Page 79 of Clive Cussler Desolation Code

“She might,” Kai said. “But the Overseer and his men are beyond her reach. She cannot blind them. Only the machines.”

That might explain Vaughn’s preference for keeping a group of mercenaries around, Kurt thought.

“What will you do?” Kai asked.

Kurt was a fairly accomplished chess player. He’d even matched skills against an adversary or two on dangerous missions in the past. He’d learned there were really only two ways to win at chess. The most common was to maneuver until your opponent made a mistake; at that point one could press and press and press until they managed to take enough pieces to make it impossible for their opponent tomount a proper defense. The other route to victory was to execute a proper gambit. A high-risk move that usually went directly for the king.

Outnumbered, outgunned, and with no safe way off the island, Kurt figured their only hope was to risk everything in a gambit of their own. Vaughn himself had to be the target. But it meant getting into his stronghold. “I’ll go after Vaughn. If we take him, his machine will leave us alone.”

Kai seemed to accept this. “We will join you,” she declared. “We have been waiting all our lives to strike back. It’s our turn to draw blood.”

“You can’t think about it like that,” Kurt said. “It’s not revenge.”

“For us, it is,” she said. “Vaughn and TAU have tortured us. They’ve used us. They’ve killed many of our kind. And now those of us who remain live in hunger and wait to die. There’s not enough food on this side of the island for everyone. Only small creatures and fruits and the eggs of birds. Before, we could catch fish, but now the spiders came and the patrol boats. The people would rather fight than starve. Who has a greater right to revenge than us?”

Kurt couldn’t deny that. But he wasn’t interested in drafting her tribe for a suicide mission. Bows and spears never fared well against firearms.

“You have to make your own decisions,” Kurt said. “But don’t throw your lives away.”

Kai stared at him. Her hard eyes and her bony face offering a dangerous and haunted look. Kurt found her to be inscrutable and fierce.

Before either of them could say any more, the sound of an argument in the outside hall demanded their attention.

Kai grabbed the knife as a number of challenges and responses were shouted.

Kurt tensed for action as the outer curtain was pulled aside. Herelaxed as the inner curtain flew open and Joe entered with the two men who’d been assigned to guard him. He carried what looked like rolled-up posters or charts in his hand. His “assistants” carried wooden boxes and flanked him on either side.

Kai’s chamber guards rushed in behind them, one of them complaining, the other apologizing for the disturbance. Kai held up a hand as if to say it was all right.

“Sorry to interrupt,” Joe said, “but I found some things that might help us get off the island.” He unrolled the charts and began papering the floor with them. “Tunnels, tunnels, and more tunnels,” he said as the blueprints landed beside one another. “They lead out to the coastline in several places. And if the inventory count is accurate, there are several inflatable boats stored in one of the caves on the western side.”

“Interesting,” Kurt said. “Unfortunately, we probably need to do more than plot our escape.”

“Ah,” Joe said, holding up a finger as if he’d predicted just that. “In which case, I present what we found behind door number two.”

Joe turned to his helpers, who placed the boxes down, opened the lids, and then carefully tilted them forward, as if they were showing gifts to the sultan. Instead of gold and jewels, they were filled with gray plastic tubes. Bright orange labels slapped on each tube suggested they should be handled with care.

Kurt noticed the lettersONC, which stood for “octanitrocubane,” an explosive nearly twice as powerful as C4. “Explosives.”

Joe nodded. “An entire vault filled with them. Enough to blow half this island right back into the sea.”

Chapter 47

Gamay Trout awoke in darkness so deep she could have been floating in a void in the depths of space. Slowly, she became aware of her body. She was lying on a cold metal grate, her back aching from the unforgiving surface, a grid-like pattern pressed into her skin.

Her first attempt at movement failed. But with a second try, she rolled onto her right shoulder while reaching out, hoping to touch someone. Her fingers brushed a smooth wall. It felt like polished steel.

Getting to her knees, she called out for the others. Paul first and then Chantel. There was no answer. Not even an echo.

Using the wall for leverage, she managed to stand and began edging her way around the room.

“One wall,” she said, sliding along to her left. “And one corner,” she added, arriving at another barrier. Ten feet away she bumped into another right angle. Turning once more, she slid forward until she found the fourth wall. The room was a rectangle, five feet by ten feet. “And,” she said aloud, “this is a prison cell.”

Still, even cells had doors.

She began searching for a seam. She’d gone two steps before catching her shin on something in the darkness. The intensity of thepain surprised her, considering how numb she otherwise felt. She cursed the offending obstruction with a flurry of words her mother would have cringed at while her dad smiled wickedly behind his newspaper.

Reaching down she discovered a metal pipe. It jutted from the wall just below knee level. She imagined it had been put there inadvertently, but it proved to be a painful booby trap in the dark. Her shin throbbed, blood weeping from where she’d split the skin.

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