Page 72 of Clive Cussler Desolation Code

“Kill them!” the man said. “They work for the Overseer.”

“No,” Kurt shouted, ready to deflect any thrusting spear. “We came here to help. The Gray Witch called for us. We’re NUMA.”

A murmur ran through the group. A nervous tension arose.

Kurt was playing the only card he had. If he was wrong, he and Joe would end up rotting on the jungle floor just like the man beside them. But if the story given to Five and his friends had been shared more widely, they just might survive.

The pause held. No one attacked. Then a female voice called from the darkness. “Tie them up,” it commanded. “Bring them to me.”

Chapter 42

Kurt and Joe were marched over rough terrain. Their hands were tied with vines, which made it difficult to balance as they scaled crumbling slopes of lava rock and ducked under branches and palm fronds waiting to smack them in the face.

Kurt kept his eyes moving—forward for terrain avoidance, side to side for any sign of where they were going. The course led upward in a climbing, curving motion, with the slope of the terrain rising to their left and dropping to their right.

At one point Kurt heard the sea. The sound was distant and coming at them from below. They were quite a way from the coastline at this point.

Continuing through the darkness, he added an occasional glance in Joe’s direction for a bit of unspoken communication.

Joe shrugged. He was fine, taking it all in stride. Getting Kurt’s attention, he twisted his hands back and forth in the bindings.

Kurt offered a subtle nod. The vines were tough, and with multiple loops they were too strong to break through, but the knots were an amateur’s work, and the vines themselves had a low level of friction. With a little stretching and wiggling they could slip free almost anytime they wanted. For now they allowed the capture to continue.

They scaled a steep section, during which Kurt skinned his knee.Cresting that, they followed a ridge in the topography. The tree line was thicker here, but that didn’t mean they were out of sight. As they traveled, the ominous buzzing of a drone could be heard in the sky. It came toward them from the north.

“Spider,” one of the men said.

“Down on the earth,” the leader of the group said, dropping to one knee. “Touch the trees,” she added. “The Gray Witch will hide us. She will keep us from sight.”

To Kurt this sounded like insanity. They needed cover, a cave or a ditch or a hollow in the rocks. Something to keep the drone’s infrared cameras from spotting their heat signatures.

“It’s not a spider,” Kurt said. “It’s a machine that’s looking for us. We need to hide.”

The leader grabbed Kurt and pulled him to the ground. “Put your hand against the tree,” she said. “Be part of the earth. It won’t see us. I promise you.”

Up close and whispering, the woman’s voice sounded familiar. He turned to her, attempting to see her face, but the hood of her dark green cloak was pulled up over her head, obscuring her face.

“Do as I instruct,” the woman said.

Kurt turned back toward the tree, pressed his hands against the trunk, and leaned in close to it. He considered the whole idea to be nonsense, but this wasn’t the moment to start a scuffle.

The drone closed in on them, changes in pitch telling Kurt that it was altering direction and heading their way.

He looked at Joe and began to loosen the bonds holding his hands. If the drone was armed, or it called in others that were, or a squad of Vaughn’s men, they would need their hands free to run and fight.

Joe nodded and began working his hands free.

Meanwhile, their captors began chanting something in a low harmonic tone. Kurt could hear only the woman beside him whispering.

“Protect us, Gray Witch,” she said. “Blind them to our presence once again. They are seekers of destruction. We are the children of pain.”

Kurt tried not to roll his eyes as the drone continued directly toward them. Seconds went by; the chanting continued, quieting to a whisper. And the drone passed right over the top of them.

So much for the Gray Witch, Kurt thought.

But the drone didn’t stop and hover overhead. It didn’t circle back for another pass. It didn’t open fire or drop flares, incendiary devices, or grenades. It just continued on out toward the coast, where the sound eventually vanished with the wind.

“Zigzag pattern,” Joe said, trying to explain the course change that brought it toward them.

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