Hand over hand, he moved left, toward a nose-shaped hump in the cliff. When his shoulder bumped against it, he lowered himself until he could duck under the tip of the nose. He shoved his hand into a crack until his knuckles were jammed against the stone, then released his left hand and let it dangle.
Above him, he heard the growl of an engine. Brakes squealed. A car door slammed. Then footfalls on gravel and the rustle of foliage. A flashlight beam skimmed horizontally along the cliff face toward him, then up and over the nose and out of sight. Fisher glanced down in time to see the beam track along the beach for a few seconds, then blink out.
He waited until the jeep’s engines had faded, then glanced at the OPSAT. The next jeep was on the east side of the island, a red diamond slowly marching toward him. Seven minutes.
He kept climbing.
WITHtwo minutes to spare, he reached the foliage overhanging the edge. He groped around until his hand found a root and he pulled himself up. He snaked through the underbrush until he reached the edge of the road. A quick EM/NV check up and down the road revealed nothing. He checked the OPSAT: one minute.
The previous day’s rain had left the road muddy—a perfect mold for footprints, so Fisher sidestepped along the grass verge until he found a spot where a pair of flat stones were half-buried in the dirt. He was leaping to first stone when he heard the grumbling of the jeep’s engine. He hopped to the next stone, then to the edge, where he ducked down, slipped into the undergrowth, and dropped flat.
The jeep’s headlights washed over the road. Half a foot away, a mud-encrusted tire rolled past Fisher’s face. The jeep ground to a halt and a car door opened. A voice called something in Mandarin. The reply came from slightly farther away—the first voice from the passenger; the second from the guard who’d gotten out to scan the cliff face.
Half a minute later, the jeep was moving again.
Fisher maneuvered his arm up until he could see the OPSAT. He punched up the map. The outer ring of rain forest lay before him. Three miles of unbroken jungle, two escarpments, three gorges.
He had six hours before dawn.
41
FISHERcame to a small stream gurgling its way through the undergrowth, and paused for a break.
On paper, three miles in six hours sounded like an easy stroll. He’d lived and fought and killed in jungles, sometimes for months at a time, and he knew there was nothing easy about it, especially at night. His every step, his every breath, his every hand placement was fraught with hazard.
His NV was virtually useless. With only the occasional game trail to follow, he had to force his way steadily through foliage so thick, all he saw in his trident goggles was a wall of leaves and branches that parted with his passing only to immediately close behind him. Every step involved either ducking or twisting or crab-walking around an obstacle. The canopy above blotted out all but fleeting glimpses of sky and moonlight. As it was, the ambient light was barely enough to feed the NV.
The heat, which hovered at ninety degrees, was coupled with ninety-percent humidty. In his peripheral vision, he could see bits of movement as the jungle’s night creatures scurried away. Serrated vines and spiked leaves crisscrossed his path, scraping his exposed skin raw. Flying insects, some so small they were invisible, others as big around as a quarter, swirled around his ears and eyes and nose.
And while every facet of breaking a jungle trail was exhausting, Fisher knew the physical stresses were only the tip of the iceberg. No other environment on earth worked on the human psyche the way a jungle could. Facing a curtain of foliage left you with no points of reference. Everything you saw was homogenized. Where you were ten feet ago looked eerily similar to where you were now. Without a tight rein on your mind, hopelessness starts to creep in, followed by panic and mental paralysis.
For all its danger, though, Fisher loved the jungle. It was the great equalizer. Every hazard you face, your enemy faces; the same wall of foliage that hides him, hides you. The difference between killing your enemy or dying at his hands becomes a matter of patience and stamina and focus.
HEsat on the bank of the stream with his back against a trunk. He dipped his bandanna into the water. It was surprisingly cold. He wiped his face and neck; the coolness was invigorating. He pulled his canteen off his belt and drank it all down. The jungle sucks moisture from the body at an incredible rate—every breath and every drop of sweat is a step closer to heat stroke.
He laid the canteen on its side in the stream until it was full, then dropped in two chlorine dioxide tablets and recapped it. More often than not, jungle water carried enough bacteria, viruses, and cysts to either kill you or leave you hospitalized for months wishing you were dead.
All around him, the forest floor rustled with life, mostly of the insect variety, from ants to spiders to beetles. Something shook in the canopy, a monkey awakened by his passage. He felt something brush over the tops of his thighs. Moving very slow, he flipped his goggles into place and looked down. A line of leaf-cutter ants, each carrying a half-dollar-sized chunk of leaf, was marching across his legs.
He checked his OPSAT. He’d been going for an hour and had covered half a mile. He checked his coordinates to ensure he was on track, then stood up, stepped across the stream, and kept going.
THEhours passed steadily but slowly as he picked his way inland. At three A.M., he found a game trail barely ten inches wide and followed it as it meandered north. After an hour the trail started to descend. Fisher felt a change in the air, a drop in temperature that could mean only one thing: water.
He heard it before he saw it, a muffled roar somewhere to his left and front. The trail became rockier, the stones slick underfoot. It veered right and kept descending, and soon the roar changed into the unmistakable rush of water. The trail continued to descend for another two hundred yards before the trees thinned out and he found himself standing on a small granite shelf. Across from him was another shelf separated by a ten-foot-wide chasm. He walked to the edge and looked down.
The chasm was twenty feet deep. At the bottom, a river boiled through the confines of the granite walls. To his left, the chasm climbed steadily upward until it reached a small waterfall.
Fisher doubted be could get enough of a running start to jump the gorge, and he knew missing would kill him. The force of the river would grind him into hamburger against the rocks. Nor could he try farther up the trail; the jungle grew right to the edge of the chasm, making a leap impossible. Down, then.
He followed the trail another quarter mile until the terrain leveled out and the chasm widened to thirty feet. Here the water was slower, shallower, and dotted with boulders, but Fisher knew better than to underestimate the river. These were Class V rapids. Even at calf depth, the force of the water would be enough to knock him down.
He studied the boulders. The were wide enough for him and were separated only by a few feet, but they were also slick with algae. He checked his watch. He was behind schedule, and he had no idea what he’d find downstream. This was the place, then.
He took a minute to plan his route, then walked to the edge, coiled his legs, and leapt. It was a frog-hop that landed him splayed, belly-first, across the rock. His tac-suit’s reinforced Kevlar and RhinoPlate took most of the shock, but still, the impact knocked the wind out of him. He recovered, wiggled himself atop the rock, then hopped to the next one. He repeated the process five more times until he reached the opposite shore.
He found a cleft in the granite wall with natural built-in steps; the mud between the stones was indented with animal tracks. A game trail. He climbed up. At the top of the cleft he found another game trail.