In this way his two hundred men could scour the countryside like a veritable army of spotters.
Kang checked the readout. His artificial intelligence system had initially predicted a 31 percent chance that the NRI team would access one of these points for additional information.
But that prediction was updated constantly based on the rate of progress. As Kang checked the readout, he saw a diminishing likelihood of finding the Americans at any of the known Mayan sights. And with all the additional faces that had been scanned and rejected at the university, that probability was falling as well.
The current analysis graded the possibilities in the following manner:
Probability that
NRI party has been captured or incapacitated: 3.27%
NRI party no longer in Mexico and heading for the United States: 9.41%
NRI party will use McCarter’s remote access to New York University mainframe: 11.74%
NRI party has sufficient information to locate precise point of next site: 14.69%
NRI party will access a local university or museum for data: 28.91%
NRI party has sufficient data to begin generalized search for next site: 31.08%
Possible other outcomes: < 1%
Kang considered the data. The most likely category, that the NRI party now had sufficient information to begin a generalized search, had been the second least likely category twenty-four hours before. He had watched with both concern and hope as it rose steadily in the rankings.
If the NRI party was truly out in the jungle somewhere, they were much closer to finding the next stone than he’d hoped. On the other hand, that was what he needed them to do eventually. And by leaving the metropolitan areas and entering the jungle they played into his hands. Out there Kang had ways of finding and tracking them that were not feasible in the crowded streets of urban civilization. And when he found them, he would deal with them away from the harsh light of any witnesses.
He turned to the project leader. “Prepare to launch the drones.”
CHAPTER 45
The plane was a Lake Renegade LA-250, an amphibious, single-engine aircraft that floated on a boatlike hull instead of pontoons with struts. They’d found it at a tourist trap called Sea & Air Tours, where for a hundred and fifty dollars vacationers could go up on a forty-minute ride and see the coastline. A few more dollars arranged for a two-hour trip and a landing at a secluded bay, where the passengers could have a romantic picnic on an uninhabited beach. The NRI team had no time for such luxuries.
After casing the dockside and the small building that acted as Sea & Air’s offices, Hawker had decided this was the plane they needed.
And then they’d waited until almost midnight, partly because they needed the dockside to be deserted but more importantly because they needed the stone to finish its energy wave and reenter the lull phase before they took off in a small aircraft.
This time Danielle had taken it in the car out into the hills. Again she had found a spot in the middle of nowhere, dug a deep hole, and placed the case containing the stone into it. It was not exactly glamorous duty, and as she dug, she waited for a federale to arrive and ask what the hell she was doing. It never happened.
Forty minutes later, she’d dug the stone out and driven back to where Hawker, McCarter, and Yuri waited.
“Anything happen?” McCarter asked.
“Nothing,” Danielle said. “Even the radio still works.”
It concerned her, actually. Perhaps the stone had blown a fuse when it had flashed the day before.
“What do you see?” she asked Yuri.
The child grinned sheepishly. “It is asleep,” he said.
From there they had ventured to the coast again, where Hawker had broken into the shedlike building and come out with a set of keys. A minute later he was in the aircraft, waving to Danielle to come aboard. She’d led McCarter and Yuri along the dock and they’d climbed inside, strapping themselves in and lowering the clamshell doors into place.
After starting the engine and taxiing the waddling craft away from the dock, Hawker had pushed the throttle to the wall. In thirty seconds they were airborne.
That had been two and a half hours ago. Since then they had flown along the dark line that McCarter had drawn, with Hawker insisting that he knew where he was going.
Danielle looked around. A large windscreen and big panoramic windows that curved up into the roof of the plane — designed to give the tourists the best views possible — gave the plane a spacious feel, especially with the wide-open sky and the stars twinkling in the distance.
As they droned along in the dark, Danielle began to relax. At least for the moment they had nothing to worry about. It seemed unlikely that there would be trouble up here. She didn’t consider it impossible, but at least it was highly doubtful.
And so she allowed her mind to rest, to stop worrying and planning and compensating, and mostly she just stared out the window at the stars.
She turned her attention from the beautiful night to the other passengers in the aircraft. It seemed there was some correlation between the insomnia and the times when the cycle peaked during the night. With the stone “sleeping” both McCarter and Yuri were finally sleeping themselves. She could even hear McCarter snoring over the intercom.
“Any way to turn that off?” she said into her microphone.
Hawker flicked a switch, restricting the intercom system to the two of them.
“Better?”
“Much.” She gazed out the window again. “I can see why you like flying so much.” She had always considered it just a mode of transportation, usually working on her laptop as the hours flew by.
“It’s quiet up here,” he said. “Especially at night.”
The Renegade had a 250-horsepower engine that was mounted above the cabin on a pylon. It was horrendously noisy, even through the protective headsets.
“You call this quiet?”
He nodded. “Up here there’s no one yapping at you to do this or explain that. No traffic, no horns, no jagged, random noises.”
He smiled to himself, apparently pleased with his reasoning. “Yeah,” he said. “To me this is quiet. And straightforward. Go from point A to point B and back again. Try not to get shot down while you’re doing it.”
She had to laugh. She guessed that qualified as quiet. “I’m sorry about the other night,” she said. Since their night on the balcony she had avoided looking him in the eye. That wasn’t her way.
“You mean ditching me to talk to Arnold Moore on the phone?”
“Yeah,” she said. “That and …” The words were hard to come by. She decided to be direct. That was her way.
“I wanted to kiss you,” she said. “I haven’t felt that close to anyone in a long time and I wanted to kiss you. It’s just that there’s someone in my life already. Someone back home, waiting for me. I think.”
For a second Hawker didn’t react. Perhaps the whole conversation seemed too absurd to him. People were trying to kill them even as a cataclysm of some kind loomed up ahead. And she was talking about her almost-fiancé, who maybe even wasn’t her friend anymore. This was why she hated relationships; somehow they always made her feel foolish.
And then she wondered if maybe he didn’t care. Maybe their almost-kiss had just been a way to pass some time. Like watching the storm and drinking the rum. His world was so different from hers. Was it foolish to even talk like this to someone who didn’t know where he would be next week, next month, next year? She was worried about home. He didn’t have one.