Nighthawk (NUMA Files 14)

It turned out that he hadn’t been impaled. The blade had only sliced a thin crease in his skin. He was bleeding, but the outpouring of crimson came from the red dye capsule, which had taken the brunt of the impact. The knife had split it in two and flooded the water with enough coloring to make it seem like an artery had been gashed open.

Kurt had found the dye capsule, tossed it away and looked upward. He could just make out the bottom of the Zodiac and two figures clinging to it.

Adrenaline urged him to surface and make an immediate attempt to rescue Emma, but the odds were against surviving another battle with the two divers. Not without much oxygen in his tank. And even if he could overcome them, there was still the man in the boat with Emma as a hostage.

If a frontal assault wouldn’t work, he thought it might be time to try the stealth approach. They think I’m dead. Let them keep thinking it, until we make our counterattack.

He detached the dive light he’d carried, placed it down in the mud and swam from the scene.

If anyone was looking down from the Zodiac, they would see only the stationary light. The diver in the black wet suit, moving in the depths of the black lake, would be as hard to spot as the Nighthawk had been.

He moved calmly across the bottom, found the spot where the Nighthawk had been resting and pushed off the bottom. Rising upward and exhaling slowly as he went, Kurt emerged from the dark lake into one of the yellow lifting bags. The voluminous air bag lay on its side, like an oversized Portuguese man-of-war that had washed up on the beach.

Hidden within, Kurt removed his helmet to breathe, unzipped a waterproof pouch on the sleeve of his wet suit and pulled a small transmitter free.

Keeping the compact radio clear of the water, Kurt turned it on and switched to a prearranged frequency. He pressed the transmit button and spoke calmly into the microphone.

“Gamay, this is Kurt,” he said.

A hushed voice came over the radio, imbued with a slight, scolding tone. “Kurt, I thought they’d killed you. I was about to move in on my own.”

Tired of being ambushed, Kurt

had decided the NUMA team could use a guardian angel to watch over them. With Joe needed to fly the helicopter and only Paul and Gamay to choose from, Kurt had picked Gamay for several reasons.

Most importantly, she was a crack shot. Good with a pistol, but an expert with a rifle. She was also smaller, more agile and more athletic than Paul. Attributes that would help her hide and move from spot to spot without being noticed.

Joe had flown her in early this morning, dropping her off on a high ridge, before heading to La Jalca to pick up Emma, Urco and himself.

Dressed in camouflage and carrying a rifle, Gamay was out there now. “What’s your position?”

“I’m on the second ridge east of the landing zone,” she said. “I can see the clearing, most of the lake and the waterfall.”

“What about Joe and Paul?”

“They’re in the clearing. They were surrounded as soon as they landed. The Nighthawk is down safely. So is the Air-Crane. Paul and Joe are being held just across from it.”

“And Emma?”

“They have her working on something,” Gamay said. “I can’t tell exactly what it is. But they’ve opened the Nighthawk and begun unloading it. Other than that, all seems fairly calm at the moment.”

“Was it Urco?” Kurt asked, fairly certain that he knew.

“It was,” Gamay said. “How’d you know he couldn’t be trusted?”

“I didn’t know,” Kurt admitted. “But a few odd moments were enough to cause concern. For one thing, he had his satellite antenna aimed low and to the northwest. There’s no reason for an archaeologist working in a deep canyon in the Southern Hemisphere to be using a satellite so low on the horizon to bounce his communications. Based on the angle, it had to be a Northern Hemisphere bird out over the Pacific. He’d also claimed to be the cameraman who shot the video of the Nighthawk crossing La Jalca, but I noticed that he was a lefty. He writes left, eats left, and yet the footage was filmed by someone holding a camera in their right hand. I couldn’t see any reason to lie about something like that, but it was definitely suspicious.”

“Your intuition is spot-on, as usual,” Gamay said.

“Not quite,” Kurt said. “I truly thought we’d be safe until we pulled the containment units out of the Nighthawk. I also thought you’d spot anyone coming down the Inca road or up through the valley. What happened?”

“That part of the plan didn’t work,” she said. “I haven’t blinked in hours. The road in from La Jalca has been empty. The road out to the south has been empty. Nothing has arrived or departed this valley on foot or by wheel or wing since you guys landed.”

He understood the implication. “Which means Urco’s men were already here, waiting for their moment to attack. I thought their numbers looked a little light this morning. Must have driven over last night.”

“I counted six down in the clearing, plus the three on the water,” she said.

“Ten, including Urco,” he noted.