58
GIDEON SCRAMBLED DOWN the dizzying trail to the crack that led into the necropolis, Amiko following. Once again the beauty of the necropolis—its lofty dignity, its mysterious light—was overwhelming. Here was proof the Cyclopes once had a culture, spiritual beliefs, a civilization. Anger at Glinn rose in him afresh. But he pushed those thoughts out of his mind, striving to focus on getting the lotus and getting out. There was nothing he could do about the rest of it—nothing. At least Garza was on their side. He had badly misjudged the man.
They entered the dark recesses of the necropolis, its silence overwhelming after the noise of the camp and the roar of the Cyclops. They quickly located Polyphemus’s grave. There was the stone box…and there was the lotus. Amid the strange and powerful scent that rose from the box, Gideon scooped as many pieces up as he could fit in his drybag. They turned and emerged from the necropolis into brilliant light, making their way up the treacherous trail.
At the top of the cliff, Gideon turned in the direction of the chopper, but Amiko paused. “What about the Cyclops?” she said.
Gideon hesitated. “What about him?”
“What do you mean? We’ve got to free him! We can’t leave him in that cage. And he needs the lotus. He’s dying.”
Gideon looked at her steadily. “We can’t do anything for him. He’s surrounded by a dozen armed soldiers.”
“I’ve got the codes. And I’ve got a plan. Now give me the bag with the lotus.”
“Wait, Amiko…Garza needs the bag.”
She stared at him, her face darkening. “The Cyclops saved your life. He saved mine. And you’re just going to leave him there, in a cage, to die in misery?”
“I don’t like it any more than you do. But there are bigger things at stake here. Like this.” And he lifted the bag.
“Give me half. I’ll take it to him. You can take the rest and go with Garza.”
“We don’t know how much will be needed for analysis. We can’t risk it. Look—”
Quick as a striking snake, Amiko lunged for the bag, seizing it. Gideon yanked back and for a moment they struggled over it before it tore open, scattering the lotus. She abruptly released the bag, sending Gideon off balance, at the same time plucking the .45 from her belt and, turning it butt-first, striking him on the side of the head. He hit the ground and all went black.
Gideon felt like he was swimming back up from the bottom of the ocean, and the journey seemed to take a very long time. He struggled to sit up, his head throbbing, and looked at his watch. He’d been out about fifteen minutes. He cursed himself for not seeing this coming.
He glanced around. The lotus roots, which had been lying everywhere, were gone. Except for one that she had left for him, shoved in his pocket. She had taken all the rest.
Blood oozed from a cut on his temple, and his head pounded so that he could hardly think. He pulled the lotus from his pocket, wrapped it in a leaf, and tucked it back. Slowly, he rose to his feet. As he tried to clear his head, he heard the thunder of a distant explosion. A moment later he saw a ball of fire rise above the canopy, roiling into red and black, in the direction of the base camp.
Amiko.
He sprinted through the jungle, bashing through the vegetation, ignoring the pain in his head, until he reached the waiting chopper.
“Where were you?” Garza cried. “Something’s going on at the camp.” His radio had burst into frenzied chatter, everyone speaking at once over the frequency:
…it’s loose…killing everyone…that woman…fire suppression now…Oh, my God!…
And then, as if to underscore all this, a distorted bellowing came from the radio, drowning out the babble of voices, dissolving into a roar of static—and then, suddenly distinct over the radio, a scream of human agony, cut short by the sound of ripping flesh.
“Son of a bitch!” Garza cried, and then stared at Gideon. “What the hell’s happening?”
“Amiko,” said Gideon. “She knocked me out. Took the lotus. She’s freeing the Cyclops.”
Garza looked at him. “Took the lotus?”
“All except this one.” He pulled it out of his pocket and gave it to Garza.
“Get in,” said Garza, snatching it. “Let’s get the hell out of here. And let’s pray to God that one root will be enough.”
Gideon hesitated, his foot on the threshold.
“Get in, damn it!”
Gideon shook his head. “No. No, I can’t.”
“Why the hell not?” Garza was already powering up the rotors.
“It’s a catastrophe. I can’t go while that thing is killing people and…while Amiko’s in danger.”
Garza grabbed the controls. “If that’s the way it is, I hope you survive. Sayonara.” The door slammed and locked. Gideon retreated at a crouch as the chopper ascended into blue sky, then accelerated westward, toward Managua and home.
As Gideon watched it disappear, another massive explosion shook the forest.
59
GIDEON SPRINTED TOWARD the camp along the makeshift road that EES had slashed through the forest, the great trees cut and bulldozed aside like so many matchsticks, the shoulders banked with a confusion of ripped vegetation, broken trunks, crushed flowers, and tangled vines.
The camp was in chaos. The main generator and its fuel tanks were burning ferociously, smoke and flames leaping into the sky, threatening to set afire a second set of tanks supplying the backup generator. Several men battled the fire with fire extinguishers. Three horribly mangled soldiers lay scattered on the ground, two obviously dead, while medics worked on the third, who was shrieking in pain. The electric perimeter fence had been torn apart in several places, and the remaining soldiers were spooked, shooting in panic into the dense wall of jungle every time they thought they heard a noise or saw movement.
Almost immediately Gideon found himself surrounded by angry-looking soldiers.
“I want to see Glinn,” he said.
The soldiers searched him roughly, handcuffed him, then shoved him toward Glinn’s tent. Drawing back the flap, they pushed him inside.
From his wheelchair, Glinn was briefing a pair of armed commandos along with another incredibly bulked-up man, with massive shoulders, a neck as thick as a tree stump, wearing camo and a Rambo-style wifebeater, with a shaved head and goatee. Ignoring Gideon, Glinn continued speaking to the men. “You have your instructions. Track it with the dogs. Don’t engage it—drive it back this way. Keep in radio contact. We’ll be ready. Understood?”
“Yes, Mr. Glinn,” said the beefy man.
“Dismissed.”
Only now did Glinn turn to gaze at him coldly. While still preternaturally calm, he was breathing rapidly and shallowly, and there was a look in that gray eye Gideon had not seen before. In the background, he could hear the barking of dogs.
“What happened?” Glinn asked brusquely.
Gideon told him everything. Glinn listened, his face expressionless. When Gideon had finished, he was silent for a moment. Then he shifted in his wheelchair.
“Garza initiated this?” He thought for a moment. “I’m not sure if I should shoot you or free you.”
“I’d rather it was the latter.”
Glinn turned to the soldiers. “Remove the handcuffs.”
They complied.
“So the mysterious client is you,” said Gideon. “And you lied. You’re going to sell the drug, not give it away.”
“Yes, I am the client. But that changes nothing. And Manuel’s wrong about the money. I’ve set up a foundation that will still get the drug to the general populace for virtually nothing, with only a small percentage to be set aside for the use of EES—”
A crump sounded beyond the tent, temporarily drowning out Glinn’s voice, the yellow glow of fire penetrating the side of the tent. There was more shouting outside, a burst of automatic weapons fire.
“Your partner showed up,” Glinn said. “She set our fuel dump afire, destroyed the primary generator, and disabled the bac
kup. In the chaos she freed the Cyclops. The creature then went on a rampage. You saw the carnage. And after it had killed without mercy, it grabbed her and took her off into the jungle. I would have said she was a hostage, except that she showed no signs of struggling.” He stared at Gideon. “Now: what are you doing here?”
“I came back because I’m partly responsible.”
“With that I would agree.”
“I don’t mean in that way. If you hadn’t come here, set fire to the jungle, caged the Cyclops—none of this would have occurred.”
“The killings occurred because Amiko freed the creature.”
Gideon waved this away. “I’m not going to argue with you. There isn’t time. I’m here because I can make things right.”
“How, exactly?”
“The creature isn’t a brute animal—it can be reached. If I go out there, alone, unarmed…I might have some influence. And Amiko will listen to me. Together we might calm him down, bring him in with the lotus.”
Glinn stared at him, his face shut down like a blank mask. “It will destroy you.”
“I’ll take that chance.”
For a moment, Glinn went entirely still. Then he shifted again in the wheelchair. “We’re so far outside our strategic predictions that anything is worth trying, even a plan as feeble as yours. I will allow it on one condition only: you go armed.”
“I won’t kill him.”
“Take it anyway.” Glinn gestured to his aide, who grabbed an M16 from a nearby rack, along with a couple of extra magazines, and silently handed them to Gideon. Gideon grabbed a headlamp, then nodded and turned to leave.
“One other thing.”
Gideon glanced over his shoulder.
“Don’t make the mistake of trusting it—or Amiko.”
60
GORDON DELGADO HAD started out as a dog handler in Iraq. Several tours and many citations later, he was honorably discharged and went to work as a crack dog trainer for the FBI. He had seen a lot of shit in his career, but when he’d arrived on the island the day before, he couldn’t believe his eyes when he saw that monster in the cage. And when it got out and went berserk, that was something beyond even his worst nightmare: worse than Iraq, crazier than any movie. He could still vividly see, in his mind’s eye, that monster with its dreads flying, bellowing, cavernous mouth open like a giant funnel, exposing rotting teeth and a ropy tongue plastered with foam, its furry hands swiping open a man’s belly with no more effort than scooping butter out of a tub, that loping sideways run—and that eye, Mother of God, that eye, a pinpoint of black surrounded by bloodshot piss-yellow, big and shiny as a saucer, rotating crazily in its orbit. During its rampage, the thing had looked at him for just a moment—one soldier in each massive paw—a look that he would never shake as long as he lived. He hoped to hell he never had to look into that eye again.
They had left the camp behind, which he’d been glad to do. The fences were down while the backup generator was being repaired, the men jumpy and firing at nothing. The dump fire was at least getting under control, or so it seemed, and thank God for that, because if it spread into the thick jungle, there was no telling what might happen.
The dogs had picked up the creature’s scent trail along the newly cut road to the other side of the island and they were following it rapidly. Holding their leashes, he moved along the path that had been freshly hacked out of the jungle, the two soldiers behind him, left and right point. Delgado knew quiet competence from braggadocio and half-assery, and these were two good men. He himself carried a .45 and an M4A1 carbine. His radio was clipped to his belt, its channel kept open to the camp’s main frequency. The idea was to track the monster and circle him, then drive him back toward camp, where an eight-man squad was set up in an L-ambush, ready to take him out. The girl, if she was with him, was to be captured, or—if that was impossible—neutralized.
Delgado had never worked with this kind of dog before, an Italian breed used for sniffing out truffles. But while they weren’t killer dogs, they were clearly intelligent, alert, steady, with no lack of guts. And anyway, against a monster like that a mastiff would be as useless as a terrier. These animals immediately understood what they were to do and had not lost their minds in terror.
The dogs paused at the wall of jungle next to the road, indicating that the scent trail went that way.
The plan seemed simple enough, and likely to succeed. But Delgado couldn’t get out of his head the speed and ferocity the monster had displayed in its tear through the camp. As they left the road, pushing into the thick vegetation, he understood that there would be little warning if the creature decided to rush them.
Almost immediately the dogs’ leashes started getting hung up.
“Hold it,” he told the soldiers as he knelt over the dogs. They were eager, tense, their flanks quivering with excitement. “Gotta unleash the dogs.”
The soldiers said nothing. He liked that. Soldiers joking and talking trash at the beginning of an op were only displaying their fear.
The dogs, unleashed, understood they were to stay close to him. All the better. He would know when they were closing in on the monster by their behavior. These were damn good tracking dogs, he decided, quiet and focused. Dogs, cars, guns, and women—the Italians did well where it counted.
It was hard to move through the jungle without making a racket. It was hot and green and overpoweringly humid, and Delgado was soon soaked. The monster would hear them long before they would become aware of him—except for the fact that the dogs would act as a kind of early warning. What he worried most about was their own rear. He didn’t know how intelligent the huge creature was, but even a dumb-ass Cape buffalo knew enough to circle around and come up on its trackers from behind. They had to expect anything.
As they penetrated farther into the jungle, everything became very quiet. The sounds of the camp disappeared. The jungle seemed devoid of life. Delgado found it spooky.
The island was small. It wouldn’t be long before they closed in on the creature. He could already see they were getting nearer from the behavior of the dogs: their heightened tension, their quickened movements. He signaled to the soldiers, and they nodded their understanding.
They moved slower, more cautiously, hyper-aware of every little sound.
And now the dogs began to tremble. They were tense, frightened, but still in control. And then suddenly Delgado realized he could smell it: a thick, cloying odor with a foul human component he found nauseating. But it was good news: if they could smell the monster, because of the wind direction, it couldn’t smell them.
With a hand signal, Delgado indicated to the soldiers that they were to make a ninety-degree turn. This would be the beginning of the stalk and circle. They moved off the scent trail, the dogs whining and reluctant to go but obedient in the end. Moving slowly, he led the soldiers two hundred yards to the nine o’clock position, and then began the clockwise circle to noon. He had done this more than once with insurgents in Iraq, and it was a move that tended to confuse and frighten them, causing them to retreat along the six o’clock line. He hoped it would have the same effect on the monster.
They reached the twelve o’clock position, and he signaled to the soldiers to stop. He figured that the monster should be about three hundred yards due south of them. Now the time had come to drive the creature toward the ambush salient. With additional hand signals he readied the group; they raised their rifles and awaited his signal. The dogs, sensing something was about to happen, went rigid with tension.
Delgado raised his hand, paused—then brought it sharply down.
The soldiers charged forward, discharging their weapons in burst mode. The dogs joined in immediately, leaping ahead of the soldiers with hysterical barking. Delgado brought up the rear, firing his .45 into the air, the massive ACP rounds sounding a deep thunder to the chatter of the M16s. Shock and awe—enough to terrify anything and send it fleeing.
Then came something like a gust of wind, a disturbanc
e in the leaves, a sudden blur, followed by the brief shriek of a dog. Then nothing. Delgado halted in sudden confusion. Both dogs were gone. And then he saw it: a long streak of gore clinging to the vegetation, going off in a perpendicular path into the dense jungle—blood, ropes of intestines, meat, fur, a pink tongue still twitching, a floppy ear.
All was silent.
It took a moment for Delgado to process what had happened. The monster had crossed their path at right angles and swept up both dogs, utterly dismembering them in passing, and then vanished again.
61
AS HE WALKED along the hacked-out road, Gideon heard the sudden burst of firing, the hysterical barking. He stopped and listened. It sounded like it was about half a mile away, but it was hard to tell in the thick foliage. The shriek of a dog—and then, abruptly, there was silence.
It was, he thought, unbelievably foolish for them to think they could meet the Cyclops on his own ground, in the dense jungle, and survive. How right Garza had been: Glinn, in his obsession, had lost his judgment. All his computer models and quantitative behavioral analysis were for naught in the face of an unknown creature like this. It would be a miracle if anyone got off the island alive.
He wondered what was going through Amiko’s head. The Cyclops wouldn’t kill her, he was sure of that. But where was she, what was she—what were they—doing? Was she a willing participant, or was he holding her against her will? She, too, had all too clearly lost her judgment. In retrospect, it didn’t completely surprise him; not given the story of her father, her early life, and her strange attachment to the Cyclops. But he couldn’t worry about that now. Judging from the sounds, he could estimate the Cyclops’s current location, and this would help him get into position without being detected.
Gideon jogged down the road until he reached the LZ where Garza had dusted off an hour or so before. Pushing into the jungle, he arrived at the cliff’s edge and descended the dizzying trail to the necropolis. He squeezed through the opening and made his way through the caverns, past the crystal room, to the burial caves in the rear.
The Lost Island Page 26
