“There’s a door in the wall.” He pointed at the map again. “There.”
Quinn closed the laptop. “Thank you, Mr. Porter. Now it’s time for you to go to sleep.”
A small, quick-inflating landing raft carried the three of them and their gear to shore. On the beach, they divvied out the equipment and headed inland.
Walking through the jungle was not as hard as Quinn had feared. While there was plenty of vegetation, it wasn’t thick enough to slow them down, and within minutes they reached the clearing where the airstrip was located. The deserted runway stretched for nearly the entire width of the island.
Double-timing it, they crossed the tarmac and entered the jungle on the other side. From there, they walked along the edge of the clearing until they reached the road Porter had pointed out.
It was wide enough for a small car, but not much else. Quinn could see where branches had been chopped away, and guessed that it was a constant struggle to keep the path from being reclaimed by nature. To avoid exposing themselves to anyone who might be using it, they stuck to the jungle a few yards off the trail, using it only as a guide.
Twenty minutes later, Orlando tapped Quinn on the shoulder. “Look,” she said.
She was pointing ahead of them and up through a break in the trees. Just visible, maybe a quarter mile away, was a small section of the stone wall that surrounded Fort Duran.
Quinn smiled to himself.
“Did anyone hear that?” Daeng said.
Quinn looked over and shook his head. “What was it?”
“I don’t know. It sounded like-”
There was a loud crack of wood, followed by a groan that was most definitely human. The sounds had come from the right and closer to the fort.
“That, I heard,” Quinn said.
CHAPTER 52
Harris was once more standing next to Romero in the courtyard. The first three prisoners had received their lashes, and were hanging from their hoists, moaning in exhaustion and pain.
It was Peter’s turn.
“Make this one extra special,” Romero ordered Janus.
The blond man smiled. “My pleasure.” He unfurled his whip again, and snapped it against the stone floor.
Romero looked back at the soldier manning the camera. “You are getting everything, right?”
“Yes, sir.”
Facing forward again, Romero said, “I hope you’re ready, Peter.”
The hooded figure made no reply.
Romero nodded at Janus. “Commence.”
Janus pulled his arm back, letting the whip drape behind him, but just as he was about to let it fly, a different kind of cracking noise came over the wall into the courtyard. It was followed immediately by a second, fainter noise.
“Stop,” Harris said.
Janus had already paused, and turned to look at the top of the wall.
Harris was looking that way, too. “What was that?” he called up to the sentry nearest him.
“Don’t know,” the man answered. He gestured behind him, beyond the wall. “Someone’s out there.”
“You heard a voice?”
“Yes, right after the breaking sound. Sounded like they were hurt.”
The only one it could be was Quinn. “See if you can spot him. I’m sending the others back out!” He turned to Romero. “Maybe we should finish this later.”
“Absolutely not,” Romero said. “There will be no finishing later. Janus can handle this fine. Go. Bring back Quinn.”
CHAPTER 53
Nate created half a dozen weapons caches in places where he thought he’d need them. Each cache consisted of at least one of the seized firearms and two softball-sized rocks.
As he was doing this, he kept an eye on the fort in case anyone ventured out, but the door didn’t open once. After he was set on the weapons front, he moved on to creating the lure.
He figured there were two ways to get their attention-visibly or audibly expose himself. A visible exposure was not very appealing. One of the soldiers might get off a lucky shot, and injure or even kill him. A loud sound, though, was different. He could control that.
He searched around for anything that could aid him in making the noise, and finally found something he thought would work. It was a tree, dead, but still standing. The branches looked brittle and easy to snap off. There was a large one, about the size of Nate’s arm, halfway up. If he could break that off, the noise would be heard by the sentries on the wall.
He found the strongest vine he could, secured a stone to one end, tossed it up and over the branch, then did it one more time so that it had a good grip on the limb.
Tentatively, he gave it a pull and then let go. The branch was definitely ready to break, but he wondered if it would be enough. They might just think it was a natural occurrence, and he’d be wasting his efforts. He would have to reinforce it with a little human touch.
Grabbing both ends of the vine, he moved to the side, and set his legs so he could jump out of the way when the branch came tumbling down toward him. He gave it another test pull. This time, it let out a tiny
He put his whole body into his next pull and jerked down on the vine. As he’d hoped, the crack of the branch as it separated from the tree was thunderous.
Just as the noise started to die down, he added the second part of his lure-an agonized groan. As soon as he was done, he sprinted into the brush and headed for his first cache of weapons.
He could hear a raised voice at the top of the wall, but couldn’t make out what was being said. It didn’t matter. His interest was on the door, and the soldiers that he was sure would soon be swarming out. He’d wait for them to pass and then cull them from the herd, one after another.
He settled into his hiding spot, his eyes on the wall. That’s when he heard it. Faint. Just a brush of something on sand. But it wasn’t the wind, or a palm frond falling to earth.
A step. He had heard a step, and it had been
Was a soldier still out there tracking him? Could Nate have missed him? Maybe the guy had hidden like Nate had, and now he was moving in for the kill.
Whoever it was, they were good, Nate had to give them that. After the first brush of sand, there had been no other sound. But Nate knew the person must’ve been moving toward the sound of the breaking branch.
He started to pick up the pistol, but then selected a stone that had an ax-like edge instead. If he shot off the gun, the echo could keep the other soldiers from coming back out.
With a quick glance at the still-closed door in the wall, Nate moved back into the jungle.
CHAPTER 54
