by Roland Smith
Not a cliff in sight. But there’s probably something else just as bad. All I have to do is find it.
He dropped the dragonspy beneath the canopy again and put it into a hover. He didn’t want to get too far ahead of Yvonne and her crew, or they might get suspicious.
Grace and Dylan joined him.
“I think we should stick around camp,” Grace said. “Someone is bound to show up.”
“Yeah,” Marty said. “Like another platoon of Noah’s thugs. I think we need to keep moving. We need to find out what happened to everyone.”
Grace looked at Dylan. “What do you think?”
“As much I would like to climb into a hammock and sleep for twenty-four hours, I agree with Marty. We need to get out of here and keep moving until we find someone who isn’t trying to kill us.”
“What if Ted shows up?” Grace asked.
“I don’t think he’s going to get the Rivlan fixed,” Marty said, although he hoped he was wrong. “He has an inflatable Zodiac on board, but it will take them hours to get this far upriver.”
“What about the ultralight?” Grace asked.
“He could fly here,” Marty admitted. “But I don’t think we should wait around to find out if he does. He told us to keep moving.”
“So, we’re on our own,” Grace said.
Marty shrugged. “What else is new? Let’s get out of here.”
* * *
“We’re not getting out of here,” Ted said. “At least not on the Rivlan.”
“The Zodiac?” Crow asked.
“Unless you can fly.”
“What do you mean?”
Ted slapped one of the crates on deck. “Ultralight. It has pontoons.”
“You have more than one?”
“I’m afraid not. We’ve seriously underestimated Blackwood. He knew where we were going. He’s hacked into our communications system and taken it down. He’s been ahead of us every step of the way. He has someone working for him on the inside on Cryptos and out here as well.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know. Maybe your friend, Buck.”
“He’s not my friend,” Crow insisted. “But Buck’s not the type. I doubt he’s the guy.”
“Regardless of who it is, the only way Blackwood could have shut us down is to have someone on both ends. Al’s working on the problem on Cryptos. I need to get to camp and work on it on this side. We’re toast if we don’t get the comms back up.”
Crow nodded. “You need help with the plane?”
Ted shook his head. “You better start your way upriver in the Zodiac. You’ll be lucky to get to camp before dark.”
* * *
Luther thought he heard someone say the word daylight, but he wasn’t sure. Then he thought he felt someone, or something, shaking him and shouting, “Luther! Luther! Are you okay?”
Luther opened one eye. He had no idea where he was. He wasn’t surprised. He never knew where he was when he woke, which always made waking interesting. It felt like his ear and cheek were lying in the dirt.
That’s interesting.
A huge, black-bearded guy was squatting over him, slapping his face.
That’s interesting, too. And a little scary.
He sat up.
The big guy with the beard was Travis Wolfe.
What’s he doing here? Where is here?
Luther looked around. They were in a hut made out of sticks and logs. The hut was maybe ten by ten feet and about five feet tall. Gray morning light was leaking through the chinks onto the dirt floor. His mind fog started to lift, and the events of the previous day came back to him.
“Are you okay?” Wolfe repeated.
“Yeah, I’m good. Takes me a while to wake up.”
“I thought you were dead.”
“Deep sleeper is all.”
“It’s kind of disturbing.”
Luther grinned. “So I’ve been told.” He looked at Wolfe’s pant legs. There was a scuffed boot sticking out from each cuff. “Time to escape?”
“Time to do something.” Wolfe moved over to the crude door and peered through a crack.
Luther joined him. Three jaguar men were standing around a smoking fire pit thirty feet away. Three others were standing a few feet outside the door. Now that he saw them in the light, it was clear that Wolfe was right. The men were identical triplets.
“I think we can take them,” Luther whispered.
“What about the other twelve or thirteen guys?” Wolfe asked.
“Probably not one of my better ideas,” Luther admitted.
“We’ll just play it by ear. See what they have in mind before making a move. It’s best to let them think we’re cooperating, being passive.”
“Model prisoners,” Luther said.
“Exactly.” Wolfe opened his backpack and took out his smashed Gizmo.
“Is it working?”
Wolfe shook his head. “But the weird thing is that they left it in the pack. While you were sleeping, or whatever you call what you do when you close your eyes, I went through both of our packs. They removed everything that we could use as a weapon, but they left the Gizmo and your cell phone. I don’t know how tech savvy these triplets are, but Raul knows enough to take our communications devices away. He’s been at the jaguar preserve for months.”
“So he knows they don’t work,” Luther said.
“Right. But he also seems to think they aren’t going to come back on.”
“Are you saying he knocked out the devices?”
Wolfe shook his head. “A hacker took them out. A very good hacker. Raul and the Trips aren’t acting independently. They’re working for someone else.”
“Noah Blackwood,” Luther said.
“Who else? And if they’re working for him, it means he’s been operating down here for years. Sylvia and Timothy must have figured this out.”
“And Blackwood had them —”
“Shot down,” Wolfe said. “I saw the wreckage. It wasn’t an accident.”
“You think they’re still alive?”
“We’re alive,” Wolfe said. “They could have killed us anytime they wanted to. They could have taken us out without our ever seeing them. If these are the same guys who took Sylvia and Timothy away from the crash site, there’s a chance the two of them are still alive. At the very least, the Trips know what happened to them. We need to find out what they know.”
Luther peered out the crack again. The Trips around the fire were joined by another set of Trips.
“Have you noticed how they always hang out in threes?” Luther asked.
Wolfe nodded. “Good eye. We might be able to use it to our advantage.”
They continued to observe. Five minutes later, another set of Trips joined the fire pit crew. A couple of minutes after that, Raul appeared and started talking to them. When he finished, he headed toward the hut.
“Take anything out of your pack that you think we might need, in case they take the packs away. Conceal it as best you can.”
Luther grabbed a small LED flashlight, his worthless smartphone, a small notepad, and a pencil. There wasn’t anything else worth grabbing. He had just stuffed the phone down his pants when the door burst open.
An angry-looking Raul stood just outside the door. “Outside now!” he shouted.
Luther looked at Wolfe. “What did we do wrong?”
“Good question. Let me go first. Take your pack.”
Luther was happy to let him lead the way since Raul was flanked on either side by two sets of Trips brandishing blowpipes, bows, and spears. They looked like an indigenous firing squad. Wolfe had to almost double over to get through the small door. Luther had to duck, too, but not nearly as far. He straightened up outside, blinked at the bright morning light, and nearly fled back into the hut in terror. Standing to the side of the squad, smiling, was Butch McCall. He looked a little worse for wear. He had a black eye, his nose was smashed, and his jaw was swollen. Butch’s smile broadened when Luther
met his eyes.
Luther swallowed his fear, knowing that guys like Butch fed on fear. He wasn’t about to serve Butch breakfast. He returned Butch’s smile.
“Hey, Butch, looks like you got the crap beat out of you. How many were there?”
Butch frowned.
Luther’s smile broadened. “Let me guess. One skinny geek dude by the name of Ted?”
Butch pulled a pistol out from a holster behind his back and pointed it at Luther’s head.
Luther frowned. Butch’s smile returned. He flipped the safety off and pulled the hammer back.
“There’s no need for that,” Wolfe said, stepping in front of Luther.
Luther tried to move back into the open, but his body ignored his mind’s noble command.
Looks like I’m going to feed Butch breakfast after all.
“Luther’s just a kid. He doesn’t know what he’s saying.”
Butch tightened his finger on the trigger. Luther knew exactly what he had been saying, and wished he hadn’t said it, even though it was true. His dad had told him a thousand times that his mouth was going to get him killed. Now it looked like it was going to get Wolfe killed, too.
“Stand down, Butch,” Wolfe said. “You’ve got us.”
Butch released the pressure, slightly, but kept the gun in his hand. “We’ve got everybody,” he said. “Or we’ll have everybody before the day’s out, including the hatchlings. Game over, Travis. You lose.”
“Fine,” Wolfe said. “Now what?”
“Step out from behind him, Luther.”
Luther emerged to stand next to Wolfe, hoping that Butch didn’t notice he was trembling.
“If it was up to me, I’d drop both of you right where you stand,” Butch said. “But your ex-father-in-law has other plans, at least for you, Wolfe. I suspect you’re going to wish I had killed you right here.” He looked at Luther. “Your little friend wasn’t part of the equation, but he might be useful.”
“How?” Wolfe asked.
“We’re running behind schedule. I need to take you someplace.”
“Where?”
“That’s exactly what I’m talking about,” Butch said. “You’re delaying things by asking questions that you know I’m not going to answer. When we start walking, you’ll drag your feet, hoping that by slowing things down something will change and you’ll figure out a way to save yourself. That’s not going to happen. This outcome was set in stone the day you took Rose away from Noah Blackwood. Now it’s the endgame, and I want to get it over with.” He looked back at Luther. “You want to keep the kid alive, you move fast without questions, without delay. If I think you’re screwing around with me, I’ll shoot him in the head. Deal?”
Wolfe hesitated, but only for a second. “Fine,” he said.
Luther hoped Wolfe was agreeing to the former part of the deal, not the shooting in the head part.
Butch lowered his gun, but didn’t holster it. He gave Luther a cold stare. “Goes for you, too,” he said. “You step out of line, you’re dead.” He took two pairs of plastic flex-cuffs out of his pocket and tossed them to Raul. “Drop your packs and put your hands out.”
Raul walked over and cinched their wrists. When he finished, he turned to Butch and said, “I go now.”
Butch shook his head.
“We had deal.”
“The deal is we can’t leave you alive,” Butch said.
He nodded at a set of Trips. Before Raul could take a single step, he was surrounded. Butch stepped into the circle, raised his pistol, and shot him in the temple. Raul fell to the ground, his sightless eyes staring up into the canopy.
Luther’s knees buckled. He dropped to the ground and threw up. When he finished, he looked up at Wolfe. The big man had gone pale. His fists were clenched. He glared at Butch with raw hatred.
“Not a word, Wolfe,” Butch said. “Or your puking friend joins Raul. Don’t know why you’re upset. Raul set you up. Of course, he had some extra incentive. He was told that he and everyone at the preserve would be killed if he didn’t help us out. Guess he didn’t read the fine print that he and everyone else were going to be killed anyway. The goal was to separate you and take you one by one. Worked out pretty good.”
Wolfe reached down and helped Luther to his feet. Luther couldn’t look at Raul. His legs were still wobbly.
Butch said something to the Trips in their own language. They divided themselves with military precision, six in front of them, six in back. Butch took up the rear and shouted another command.
They moved off into the rain forest.
The hardest thing about following the hatchlings was avoiding the steaming piles of dung they were depositing about every thirty feet. Marty, Grace, and Dylan could have followed their path blindfolded.
Marty paused at yet another stinking mound lit by a shaft of morning sunlight.
“Stick your finger in it,” Dylan suggested. “Maybe we can tell how far ahead they are by the temperature.”
“Be my guest,” Marty said.
Dylan squatted down as if he were going to do it, but instead he changed the subject. “I bet this pile weighs five pounds. If this keeps up, the hatchlings will weigh nothing by the time we catch up to them. We’ll be able to put them in our pockets.”
“Maybe we should keep moving instead of talking about dinosaur bowel movements,” Grace said. “Everyone we know is missing, and there are people trying to kill us.”
“What else is new?” Marty said. “Doesn’t mean we can’t enjoy ourselves while we run for our lives.” But he understood perfectly what she was getting at. He was still sick with worry over his parents. And now with everyone else missing, it was all he could do to put one foot in front of the other and not collapse from the horror of it all. The only thing that was keeping him going was pretending that none of it was a big deal.
They moved on to the next deposit, which was considerably smaller than the previous pile.
“Smaller and smaller,” Dylan said. “They’ll be on empty soon. I’m guessing they’ve dropped twenty pounds since we let them go.”
The hatchlings had pretty much stayed on the trail, stopping once in a while to tear into some foliage, or dig at something in the ground, or drop a load.
Marty squatted down to take a closer look at one of their digging spots. It was muddier along this section of trail, and the tracks were clearer.
“Luther!” he shouted, pointing at a tennis shoe print.
Grace and Dylan joined him.
“We’ve been so preoccupied with the hatchling spoor, we haven’t been looking for human footprints,” Grace said.
“You’re right,” Marty said. “Hang on.” He jogged back along the trail to the previous scratching. It took him a while to find it, but sure enough, he found a partial tennis shoe print.
He backtracked to the next spot and found what he thought was another partial, but he couldn’t be sure because the print had been almost completely obliterated by the hatchling’s claws. He jogged back to Grace and Dylan and told them what he had found.
Dylan walked over to some of the bushes along the trail that had obviously been attacked by the hatchlings. He got down on his knees and looked at the ground.
“Here!”
Marty and Grace joined him, staring down at two perfectly formed tennis shoe prints in the soft ground beneath the bushes.
“It’s almost as if they’re marking every place Luther’s been,” Grace said.
“I think you’re right!” Marty said excitedly. “Remember when we let them go? They were sniffing the ground like a couple of bloodhounds on the scent of an escaped convict.”
“And the sound they made,” Grace said. “I’d never heard it before. They’re imprinted on him. Luther is their surrogate mother. They must be trying to find him.”
“Looks more like they’re hunting him down,” Dylan said.
“Either way,” Marty said, “they’re leading us to him.”
They hurried along at a more
determined pace, stopping at the place where the hatchlings had jumped off the trail.
“What are the chances of Luther leaving a perfectly good trail in favor of cutting through the jungle?” Grace asked.
“Zero,” Marty said. “Unless he was being chased, or someone grabbed him and took him off the trail.”
Ten paces into the tangle, they found Luther’s tennis shoe prints, hatchling prints, and a couple other footprints, which had to belong to Ana and Buck, and …
“Uh-oh,” Marty said.
Mixed in with the shoe prints were several sets of bare footprints smaller than Luther’s and Ana’s.
“Someone grabbed them?” Dylan asked.
“Let’s find out.” Marty led the way into the brightening rain forest.
Raul’s brutal murder looped through Luther’s brain like a scene in a horror movie. He’d never seen a man killed before. He’d never seen a dead person. He never wanted to see one again.
He walked quietly, directly behind Wolfe, who, true to his word, was moving down the trail at a pretty good clip without any delaying tactics. A half dozen Trips led the way, with Butch and the rest taking up the rear. Every once in a while, Luther got a spidery feeling on the back of his neck that made him think Butch was going to put a bullet in his head just for the fun of it. Luther told himself not to look back at Butch, but he couldn’t help himself. Each time he looked, Butch was just trudging along, his bruised and bearded face dripping with sweat, his eyes as cold and deadly as glacial ice. But no gun. He had tucked it away in its holster.
What stopped Luther from thinking about Raul was their arrival at a twelve-foot heavy-gauge chain-link fence topped by rolls of razor wire. The shock of seeing a fence in the middle of nowhere even stopped Wolfe.
“Keep moving!” Butch bellowed. “And don’t brush up against it unless you want to be barbecued.”