فصل هجدهم

Chapter 18: On the Move

“Mr. Michael, Mr. Michael.”

I opened my eyes to see Jaime leaning over me. It was still dark. “What?” I asked groggily.

“The voice has signaled us.”

I sat up. “The voice?”

He nodded. “Come.”

I looked over at Tessa, who was still asleep, then climbed out of the tent and followed Jaime to the radio. Our camp was lit by nothing but the moon, and Jaime had even covered the radio dials with leaves. I didn’t see them at first, but in the shadows the other two Peruvian men were dressed and ready to go, standing next to their packs.

“How do they signal you?” I asked.

Jaime showed me a small blinking device that looked like a simple pager. “With this.” He turned on the radio and a voice immediately came over the speaker.

“Southern Cross,” a female voice said. “Do you read me? Southern Cross, do you . . .” Jaime lifted the microphone close to his mouth and said in a soft voice, “This is Southern Cross.” “Please confirm,” the voice said.

“Diez, uno, uno, uno, nueve, seis, dos.” “Confirmed. Please receive this message. The army is on the move east on the PE-30C highway. I repeat: The army is on the move east on the PE-30C highway. Do you copy?” “I copy,” Jaime said.

“Transmission complete,” the woman said. “Good luck.” The radio went dead.

He looked at me. “It is time to go.”

“I’ll wake Tessa,” I said. I went back to the tent. “Tessa.” She didn’t move so I lightly shook her.

She woke with a start. “What?”

“It’s time,” I said. “They’re coming.” “Who’s coming?”

“The army.”

Tessa pushed her hair back from her eyes, then sat up. “Let’s go.” She pulled on her shoes then followed me out. Jaime and the other men were standing near the outside of the tent waiting for us. “Vámonos,” he said.

We followed Jaime down the mountain, moving quickly through the dark jungle. Jaime’s friends were fascinated by Tessa’s and my glow, and Jaime reminded us to pull our sleeves down as far as possible.

It took us nearly forty minutes to reach the stony outcrop—twice as long as it had taken in daylight. Except for a few black stratus clouds, the sky was clear and the stars shone like punctured holes in a black curtain. The tension around us was as thick as the darkness. Or maybe it was just fear. Something told me it might be the last night of my life. I shivered at the thought.

From the edge of the outcrop we saw them. The lights of the army’s caravan stretched on for miles, a long, dark snake, slithering steadily toward us, two abreast. It was the first time I fully realized how improbable our task was. I reminded myself that my friends were somewhere in that snake’s belly and we were their only chance of escape.

“Look at all those trucks,” Tessa said softly. “There’s got to be a hundred of them.” “At least,” I said. I took a deep breath of the crisp night air. “How long until they reach us?” “Maybe twenty minutes,” Jaime said.

“Then we better go.”

He slipped the pack from his shoulder and propped it up against a stone. As he dug through it, he asked, “Do you have your GPS?” I took the iPod out of my pocket and showed him.

“Good. And here is your radio. The frequency is 1717. Can you remember that?” “Seventeen, seventeen. The number of electric children,” I said. “Twice.” “Sí.” His voice fell. “If you are captured, you must pulse and destroy the radio before it is found. Understand?” I nodded. “Yes.”

“When you have found all your friends, raise your hand to signal us. We will activate the sentries.” “Okay,” I said.

“I will see you in Cuzco where?”

“Hostel Triumph near the town square.” “Sí. El Triumfo,” he said. He looked into my eyes. “Good luck, Mr. Michael. Rescue your friends.” We embraced. I looked once more out toward our enemy, then nodded to Tessa, and we started down the slope, carefully making our way in the dark toward the highway. As quiet as we tried to be, our hike down was heralded by the screeching of birds and curious monkeys in the trees above us.

At street level we could no longer see the stony outcrop or the lights of the advancing caravan. We could only guess how close the trucks were. I got down on my knees and put my ear to the asphalt road like I had seen Native Americans do in old Westerns, listening for buffalo. I could hear the deep, low rumble of the distant convoy.

We crossed the highway about twenty yards down from the spot the rock slide would take place and disappeared into the darkness of the jungle, waiting behind the waist-high roots of a lupuna tree. Neither of us spoke and the only sound was the chattering of monkeys and the millions of insects around us that sounded like the buzzing of electricity.

“Do you think they’ll be in the first truck?” Tessa asked.

“No. They’ll probably want some kind of a buffer.” “Do you think they’ll all be in the same truck?” I shook my head. “We’ll find out soon enough.” * * *

The minutes dragged on, raising my anxiety until my heart pounded like an African drum. I felt like a man with a noose around his neck, waiting for the floor to fall out from beneath him. When the caravan arrived, we could not only hear the rumbling of the trucks and the screeching of animals at its approach, but we could feel the convoy vibrating the jungle with a million pounds of metal.

Neither of us breathed when the first of the trucks’ lights hit us. Then the first vehicles passed, a small jeep with a mounted machine gun followed by a tank. Behind it were five personnel transports painted in camouflage green. They drove past us without incident.

“Where’s the rock slide?” Tessa whispered.

“Come on, Jaime,” I said. “Roll the rocks.” Then I saw the problem. Jaime had miscalculated the density of the jungle. The rocks were crashing against trees, not even making it to the road. Only a few of the smaller rocks actually reached the asphalt, and they were small enough that they didn’t even slow the trucks.

“It’s not working,” Tessa said, her voice pitched.

My chest constricted in panic as I watched the convoy pass.

“It has to work,” I said. “This is our only chance.” I turned to her. “Have any of my friends passed?” “I’m not sure. The trucks are going pretty fast.” “We’ve got to stop them somehow.”

“Try short-circuiting them,” she said.

I focused on the nearest truck and pulsed. Nothing happened. “My pulse isn’t strong enough.” “It was powerful,” Tessa said. “I felt it. Can you magnetize them?” “They’re too heavy. It would only pull me to them.” I thought for a moment. “But maybe if I didn’t try to pull them toward me . . .” I looked at Tessa. “Enhance me.” She took my hand. “Okay, go.”

I reached out, exerting as much magnetism as I could, focusing not on the vehicles but on the space between two of them. Suddenly two trucks veered into each other. There was a loud crash as they hit and locked bumpers, then one of the trucks, which was slightly ahead of the other, rolled over on its side, blocking the road. The crash set off a chain reaction as the vehicles behind them—their visibility limited by darkness—rammed into the vehicles in front of them. When the convoy had come to a halt, we could hear doors slamming and the shouts of soldiers furiously yelling at each other in Spanish.

“That should hold them for a while,” Tessa said.

“Let’s find my friends,” I said. “Do you feel anything?” “Not yet.”

We moved quickly beneath the shadow of the trees, about twenty-five feet from the edge of the road. Suddenly, Tessa stopped and pointed at an idling green transport near our side of the road. “There,” she said. “Someone’s in that truck.” “Are you sure?”

She nodded. “Yeah. It’s Zeus.”

“You can tell who it is?”

“I can smell him.”

“He doesn’t smell that strong.”

“Not him, his power. Everyone’s power smells different.” I wondered what I smelled like. “Let’s get him,” I said.

The trucks were all jammed up next to one another, making it difficult to find a safe route. We crept to the edge of the jungle’s shadow. Even though we were hidden by the dark, we knew that the soldiers might have night-vision goggles so we stayed low, moving cautiously. As we neared the truck Zeus was in, the driver’s door opened and the driver got out. He walked around to the truck’s rear and lit a cigarette. He was only about thirty feet in front of us.

“I can hit him from here,” I said. While he was slightly turned, I made a lightning ball and threw it at him. I missed, and the blue-green sphere popped against the truck behind him. The soldier threw his cigarette down, then turned around to see what had made the noise.

“You missed,” Tessa said.

“Yeah, I know.” I quickly formed another one and threw it. This one caught him square in the back, dropping him to the ground. “Let’s go.” We moved in until we were next to the man, hidden from the rest of the convoy by the truck.

“There’s someone else in the truck’s cab,” Tessa said.

“I’ll take care of it.” I made another ball and lobbed it into the truck’s cab. There was a flash of blue light, then the sound of a head hitting the dashboard. “Got him.” We got down on our hands and knees and crawled underneath the truck, coming up at its rear. The dented grill of the truck behind it was only six feet back. It looked as if it had rear-ended the truck in front of it then backed off. There were soldiers in the truck’s cab.

“There are men in there,” I said. “They’ll see if we open the back door. I’ll have to take them out.” “What’s the door like?” Tessa asked.

I looked up from beneath the bumper. There were two doors. A thick chain with a padlock was wrapped between the door handles.

“It’s locked with a chain.”

“How do we get that off?” Tessa asked.

“I’ll check the driver for keys.”

As I started to crawl back, there was a massive blast of electricity, blowing the doors off their hinges and into the windshield of the truck behind us. For a moment we both froze, unsure of what had just happened.

“Zeus found his power,” Tessa said.

“So much for stealth,” I said.

Tessa and I crawled back under the center of the truck as soldiers began running toward us. Zeus jumped down off the truck’s bed, his legs almost within reach of us. Electricity was sparking between his fingers and legs. He tore the smoking RESAT off his chest and flung it to the ground, then began blasting everything and everyone around him. “Eat lightning!” he shouted.

“Zeus!” I whispered loudly.

Zeus stopped and looked around. “Who said that?” “Down here. It’s me, Michael.”

“Michael?” He crouched down. “Where did you come from?” “Get down here. Fast.”

He got on his knees and crawled under the truck. He stopped when he saw Tessa. “That explains why I was suddenly so powerful.” “I’ve always made you a better man than you are,” Tessa said. “No hello, sweetheart?” “I was a little busy,” he said.

“It’s good to see you too,” she said coldly.

“I take it you two know each other,” I said.

Tessa’s eyes narrowed. “I thought I did.” Zeus said, “It wasn’t all my fault. . . .” “Great, you have history,” I said. “You can settle this when no one’s trying to kill us.” Tessa pointed a finger at Zeus. “Later,” she said. “We’ll talk later.” “Can’t wait,” Zeus mumbled beneath his breath.

“Can you sense anyone else?” I asked Tessa.

“There’s someone over in that truck,” Tessa said. “I don’t recognize the smell.” “Do you know who it is?” I asked Zeus.

“No. We were all blindfolded.”

“Let’s get them,” I said.

The truck was in the far row closest to the mountain, two vehicles back from where we were. It was dark, as Zeus had blown the lights out of the trucks around us. As we crept toward it, we could hear the shouting of soldiers, but the only soldiers we could see were either unconscious or electrocuted. “Keep your eyes open,” I said.

From under the truck I saw a pair of boots. I made a lightning ball and threw it at the soldier. It exploded against his shin, dropping him to the ground. Then Zeus and I slunk around the back, while Tessa stayed sheltered next to its back wheel.

“Can you blow off its lock?” I asked Zeus.

“Yes, give me a hand,” he said to Tessa, reaching his hand out to her.

“I’ll do it from here,” she said.

Zeus slid around the side of the truck, checked for soldiers, then pointed at the door and fired. Amplified by Tessa, the heat of his electricity actually melted the metal latch around the lock. “It’s open,” he whispered.

I ran around and pulled back one of the doors. McKenna was standing inside. Her skin was red and smoke was rising off of her. She had already melted through her cuffs, and her RESAT was on the ground and smoking as well.

“McKenna!”

“Michael?”

“Get down here, fast.”

She ran to the end of the truck and jumped down. “It’s so good to see you,” she said. “What’s happening? I’m suddenly superpowerful. My RESAT just exploded.” “It’s me,” Tessa said.

McKenna looked at her quizzically. “Tesla?” “Long story,” she said. “And it’s Tessa now.” “Come on. We’ve got to rescue the others,” I said. “Who’s next?” Suddenly there was a burst of gunfire. Bullets hit next to me on the truck.

“That was close,” Zeus said.

“Looks like they’ve got night-vision goggles,” I said.

“I have an idea,” McKenna said. “Everyone close your eyes on the count of three. One, two, three.” We covered our eyes. McKenna stood up and flashed so brightly that even with my eyes covered I could see the light. She had literally turned the night to day.

When I opened my eyes she was crouched back down next to me. “That was crazy,” I said. “They could all see you.” “They could see us anyway with their night-vision goggles,” she said. “I just took care of that.” “I bet they’re all blind now,” Zeus said.

“Let’s get out of here,” I said. “Who’s next?” “I can’t sense anyone,” Tessa said.

I knew that there was a weakness in my plan. Tessa wouldn’t be able to detect Ostin, Jack, or Wade. We needed to find Ian.

“They must be farther back. Let’s keep going.” The four of us crept single file down between the trucks. Suddenly Tessa pointed. “There,” she said.

Zeus and I crept low to the cab of the truck. The driver’s-side window was open and I could hear Peruvian folk music playing from inside the cab. I produced a lightning ball about the size of a cantaloupe, then lobbed it into the cab’s open window. It exploded louder than any I had made before. We ran around to the rear, and Zeus blew off the back door. Then McKenna and I climbed in while Zeus and Tessa stood watch. Ian was inside waiting for us. “Tesla sure makes me see a long way,” he said.

“It’s Tessa,” she and McKenna said simultaneously.

McKenna melted off his bands. “I’m glad we found you,” I said. “We need your help finding everyone else.” “We’ve got other problems,” he said. “The soldiers are gathering on both sides. There’s thousands of them behind us, about a hundred yards that way,” he said, pointing toward the back of the convoy. “They’re getting ready to move in.” “Are we surrounded?”

“Just on the road.”

The sky was beginning to lighten a little as dawn was coming. “They’re probably waiting for daylight. Where are the rest of our guys?” “You passed Ostin,” he said. “He’s back there. The last I saw of the others, they were behind us.” “All the way back?”

“No. Maybe ten, fifteen trucks back.”

We ran two trucks back and freed Ostin, who was overjoyed to see us all.

“What’s the plan?” he asked.

“Simple,” Tessa said. “Find everyone, run away.” “Who are you?” Ostin said, looking at her.

“Tessa,” she said.

“Like Tesla,” he said.

“Almost,” she said.

“What do you do?”

“I make people more electric.”

“Cool,” he said.

“Wade’s there,” Ian said. “Seven trucks back. Just behind the jeep with the machine gun. But there are soldiers everywhere. Some are walking around.” “We better get off the road,” I said.

We returned to the shadow of the jungle, passing all the trucks between us and Wade. When we reached Wade’s truck, Ian stopped us. “There are soldiers in his truck and the truck next to him.” “I’ll clear the way,” Zeus said. “Turn it on, Tessa.” He reached out and blasted both trucks with such force that it actually rocked them.

“Looks like we’re good,” Ian said. “For a minute.” We ran to the truck and opened the back door. Wade was still bound to the wall and unable to move. Ian hadn’t mentioned that he wasn’t alone.

“Stop!” a soldier shouted, pointing his gun at me. I pulsed, knocking the man back against the wall.

I ran in and grabbed Wade’s bands and melted through them. He looked at me in disbelief. “Michael. Where did you come from?” “Idaho,” I said. “Let’s get out of here.” “Did you find Jack?”

“Not yet,” I said. “We’ve just got him and Taylor to rescue, then we’re out of here.” We climbed down from the truck bed.

“Sorry, man,” Ian said. “I don’t know how I missed that guy in there.” “It’s okay,” I said. “I didn’t. Where are Taylor and Jack?” “I can’t see them.”

“What do you mean? You can’t see that far?” “No, with Tessa around I can see past the last truck. They’re just not in any of them. They’re gone.” “What do you mean, they’re gone?” Wade said. “You’ve got to find Jack.” “I’m telling you, he’s not here. Neither of them are.” “But you said you saw them earlier,” I said.

“They were with us when we left.”

I looked at Ostin, hoping he had an idea. He just shrugged. “Maybe they escaped.” I turned back to Ian. “So far all the transport trucks had big chains on back. Look for chains.” “All right.” He was quiet a moment, then said, “I see one. It’s the truck Taylor was in, it’s open. But she’s not there.” “How can you tell it’s the one Taylor was in?” I asked.

“There’s still electric residue.” He kept looking. “I can see another truck open. There are leg manacles.” He turned to me. “Jack escaped.” “Or someone let them go,” Ostin said. “Are they together?” “I don’t know.”

“Can you track Taylor like you did back at the academy?” “I might be able to follow her residue. We’ve got to get close to the truck she was in.” “How far down?” I asked.

“About fifteen more trucks. But there are soldiers all along here.” “Back to the jungle,” I said.

Fortunately, the farther back we went, the more the soldiers seemed unaware that their prisoners had escaped. They were just talking or sleeping, waiting for the road jam to clear. When we got to Taylor’s truck, there was a RESAT lying on the ground with cut bands.

“This is where she was,” Ian said.

“Her RESAT was cut off.”

“It had to be turned off first,” I said. “Or it would kill her.” “Who would cut it off?” Zeus asked.

“Probably the same guy who took them out,” Ostin said, pointing at two soldiers lying facedown on the ground.

“Where did she go?” I asked Ian.

Ian looked around for a moment, then pointed south toward the trees. “Two sets of footprints. They ran off into the jungle.” “Jack and Taylor?”

“I don’t know. But I can’t see Jack anywhere else.” “Let’s go,” I said. When everyone else had disappeared into the jungle, I stopped at the side of the road and raised both hands.

“What are you doing?” Ostin asked. “They’ll see you!” Suddenly the sound of machine guns erupted from the hillside.

“They’re firing at us!” Zeus shouted.

“No,” I said. “They’re ours. Let’s get out of here.” All around us the soldiers began jumping out of their trucks, pulling out their weapons. As Jaime had planned, they were facing the opposite direction as us as we plunged unseen into the dark jungle.