“Jon!” Jones shouted, thankful his mask covered his smile. “Let the guy talk.”
“Talk? All he does is talk. Ten minutes ago I asked him about this facility, and he started blabbing about the effects of molten lava…. Seriously, who the hell does that?” He pointed at Sheldon. “Why would you do that? Do I look like I give a damn about molten anything?”
Jones stepped between the two, knowing full well that Payne wasn’t really mad or the least bit out of control. But when it came to acquiring information, they realized fear often went a long way toward lessening someone’s reluctance to speak—especially someone like Dr. Sheldon, who was holding his cards much tighter than he should have been. Thankfully, when someone as large as Payne started to roar, people usually did whatever they could to calm him down.
This was their version of good cop/bad cop.
They called it
Payne in the ass.
“Jon,” Jones said, “calm down. Let me talk to him for a minute. Alone.”
“Fine! Maybe you two can discuss the history of molten liquor.”
Jones rolled his eyes. “It’s called
malt
liquor. And my guess is he doesn’t drink Colt .45.”
“Okay, Billy D. Discuss whatever you want. But I’m going outside to make a call.” He pulled out his cell phone and fiddled with the buttons. “If you learn any news about this century, you know where to find me.”
Payne stormed off, the sound of his footsteps echoing in the cave like rolling thunder. Jones waited for the rumble to pass, then apologized for his friend’s behavior, blaming it on jet lag and his close connection to Trevor Schmidt.
“You have to understand,” Jones said, “Jon is very protective of his proteges. Two days ago Colonel Harrington told us that Trevor was missing and asked for our help, but that’s the last we’ve heard about it. No updates. No progress reports. No nothing. That’s tough for us to take.”
Sheldon nodded. ‘Trust me, I’m empathetic to your situation. I truly am. But there’s a reason why I’ve been rambling on and on about this cave’s background and answering all of your questions with questions of my own. I know you think I’m playing games with you, but I swear that’s not the case.”
“Then what
is
the case?”
Sheldon fidgeted with his gloves, trying to delay his answer. “Honestly, we’ve been on Jeju for several days now, and in all that time we’ve only learned one thing.”
“Which is?”
“None of us have any idea what happened here.”
Payne smiled as he walked outside. The smell of blood still lingered in the air, yet compared to the interior of the cave, he felt like he was standing in a daisy-fresh meadow. His mood brightened further when he scrolled through the picture gallery in his cell phone and saw the clarity of his latest image: Dr. Ernie Sheldon, the unwitting star of a sneak attack.
Laughing to himself, Payne typed an encrypted text message to Randy Raskin, one of his best contacts at the Pentagon, asking him for basic intel on the man in the photo. He gave him Sheldon’s name but stressed it might be an alias. At this point it was too early to tell.
After hitting send, he returned his attention to his current surroundings. With a quick glance he scanned the rocky path that sliced through the trees toward the road. No sign of Kia. She’d fled the scene several minutes earlier, but he fully expected to see her sitting there. Her head between her knees. Cheeks flushed with embarrassment. Several excuses ready to spring from her lips to explain her actions. But none of them was necessary, since it wasn’t her fault.
If anyone was to blame, Payne knew it was himself, for he was the one who let her enter the cave. The one who knew she was a translator, nothing more. Certainly not trained for that type of gore. Yet for some reason he urged her to tag along, even though she served no purpose inside. Even though he knew they were about to stumble into something much worse than a rescue mission. Not with that smell. Not with all those soldiers carrying all that firepower outside the scene. Obviously this wasn’t about a missing person. This was something different. Something more significant. But for the life of him, he didn’t know what it was. That’s the main reason he wanted to step outside and get some fresh air. He needed time to think. To figure out why they’d brought him in. What role they wanted him to play.
Now all of that would have to wait. His focus was no longer on the cave. It was on Kia. She was his number one priority. Not because she was a woman or defenseless, but because she was part of his team. And that’s what leaders were supposed to do. Protect their squads at all cost.
Payne knew snipers were nestled in the camphor trees and buried on the hillside, tracking his every move through mounted scopes. He couldn’t see them, but he knew they were there. Watching. Waiting. Hoping someone did something aggressive so they could pull their triggers. The key was not to give them an excuse. Slowly he turned and studied the rock face behind him, trying to determine where he would have positioned his men if he’d been in charge of security.
One up top. A couple over there. A few more down the path.
No way Kia went anywhere without being watched. Without them telling her where she could puke and where she couldn’t. This was their land. Their terrain. They were the spiders, and this was their web. They could tell him her exact location. No problem at all.
But first he had to get one of them to talk.
Payne crunched down the trail, focusing on a thick grove of trees. It looked dark and impenetrable. The perfect place to take residence. With a grin on his lips, Payne pointed toward the dense brush and signaled for the sniper to come out. Then Payne just stood there, staring and smiling, until he heard some movement. A snap was all Payne needed to know that he was right.
A few curse words later, the guard emerged from the thicket. Mud on his young face. Twigs on his helmet. A rifle in his hands. “Dammit, sir. How’d you see me in there?”
Payne shrugged. “Who said I did?”
The sniper cursed again, this time even louder. Pissed at himself for giving up his position to someone who hadn’t even seen him.
“Wow. When you were a kid, you must’ve sucked at hide-and-seek.”
“Actually, sir, I
never
lost.”
Payne smiled. “Actually, son, you just did.”
The sniper was tempted to argue, but what could he say? Instead, he quickly changed die subject. “Was there something you needed?”
“I’m looking for my translator. Female. Asian features. Probably covered in vomit.”
“You mean the hottie? She headed toward the village.”
“There’s a village?”
The sniper pointed down a side path that cut through the woods. “Can’t tell you much about it. Haven’t been there yet.”
“Is it secure?”
“Don’t know. Don’t care.”
Payne nodded, not surprised by the answer. In the military, most information was compartmentalized— especially on secured projects such as this one. A guard over here didn’t need to know what was going on over there unless it posed an immediate threat. And even then, he sure as hell wasn’t going to talk about it with someone he didn’t know or trust.
“We done here?” asked the sniper, who waited to be dismissed before he slipped back into the woods to find a better place to hide. Payne watched him for a while, then turned his attention to the village path. It was dark and foreboding, like everything else in the area. Protocol told him that he should let Jones know where he was going, but something in his gut told him that time was of the essence. That Kia was in a lot more danger in the village than Jones was in the cave.
And as usual, Payne’s gut was right.
Kia walked through the center of town, staggered by the silence. It was the middle of the day, yet there were no dogs barking, no kids playing, no errands being run. No movement or activities of any kind. Tiny stone huts sat back from the rocky road, separated by stone fences and guarded by dozens of harubang, their friendly stone faces no longer quite so inviting. In fact, in the stillness of the village, their presence was somehow disconcerting, as if the people themselves had been consumed by these ancient stone figures. As if
they
were suddenly the only residents.
A gust of wind added to the chill that Kia felt surge through her body. She was accustomed to the warm tropical breezes of the Marshall Islands, not the whipping wind of this volcanic ghost town. Or was the chill from something else? Perhaps more to do with her fear and apprehension than the temperature itself. The thought was an unpleasant one, especially after her recent behavior in the cave. No way she was going to turn and run again.
Once was bad enough. Twice would be unbearable.
The strength of the wind increased, this time bringing the faint scent of burning wood. Not maple. Not oak. Maybe pine. The musk filled her nose, quickly erasing the memory of the bloody cave and replacing it with the promise of survivors. She turned toward the smell, staring into the face of the breeze, looking for a sign of life. Any sign. And then she saw one. A tiny wisp of smoke rising from a stone chimney on the far end of the village. It wasn’t much, but its presence gave her hope. A rope to cling to as she journeyed forward, searching for answers.
Kia passed house after house, yard after yard, all of them seemingly deserted. Each adding to the mystery of this vacant town, each filling her head with more questions. Were the villagers dead? Or were they hiding? If so, from whom? Or what? She prayed the blood in the cave didn’t belong to them, but every empty home, every abandoned car made that seem less likely.
Obviously there was a connection between the two mysteries.
She hoped it wasn’t a tragic one.
Payne heard the scream from the far end of the village and reacted instinctively.
In a single motion, he pulled his Sig Sauer P226 from his waistband and broke into a full sprint. His eyes scanned the horizon, searching for danger. The only movement he saw was the bouncing of tree limbs as they swayed in the breeze. Payne leaped a log gate in a stone fence that lined one of the nearby yards and checked his weapon. His magazine was full.
At least until he found a target.
Because of the wind and the echoing effect of the rock, Payne couldn’t gauge where the scream had come from. He knew it was somewhere up ahead, but that’s all he knew. Maybe from a house. Maybe in a yard. Maybe in the woods beyond town. To him, it was like tracking gunfire in an open canyon. The first shot announced trouble; the second shot gave its location.
Thankfully, the scream was followed by the murmur of voices. Close enough to be heard, but too far away to be understood. Yet Payne didn’t care about diction. He cared about location. Every second of sound gave him a better chance to find the threat and stop it.
Moving silendy, Payne skirted the stone fence and crept forward, his weapon raised in an offensive position. His eyes focused. His breathing controlled. Just like he’d been taught to do. In fact, this whole scene felt like a training exercise. Like he’d stumbled into Hogan’s Alley—the mock city at the
FBI
Academy in Quantico, Virginia—and was being tested for speed and marksmanship. Only this was the Asian version. And it was real. No fake terrorists armed with paint guns. No spring-loaded wooden targets. And absolutely no do-overs.
He was up against an unknown enemy with unknown numbers.
And he was facing them alone.
Jones stared at Dr. Sheldon, unsure if he was telling the truth. How could several days of fieldwork turn up nothing? “Doc, I’m not calling you a liar, but—”
“You find my lack of answers hard to fathom.” Sheldon smiled, not the least bit offended. “And if I were you, I’d feel the exact same way. All this blood, all this evidence, I have to know what happened. Unfortunately, there’s one thing preventing me from drawing any conclusions.”
“Which is?”
“I don’t have a lab. My entire investigation relies on forensic evidence, yet I can’t test anything myself. As it stands, every single sample has to be smuggled off this island so it can be examined at some classified facility. That tends to slow things down.”
“I guess it would.”
“Right now I’m still waiting for test results I should’ve received days ago.”
Jones nodded, sympathetic to the situation. Early in his career, he worked for the military police, so he knew all about forensic delays and what they did to a case. “Then let’s concentrate on other things. Like Trevor Schmidt. How do you know he was here?”
“How? Because this was
his
facility. He was running the show.”
“What do you mean?”
“They brought him in several months ago. First as a guard, later in a more significant role. My guess is they wanted to see if he could handle this place, and he ended up thriving.”
“Doing what?”
“Doing everything we’re not supposed to do.”
The voices came from a house at the far end of the village. One male, one female. Both of them shouting in Korean. Or Chinese. Or some other language that Payne didn’t speak. He tried to get as close as possible, hoping to get a view of the argument, but the stone fence that surrounded the yard was much taller than the others he had passed. It stood ten feet tall and was made of thick volcanic rocks that were held in place by some kind of natural paste.
The only entrance was a carved wooden gate that depicted all four seasons on Jeju. Royal azaleas blooming in spring. Waves roaring in summer. Leaves dancing in autumn. And snow falling on Mount Halla in winter. A stone grandfather stood on both sides of the gate; each was rough and weathered, like they’d been there longer than the home they were protecting. A stone chimney anchored the right side of the house, exhaling wisps of brown smoke that soared above the thatched roof and filled the air with a piney aroma.
Gun in hand, Payne crept closer until he was able to lean his body weight against the right gate. It groaned ever so slightly as it swung open, just enough space for him to slip inside.
Kia stood at the far side of the yard, her back against the wall, tension etched on her face. She was arguing with an old man who wore
ajeogori
robe and
bqji
pants. Pleading with him. Begging for something in Korean. None of this made any sense to Payne until he saw the weapon in the guy’s grasp. It was long and sharp and pointed at Kia’s midsection. Maybe a pitchfork. Maybe a trident. Whatever it was, it was fully capable of ruining her day.