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After separating from Maddock, Bones had initially chosen stealth over speed, staying low and seeking concealment in the foliage near the twin holes which looked down into Prohodna cave, but when it became apparent that most of the men were pursuing Maddock, Bones decided to change tactics. He rose from hiding and began crashing noisily through the woods, hoping to draw at least some of the men after him. He was only partly successful. Two of the Bulgarian mobsters split off from the larger pack and came after him.
The men clearly had no experience with tracking prey through the woods. They blundered through the vegetation, shouted to each other, and seemed unable to pick up the very obvious trail Bones was leaving.
When reporting his progress to Corey, Bones didn’t even make an effort to whisper. He was dismayed however when Slava warned against returning to the car. How else were they supposed to get back to civilization?
Maddock started to ask exactly that question, but was cut off in mid-sentence. The sound of a scuffle ensued, followed a few seconds later by a scream that was audible even without the amplification of the two-way communications link. After a second or two however, the random noise coming through the earpiece ceased completely.
Bones’ felt a flush of apprehension—something terrible had just happened.
“Crap!” Corey said, his tone urgent and anxious.
“What’s wrong?” Bones snapped.
Corey spoke slowly, like someone half-asleep and trying to make sense of a bad dream. “Uh, Dane just pushed a woman off a cliff. He jumped after her, and then his feed went black. I think...” He trailed off, as if fearful that voicing the obvious conclusion might make it a reality.
Bones broke from concealment and charged back toward the trail that had brought them to the hilltop. This time, he made no noise whatsoever, and when he spoke again, it was barely a whisper. “What do you mean, ‘jumped after her’? Like bungee jumped?”
“Maybe.” Corey didn’t sound particularly hopeful. “But that wouldn’t explain why I lost the feed.”
Bones spied movement about thirty yards ahead—one of the mobsters, emerging from behind a thicket—and shifted course to give the man a wide berth. “Could he have ducked back into the cave?”
“Maybe,” Corey said again, with the same note of skepticism.
Bones shook his head. There was only one way to know for certain what had happened. Throwing caution to the wind, he broke into a full sprint, choosing the most direct course back to the clifftop above the large entrance, which took him right past the mutri thug. The man’s head swiveled around as he detected movement, but before he could process what he was seeing, Bones plowed into him and sent him sprawling. Bones didn’t slow down and he didn’t look back.
He emerged from the woods only a few steps away from the bungee staging area, and saw a several people, presumably members of the adventure tour group, standing near the edge, cautiously looking down. Steeling himself against the grimmest possible outcome, Bones stepped up beside them and gazed down as well.
A hundred fifty feet below, a few members of the group were helping a young thrill-seeker detach from an ankle harness. The rest of the group was gathered near the mountain bikes and appeared to be arguing about something.
There was no sign of Maddock, nor did it appear than anyone had jumped or fallen from the cliff, aside from the young woman attached to the bungee cord.
Frowning, Bones turned to the adventure-tourist beside him. “What’s going on?” he asked, trying to sound casual.
Without looking at him, the man replied, “Some madman pushed Marta before she was ready. Then he grabbed her cord and tried to go down with her.”
Bones allowed himself a faint sigh of relief. That was a detail Corey had not picked up on. “Wow. Did it work?”
“He almost got himself killed,” the man replied. Bones thought he sounded pretty pissed off, but with the German accent, it was hard to tell. “And Marta, too.”
“But she’s okay,” Bones pointed out. “So what happened to the guy?”
“He landed hard, but got up and ran off. Some men were chasing him.” The man paused a beat, and then snarled contemptuously. “I think he must have been a thief. He stole one of our bikes.”
Definitely pissed off, Bones thought, hiding a smile at the thought of Maddock committing grand theft bicycle. “Bummer,” he said. “Well, I hope you get it back.”
“Danke,” the man said, and then finally turned to look at Bones. His eyes immediately went wide. “Wait. You were with him. With the madman.”
Bones affected a look of innocent outrage. “No way, dude. I don’t hang out with madmen. Except for my uncle, Crazy Charlie, and the craziest thing he ever did was buy a casino in Canada.”
The man shook his head. “No, I remember. You came up with him.”
Bones was already backing away, but at that moment, one of the mutri men burst out of the trees. He took that as a cue to accelerate his exit.
As he charged down the trail leading back to the entrance, he said, “Did you get that?”
“Yeah,” Corey replied, sounding as relieved as Bones felt. “He must have smashed his phone when he landed.” He paused a beat, then added, “How are we going to regain contact with him?”
“Don’t worry about Maddock,” Bones said. “He’ll call in as soon as he can. He knows what he’s doing.”
––––––––
At that precise moment, Maddock would not have shared Bones’ confidence in his ability to deal with the situation.
The downhill slope had, without warning, terminated at a sharp drop-off. Beyond that stark horizontal line, there was only the indistinct green of a distant forest. A fraction of a second, which brought him that much closer to the edge, revealed another band of color—the gray-green of a river flowing perpendicular to the slope, and directly below the cliff.
Maddock felt an almost primal urge to squeeze the brakes, or throw himself off the bike to avoid going over, but knew such a course of action would not only prove futile, but possibly make matters worse. Instead, he used what little time remained to spin the pedals even faster, supplying a boost of speed as the mountain bike’s tires left the ground, and both bike and rider arced out into the air above the water.
The fall was only about thirty feet, and unlike the drop from the bungee cord, ended with a plunge into the far more yielding surface of the river. Maddock’s last-second decision to pedal furiously supplied just enough momentum to carry him out into the slightly deeper water away from the sheer walls of the gorge. Nevertheless, he had been falling fast enough that, even as the water closed over his head, he felt the bike’s impact with the river bottom travel up through the pedals to his feet, eliciting a slight jolt of pain in his injured ankle.
Instinctively, he kicked away from the bike and, with one hand gripping the strap of the duffel bag containing the skull cup, began kicking back for the surface. He could feel that the current had him, but he didn’t fight it. Once his head was clear of the water, he simply allowed the river to carry him along.
The western shore, to his left, was thickly forested and looked accessible, provided he could reach it. Whether or not anything remotely resembling civilization lay beyond those woods, he could not say. To his right, there was only a sheer rock wall which continued to rise higher and higher as he was swept along, but at its crest stood a large multi-story structure which appeared to have been at least partly built into the cliff wall. It looked like it might be a resort hotel. As he was pondering what it might take to reach it, another man-made object came into view. A hundred yards directly ahead, a low bridge spanned the river, disappearing into the woods on either side. He let the river carry him past the tall cylindrical piers supporting the bridge arches. Just beyond it, the river veered away from the cliff. A low forested bank appeared in front of Maddock and he swam toward it, pulling himself up onto dry ground.
Maddock wanted nothing more than to lie there and rest, but knew that he had to keep moving, so he got to his feet and limped up the gentle slope toward the bridge and the adjoining road. After a few steps, his ankle actually felt a little better, which told him that the injury wasn’t as severe as he had earlier feared. He wouldn’t be running any marathons anytime soon, but he would be able to hobble along for at least a few miles.
He was a little dismayed to discover that the road was actually a railroad, and that it continued north along the base of the cliff. Railroads, Maddock knew, sometimes crossed hundreds of miles of open country without encountering cities or even minor settlements. He didn’t recall having crossed any train tracks during the drive to Prohodna, which meant that following the rails back across the bridge would not bring him to the highway. There was no guarantee that following the tracks north would get him anywhere he wanted to go, but staying on the same side of the river made the most sense, so he stepped onto the rail bed and started walking.
His choice proved fortunate. As he walked along, the cliff to his right began sloping down until, after only about a tenth of a mile, it was nothing more than a grassy hillside running parallel to the rails. Rather than tempt fate by continuing on into the unknown, Maddock instead ventured up the hill and headed back up the slope along the rising crest. Near the top, he was forced to free climb a few sections, but eventually reached the structure he had glimpsed earlier.
The building was perched on the edge of the cliff. Approaching it from the road to the east, it would have looked like a large two-story house, but Maddock’s view from the river revealed its true size. There was a sign on the gabled second story, but Maddock couldn’t decipher the Cyrillic writing. Not for the first time since his ill-advised bungee-plummet, he regretted the loss of his phone. Slava could have told him exactly where he was. Nevertheless, the sign suggested a place of business rather than a private residence. The A-frame chalkboard sign on the porch, adorned with a Bulgarian beer logo that he recognized, seemed to confirm this deduction.
He ventured inside, and soon found himself in what appeared to be an empty restaurant dining room. A young man standing behind the bar, polishing glasses, raised his head and seemed about ready to call out a greeting, but when he beheld Maddock, his eyes went wide in alarm.
Maddock grimaced, realizing that he must look like an escaped madman. His clothes were still damp and the long trek up the cliff had left him streaked with dirt and grime. He quickly raised his hands in a placating gesture and said, “Sorry, I’m really, really lost. Can you help me?”
The man’s wary expression immediately softened, and he broke into a grin. “You are American?” he asked in halting English.
“That’s right. I was visiting Prohodna and got lost. Then I sort of fell into the river.”
The man’s eyebrows arched in surprise. “You fell in Iskar River?”
“Yeah. It’s a long story. The thing is, my phone got ruined. Can I make a call...” He noticed a large computer monitor at one end of the bar. “Or better yet, would you mind if I check my email?”