“Was there any evidence that your chopper crashed?” asked Top.
“No. Same goes for the Coast Guard drone. There is apparently some kind of line out there near the beach, and once something has crossed it all transmission ends. I sent a drone in to circle and photograph the island at a distance, standing half a mile beyond the surf line. We have lots of pictures of burned trees and mounds of dirt, but we can’t get a good angle on the object from that distance. We don’t know how firm the dead zone is, or even if it is still active, because orders came down to wait for you.”
I met his stare and said, “And that wasted almost a full day where you don’t know if your people are injured and in need of assistance. I get it, and I’m sorry, but this situation is complicated and sensitive.”
“And clearly above my pay grade,” he said, barely hiding his contempt of any policy that did not allow him to protect his people.
“Yes,” I said, “it is. I’m sorry for the inconvenience and the obfuscation but—”
“But you’re not really sorry.”
“Frankly, Captain, I’m sorry any of us have to be out here, but this is how it is.”
Top and Bunny both muttered, “Hooah,” under their breath. Ghost whuffed.
Tanaka took a moment and I could see the muscles bunch and flex in the corners of his jaw. He had a lot of control and knew enough to think and compose his thoughts before he opened his mouth.
“Let me know what you need from me and I’ll make it happen. Weapons, equipment, people…”
“Thanks,” I said. “We brought our own toys. What we need is a boat and a whole lot of rope.”
“How much rope?”
“Enough to run a line from a second boat out in the water to the one I’m going to take all the way in. This might be a stable or repeated null field.”
Tanaka frowned. “Wait… like what was used two years ago?”
I nodded. A rogue CIA agent had gotten his hands on a man-portable device capable of canceling electronic power within a certain range. Unlike the EMP cannons DARPA was developing, this did not destroy electronics but merely interrupted them.
“You think someone on the island has Kill Switch technology?” he asked.
“That,” I said, “would be best-case scenario.”
He gave me a funny look. “What exactly do you do in the DMS?”
“Mostly?” I asked. “We get the shit scared out of us on a regular basis. Better than a high-fiber diet, but my blood pressure could pop rivets on a submarine hull.”
-3-
The Michael Murphy carried two RHIBs, or rigid-hull inflatable boats, that could zip across the water with great speed and surprising grace. Bunny was good with boats, but not as good as the chief running the second RHIB. Top and I had our rifles ready and we studied the shoreline through sniper scopes. Saw a few seabirds and a turtle, but nothing else.
Bunny asked, “If I say that it looks quiet, will one of you cats say, ‘Yeah, too quiet’?”
“If I wrap an anchor chain around you and drop you in the water, will the cap’n cry the blues?” was Top’s reply.
Bunny grinned.
When we were five hundred yards from the beach, the chief cut his engine and stopped, but we kept going, spooling hundreds of yards of thin line behind us as Bunny drove toward the beach at reduced speed. The counter on the spool on the chief’s boat would record how much line had paid out before we hit whatever electronic barrier was present. I was surprised that we made it all the way to the mouth of the lagoon before the engine died. There was no sputter, no spark trying to catch inside the motor. One second the engine was running normally at fifty knots and then it wasn’t. Just like that.
“Now we know where the fun and games start,” muttered Top.
“Just like with the Kill Switch,” observed Bunny.
The day became very quiet very fast.
Bunny had to wrestle for steerageway and used a passive rudder to angle us in toward the shore. There was just enough impetus to allow him to beach the nose of the boat; Top and I jumped out and dragged it onto the sand. Ghost bounded out past us and ran up and down the beach like a silent gust of white smoke, then he returned to me and sat. It meant that he detected no immediate threat. Not sure if that was a good thing or not. We all moved toward the shelter of a stand of palms.
Top tapped his earbud and shook his head. Mine was just as dead, not even the white noise of an empty channel. Nothing. We checked all of our electronic gear and it was all down.
Bunny made a rude noise, then said, “If some ISIL dickheads are out here with one of those Kill Switch machines, I’m going to get cranky.”
“You’ll have to wait your turn,” I said.
Even my flashlight didn’t work, which wasn’t much of a problem because the sun was up. I looked out to sea and saw the other boat about half a mile beyond the farthest point of the island. The faint thrum of its idling engine drifted to me on the humid morning air. They would keep the engine on to allow them to maintain a safe distance. There was a quick two-pulse flash of light as a signal. I stood up and waved my arms three times to indicate that I was safe. Then I turned and moved into the dense foliage, vanishing from their sight. Not, I hoped, from history.
The island was not big enough to get lost on, which meant it was small enough to get found on. So, I was very damn careful as I made my way along the southern reach of it, staying inside the trees, pausing to listen. Hearing nothing. Not a bird, not a bug. Nothing but the sway and hiss of palm fronds moving in the sluggish breeze. Ten minutes in, I heard a sharper hiss and looked up to see a flare rise in an arc from the direction of the other RHIB. It popped high above me and stained the sky with green smoke. It was intended to both signal any survivors on the island and draw the eye away from the beach — away from us.
Without saying a word, we moved, spreading out, weapons up and ready, eyes and gun barrels moving in unison, fingers laid along the outside of the trigger guards, going fast but no faster than good caution allowed. Ghost ranged ahead but not too far, and if there was something to see, he didn’t see it. That was comforting, but only if you didn’t look too closely at it. Just because a dog didn’t see, smell, or hear something did not mean it wasn’t there.
We swept along the strip of jungle fifty feet in from the sand, using the slanting rays of morning light to pick our way.
Top was on point and he stopped with a raised fist. Bunny and I immediately knelt, alert and ready. Top pointed to something ahead and off to our right, then gestured for us to approach. We came up on it quickly.
It was the Coast Guard RHIB, a seventeen-foot Zodiac Hurricane with a 100-horsepower diesel engine and M240B machine guns mounted fore and aft. Very fast and fierce.
It sat on the sand. Empty, abandoned, undamaged.
There was no one there. Not even footprints in the sand. No sign at all of what happened except for something Ghost found. He jumped into the craft and stood growling at something I couldn’t see until I climbed in. Top and Bunny provided cover in case it was someone or something nasty hiding there. It wasn’t.
On the back of the pilot’s seat was a muddy handprint. Full palm and fingers.
Only here’s the thing. The fingers were way too long and each finger ended in wickedly sharp points.
And there were four of them.
I’m not talking about a hand with a missing finger. What we saw was a handprint of something that had a thumb and three fingers. Three clawed fingers. Like a bird’s, except that’s not what it was.