searched the flat and bumpy areas ahead, and then the trees and ground and boulders for any moving shapes.
She hand-signalled to Farrell and he nodded and stepped out from behind a tree. Up came his HK submachine gun with a silencer and flash suppressor. They fell into step with each other, their backs nearly touching, and moved forward in a two-by-two formation, checking the ground before each step, the dark forest lit up by their night-vision goggles, the wind camouflaging the sounds of twigs and branches snapped by their boots.
It was slow work. Several minutes later she heard Clark from Bravo Two whisper over her headset: 'Command, this is Bravo Two. We've discovered a path east of the clearing. Permission to investigate.'
'Permission granted,' Knowles replied. 'Proceed, Bravo Two.'
Ten more minutes and up ahead she spotted the clearing she had been instructed to reach.
Definitely man-made. Someone had removed the trees and stumps in a space roughly the size of a basketball court, the ground covered with snapped branches, some looking as if they had been stabbed into the ground and -
Darby took another few steps before hand-signalling to Farrell to stop. She pointed ahead to the clearing and Farrell looked down the length of her arm and she heard him mumble, 'Jesus.'
She called it in: 'Command, this is Bravo One. I have a partial visual on the clearing. I'm seeing at least three hands sticking out of the ground. They don't seem to be moving, but I won't know until I get a closer look.'
A short pause, and then Knowles replied: 'Acknowledged. We don't have a visual so walk us through it. Proceed with caution. I repeat, proceed with caution.'
You don't have to tell me twice, she thought. The whole scene smacked of a Grand Guignol performance, only she wasn't dealing with theatre of the macabre. These hands belonged to real people, not actors. These people weren't pretending to be dead, they were dead.
Jack Casey's wife and daughter flashed through her mind and Darby wondered with a sickening dread if one or both had been buried somewhere up ahead. She advanced slowly, a single word worming its way through her thoughts: trap.
These people worked too hard to remain hidden in the shadows — and had done so successfully — so why would they bury their victims with their hands sticking out of the ground for us to find?
Two tight, bright beams emerged at the opposite end of the clearing — the path Bravo Two had mentioned. She could see Clark and Reggie sweeping the beams of their tactical lights across the ground.
Clark's voice spoke over her headset: 'Command, we've come across a hatch of some sort. It's covered in… a camouflage blanket you could call it. It's made of these fake leaves, like the kind my wife buys at craft stores. I don't know how else to describe it.'
Darby reached the edge of clearing and saw a sea of hands sticking out from underneath the dirt — there were dozens of them hanging in the air, lifeless.
'Hatch is locked with a padlock and chains,' Clark said. 'The chain's got some slack so I think we can lift it up enough to take a look and see what's down there.'
Darby glanced at the path. The black guy, Reggie, lifted up the hatch — a big door mounted against the earth, the top covered by a camouflage blanket of fake leaves. She heard a rattle of chains as the door rose about a foot and then came to a jarring stop.
Clark, down on his knees, moved his tactical light through the foot-long gap.
'There's a ladder,' Clark said. 'Goes down to a hall made of stone.' Coughing and gagging sounds followed, and then he said, 'Christ it reeks like an outhouse. I'm seeing candles inside lanterns and they're hanging on the stone walls.'
Darby thought about the walls behind Sarah Casey's Plexiglas cell as Knowles said, 'Anyone down there?'
'Negative, Command. If we're going to go down there, we'll need bolt cutters.'
'I've got them,' Darby said. 'Standby, Bravo Two. Command, I've reached the clearing.'
Darby clipped her weapon to the front of her vest. Straight ahead she spotted a set of hands, the thin wrists bound together by rope, the fingers crooked, broken.
She flipped up her night-vision goggles. She covered her mike as she leaned into Farrell and said, 'Give me some light.'
Farrell turned on the tactical light mounted underneath his HK and focused the beam on the bound hands. Darby leaned forward and grabbed the wrists. She pulled hard, then staggered and tumbled sideways against the ground.
76
'Bravo One,' Knowles said, 'what's your status?'
Darby sat up. 'Command, I'm holding a set of hands that have been severed at the forearms. Someone just stuck them in the dirt.'
'What about the body, any sign of it?'
'Stand by.'
She got on her knees, moved to the spot where she had pulled the hands and dug through the earth.
'Command, I'm not seeing a body, just several bones.'
'And these other hands? Any survivors?'
'Unknown. Farrell and I will split up, check each one and see who's alive. There're at least a dozen or more here.'
'Bravo Two, assist Bravo One and search for survivors.'
Farrell moved to her left. Darby walked to the next pair of hands, grabbed the wrists and this time pulled up a body. Down on her knees, she stripped off her gloves and then brushed away the dirt from the neck and checked for a pulse on the cold skin.
Standing, she turned on her tactical light and saw a shaved, scarred head. The emaciated body was covered with fresh and old scars, fresh and healing wounds — and there were no eyes, the sockets scorched and blackened as if they had been burned away. Like Charlie Rizzo, like Darren Waters, this victim had been castrated.
She swiped her forearm across her forehead. 'Command, this is Bravo One. I have one male vic, deceased.'
Clark had pulled up a body and was checking for a pulse. His partner, Reggie, was kneeling on the ground, digging.
She moved on to the next set of hands when Clark said, 'I have a young female vic, deceased, with blonde hair.'
Darby felt as though her stomach had been rolled across shards of glass. Please don't let it be -
'It's not Sarah Casey,' Clark said. 'Vic appears — '
Screaming cut through the air and she whipped her head around, bringing up her weapon. In the beam of her tactical light she saw Reggie writhing on the ground, his gloved hands working furiously at something wrapped around his knee — the clawed metal jaw of what she was sure was a bear trap. It had clamped around his left thigh and shin, trapping his leg at a 90-degree angle. His knee had been spared. He must have knelt on the ground and triggered the trap's spring with his knee.
Clark had bolted over to help his partner. Darby ran too, Reggie's screaming and painful blubbering as loud as gunshot reports against her ears. The hands sticking out of the ground were bound by rope at the wrists. She dropped to her knees and helped Clark prise away the trap, her bare fingers slipping across the rusty metal jaws slick with blood.
Out of the corner of her eye she thought she saw the bound hands move. Darby turned to them and saw moving fingers.
Reggie slid his shredded mess of a leg out of the trap. Darby got to her feet, wrapped her hands around the wrists and pulled.
