The Exfiltrator

by Garner Simmons

  *****

  It was nearly dark by the time all three had emerged from the depths and stood again beyond the cave’s entrance. Sebastian had been waiting, his face filled with concern.

  “We were afraid something might have happened. You were gone so long. I was beginning to think we might have to send down a rescue party,” he said, half joking.

  “Sorry,” Corbett replied. “Sensory deprivation. Lost track of time.”

  “It was like being in a darkroom,” Ella agreed. “You go in to develop a couple of photos and the next thing you know, it’s midnight.”

  Given the hour, Hector had had Gorka prepare a thermos of coffee and tapas that were waiting for them. Famished, they ate quickly while Sebastian pressed them for information.

  “So tell me,” Sebastian asked. “What did you actually find down there?”

  “It’s still too early to tell, or course, but from what I we’ve seen so far,” Corbett replied, “it might potentially rival Altamira.”

  “Wait until you see the wall paintings,” Ella added, clearly still excited by what they had discovered. “So rich. Like nothing I’ve ever seen.”

  “Excelente. I cannot wait to go down,” Sebastian smiled.

  “And then there’s this,” Corbett added, fishing the painted shell from his jumpsuit pocket and handing it to the older man. “Roberto unearthed it just as he was rappelling down.”

  “Fantástico,” Sebastian marveled, turning the shell over in his palm. “Perhaps an amulet or part of a necklace. The hole drilled through like so.”

  “Hand painted as well.”

  “A wonderful find on our first day. An omen of good things to come.”

  “Speaking of which, any word on our winch?”

  “Good news. The university has managed to send the replacement parts by courier. They arrived a short while ago. I’ve asked Hector to see if he can get the winch set up and running by morning.”

  “No problem, Boss,” Hector grinned. “We work on it tonight, get it done pretty damn quick.”

  “Good man,” Corbett said, turning to the others. “Time to head back and get some sleep. The real work starts tomorrow.”

  “Can’t wait,” Ella smiled as she waited for Corbett to start down before falling into step beside him.

  Acutely aware of her presence, he was only half-listening as she spoke excitedly of the cave paintings once more. There was no point to denying it, he thought. There was something about her.

  Reaching the encampment, they stopped before the entrance to her tent. From inside came the sound of voices. The two girls from Munich with whom she shared the tent sat on the edge of their cots speaking together in German. Ella turned to him and hesitated.

  “I just wanted to say thank you,” she said at last. She was standing there in the darkness looking up at him, her body invading his space. He had an odd sensation as if they had somehow been on a date.

  “Thank me…?” he repeated, not quite certain what she meant.

  “For including me, taking me seriously,” she replied, struggling to find the right words.

  “All I really ever wanted,” she began again, “is a chance to make a difference. Aside from your lecture back at Northwestern, it’s what made me decide to go into archeology. Women like Margaret Mead and Mary Leakey were able to make their mark totally irrespective of men’s approval. But unfortunately, here in Spain, things are different. Half the time, I feel like I’m back in the Middle Ages. Women are still expected to know their place. You heard Roberto today. Spanish men just seem threatened by a woman doing what they see as a man’s job.”

  “You’re not wrong,” he acknowledged with a sympathetic nod. “It’s obviously different here. Chauvinism is part of the culture. You just can’t let it get to you.”

  “I know you’re right,” she shrugged. “It’s just…” She struggled unable to put it into words. Her face reflected her frustration.

  “…Not easy,” he said, finishing her thought. “You’ve got to keep a sense of humor. Let me tell you story. Some years ago, there was an archeologist working in the Levant. And there, while exploring a cave near the Dead Sea, he came upon an ancient urn hidden among the rocks. Inside the urn was a scroll containing a new, heretofore unknown Gospel that predated every known Biblical text. Excited, he returned to his tent and began to translate it. The scroll retold the story of the Creation but with a startling revelation: When God created the human race, it was Eve, not Adam whom he first created. Even stranger, as He modeled her body out of the clay, God had given her three breasts.”

  Reacting, Ella couldn’t help but smile as Corbett continued.

  “Staring in wonder at herself, Eve marveled at God’s handiwork. But when she came to her breasts, she frowned. Seeing this, God asked: ‘What is wrong, my child?’ and Eve answered: ‘Not to sound ungrateful, Lord, but having three boobs feels really strange.’ Realizing she was right, God reached down, and cupping the middle boob in his hands, he removed it. ‘Much better,’ said Eve. ‘Thank you.’ And God beheld his work and was most pleased. ‘But,’ He said at last, ‘what am I going to do with a boob like this…?’ And thus, God created man.”

  Caught completely off guard, Ella started to laugh. “You are terrible…!” she whispered.

  Corbett smiled. He liked the sound of her laughter. “Now get a good night’s sleep. The morning will be here before you know it.”

  “I will,” she said, stopping to regain her composure before entering the tent. “And thank you… for understanding. See you at breakfast.”

  Turning, she slipped inside her tent as he started toward his own. The two German girls turned. Nodding in her direction, they returned to their conversation.

  Still smiling at his joke, she dropped down on her cot and began unlacing her boots. Kicking them off, she started to get ready for bed. Unexpectedly, a sense of exhaustion overtook her as she decided to stretch out just for a moment. Pulling her blanket up over her body she lay there. Then just as she felt herself start to drift off the thought occurred to her that she had not found the time to run all week. If she woke up before dawn, she vowed, she would try to put in at least a half hour workout before breakfast. Closing her eyes, she immediately fell into a deep sleep.

  *****

  Making his way through the encampment to his tent, Corbett attempted to clear his mind. Between the demands of the expedition and the need to exfiltrate Tariq, the last thing he needed right now was to become romantically involved. Objectively, he had to admit that he felt attracted to Ella. But given the circumstances, it was critical he keep her at a distance, at least emotionally. Yet there she was, occupying his thoughts, seemingly making herself available. Or were these unexpected stirrings he was feeling toward her simply an indication of his own susceptibility?

  Setting his thoughts of Ella aside, Corbett turned to more pressing matters. First, there was the email he would need to send to Asurias detailing their first foray into the cave. Then came the matter of getting word to Reed regarding his encounter with Amaia at the clinic and the incident in the street that followed. Without question, Tariq was in more immediate danger than he had realized. And this was only the beginning.

  Reaching the entrance to his tent, he drew the canvas flap to one side and stepped into the musty darkness. Having hooked up the large generator, a single bare light bulb now hung suspended over the field desk. He fumbled for the switch and managed to turn it on, flooding the confined space with light. Turning to the stacked cases beside the desk, he opened the larger one then unlocked the secret compartment, removing his laptop. Placing the computer on the desk, he plugged it in and pressed the power button waiting for it to boot up. After thirty seconds, a message flashed on the screen: NO SIGNAL. TRY AGAIN?

  Cursing, he shut off the computer and moved to his cot. With no other option, he decided to rest his eyes and try again in a little while. Reaching up, he shut off the bare bulb and closed his eyes. Before he realized it, he was asleep.
r />   SEVENTEEN

  I t was still dark when Ella awoke. Completely out of sync with her circadian rhythm, she could feel her body rebel at the thought of running in the cool pre-dawn. Yet she knew from years of habit that once she got going, she would start to feel better. Rising, she pulled on a sports bra and her sweats then slipped into her cross-trainers. On the far side of the tent, the two German girls continued to sleep, their light, steady breathing almost imperceptible. Quietly exiting the tent, Ella moved to the open space where the vehicles were parked and began to stretch. A dozen exercises designed to loosen her muscles, limber her joints and prevent serious damage, they had been part of her routine since high school.

  The sky in the east was just beginning to lighten as she finished stretching and started to jog. The base camp had been pitched roughly an eighth of a mile below the entrance to the cave, all uphill. Glancing in the other direction, down the mountain toward the main road a couple of miles below, she was momentarily tempted to take the downhill course since it offered the least initial resistance. However, she knew from bitter experience that running down a steep incline would be punishing to her knees, ankles and lower back. Then of course, she would still have to run back up. And so instead, she turned and began her run by heading up the somewhat lesser incline toward the mouth of the cave.

  Aware of the dangers of running over uneven terrain, she stuck to the path barely discernible in the early morning half-light. Almost immediately she felt the stiffness in her calves and quads and cursed herself for allowing so many days to pass since her last workout. Moving at a steady pace, she began to focus, controlling her breathing. In through her nostrils, out through her mouth, the rhythmic repetition helped her to gain control as she climbed. At the same time, she could feel a familiar ache begin in her lungs. What was the old bromide? No pain, no gain. Continuing to run, by the time she reached the entrance to the cave, she had begun to push beyond her initial discomfort.

  Circling the large level staging area in front of the opening, she started back down while simultaneously beginning to cut back and forth across the path. Straight up and slalom down. She could still hear her high school cross-country coach repeating the words over and over like a mantra. The only way to lessen the impact of running downhill was to traverse back and forth as you descended. And while it lengthened the time it took, the point was, in training, you needed to save your knees.

  By the time she had completed her first full lap and started back up, she could feel the endorphins begin to kick in freeing her mind to refocus on something other than the stiffness and pain. She thought of the cave and the Neanderthals who once had perhaps sought shelter there. She wondered how a species could survive more than 400,000 years and then, in a blink of time, just disappear. Perhaps this cave had been their final refuge before extinction. And what of the extraordinary paintings she had seen during yesterday’s descent into the darkness? Were these primitive drawings simply a last desperate record of a world they feared would soon be lost? Or an existential declaration intended to deny the transitory nature of life itself? Confronted by such thoughts, she began to feel a certain kinship to the artist who had worked so painstakingly more than 30,000 years ago attempting to capture the life she had known. Indeed, would not the act of photographing these paintings make Ella herself a kind of accessory after the fact? Preserving primal images for posterity in ways their creator could not possibly have imagined. The thought of it excited her and made her anxious to begin her work.

  Without warning, Michael Corbett abruptly found his way into her thoughts. What was it about him? Perhaps the disarming way he looked at her? Or the unexpected tension she experienced whenever they spoke? From their first meeting in Asurias’ office, she had felt these unsettling sensations. Dismissing them almost immediately as just some momentary schoolgirl crush, a kind of lingering infatuation that had begun after first seeing him lecture back when she was an undergrad, she had expected it to pass. But when the feelings didn’t go away, she found herself wondering if perhaps there might be something more.

  Whatever it was, she felt certain these sensations were not hers alone. The way she caught him looking at her in unguarded moments. The casual flirting. His slightly off-color joke the night before. Something was going on. And yet for some reason he seemed reluctant to make the first move. Definitely a problem not shared by the Spanish men she had encountered daily in the streets of Salamanca, who constantly seemed to hit on her, whistling and undressing her with their eyes. Like every other unescorted woman, she had felt the need to be on guard against these unwanted advances.

  Clearly, these complications were decidedly American. Over the past few years, given the public outcry against sexual abuses by powerful men – men in business, entertainment and politics – toward younger women, flirting had become a risky business. But if neither sex took the initiative, what chance did anyone have for any kind of serious relationship? Maybe that’s what happened to the Neanderthals, she thought with an ironic smile. No wonder they called it the Ice Age. Obviously, if anything was going to happen, it was simply going to have to be up to her. She would just have take the first step

  Reaching the bottom of the incline for the eighth time, she slowed to a stop. Then turning, she walked quickly backwards for twenty meters, reversing the action of her muscles, allowing her body to start to cool down. Breathing deeply, she was beginning to feel better already. At last, she turned and walked quickly into camp only to encounter one of the security men as he emerged from the darkness carrying a paper coffee cup.

  “¿Quien va…?” His challenge caught her by surprise. But the moment he saw it was the girl he relaxed shaking his head with a slightly lascivious smile. Ignoring him, she moved past and re-entered her tent. Some things never changed.

  *****

  Caught in the last vestiges of some half-imagined dream still lingering in the corners of his mind, Corbett found himself awake. He vaguely remembered chasing something… or was it someone? Or was something chasing him? Exactly where or when he could not be sure. Only a fleeting recollection of a face that had vanished the moment he had tried to open his eyes. A woman, he thought? Or was it a man?

  He lay there for several minutes attempting to retrieve some fragment or detail from his dream only to find himself thinking of Amaia, of seeing her again after so long. Suddenly, the image of her brother Jon, his bullet riddled body lying dead in the street in Kibera Slum filled his mind with a sense of guilt. How could Corbett have allowed it to happen? How could he have he failed him? He should have been quicker. Death, indeed, was the ultimate betrayal.

  Thinking about Jon brought him back to Amaia and his need to find and exfiltrate Tariq. Which in turn conjured up the face of the man who had attacked him at the airport. The fact that he had now appeared in Xeria proved the attempt to steal his computer could not be laid to mere coincidence. And then there was the fleeting memory of the two men who had attacked him in the street outside the clinic. The adrenaline rush of unexpected combat. The finality with which he had been forced to kill them both. Troubling memories. Faces intermingling with those of others he had been forced to deal with – to “terminate” – in the past. It had been a knee-jerk response. No time to question when your life is on the line. To stop and consider some less draconian alternative. Reductio ad absurdum. Either kill or be killed. Take action. Move on. Compartmentalize and assuage the guilt. Yet why, he wondered, were some deaths easier to dismiss than others? What was it about Jon Alesander’s death that continued to stalk him? Perhaps the fact that those he had been forced to kill in such moments held no emotional weight. Unlike the death of his friend for whom Corbett’s failure still embodied the last full measure of his own inadequacy.

  Checking his watch, he found that it was nearly five. Soon it would be daybreak. Rising, he managed to locate the light switch and turn it on. The bare bulb swayed on its cord, sending a cascade of shadows ricocheting around the walls of the tent. Moving to the computer, he
sat down and attempted to reboot the screen once more. To his surprise, he had service. Within thirty seconds, he was connected and logged onto the Internet via the WiFi connection. Quickly typing Professor Asurias’s university email address, he began his report:

  Arrived safe at site and have begun to settle in. Camp is up and running. According to Sebastian, the spare parts needed to repair our winch have now arrived and hopefully it will be working by noon. The delay allowed us to rappel down into the main chamber of the cave itself. Preliminary recon very promising. As soon as winch is operational, we will set up the lift. Laser mapping to begin ASAP. More to follow.

  – Corbett

  Clicking the “SEND” button, Corbett returned to the INBOX where he found a new encrypted email waiting from MOTHER@firewall.org. The subject line read: “Status UPDATE…?” Hitting REPLY, he wrote:

  Dear Mother – Saw doctor in town. Explained critical need to find specialist A.S.A.P. Doctor non-committal but promised to consult specialist directly. Encountered a couple of minor complaints upon exiting clinic but terminated both accounts. Will be in touch. – Sonny

  Clicking SEND again, the email vanished into the Ether. Completely preoccupied, he had failed to hear Ella enter behind him.

  “We really are in the middle of nowhere,” her voice caught him by surprise. Seeing his head abruptly turn in her direction, she smiled. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to startle you. I tried using my cell phone when I got back from my run and couldn’t even get a signal. Did you actually just send an email…?”

  “Sometimes the magic works, sometimes it doesn’t,” he said without answering the question. “You ran this morning…? Out here?”

  “Some habits are hard to shake. The terrain’s a little daunting, but I managed to get in something like a couple of miles.”

  “That’s dedication,” he said. “I’m impressed.”