Lost Empire (Fargo Adventures 2)

“Assuming—”

“Don’t say it.”

FOR THE NEXT SIX HOURS, as the afternoon wore toward evening, they marched side by side across the ravine floor and up and down hillocks, poking with their sticks and doing their best to keep to a north/south-oriented, switchback pattern.

“Six o’clock,” Sam said, glancing at his watch. “We’ll finish this line, then call it a night.”

Remi laughed wearily. “And retreat to the lovely confines of our hammock—” She stumbled forward and landed with an “Umph!”

Sam strode over and knelt beside her. “Are you okay?”

She rolled over, pursed her lips, and puffed a strand of hair from her cheek. “I’m fine. Getting clumsy with exhaustion.” Sam stood up and helped her to her feet. Remi looked around. “Where’s my stick?”

“At your feet.”

“What? Where?”

Sam pointed down. Jutting two inches from the loam was the tip of Remi’s stick. Sam said, “Either that’s a fantastic magic trick or you’ve found a void.”

CHAPTER 44

PULAU LEGUNDI, SUNDA STRAIT

STEPPING CAREFULLY, THEY BACKED UP A FEW FEET AND SCANNED the ground nearby. “Anything?” Sam asked.

“No.”

“Hop onto that tree.”

“If we haven’t fallen through yet, we probably won’t.”

“Just humor me.”

Remi backed up until her butt bumped into the trunk, then turned and climbed onto the lowermost branch. Sam shrugged off his pack and laid it on the ground. Next, holding his stick parallel to the ground at waist height like a tightrope walker, he crept forward until he was standing over the tip of Remi’s stick. He knelt down, placed his stick in front of his knees, then pulled Remi’s free. He dug his headlamp from the thigh pocket of his cargo pants and shone the beam into the hole.

“It’s deep,” he said. “Can’t see the bottom.”

“What do you want to do?”

“What I want to do is widen it and crawl down there, but it’s almost dark. Let’s set up camp and wait for daylight.”

THEY SLEPT FITFULLY, passing the hours dozing and talking, their minds imagining what might lay only feet away from their hammock. Having both metaphorically and literally traced the same course Winston Blaylock followed during his quest, Sam and Remi felt as though they’d been hunting for the Shenandoah for years.

They waited until enough morning sun was filtering through the canopy to partially light their work, then ate a quick breakfast and climbed back up the hillock to the hole left by Remi’s stick, this time equipped with a thirty-foot coil of nylon boating rope that had come with the pinisi.

Remi looped one end of the line twice around the nearest tree; the opposite end of the line Sam formed into a makeshift horse collar that he slipped over his shoulders and tucked under his armpits.

“Luck,” said Remi.

Sam paced over to the hole and knelt down. Carefully, he began jabbing with the stick, knocking chunks of loam and congealed ash into the unseen voids below, backing away on his knees as the hole widened. After five minutes’ work, it was the size of a manhole.

Sam stood up and called over his shoulder, “Have you got me?”

Remi grabbed the line tighter, took in the slack, and braced her feet against the trunk. “I’ve got you.”

Sam coiled his knees and jumped a few inches off the ground. He did it again, a little higher. He paused and looked around.

“See any cracks?”