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The cliff didn’t turn out as steep as it had initially appeared. Eventually they reached the point to which it had directed them, whereupon the coordinates changed to going 100 meters north.
“What the—?”
“Looks like he’s giving us the runaround,” Bones observed. “Maybe he’s checking to make sure we follow his instructions.”
Maddock’s sense of dread only deepened, but he didn’t give voice to it.
They had to bushwhack through some trees, and the saturated ground threatened to transition into a full-fledged swamp. The coordinates led to another waypoint, just one of several updates to their instructions that seemed intentionally designed to disorient them. After half-an-hour of tromping back and forth, they stopped to grab a drink of water from their canteens.
Bones smacked his lips. “Where does the magic eight ball tell us to go next?”
Maddock pointed to a small rock formation about fifty yards away. The rock seemed to have a blue tint to it.
“That’s gneiss.”
“Not sure why you think it’s nice, Bones.”
“Not nice, gneiss, the kind of rock.”
“Ah. Sometimes I forget you’re not as dumb as you look.”
“At least I’m not as dumb as—”
Bones fell silent as a figure appeared next to the rock. Maddock instinctively drew his Walther, then realized who it was, and took off running. “Angel!”
Bones shot out a hand to stop him but his fingers grasped at empty air. With a sigh he pulled out his Glock and started after his friend.
Maddock’s pulse was in the stratosphere. Angel waved to him, but he couldn’t hear her say anything. He tore through the underbrush, leaving bushes and small trees shattered in his wake.
Then he felt something snag his left ankle. Before he could even think to shake free, he was jerked off his feet. A second later, he was hanging upside down, his foot caught in a thick rope noose, his head five feet off the ground. He had no idea what had happened to his Walther—probably lost somewhere on the forest floor.
His SEAL training kicked in. In an ambush, don’t stop and think—react! Maybe this wasn’t actually an ambush, but he knew better than to let inertia settle in. He immediately did an inverted crunch and brought his left hand up to grab the rope six inches above his ankle. His right hand uncovered and drew the knife sheathed to his right calf. With a deft motion he sliced the rope between his left hand and his ankle, hanging on tightly as his legs dropped toward the ground and let his shoulder bear the wrenching brunt of the sudden application of gravity. He held on for just a moment, then dropped to the ground in a crouch, knife still in his right hand. He scanned the area and determined two things quickly.
First, Angel was gone.
He’d only seen her for a few seconds, but it was her as clear as day. But he was only twenty yards from the rock formation, and there was no sign of anyone there.
As he spun around, the second problem became apparent and caused him even greater concern.
Bones had vanished as well.
––––––––
Maddock rushed to the rock formation, which was about ten feet high and maybe fifty feet around. He still didn’t see a sign of Angel or Bones. He looked at the GPS. It read Arrived at Destination.
Dread crept through his chest. As they had speculated ever since Florida, it was a trap. The kidnappers had wanted them to wind up here. They had also wanted him separated from Bones. But where could Bones possibly be? He wasn’t the easiest guy to take down. Maddock would have heard if there were a shot, plus how would they get rid of the body so quickly?
With no answers, Maddock started calling out for Bones and Angel while at the same time searching the area. The forest looked like no one had trodden there recently, but halfway around the rock formation, he found an opening in the stone.
He supposed one might call it a cave, but it was more like a tunnel. Big enough for him to fit into, but not big enough to extend his arms even to the elbows. From the side of the rock, it became nearly vertical within three feet, disappearing into darkness.
He took another look around the area. Aside from this mysterious burrow, it looked like a normal forest. He considered that going blindly into a hole in the ground wasn’t the smartest move. Then he recalled that like so much that had happened in the fourteen hours since Angel’s kidnapping, he really didn’t have any damn choice.
He extracted a headlamp from his pack and secured it on his head, returning his pack to his back. Then with a deep breath he started down into the ground.
His first concern was that he was going to have to use a wedging technique for an unknown period of time to lower himself down the vertical tunnel. As an avid rock climber, this wouldn’t be a problem for him, but doing it in the dark was a challenge. And he had no idea if it would widen to the point where he could no longer create the counterforce necessary to continue.
Fortunately, his feet hit some sort of rung about four feet down. As he lowered himself, he found more rungs at eighteen inch intervals. He carefully tested each one before allowing his full weight onto it, but they showed no signs of movement under his weight.
Until both the rung he was holding and the rung on which he was standing disappeared.