They had struggled and schemed through half a dozen hopeless plans of escape. Verhoven and Danielle had worked the cuffs until their wrists bled, trying desperately to slip their hands free. Whenever one of Kaufman’s soldiers approached, their emotions surged with hope and fear, hope that they might be released and fear that they would be shot and left for dead. But neither event occurred, and as the night arrived they fell into various forms of fitful, uncomfortable sleep.
After dozing for an hour or so, Professor McCarter awoke with a cramp in his leg, tight like twisted bands of steel. He shifted his weight and tried to stretch it, grunting in pain and waiting for the pins and needles.
The air around him was cool and still, the clearing quiet and the skies as lucid as any he’d ever seen. The unseasonably dry air meant hotter days and cooler evenings, and it left the night skies brilliantly clear. The camp ahead of him was black. And as he looked around, the others appeared to be asleep, except for Danielle and Verhoven, who were talking quietly.
As he watched them, a sense of anger welled up inside. They’d led Susan and him here under false pretenses, endangering them without their knowledge or consent.
It seemed so obvious now: armed security, guard dogs, coded satellite transmissions. Of course they’d been in jeopardy, right from the very beginning. It wasn’t as if he hadn’t noticed, but he’d written it off to a general sense of prudence and a healthy fear of the Chollokwan. He stared at Danielle.
“Anything happening?” he asked.
“No,” she said.
Verhoven added, “Not yet anyway.”
There was something ominous about Verhoven’s statement, but before McCarter could say anything he heard voices: the disembodied shouts of hidden soldiers. In the distance, a flashlight came on and then went off again. There was hurried movement, more commands and metallic noises like guns being loaded and readied. In the stillness of the air, it seemed as if he could hear every footfall. “God, it’s quiet.”
“Too quiet,” Verhoven said. “Too quiet, for too long.”
McCarter glanced at the South African. “What do you mean?”
There was a sliver of a grin on Verhoven’s face. “Trouble’s coming.”
McCarter’s hands tingled. He didn’t like the sound of that. “What kind of trouble?”
“Visitors,” Verhoven said, nodding toward the trees. “Been around for a while, but these fools are only just figuring it out.”
McCarter craned his head around and looked out into the darker void beneath the trees. He sensed something, though he wondered if it was a result of Verhoven’s suggestion. “The Chollokwan?”
“They came for us after we went into the temple,” Danielle reminded him. “They’ve left us alone ever since. But these guys have been banging around in there all day long. I fear they may have struck a nerve.”
Staying out of the temple hadn’t been a conscious decision, but the timing of the two events had escaped no one. McCarter looked back to the forest. The thought of being chained to a tree when an attack came horrified him. He remembered the chanting and the fires.
“Where does that leave us?”
“Stuck at the table,” Verhoven said. “With a very bad hand.”
McCarter’s face wrinkled.
Danielle looked over at him; her eyes suggested defiance. “We’re not done yet,” she said. “Stay sharp. We might get a chance, somewhere in all the madness.”
McCarter understood the situation. He’d questioned their odds before, but now he knew what it meant to cling to even the thinnest ray of hope. They couldn’t hold out for a good chance or for even a fair one. It seemed prayers would be wasted on such grand requests. But a hundred-to-one shot, the smallest mistake by their captors, perhaps it was less foolish to ask fate for that, perhaps they’d get that type of chance before it was over.
McCarter tried to stretch his legs. He stared up at the night sky once more. The stars were so ridiculously bright that they seemed to be mocking him.
“The Mayan people cut holes in the jungle like this one,” he said. “Just to see the stars. They aligned their temples with the Equinox and the Solstice and even the very center of our galaxy—though no one knows how they determined that. They carved whole sections out of the rainforest, just to study the heavens, the realm of their gods.”
McCarter continued to scan the sky above the clearing. “Over time, the jungle crept in and swallowed the other places whole. But the land is still barren here, the stars still shine. A small refuge for the old gods, I guess.”
McCarter glanced at Danielle and then Verhoven, waiting for a derogatory comment or some quip about useless philosophy. But despite what McCarter thought, Verhoven actually smiled. “Then let’s hope the old gods favor us,” he said.
Out in the clearing the activity had stopped.
McCarter let his body grow still. His own quiet seemed to heighten his senses and he soon recognized a soft glow at the center of the camp and the dimly lit outline of a face, bathed in a strange, fluctuating glow. It took a moment before he understood: the soft light came from the perimeter warning system. The screen was flashing.
Verhoven saw it too. “Our friends are here.”
His voice was low, but loud enough to wake the only other survivor from his team: Roemer.
McCarter thought to wake Susan, only to remember that she was gone. Another loss he hadn’t come to grips with.
“Things could get ugly,” Verhoven said. “If you see them, don’t move. If they realize that we’re prisoners, they might take pity on us. Or they might attack anyway. But if we fight, they’ll slaughter us.”
“And if they set the trees on fire?” McCarter asked, voicing his earlier fear.
“Then hope they kill you first.”
As McCarter tried to block out the possibility, he looked toward the command center. He could make out Devers’ face now; he was pointing into the distance.
A flare shot off directly to the west. It carried a half mile into the sky before deploying a small parachute and beginning a gentle float across the camp to the south.
“White flare,” Verhoven said. “Trip-wire flare, not from the console. Something’s in the forest out there.”
The burning flare illuminated the camp. “I see eight soldiers,” McCarter said.
“I counted eight as well,” Danielle said.
“There are more,” Verhoven said. “I know it. They just have their heads down, waiting for the attack.
“Any sign of the Chollokwan?” Danielle asked.
Verhoven twisted around for a better view of the forest behind them. “Not yet.”
McCarter’s eyes went from the clearing to the forest and then back again, as another flare shot upward to the north. This time a red one, triggered by the sensors, or manually from the laptop. A rifle cracked, shattering the silence. A second later other weapons joined in, opening up at full tilt.
Things looked bad, and a minute later, when one of the Germans came bounding over to them, McCarter wondered if they were about to get decidedly worse.
The soldier who approached them had been sent at Kaufman’s bidding. With an attack from the natives or the animals likely, the prisoners had suddenly become a problem for him. Kaufman didn’t want to leave them at the tree, but he had nowhere else to secure them, and he didn’t want them causing any problems in the middle of the battle. He’d chosen a compromise: leave them where they were, but send protection. This soldier had drawn the short straw and the unenviable task of guarding them during whatever was about to occur.
He walked up and kicked McCarter’s legs.
“I’m awake,” McCarter said, pulling his legs back.
“Good,” the guard said. “Now be still.” He waved the barrel of his rifle at the others. “All of you.”
McCarter’s eyes tracked the soldier. He was sick of being a prisoner, sick of being afraid. Verhoven had said something earlier about bringing one of them down to the ground, and from that point, a solid kick to the neck or temple would finish him. Maybe now was the time.