by Nick Thacker
“Jules,” he said, looking straight at her. His eyes were steady, fixed onto hers.
“Ben,” she replied.
“I need you to trust me.”
“I do trust —”
“No, Julie. I need you to just follow my lead. And Reggie.”
“Okay…” She tried to read his expression, to understand what it was that had him so shaken. “Why not just tell me what you’re planning?”
“Because you’re not going to like it.”
A voice shouted from the other side of the boulder. “Juliette Richardson! Harvey Bennett, Gareth Red!”
Agent Sharpe.
“Now that we have your attention, come out from behind the rocks, we are not going to shoot. You are under arrest for aiding and abetting in the kidnapping of Dr. Sarah Lindgren,” he continued.
“What?” Julie whispered. “‘Aiding and abetting?”
“As well as charges against you all for reckless driving. I have spoken with the local police, and they will not use force if you agree to come in for questioning right now. Otherwise they are prepared to approach you as criminals, using whatever force necessary.”
Like shooting us, Julie thought.
“Ben, what are you doing?”
“Julie, listen to me. This is our only chance. If Sarah gets to that island, she’s gone. Understand?”
“Yeah, of course, but —”
“But if we go with Sharpe and the police right now, there’s no way we prove our case and we’re off the hook in time to get her back. Not to mention her father.”
“Ben, I get that. But there’s no other option here. Right? What am I missing?”
He smiled, then kissed her. “Like I said, follow my lead.”
He checked his phone one last time and then slid it into his pocket. He rolled over onto his knees, then into a squat.
He crawled to the edge of the boulder and whispered over to Reggie.
“You ready, brother?”
Reggie didn’t say a word, he just nodded.
“Attaboy,” Ben said. He turned to Julie. “All right, Jules. I’m sorry in advance.”
Without looking back, Julie watched him stand up and start running — sprinting — down the steep path that led to the water. She watched him, horrified.
He can’t run all the way down, she thought. And besides, what’s he going to do when he gets —
Before she could finish the thought, she screamed. Ben wasn’t slowing down as he neared the first turn in the trail.
He was actually speeding up, using gravity and momentum to get a good running start.
Oh God, Ben. No, please. Don’t —
Again, she couldn’t finish the thought. Ben planted his left foot right at the end of the short path, kneeling low and then popping back up and out.
And then he sailed off the edge of the cliff, into the night air, and out of sight.
50
Ben
HE HAD EXPECTED FEAR, TERROR, maybe a little regret. Instead he felt freedom.
He’d never experienced a sensation like this before. He’d never gone skydiving, BASE jumping, or done any other stupid high-intensity sport like it.
Sure, there was the time he fell off a cliff in Antarctica, but he’d landed on a snow bank not too far below. Besides, that hadn’t been his choice, but the choice of the Chinese soldiers far above him who’d cut the rope.
This time, however, it had been his choice. He’d read enough about this sort of thing to know that the more one thought about it the more difficult it became to pull off.
So when the thought crept into his mind, he decided immediately it was the right call.
He stretched his arms wide, feeling the rush of air and speed and adrenaline as he flew. He was falling, but the first hundred feet felt like hovering — the ocean was dark, the mound in the center of it still so far away, bobbing slightly but not really moving.
Then the ocean started getting bigger — faster. He was now feeling the terror of what he’d done. Feeling the stupidity of the mad decision.
Julie’s going to kill me, he thought. If I don’t kill myself first.
He hit the water much harder than he thought he should have, probably because he couldn’t see it coming. A fall like this was nearly impossible to prepare for, since he couldn’t get an accurate idea of how far he had to go.
The water was cold — very cold — and most of it soared straight up his nose. He felt like he’d just had a lobotomy, the water causing his eyes to sear and his nose to sting. He sneezed, forcing the saltwater out of the inside of his face, and then he felt the rest of the pain.
The cool water and the shock of it all had momentarily paused his pain receptors, but they were working again and in high gear, screaming at his brain. His arms were raw, the smacking as he hit the surface causing a bellyflop-like reaction on their undersides.
And his ears were tight, the pressure building. I’m underwater, he realized. I’m going deeper.
He had no bearings, but he knew that the pressure increasing in his ears wasn’t a good thing. He forced through the pain in his arms and kicked with his legs, trying to go the direction he thought was up.
He opened his eyes. Everything was dark. Quiet now. He was still underwater, and he could feel the bubbles tickling the outside of his face even as the water itself tickled the inside of it. He surged upward, pushing, fighting.
And then he broke through and was floating. He sucked in a huge breath, laughing. He was still in pain, his nose and eyes and ears still stinging, but he laughed.
The sea was calm here, as he’d jumped far enough out to miss the crashing waves pushing and breaking against the jagged rocks. He whooped, screaming into the night. What a rush, he thought.
Not that I’ll ever do that again.
And then, as if he suddenly remembered where he was, he looked up.
“Come on, Jules,” he whispered. “You got this.”
He saw a body launching itself off the edge of the cliff. His heart caught in his throat. It’s so high, he realized. Must be at least two-hundred feet.
The person flying down toward him was Reggie — he could tell by the size of the silhouette as it sailed down, the pencil-thin figure falling in a feet-first dive, hands at his side, as if he had been a cliff diver every day of his life.
He splashed, but it seemed nowhere near as intense as Ben’s epic cannonball. He swam over to lend a hand. Reggie, however, was up and treading water in less than three seconds. He had a smile on his face, and he swam over to Ben.
“Have to make me look bad, don’t you?” Ben said.
“You didn’t have to flail your arms around like an idiot,” Reggie said. “That was your choice.”
“Thanks.” Ben looked up at the edge of the cliff, waiting.
Come on, Julie.
He hoped there was enough time. The police and Sharpe would be nearly to their hiding spot by now, or they had already reached it. He hoped Julie hadn’t been detained, grabbed by one of the police before she was able to jump.
He watched, still waiting. He felt anxious, feeling again like his decision to jump off a cliff and hope the others followed suit may have been a bit too rash.
No going back now.
Just as the thought crossed his mind he saw another silhouette, this one smaller, launch themselves from the cliff.
“That’s Julie,” Reggie said.
She was screaming, yelling something Ben couldn’t quite understand, and then she was in the water. She’d landed a few feet from Reggie, and he immediately stuck his head underwater to retrieve Ben’s fiancée.
She gasped and spit out a mouthful of seawater as her head broke the surface. She was still yelling, shouting something at Reggie as he tried to help her.
“Get off… get off me,” she shouted, fighting against the larger man. She swam over to Ben and smacked him across the face.
“Ouch,” he said. He laughed, unable to help himself.
“Are you… k
idding me?” Julie screamed. “Are you joking? What the hell was that? What in the world did you think —”
“Look,” Reggie said, pointing.
Julie stopped screaming, and the three of them looked up at the cliff. Ben could see a few men standing along the edge, peering over the side.
“You think they’ll try to make the jump?” Reggie asked.
“Not in a million years,” Ben said. “I figured they’d feel like it’s not worth the effort. I mean they shot at us, but still — I don’t think anyone but Sharpe actually thinks we’re a threat.”
“Besides,” Reggie said, nodding. “They’re probably thinking they’ve got us covered.”
Just then a massive light flicked on and the wide, thick beam of light shot down at them. It was an industrial-grade flashlight, and it was illuminating the ocean around them two feet into the water.
“They’ve got a clear view of us,” Reggie continued. “And they know we can’t just swim away. If we try to get to shore, they’ll just hike down and grab us.”
“Or shoot us,” Ben said, his voice sounding more serious than he’d meant it.
“Ben,” Julie said. “I’m still — I can’t believe… I mean what were you thinking? What are we supposed to do now?”
The three of them were treading water in the bay, the dark, empty caves along the cliff barricaded behind sharp, jagged rocks. Even if Ben’s plan had been to swim to shore, it would be a nearly impossible task. The surf would smack them against the rocks and the razor-sharp, barnacled surfaces finish the job.
It’s a good thing that wasn’t my plan, he thought.
He pricked his ears up, focusing on a sound in the distance.
“Hear that?”
“Hear what?” Reggie asked.
“Shut up and listen. Over there.”
Ben pointed north, along the shoreline at the tip of the point of land, where it curved and headed back to the mainland. It was the sound of an engine, growing louder and more distinct every second.
“A boat?” Julie asked.
“Not just any boat,” Ben said. “Our boat.”
“What are you talking about?”
The boat was nearing their location, and Ben could now see that it was smaller than he’d hoped — Mrs. E hadn’t told them what size they were going to get, so he’d expected it to be a small yacht, or at least a spacious ocean cruiser with a solid engine. Instead the craft seemed to be nothing but an 18-foot flat-topped fishing boat, with a simple inboard motor and captain’s stand in the center of the hull.
But, as he had said, it was their boat. He could now depict the shape of the pilot herself — Mrs. E’s massive frame, short hair, and wide grin was unmistakable — as she navigated the boat around the tip of the rocks and up alongside them. The light from the police, far above them, only made it easier for Mrs. E to find them.
“Hello, you all,” she chirped down. “Need a ride?”
Julie whirled in the water and stared at Ben. “Ben, how…?”
“I sent her a text when we were pressed down. Told her where we were and sent a location just in case. I also told her we’d be, and that we’d be wet.”
“Good thing it finished sending before you made your little leap of faith, buddy,” Reggie said.
Ben held up his waterlogged phone that he’d taken out of his pocket. It was off, and he knew it was unlikely it — or any of their devices — would be able to be turned back on. “Yeah,” he said. “Good thing.”
“I was already on my way to the boat dock,” Mrs. E said. “I got Julie’s text from earlier that you were all out having an adventure without me, so I woke up the owner of the boat and told him we would need the rental a bit sooner than expected.”
“Well, I’m glad you did,” Julie said, already making her way over to the retractable ladder at the back of the vessel. She pulled herself up and onto the back of the boat and then turned to help Reggie. When it was Ben’s turn, he looked up at his fiancée and smiled.
She simply shook her head. “I vote we leave this guy in the water for a bit.”
“Seconded,” Reggie said.
Ben pulled himself up and in and then headed to the bow and pointed. “Over there,” he said to Mrs. E. “They went to the island, and if we hurry we can get there in another few minutes.”
She nodded and pulled out of the little circle of light they were floating in, and Ben heard the shouts of the police — and Agent Sharpe — from the clifftop. Their words were barely reaching him, but he could hear that they weren’t happy, and they weren’t about to give up the pursuit.
He sighed. Out of the frying pan, he thought.
Mrs. E jammed the throttle down and the tiny 9.8 horsepower Suzuki engine roared to life, aiming toward the Nea Kameni crater-topped volcano.
…and into the fire.
51
Reggie
JUMPING OFF A CLIFF WASN’T something Reggie had planned to do. He had watched, horrified and amazed, as his best friend Ben, a man who was otherwise rather stoic and collected, lost his mind and ran off the edge of a cliff at the edge of the world.
The jump was a couple hundred feet straight down — nothing bad enough to cause any permanent damage, Reggie knew — but it was the breaking waves and foaming churn of the sea that worried him. A miscalculation could have sent Ben into the rocks.
But as it turned out, Ben was fine.
So Reggie had taken a deep breath, promised himself that he’d smack Ben across the face for making him do it, then jumped off into the sea.
Reggie had never practiced cliff diving as a sport, but he’d made more than a few hairy jumps in his time. He specifically remembered a time skiing in Russia with an old friend, and together they’d gotten into a bit of a bind in the bowls behind Dombay. He’d taken a route through a heavily forested area that ended with a steep 50-foot drop just beneath the ski lift, and his friend Latia had been forced to follow along his foolish route, both of them ending up waist-deep in fresh powder, unharmed but coursing with adrenaline.
And in another life, he’d trained executives and wealthy individuals in survival techniques at his compound home in Brazil, and for one special session, he’d hired an old Army paratrooper guide to give him — and his clients — the ride of their lives.
Jumping from a perfectly good airplane was now something Reggie could say he had done, though he had no desire to repeat it.
But jumping from a cliff, at night, while being chased by cops and Interpol agents was not something Reggie had ever done. The fall had been uneventful, though he had a bit of a shock at the temperature of the water when he’d hit. He’d resurfaced and smiled, laughing at the situation while simultaneously wondering what the hell sort of plan Ben had cooked up.
Julie, on the other hand, seemed to have been a bit more concerned with their predicament. After she hit the water and came up, spitting saltwater from her mouth and acting as if Ben had forced her to jump into a pool of molten lava, Reggie watched as the enraged woman smacked Ben and laid into him.
Ben was all smiles, however, and within a few minutes Reggie understood why: Mrs. E was racing toward them, locating them on Ben’s phone’s GPS before it became unusable and waterlogged.
Good work, friend, he thought. Reggie had given him a quick nod before climbing out of the ocean and into the boat.
But the fun wasn’t over. Reggie could barely see in the dying light another boat — Sarah’s boat. It had docked against a short, stubby protrusion from the flat rocks of Nea Kameni and was currently offloading its passengers. He saw the larger frames of the men who’d kidnapped her, as well as Sarah herself, bound and now blindfolded.
He felt his blood heating up, his entire body no longer remembering that it had been completely submerged in chilly ocean water not moments ago. He clenched his fists and stared at the dark, ominous island at the middle of the bay.
Ben leaned toward him, toweling off his hair with a rag he’d found underneath one of the seats. “We’re g
oing to get her back, brother,” he said.
Reggie nodded, but his fists clenched harder, his knuckles white.
Where are they taking her? he wondered. What do they want with her?
He tried to piece it together. First her father, then Sarah herself. What did they have in common?
They were both scientists, academics. Well-respected in their larger academic communities, despite the fickle peers they kept. They both had a knack for problem-solving, a love of history and their ancient past, and a desire to understand more fully the true legacy of their ancestors. They both wanted to educate the rest of the world, only using their platforms and popularity for spreading the message of history: learn from your past, and you can learn about your future.
Reggie, as a history buff himself, completely understood their stance. He had grown to admire Sarah and her father over the time he and Sarah had dated, and he had often found himself daydreaming about a life spent as her husband, following her around the globe as she cracked cases and solved ancient riddles.
A present-day Indiana Jones, he thought. ‘Diana’ Jones, perhaps. The thought usually made him smile — in the fantasy he’d play security, the strong-arm brawn to Sarah’s unmatched wit, helping her solve ancient mysteries her anthropology background put in front of her by pushing around corrupt officials and overzealous locals.
But tonight the fantasy just left a deep pit in his stomach — he watched as Sarah was manhandled out of the boat and onto the dock, then up onto a narrow pathway cut into the side of the hill that sat at the base of the volcano. He felt rage, a feeling he rarely allowed himself to feel. That emotion, he’d reasoned long ago, was reserved for the worst of the worst — situations that required the use of force, and force that was unwaveringly and unquestionably extreme.
He did his best to push the emotion out of the rational side of his mind, but he failed. The rage built, and nothing Ben or Julie or Mrs. E could tell him would change that.
The last time he’d felt this angry he’d murdered a man with nothing but the tiny protrusion on the clasp of his watch.