by Roland Smith
You’ll figure it out, Butch had said. He grabbed the cutter and a bottle of water, and walked back over to Buck.
“Good find,” Buck said. He took the cutter and sliced through Luther’s flex-cuffs. Luther did the same for him and for Ana, who was sitting up now, shielding her eyes against the dim light.
“Want me to turn the lights off?” Luther asked. “Or I should say the light off? There’s only one working.”
“No, leave it on,” Ana said. “And you’re a lot of trouble.”
“I just went for a walk,” Luther said.
“Open the bottle and hand it over,” Ana said grumpily. “What else did you find?”
“Gasoline, propane, food,” Luther said. “Enough food to last for months.”
“That can’t be good,” Ana said, taking a drink.
Buck looked up at the ceiling.
“Air vents,” Luther said. “Too high to reach. Butch told me they were welded shut.”
Buck pointed at the door Luther had been pushed through. “We know where that goes, but what about the other doors?”
Luther looked. He hadn’t noticed them, but there were metal doors on three of the walls. “I’m sure they’re locked.” He tested one.
It opened.
* * *
Butch pushed Wolfe back into the elevator and stabbed the button for the top floor. Wolfe expected the door to open into another corridor, but it didn’t. He stepped out into what appeared to be a tropical park. It was filled with plants and trees. Colorful parrots flew between branches. Butterflies danced around the flowers. Monkeys chattered down at them from the trees. The park was covered with a fine mesh that was nearly invisible in the shadowy canopy.
Butch waved his gun at him. “Follow the path.”
The path was made out of cement and was clear of foliage. He knew by the way the rain forest grew that it probably took a small army of gardeners to keep the path clear. There were cages along the path, some big, some small, with every kind of rain forest animal imaginable … jaguar, ocelot, tapir, capybara, anaconda…. An animal he’d never seen before rushed out of its holding area, jumped on the chain link, and started snarling at them. It was wearing a radio harness with one of Ted Bronson’s cameras attached to it.
“Shocking, isn’t it?” Butch said.
The animal was about the size of a coyote. It had long, curved canine teeth, protruding spines running down its back, brown-black fur, and three lethal-looking claws on each of its front feet. Wolfe had thought the boys had been exaggerating when they had described it to him. Looking at the chupacabra now as it tried to get at them through the mesh, he realized they had actually downplayed the ferocity of Noah’s beast. It was truly frightening. Butch let him look at it, obviously enjoying his reaction.
“We call him Nine,” Butch said. “You should have seen the first eight. Now, those were aggressive buggers. Uncontrollable.”
“You can control this one?”
Butch pointed his gun at the slavering mutant. “I can control everything with this.”
“He doesn’t appear to like you,” Wolfe said.
“Doesn’t matter,” Butch said.
The cage next to the chupacabra was empty, no doubt as a buffer between the chupacabra and the animal in the third cage, so that they didn’t tear each other to pieces through the mesh. The animal in the third cage looked like a cross between a grizzly bear and a lion, and acted like one, bashing itself against the mesh and roaring.
“You sure that cage is secure?” Wolfe asked.
Butch laughed. “You scared, Travis?”
Wolfe didn’t answer. He glanced back at the chupacabra. It was now lying on top of a log, completely calm, watching them with intelligent golden eyes. In a way, Wolfe found this more frightening than when it was in attack mode. There was raw intelligence behind those eyes.
Wolfe looked back at the animal in the third cage. “What do you call this?”
“Bearcat.”
“Mutants,” Wolfe said.
Butch shrugged. “Whatever.”
They heard someone in front of them yell out a stream of curses that would make a truck driver blush. Wolfe recognized the voice.
Impossible, he thought.
Wolfe had been surprised to see Butch in the middle of the rain forest. It was almost as if Butch had left the States before they did, which meant Blackwood still had spies on Cryptos Island. Someone had told Blackwood and Butch where they were going.
But how did Blackwood get here so quickly?
“Sounds like the old man is upset,” Butch said, smiling. “Bad timing on your part. You know how he is when things don’t go his way.”
Wolfe knew exactly how Noah Blackwood was when things didn’t go his way. It wasn’t pleasant. He’d known Blackwood since he was a teenager. Wolfe’s father had been a friend of Noah’s until their acrimonious falling out.
“How’d you get down here so fast?” Wolfe asked Butch.
“Because I know what you’re going to do before you know you’re going to do it.”
“How did Noah get down here so fast?” Wolfe clarified.
“He was with me,” Butch answered.
“How long have you and Noah been down here?”
“A few days. Surprised?”
“Not really,” Wolfe said, but he was surprised. Very surprised.
Blackwood’s cursing died down and the birds and monkeys started chattering again.
“Move it!” Butch pushed him up the path.
They didn’t have far to go. The path ended at a luxurious swimming pool surrounded by lush jungle foliage dotted with beautifully colored, and no doubt rare, orchids. Noah Blackwood was sitting in a comfortable chair, sipping an ice-cold drink. In his other hand he held a small electronic tablet. He was smiling, completely composed. He didn’t look like a man who had thrown a tantrum two minutes before. He looked like a man completely enjoying himself, as if he were on vacation in a tropical paradise.
“It’s good to see you, Travis.”
Wolfe stared at him. Noah didn’t have a hair out of place, or a trickle of sweat on his starched khaki safari suit. It was spotless.
“Please sit down.”
Wolfe remained standing. Noah nodded. Butch slammed his fist into Wolfe’s stomach and pushed him into the chair across from Noah.
“That’s better,” Noah said calmly.
Wolfe remained bent over, trying to catch his breath and not throw up. It took several seconds before he could sit up. Butch stood directly behind him.
“Let Luther go,” Wolfe said. “This is our fight, not his.”
Noah laughed. “The fight is over, Travis. You’ve lost. Unfortunately for Luther, he was on the wrong side. All your friends were on the wrong side.”
“You won’t get —” Wolfe stopped himself. Telling Noah he wouldn’t get away with it sounded trite even to him, and he knew Noah probably would get away with it. He’d gotten away with it his whole life.
“Yes?” Noah asked.
“What is this place?”
“Ah … It’s a research center. It’s been here since before World War Two. But it’s much more than that. It’s where I was born. It’s where Rose was born.”
“So Butch told me,” Wolfe said.
Noah’s eyes narrowed and his face flushed in anger. Wolfe wished he could see Butch’s face. He suspected that Butch was no longer smiling. He realized he needed to let it play out the way Noah envisioned it. He needed to keep the conversation going, because when the conversation ended, it would all be over.
“I didn’t believe him,” Wolfe said. “Rose shared very little about her childhood, but she certainly would have told me that she was born in the middle of the Amazonian rain forest, if it was true.”
“I anticipated as much,” Noah said, the flush fading from his face. “I would wager that Rose never showed you any photographs of herself when she was a baby.” He picked up a file from the side table. “The reason she didn’t share her
baby pictures with you is that she didn’t know any existed — at least not these.”
Noah laid several color photos out on the table. The baby had a shock of black hair and the most beautiful blue eyes Wolfe had ever seen. It was unmistakably Rose Blackwood. There were photos of her with Noah cradling her exactly where he was sitting right now, photos of her in the village at the edge of the lake being nursed by one of the Trips, photos of her being pushed in a carriage along the corridor Wolfe had walked moments before.
It was a full minute before Wolfe could speak. He stared down at the photos and thought his heart might break.
“Did she know she was born here?”
“I think she had her suspicions,” Noah said. “I took her to the States when she was fourteen months old. I never brought her back down here, although I would have, had you not taken her from me and killed her.”
“I didn’t kill her,” Wolfe said.
“Letting her die in the Congo amounts to the same thing,” Noah said, his face reddening again.
Wolfe had no defense. In a way, Noah was right. If he hadn’t taken her to the Congo to find Mokélé-mbembé, she would still be alive. But she was the one who had insisted they go on the expedition. One of her justifications was to get as far away from her father as she could. He’d argued that Cryptos Island was close and secure. She’d insisted that if Noah knew where she was, he would find a way to get her back. She wanted to disappear, and she had. Forever.
“What about her mother?”
“We’ll get to that eventually,” Noah said. “We’ll get to everything eventually.” He looked at his expensive watch. “Right now I have business to tend to.” He gave Butch a nod.
“Want me to put him down with the others?” Butch asked.
“What others?” Wolfe asked.
“No,” Noah said, ignoring Wolfe’s question. “I think we have an opening between Nine and the bearcat. Put him there.”
Beyond the door was another dark room.
Luther used his cell phone to find the light switch and flipped it on. The room was the same size as the one Butch had put him in, and here, too, cardboard boxes, wooden crates, and old equipment were stacked along the wall. The only obvious difference was that the ceiling lights in the second room had four working bulbs instead of one. There was a steel door leading to the corridor. Locked. And another door on the far wall. Luther walked over and tried it. In opened into yet another dark room.
He turned and looked at Ana and Buck, who were rummaging through the boxes along the wall. “Why would they leave these interior doors unlocked? I mean, when Butch, or whoever, comes down here to check on us, how’s he going to find us?”
“Cameras,” Ana said. “They must have them.”
“Or else no one is going to come down and check on us,” Buck said. He pointed at the boxes. “More MREs. Medical supplies. Bottled water. Blankets. Someone has already been through the med supplies, and the MREs have been picked through, too. They come in several versions. Most of the breakfast boxes are empty.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means that someone is partial to breakfast, and I doubt it’s Butch or Blackwood. We could live down here for years, maybe decades. And we’re not alone.”
Luther was trying to wrap his mind around what Buck was saying when he heard a screeching sound. He peered into the third dark room and saw a square of light on the far wall as the door opened, and the silhouette of one — no, two — people coming through the doorway.
“We’ve got company.”
One of them flicked on the light. It was Flanna Brenna and Jake Lansa.
* * *
“Did you notice they didn’t go to sleep after their last … uh … meal?” Grace asked.
“You mean slaughter,” Marty said. “Yeah, I noticed.”
They had been following the hatchlings through the jungle for miles at a grueling pace without a break. The hatchlings’ sleep pattern was not the only thing that had changed. Their behavior had, too. They were ranging ahead about a half a mile, then frolicking back to the exhausted trio, circling them a couple of times, then taking off again like unleashed puppies. They had just completed another circling maneuver and taken off again, crashing through the forest.
“They’re making enough noise to wake the dead,” Dylan said.
“Do you think the dragonspy is charged yet?” Grace asked.
In their numbing slog through the stifling rain forest, Marty had completely forgotten about the second bot. He quickly grabbed his cap off his head and breathed a sigh of relief when he saw the dragonspy had not been scraped off by a bush or a branch. He stroked the folded silvery wings and felt it tremble at his touch.
“I think it’s good to go,” he said, slipping the Gizmo out of his pocket.
“Which way are you going to send it?” Grace asked.
Marty checked the dragonspy in Yvonne’s pack. “They’re about a mile from camp, not moving very fast.”
“The dragonspy must be bugging them,” Dylan said.
Marty laughed.
Grace rolled her eyes. “You guys have been spending way too much time together. How’s the battery holding up?” she asked.
“I was just about to look,” Marty said. But I really should have checked on that a while ago, he thought. What is wrong with me? If I don’t start paying attention, I’m going to get us all killed! “There’s just enough juice left to crawl out of Yvonne’s pack, and maybe, maybe, fly up into a tree.”
“What if they see it?” Dylan asked.
Marty shrugged. “If it dies in the pack, they’re going to find it anyway.”
“Providing they don’t die before they find it,” Grace added.
“Not much chance of that,” Marty said. “Since they’re the ones on the hunt, and headed to an abandoned camp. And what’s the deal with your newfound violence? I’m not complaining, but it’s kind of a new look for you.”
Grace flushed with embarrassment. “I guess I’m just mad. Frustrated. I want this all to stop.”
“Welcome to the club,” Marty said, then got back to the dying dragonspy in Yvonne’s pack. He had to concentrate. Crawling it was much harder than flying it. And flying it wasn’t easy. He maneuvered the bot around until he saw a sliver of light at the top of the pocket, then started up. At the top of the pocket, he swiveled the bot’s head back and forth. “It looks like Yvonne is taking up the rear. I don’t see anyone behind her.”
“Maybe they ditched her,” Dylan said.
“Fingers crossed,” Graced said.
Marty glanced at the bot’s battery indicator. It was just about at zero. He opted for the drop and see what happens approach because he didn’t think there was enough juice to get it into the air. As soon as dragonspy hit the ground, he turned it so he could see Yvonne walking away. The problem was that Yvonne was not walking away. She had stopped and was looking down at the dragonspy angrily as if she was about to step on it.
She turned her head and shouted, “Hey! Spike!”
A second later, Spike appeared next to her, peering down at the dragonspy. “Those your hatchling trackers flashing?”
Yvonne nodded. “They must have cut them out of the base of their tails.”
Spike squatted down for a closer look. “Then attached them to this little drone thing. Then led us off their trail. Then followed us around with it to drive us nuts.” He laughed. “Pretty smart. Brilliant really.”
“Fly it away, Marty!” Grace shouted.
He did. The little shot of sunlight was just enough get the dragonspy into the air quickly. Unfortunately, Spike was quicker. He grabbed it out of the air like a frog snapping up an insect and treated them to an extreme close-up of his and Yvonne’s faces as they examined the dragonspy.
“I think those are tiny cameras,” Yvonne said.
“Think they’re watching us?”
“Presumably,” Yvonne said.
“Think they can hear us?”
“I
doubt it. What should we do with it?”
“I’m keeping it,” Spike said. “Bet it’s worth money to someone.”
“Smarter than he looks,” Marty said.
“Not really,” Grace said. “If Al Ikes and the CIA find out, they’ll hunt him to the ends of the earth.”
“Then let’s hope he keeps it,” Dylan said.
Spike did keep it. He buttoned it in his shirt pocket. The Gizmo went dark and the voices became so muffled they could no longer hear what they were saying.
“At least we’ll be able to keep track of them,” Marty said, showing them the battery indicator. It was about an eighth full. “The bot should last a while piggybacking on Spike.” He switched to the second dragonspy. “No point wasting this little guy to keep an eye on them. We’ll fly it ahead and find the hatchlings.”
It didn’t take long. The hatchlings were halfway across a raging river, swimming like a pair of dolphins.
“All the doors between the rooms are unlocked,” Flanna explained as she and Jake led Luther, Ana, and Buck through one room after another. “But the doors to the corridor are locked up tight.”
“Where are Doc and Laurel?” Luther asked.
“They’re in the main room. Not surprisingly, Doc resisted when they were captured. He’s a little banged up, but he’ll survive.”
“And Laurel?”
“She’s fine and as sharp as a tack. She already trying to put together a lexicon of our kidnappers’ language.”
“The Trips,” Luther said.
“The what? Oh, triplets. The Trips. I get it. Bizarre, isn’t it? Laurel thinks she’s heard enough of their language to communicate with them. A set of Trips was waiting for us behind a waterfall we used to cross a river. Somehow, they knew we’d be there.”
“Did you see Butch McCall?” Luther asked.
“Who’s he?” Jake asked.
Luther explained how he and Wolfe were captured.
“Raul’s dead?” Flanna said, shocked.
“Yeah. Butch shot him and left him in the forest. He force-marched us here, shoved me into a room, then took Wolfe somewhere else.”
