Page 2 of Clive Cussler Desolation Code

He had no experience in such things, but he quickly saw the drawback to using it: if he could see it, so could the hunters.

He removed the necklace and placed it over the head of his brother. “Climb down.”

His brother looked down at the rope and the rocks far beneath it. He shook his head.

“Go,” Deci insisted. “Lead them.”

“No,” he said. “You take them. I have no faith.”

Deci grasped his brother by the arm and drug him to the edge of the cliff. Reaching over, he managed to grasp the rope. He pulled on it to test the security, then placed it in his brother’s hands. “She promised a way out. This is it. Now go!”

—

Pushing through the jungle, a half mile behind the group of escapees, a tall Caucasian man with a bald head and narrow, hawkish eyes found himself enjoying the hunt. Dressed in khakis and a safari vest, he carried two pistols on separate belts and walked with a shotgun in his hands.

On the island he was known as the Overseer, but at previous stops in his life he’d been a big-game hunter, a trail boss in some of the toughest parts of the world, and a mercenary for hire to anyone with the right denominations of currency.

Here on the island, he found himself grinning as the dogs locked in on the scent and pulled hard against their leads. He laughed as the handlers struggled to keep up, holding the animals back and hacking their way through the brush with machetes.

“Run them down,” the Overseer growled with a demented sense ofglee. “If even one man escapes, each of you will suffer the punishment meant for them.”

If his men needed any more motivation, this was enough. They pushed on, climbing higher and moving faster as the foliage thinned. Before long they were tracking bloody, scuffling footprints imprinted by raw, uncovered feet. It made the trail easy to follow, but left the Overseer wondering about the course they’d chosen.

Previous escapees had always run for the other side of the island, fleeing the civilized but prisonlike compound in hopes of surviving in the rocky, volcanic wasteland. These men were taking a different path. One that kept them away from the dividing wall and its razor wire and cameras.

It was curious, he thought, but it didn’t matter much. Soon they’d be trapped between the dogs and the cliffside.

The dogs began yelping more intensely. They smelled the quarry up ahead.

“Let them go,” the Overseer shouted.

The handlers dropped their leashes and the dogs shot forward. They rushed upward and vanished from sight, a lethal pack only a fraction removed from the wolves they were descended from. The Overseer picked up his pace, eager to watch the animals do their job.

He arrived at a small clearing to find the animals running in circles, sniffing the ground and then raising their snouts to howl at the sky. The trail had come to an end, but there was no one to be found.

A branch creaked behind him, and the Overseer turned in time to see a figure leaping down toward him. The barefoot man hit him, knocking him to the ground and rolling free. Both men jumped up, and the dogs spun around as if to set upon the attacker.

“Stay!” the Overseer shouted at them in a deep, commanding voice. The dogs heeled and stood stiffly.

The Overseer aimed the shotgun at the dirty, bleeding man. “Where are the others?” he demanded. “Tell me now and I’ll show you mercy.”

The escapee was thin. The shredded clothes hanging on him like rags. Living in the bush for weeks would do that to a person. He stepped back nervously, looking from side to side. From the waistband of his threadbare pants he pulled a homemade knife. It was nothing more than a length of thick fabric wrapped around a sharpened flint.

“You’ve made yourself a weapon,” the Overseer noted. “How interesting. We didn’t teach you that. Maybe you vermin learn faster than we’ve been told to expect.”

The Overseer tossed the shotgun aside and took a machete from one of his men. “Let’s see how well you use it.”

He stepped forward, but Deci threw a handful of dirt in his face. The Overseer squinted against the attack, suffering the sting of the grit with eyes open as he slashed with the machete.

It grazed Deci’s chest deep enough to draw a line of blood, but the mark was no more than a flesh wound. He had suffered worse than that intherooms.

Deci glanced at the blood on his chest and shrugged it off. He circled to the right and then back, holding the knife toward the Overseer and then pointing it at the nearest of his men.

“Don’t worry about them, boy,” the Overseer said. “Bring that sharpened little stick to me.”

As if responding to the command, Deci lunged forward, slashing for the Overseer’s neck. It was a daring attack, but the Overseer had a lifetime of fighting in his past. He stepped sideways, leaning back to avoid the knife and countering with the machete.

The heavy blade dug into Deci’s arm. This time he howled in pain and stumbled back, staring at the gash in his flesh. Blood was running red, pouring from the exposed sinew and fat.

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