“Targets?”
“No way are we going to make it to the edge of the cliff without Murdoch sending hunters after us. These men are experienced hunters and killers. The sane thing to do would be to run as fast and as hard as possible. Last thing he’s going to expect is for us to do the hunting first. We take them out before they take us out, and by the time he gets a second set after us, it’s too late. We win the race to the cliff.”
“Position A,” King said. Humans hunting humans. The thought of it sent his already racing heart into overdrive, and he felt a new surge of adrenalin. The most dangerous predator in the world was also the most dangerous prey. “We’re setting up an ambush?”
“Yeah,” Mack answered. “With about a half hour to get there. You ready?”
“Not much choice,” King said. “Not anymore.”
CHAPTER 32
“If we get into position before the hunters are released, we’ll have a chance.”
That had been Mack’s promise. Of course, it depended on whether the favor Mack had called in had been delivered and the thermal sensors stayed down the entire hour, giving them a small window of time to make it unnoticed into the forbidden zone. And it depended on how long the western-facing rock wall behind King held the heat it had absorbed during the day.
King stood near the base of a spruce tree beside that wall, well covered by low-hanging branches. His dart rifle rested on a branch, and the barrel stuck out of the dense spruce needles and faced the path. He could reach the trigger almost instantly.
The branches provided a visual screen for an ambush, especially at night, even if the hunters had night vision goggles. Still, King felt open and exposed. He knew his body heat was higher than the heat of the tree. He felt as if he and Mack were easy targets for anyone who was using thermal sensors or receiving instructions from someone at the prison’s main computer terminal.
To get around that, King was wrapped in a space blanket. This common camping item, based on NASA technology, was a lightweight plastic sheet with a Mylar coating that made it look like tinfoil. But it was lighter and cheaper, and it was a great reflector of heat.
King was wearing it inside out, to minimize any leakage of body heat that would reach a thermal sensor. He also wore a hood crudely made from the same material. With the night vision goggles on, most of his face was covered.
His best protection, however, was the 12-foot-tall outcropping of rock wall behind him, rock that had absorbed heat during the day and was cooling gradually now.
When they’d reached it, Mack had reassured King by giving King a look at the rock face through his thermal goggles. The rock wall—virtually invisible in the darkness—glowed a dull orange in the thermal goggles. As further reassurance, Mack had stepped up to the rock and wrapped himself in a space blanket, and King had checked it out through the thermals. Mack’s heat imprint was lost against the heat imprint of the rock.
Perfect. Well, almost perfect.
The space blanket was crinkly, so it rustled with the slightest movement. Which meant King had to remain perfectly motionless as the space blanket reflected his body heat back at him and drops of sweat trickled between his shoulder blades and collected in the small of his back.
King was terrified, and this alone was enough motivation not to reveal himself with movement. But he was also determined to be Mack’s equal. If Mack could hold position in total silence and total patience under another spruce only five yards farther down the path, then King would do it too.
The loudest thing, it seemed to King, was his own heartbeat. Because if Mack was correct, Murdoch had sent out some of the most disturbed men in the entire national prison system. With the sole purpose of hunting Mack and King.
“If we get into position before the hunters are released, we’ll have a chance.”
It also depended on whether the released prisoners followed the pattern Mack had observed earlier. He’d told King that they usually fanned out in pairs. One pair always took the path that led past this rock outcrop because it was the easiest route into the heart of the forbidden zone.
It was a gamble, but it was really their only option.
With Mack’s dart rifle set in position too, all they could do was wait.
And hope.
Predator was now prey.
CHAPTER 33
They came in as delicately as mice afraid of attracting a cat.
Two of them, just as Mack had predicted. He’d always observed them hunting in pairs.
What made the delicacy of their approach more terrifying was how big each of the men were. King had been straining to see the slightest movement through his night goggles, and at first, he thought the slight detachment of a shape from a tree down the path was his imagination.
Then he realized it was worse than anything he could imagine in a nightmare.
The shape turned into the vague outline of arms and legs attached to a huge body. Then a second body.
King stopped breathing.
He had specific instructions from Mack. “Don’t shoot. Let them pass.”
King’s role was backup. Mack would take them out.
King waited until it felt as if he had to gasp. Mack had thermal goggles. Surely Mack had seen them, right? But nothing was happening.
Except the vague terrifying outlines of two humans moved closer and closer. Any second now, they’d reach Mack and—
The crinkle of movement came first. The Mylar betrayed that Mack had made his move.
The slightest shift of time. Then, thfft, thfft.
Mack had fired the dart rifle.
So close to that sound that King almost didn’t hear came the slap, slap of darts striking targets.
Then snorts of laughter from the monsters on the path.
“Dude,” one of them said in a weirdly echoing voice. “That all you got?”
In the moonlight, King could see their outlines clearly through his night vision goggles, green ghostly images that looked like Sasquatch. They split apart, forming a triangle of the two of them and the position from where Mack had fired, transforming themselves from mice scared of a cat, to cats themselves, twitching tails and about to pounce.
King couldn’t figure it out.
The darts had hit each of them. He’d heard it happen.
But neither had seemed affected.
“Come out, come out, wherever you are,” a second voice taunted in the same weirdly echoing voice, as if this were a childhood game of hide-and-seek. “We’re going to hurt you bad. Murdoch said we could make this terminal. We love our knives. Just like the others out tonight looking for you.”
One of them passed by King so close that King could have prodded the huge man with the tip of the barrel of his dart rifle.
That’s when King made his decision without even thinking about it.
Reaching down to the small of his back where he’d tucked his EID pistol, King leapt out in a rush of fury and fear and held the trigger tight, knowing as soon as it made contact, it would paralyze the largest of monster humans.
He was hampered by his night vision goggles, which scraped against the branches as he dove through, moving the goggles away from his eyes. But his hands made contact, and that’s what guided his attack.
He jammed the electric pistol into the bulk of the man’s body. Instinct, based on his memory of how the jolt had crippled Murdoch, told him he’d succeeded.
Then King’s brain told him otherwise, that his instinct was wrong.
The animal—because in essence, that’s what was in front of him, one of the biggest mammals on the continent, smaller than only bears—whirled upon King and with a roar, brought a fist into King’s chest.
King stumbled backward, as much in disbelief that the electric pistol had failed as in surprise at the counterattack. And with the quickness of any other savage beast, his attacker lunged.
King’s paralysis served him well. But by accident.
He’d been too surprised to release the electric pi
stol, too surprised to unclench his trigger finger.
When the man fell on King, King pushed upward in panic. That’s when the man’s roar of anger turned into a gurgle of flailing helplessness. Finally, King’s gun had made contact.
King rolled with the man and dimly understood why his first effort had failed. His free hand brushed against a nylon fabric, and as he punched, it gave solid resistance. Kevlar?
No time to think more.
Feel for the man’s throat.
That’s where King must have hit him by accident the first time, and now, with primal rage and fear driving him, King jabbed the electric current back into the man’s throat again.
The man’s flailing became shortened spasms, and King pulled himself out of his rage and let his brain take over again.
One more attacker. But where?
He flipped to his feet and looked around. With his goggles off, he saw only darkness. Until an impact against the side of his head sent bright lights across his vision.
He tumbled. Tried to jab upward. Not. Good. Enough.
The full weight of the second man was upon him, a crushing sensation as horrible as a landslide. King’s arms were pinned, and he had no chance of using the electric pistol to protect himself.
Then hands against his own throat. A squeezing that felt like it was crushing cartilage. Lights that burst inside his retina, then dimmed.
Until...
Out of the darkness, another scream of rage. A massive thump. Another massive thump. Neither thump dislodged the beast that was killing King.
Then the body on top of King flailed, quivered, and spasmed.
The scream of rage became a calm voice.
“King. You okay?”
King could only manage a grunt. His lungs felt as if an elephant were standing on his chest.
Mack grunted too, but his was a grunt of effort. He was pulling at the shoulders of the second man, trying to roll him off King. King twisted and rolled the other way. Finally, air. Sweet clean air.
King gasped a few times and then got to his knees.
“What took you?” King managed to say, leaning over with his hands on his knees.
“Tactical error,” Mack said. Mack was panting but managed to speak clearly. “I hit him as hard as I could with my backpack. Had it by the straps and swung it as hard as I could. Twice. Didn’t work. I had to jump him and find a spot to jab him with my electric pistol.”
By then, Mack was using his flashlight to play it across the two fallen men. It confirmed what King had guessed.
Kevlar vests. Bulletproof. And dart proof.
Each man wore night vision goggles and a helmet with a face shield, which explained why their voices had sounded so weird. A dart wouldn’t have brought one down unless it hit him in the few square inches of exposed neck.
“We need to stay close to each body,” Mack said. “Remember?”
Their plan had been to make it into the forbidden zone undetected, then bring down a couple of the men hunting them. The heat sensors weren’t able to distinguish individual men, let alone individual features.
Now with those men down, all they needed to do was drag the men to the rock face and cover them in thermal blankets. Those two would become invisible, and Mack and King could move freely. Whoever was monitoring the thermal sensors would believe Mack and King were the two men who had left the prison. And to anyone monitoring their movement, their travel to the cliff’s edge would look like a natural part of the hunting pattern.
Except now there was one slight problem.
CHAPTER 34
“Mack,” King said, “these guys will be unconscious ten minutes at most. Maybe less. Big as they are, they could wake up any second. The EIDs won’t keep them out as long as a dart would.”
Mack let the flashlight roam, showing again helmets, visors, and the Kevlar.
“We’ll have to hit them with darts,” Mack said. “But if we shoot them in the throats at this range, it will kill them. Tempting, but not a memory either of us needs.”
“Shine the light on one of the legs, okay?”
King had a jackknife in his pocket. He knelt and tried cutting through the fabric of the first man’s pants.
No luck. The fabric was a tight nylon that would have resisted darts too. “Suggestion?” King asked.
Mack sighed. “It’s going to have to be a couple of butt shots. Unbuckle their pants.”
“You didn’t just say ‘butt shot,’ did you?” King wanted to giggle, probably a reaction to the stress he’d just faced.
“Look, that’s what doctors do, right? Give you a needle in the—”
“No.” King groaned. “Bottom of their feet. That’s better than a butt shot, right?”
King didn’t wait from an answer from Mack. He untied the first man’s left boot and pulled it loose.
Mack kept the light steady on the man’s foot. “Get your dart rifle. You can have the honors.”
King crawled back under the spruce branches and came out with it. He didn’t mess around. He held the barrel of the rifle less than a foot away from the motionless man’s left heel. He pulled the trigger.
Thfft.
The dart buried itself almost to the feathers.
“Next,” King said, and pulled off the other man’s boot. He tried to think of something funny to say, the way it would happen in the movies. But how can you say, “Go ahead, make my day,” or “Hasta la vista, baby” when you are going to shoot the bottom of a man’s foot?
So he calmly buried a dart in that man’s heel too.
It took both of them to drag first one man and then the other to the base of the rock face. Much easier to drape them with the Mylar space blankets.
They were about to walk away when something beeped under the blanket of the first man.
Mack knelt and lifted the blanket. He found the source of the beep and pulled it loose. The device, about the size of an iPhone, had a screen, and the screen showed four dots.
“Some kind of GPS thing?” Mack asked. “This looks like it’s on a map of the island.”
“Must be,” King answered. “Those dots. Each one is a person, right? Two of us here—and the other set of two dots, moving away from us.”
“Perfect,” Mack said. “We become dots to replace the two guys we just took out. No way anyone monitoring the thermal sensors can guess that two of those dots are us. Set your GPS to position B and grab your backpack. We’ll continue as a pair and make it to the cliff without any problems at all.
King hoped it would be that easy. He wasn’t thinking about the cliffs. He was thinking about the other two dots on the tracking device. Each one of those dots representing hunters of men who only had one goal for the night.
Kill. With knives.
CHAPTER 35
Fifteen minutes of walking took them about halfway to the cliffs and nearly all the way to King’s death.
Walking, though, wasn’t an accurate way to describe it, because that could give the impression that moving through the forbidden zone was like a stroll on city streets. Instead, it was constant motion of ducking beneath branches, balancing on boulders, and finding openings between rock outcrops. All of it was made more difficult by their backpacks. They were guided only by moonlight that disappeared far too often behind drifting clouds. Without the tiny arrow on his GPS to show them the line they needed to take, King would have been lost.
King had let his night vision goggles hang from his neck. He disliked the tunnel vision they gave him, and making sense of the shapes that appeared was difficult because he’d had so little practice.
Mack no longer wore the thermal goggles either. They weren’t needed now that King had a device that showed the locations of all heat sources in the forbidden zone. King glanced at it occasionally to reassure himself that the GPS on his wrist was sending Mack and King in the correct direction. The little dots that represented them moving on the map reminded King of the Maps app on an iPhone with a pulsating blue dot that showed
the user’s location.
King also kept glancing at the thermal dots because he wanted to feel safe from the other two dots. He should have been watching the ground more closely because it suddenly disappeared. And this was how he nearly died.
In actual time, it would have been less than half a second. In terms of sensation, he was in a slow-motion nightmare, frantically flapping his arms to keep his balance, uselessly trying to fly. But in a fight between man and gravity, one inevitably wins and the other inevitably loses.
King dropped. Hard. His gut tightened as he braced for impact, not even knowing where and how he’d fallen, just knowing that there was nothing beneath his feet. At the end of that half second, a giant hand plucked him from the night sky.
At least, that’s how it felt.
“King!”
Mack, a few steps behind, had stopped in time.
“Here,” King said, his feet dangling, still in total shock and bewilderment.
What had just happened?
Then came the small beam from Mack’s flashlight.
It showed a deep and narrow crevice where eons before, part of a rock outcropping had split. King would have landed only a few feet farther down, but on jumbled rocks and rotting tree branches from spruce that had fallen during storms. With luck, he would have only broken some bones. But with broken bones, he would have been unable to travel. And that would have meant death too.
The giant hand that had plucked him from the sky was a spruce that had fallen across the crevice. A broken branch had snagged the straps of his backpack and yanked him as hard as a parachute that had just opened.
“You’re okay, right?” Mack said.
“Now that I think about it,” King said, “yeah.”
All he had to do was wriggle loose from the backpack, ease his way a few feet down to the bottom of the crevice, and then climb out. Even getting across was easy. The fallen spruce formed a natural bridge.
Dead Man's Switch Page 11
