see that something was still not quite right with Skylar.
She took a long time to make her way over a relatively simple obstacle, Ethan noticed. It was as though she was vastly over-weighted, but she wore only her same backpack and carried no additional gear. Yet as he watched, she was constantly having to compensate for being pulled backwards by her heavy pack. Sure, they had taken on some additional equipment scavenged from packs of the fallen, but he and Anita had shared in that burden and they were nowhere near as encumbered. He thought that perhaps Skylar had become injured and didn’t want to make it known for fear of being perceived as a burden to the group.
He caught up to her after she almost toppled backwards hopping over a small rise. “Skylar, you look a little shaky. Are you okay? Any injuries?”
The geologist stopped walking and adjusted her pack without looking back while she spoke. “I’m fine, Ethan, thanks for asking.”
“The reason I ask is because you keep having to compensate for being pulled backwards.” He moved closer to her and went to put a hand on her backpack. “Maybe if you let me adjust your pack, we can—”
“Hands off, Ethan! I said I’m fine.”
But as she stepped off a low-lying rock, her foot slipped a little and again her pack took her straight down, landing her in a heap on the path.
“Skylar, why don’t you let us help you?” Anita caught up to them and stood with her hands on her hips, looking down on the fallen scientist. Skylar pushed herself up to unsteady feet, avoiding eye contact with the others.
Ethan moved until he could see her face. “What is it you’re carrying in that pack that makes it so heavy, anyway?”
“It’s just my normal gear, including the rock hammers and stuff, a few rock samples from the island to test back in the lab, plus the new gear we took on from Richard’s and Joystna’s packs.”
“Please—you didn’t have the shovel when we needed it back there with the allosaurus to dig Anita out. What happened to it?”
“Actually, it turns out that I do have it, I just couldn’t find it in the heat of the moment and there was no time to go through the trouble of digging it out from under all my other stuff.”
“Let me see it now, then, since you still have it.”
There it was, out in the open. A demand, a veiled ultimatum, really. If she didn’t let him see, he and Anita could either overpower her and take the pack, or simply leave her behind to fend for herself until she was either killed by one of the prehistoric beasts, ran out of supplies and perished, or got lucky and was able to be at the right place at the right time when the rescue helicopter called by Ethan showed up.
“Shut up, Ethan.” She whirled around to face him now. “And you know what? I’m tired of you taking my picture all the time.” She pointed to the camera hanging around his neck. “I know you’re taking pictures of my ass, you perv.”
“Okay, that’s enough!” Anita waved an arm in the air, as if to banish all activity. “Ethan, if she says she can make it, then let her make it.” Then she turned to Skylar. “But you shouldn’t be lead. Let Ethan go first.”
Skylar stared Ethan down for a moment before acknowledging Anita’s suggestion. “Fine. In fact, you can both go ahead of me.” She stepped aside, pressing herself against the wall of the volcano while Ethan and Anita resumed the path upward, hiking past her.
The angle of incline increased as they neared the summit, but Ethan remarked how he considered it a piece of good luck that this avenue, sketchy as it was, afforded them the chance to get close to the summit at all. “Get close to” was the operative phrase, though, since before long, they reached another imposing rock wall. The good news was that it led directly to the summit, the bad that it would require a time-consuming, technical climb as before, making use of pitons, ropes and belay systems.
Ethan shrugged off his pack, as did Anita. Skylar removed hers as well, but sat on it, Ethan supposed as a way to make sure no one tried to access it. The team took a break, snacking on power bars and drinking water while they mentally prepared themselves for the task ahead.
“One more climb.” Ethan stared up at the fifty-foot wall. “Just one more climb and we’ll be at the summit, and I know there’s some decent walkable ground up there, as well as a helo-landing zone. We can do this!”
“Your pep-talks suck, Ethan.” Skylar stepped into her climbing harness.
“Whatever. The sooner we get up there, the sooner we can find out if that sat-phone is still up there.”
“And if it still works,” Anita added, immediately regretting the comment.
“You two give any thought as to what we’ll have to do if we can’t make a rescue call?” Skylar fastened a carabiner to her harness and threaded a rope through it.
Ethan stared up at the summit while he answered. His voice was flat. “We’d have no choice but to camp out until the originally planned pickup time. Set up a base camp on the summit and wait it out for…almost four more days.”
A chill came over Anita as she considered the ramifications. “Four more days.”
Ethan capped his water bottle and started prepping his climbing gear. “Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that. First things first. We’ve got a little climb to do.”
#
Ethan hammered in what he hoped would be his last piton before making the summit. The climb had gone smoothly, easier than the one on which they had lost Lara. Solid hand- and foot-holds were plentiful and the rock face not quite vertical, meaning he could lean in to the wall for a rest. He even scanned the water far below for boats. Still didn’t see any, but the act of doing something to improve their fate, however small, was uplifting, and soon he was on his way up the final few feet to the top.
Ethan hooted as he reached over the lip of the cliff and threw a leg over. He pulled himself up onto the summit. From here, he could look down a gradual, walkable slope and see the devastated area where he had fallen through earlier, some distance below.
“It’s nice up here!” he called down to Skylar and Anita. The sailor was already rigged to a climbing harness and testing her first set of holds.
“Hey, Anita, it’s easy, but it’s not that easy. Give me a minute to set up the belay so I can catch you if you fall, okay?”
“No problem. Actually, why not take my pack up first?” She clipped her backpack to the line and Ethan hauled it up.
“I can haul yours up, too, Skylar. Clip it to the line.”
“I want it until I have to climb.”
Anita and Ethan exchanged knowing glances, but he didn’t push the issue.
“Ready when you are, Anita. Belay on.”
“Climber ready. Climbing! ” Anita began to climb in earnest, scaling the wall even faster than Ethan had. She paused on a large foothold, a mini-ledge, really, halfway up for a breather.
That’s when they all heard the scratching sound. Scrabbling, scraping. Not very loud, but persistent and getting noisier.
“You hear that? What
is that?” Skylar stood up from her pack, which she’d been using as a chair.
Neither of her team members responded, so intent were they both on listening to the oncoming noise. Ethan spoke next.
“I’ve heard that before. It sounds like—” Before he could complete his sentence, Skylar screamed. She pointed to the trail from which they had made their way up the volcano to the bottom of the cliff.
A herd of small chicken-sized creatures flooded up the volcano.
“The ones from inside the cave, right after the earthquake!” Ethan finished his earlier sentence. They all knew they were small but vicious, and apparently meat-eaters. There had to be at least a thousand of them, roughly estimated by eyeballing the seething mass. They ran up onto the climbers’ staging area with serious speed. Skylar hefted her pack but tripped as she stumbled the rest of the way to the cliff base.
“Ethan, take my pack!” She clipped it off to a dangling belay rope.
“Oh, now you don’t mind, eh? Funny how that works…”
“Ethan, not now!”
“I got it, move!”
“I don’t have a rope!”
“What? Where’s yours? I thought you rigged it already!”
She glanced up at her pack, now being hauled up the rock face. “I thought it was in there, but—”
“Just go! You can do it without a rope.” Ethan eyed the animal pack that had to be only a few seconds away from Skylar now.
Skylar looked back and saw the mob of avian dinosaurs flocking toward her, cackling, screeching, scratching their way across the lava rock. God, how she detested them and their animalistic single-mindedness. She leaped onto the wall in a move Ethan had to give her credit for. She reached the second level of foot and handholds in a perfectly executed jump. And it was a good thing, since the horde of pack-hunters swarmed beneath her only seconds after she left the ground.
Anita looked down to check on the progress of the lizards and saw both Skylar free-climbing up the wall as well as the pack fanning out beneath her, seeming to rise up the face as easily as water poured into a glass.