“Agreed,” said Jonah, slinging his rifle behind his back. “And, if someone was waiting for us, I’d have to assume they would have started shooting by now.”
The Scorpion had made it past the breakers, moving evasively as the last of her conning tower disappeared beneath the waves once more. Alexis pointed toward the long steel lines she’d spotted earlier. “The concrete dock is a lot newer than the town. So are the railroad tracks.”
“Maybe dating from the second World War?” suggested Hassan. “I understand this region saw heavy combat.”
“It’s possible,” said Jonah. “Let’s follow the newer trail. Spread out — and keep your head on a swivel. It doesn’t look like anybody’s still here, but I don’t want to take any chances.”
The tire tracks turned abruptly at the end of the town, just a few hundred meters above the beach, and disappeared into the jungle.
“Somebody recently clear-cut a path,” said Jonah, pointing to the felled trees and sawed-off stumps. A massive green jungle canopy rose above them, plunging the off-road trail into darkness. Alexis let the smell of recently sawn wood drift into her nose as she walked the path. Soon the leafy tunnel opened again to a badly deteriorated concrete airstrip surrounded by low buildings and bunkers, the structures all but reclaimed by the surrounding forest.
“Look!” Alexis pointed. A section of the crumbling airstrip had been carefully graded, smoothed, and topped with a fresh layer of asphalt that still smelled of oil. Three empty steel shipping containers lay between the narrow strip and a blackened, ashy burn pile.
“I see no movement,” said Dalmar. He stared down the powerful optic of his sniper rifle as he slowly panned the barrel from one hollowed-out auxiliary building to the next. “I believe we are alone.”
“You couldn’t land on this,” said Jonah, tapping his foot on the new airstrip. It was too narrow, too short, totally devoid of painted lines or indicator lights.
“No,” said Hassan. “But one could take off, provided you knew the exact runway length required. A single mistake and the aircraft would be lost — not many pilots would be willing to take such a risk.”
“Maybe there wasn’t a pilot — they could have used an unmanned drone,” Alexis suggested.
Dalmar just grunted his acknowledgement.
“Looks like they’ve picked up stakes and moved on.”
“And they didn’t leave much behind,” added Jonah. He scratched at his beard for a moment before wiping a palm across his forehead, the heat of the day beginning to build as the sun rose higher in the early morning sky. “Radio Vitaly. Tell him to moor the Scorpion at the concrete dock. I want everybody ashore. We’ll go over this island with a fine-tooth comb. I just hope whoever launched the attacks was sloppy enough to leave some evidence we can use.”
“What do you want us to do in the meantime?” asked Hassan.
“Split up; wander around. Maybe we’ll get lucky and stumble across something.”
CHAPTER 15
Alexis didn’t want to sift through the ash of the burn pile. She left that dirty job to the others. Instead, she slowly walked the far perimeter of the airstrip and surrounding buildings. The recent occupants of the island had cut back the jungle in order to access and widen out the landing strip, but the surrounding area remained thick and overgrown.
She trod carefully, lifting each foot in an exaggerated fashion as she stepped over the leafy underbrush, the thick vines and roots bending beneath her heavy boots, all the while imagining what lay below. What had the jungle devoured since people last lived here? And what kind of vermin or snakes or other creepy crawly things had made themselves at home since humans had abandoned the island? The thick vegetation shrouded the imprint of each footfall, erasing the trail behind her. Footprints, roads, buildings, an entire town — the island had swallowed them all. People, she concluded, did not belong here.
She pushed that thought from her mind and concentrated on the airstrip. In the distance, she could see a set of enclosed concrete hangers at the abandoned end of the airstrip, far from the newly poured asphalt.
Her foot hit something heavy and unyielding. She kicked away at the vegetation and brushed the dirt back with her hand, uncovering another section of railroad track. A little stomping soon revealed its parallel twin. She held up a thumb, imagining their lengths in either direction. No doubt the lines followed a slight natural decline through the jungle before ending at the harbor. The other end disappeared toward the largest of the hangers.
Alexis walked toward the structure, careful to stay between the intermittent sections of rusting, corroded tracks. She could see the hanger more clearly now, half encased in thick vines, some of which were so large they’d sprouted entire trees. The root systems were relentless, finding every crack and seam as they spread over the decades, breaking apart the concrete and collapsing half of the roof.
She stopped again, noticing a tall piling almost invisible within the surrounding jungle. It was the bottommost section of a flagpole, the pole itself rusted and snapped, rising no more than three feet above its concrete foundation, the flag long since gone. Alexis abandoned the tracks momentarily, pushing into the eerie, all-consuming thick of the jungle. Her ears pulsed with the calls of the birds and insects surrounding her. She was glad Dalmar hadn’t burned down the jungle; it was dense with life and moisture.
A small, carved monument sat just a dozen feet from the broken flagpole. It was large and flat, like a tombstone, almost taller than her shoulder, its base buried deep in the earth. She removed a small knife from her pocket, cutting away the green vines and damp leaves to reveal the inscribed face below. A few more slices with the knife and the last of the overgrowth fell away, revealing the two long columns of careful Germanic script.
Alexis frowned at the long list of names. Germans in the Philippines? It didn’t make any sense. She half-remembered a history lesson about the colonial era and German colonies in the Far East, but the heading “U-3531” didn’t seem like an overly colonial designation. Maybe a mining company, or some other kind of industrial… thing? But what about the titles? They seemed almost military. Not that she recognized any beyond “Doctor,” or the ones sort of like lieutenant. Didn’t Marissa speak a bit of German? Maybe she could shed some light on the monument.
She glanced around at the thick trees surrounding her, and was suddenly aware of the sunken, rich earth beneath her feet. With an abrupt prickling sensation, Alexis realized she could be standing atop a mass grave, and with a shudder, she scrambled back to the overgrown railroad tracks.
By the time she reached the rusting, corroded doors to the massive hanger at the end of the airstrip, Jonah was a tiny figure in the distance. Three more Scorpion crew emerged from the newly-carved jungle pathway — Vitaly, Sun-Hi, and Marissa — and they, too, began combing through the first of the empty auxiliary buildings.
The steel hanger door was paper-thin and brittle, easily snapping away as she kicked at it, creating a gap just large enough to duck through and into the darkness. She held her breath as she stepped into the cool, humid interior, swatting away at the cobwebs that covered her face and hands. A few rays of light shone from the collapsed end, shimmering in the darkness as they played across dangling vines and broken concrete. Before her loomed a massive shape, its silhouette angular and menacing.
Alexis clicked her flashlight. It flickered for a moment and died. She slapped it a few times, shaking it until the battery re-established an electrical connection to the high-output bulb. Raising the light again, she shone it towards the shape in the darkness, illuminating a long, curved submarine bow before her. She let her light play along the length of the rusting sub, across six forward torpedo tubes, fuel tanks, and flood vents, across the conning tower and antennas. Despite the rust and corrosion, she could still make out the insignia ‘U-3531’ painted across the tower. Her profile was unmistakable, a product of a single era.