Page 14 of The Hijack

“I was ambushed in Russia,” he claimed. “I was on a mission for Lukas Vitrolo.”

“You know Lukas?” I demanded, waving my stick around.

“I know of him,” Linc cried, taking a step backward to avoid being stabbed. “We weren’t on a first-name basis, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“How do you know him?” I asked.

“He’s the leader of Dark Sparrow. Everyone knows him,” Linc said.

“Why you?” I pushed, still sorting out the facts in my head.

“I don’t know. All I know is that I was supposed to track down an operative in Russia who was working on some kind of massive weapon,” Linc replied.

“What kind of weapon?”

“I don’t know. We didn’t have a lot of intel. I was supposed to find the guy and bring him back to Lukas for interrogation. Only when I arrived in Moscow, someone was waiting for me. I didn’t have a chance to carry out my mission.”

“How did you get here?” I pressed.

Linc shook his head. “The last thing I remember was the subway station, and there were two of them double-teaming me. The one guy got me in a headlock, and when I woke up, I was on a boat.”

I considered my own kidnap story and the series of vehicles I had been transported on. Linc’s situation so closely mirrored my own, it was uncanny. But I still wasn’t convinced. It seemed all too convenient to have met someone so close to Lukas out here in the jungle. Maybe it was the connection to Dark Sparrow that was important, not Theo’s rogue handler. Or maybe it was both. Maybe they were related in a way I couldn’t see yet.

“Look, I agree that we need to trade notes, but do you really think now is the time?” Linc asked, his hands still raised above his head.

I reluctantly lowered my weapon. If Linc was a threat, he was playing the long game. He clearly wanted to convince me that he was on my side, whether to get me to lead him to Theo or not, I couldn’t tell.

“Okay,” I said.

“We’re still looking for the beach, right?” he asked.

“Right.”

“Do you know which way you’re going?” he questioned.

“Not exactly.” I turned my back on him, pushing my way through the brush. I didn’t know if we were going further inland or heading back to the shore. My entire compass was turned around, due to the storm and the fact that I’d been brought in unconscious. There was nothing to do but continue forward. At least I knew that we were successfully evading anyone who might be following us. Whether that meant we would escape this island or not was still to be seen.

I didn’t ask Linc for his opinion. He was the junior officer, and I had the most experience. I didn’t think I’d been to this particular country per se, but I knew the general location. We were most likely in Papua New Guinea, a smallish chain of islands south of the Philippines.

Storms were a constant occurrence in that part of the world, and it was likely that our native captors had some place to hole up. They probably thought they would find us shivering and wet or dead from the force of the wind. It was their mistake leaving us unguarded or not moving us to a more secure location. I wasn’t going to give them an opportunity to correct that mistake, no matter what the cost.

I pushed my way past leaf after leaf, getting a fresh drenching of water each time. Though we were no longer at the mercy of the rain, we were still experiencing all the runoff. It was another hour before the foliage cleared, and I could see the black sands I was searching for. There wasn’t a dock in sight, but at least we’d reached the shoreline. It would be a simple matter of hugging the ocean until we found a vessel that would take us away.

“Hang on,” Linc said from behind, bending over to put his hands on his knees.

I allowed him a moment to catch his breath before pressing forward. There were still waves rocking the beach, making the sea look dangerous. We needed something more than a rowboat or a life raft. A fishing boat or even a yacht would be nice. There had to be something we could commandeer without waiting for an official evacuation.

I chose to go right, since that would increase the distance between us and our foes. Turning left would bring us around in a circle, potentially reconnecting with the boats they had used to ferry us to the island. If I had to choose, I would prefer to surprise some innocent fisherman than tackle armed mercenaries. I had lost any scruples I might have had regarding theft of private property way back when I was a child. My foster father taught me that staying alive sometimes meant bending the rules. And spies couldn’t afford a moral compass when it came to civilians. There was a bigger picture at stake.

I thought I saw a pier in the distance, with a single boat tied up. It seemed like it might work. There was a tiny cabin which meant shelter from the next storm and a motor. We could easily use something like that to avoid capture and survive several days out at sea. If we were lucky, it would even be stocked with food and water. If there was no food, maybe there would be fishing poles or nets that we could use to catch our own meals.

“Come on!” I shouted to Linc, who had fallen behind.

The shifting sand beneath our feet made walking difficult. I remembered training excursions where my instructor had forced us to run barefoot through the desert to test our endurance. I wondered if Lukas had done the same thing for his troops, or if he’d opted for the easy way out. Linc didn’t seem to be adapting quite as quickly to the changing terrain as I was. If I ever saw Lukas again, I was going to give him an earful about properly training his men.

A shot rang out across the beachhead, startling both of us. I looked back the way we had come and saw masked gunmen running toward us. Whether they were the same ones we left behind, I couldn’t tell and didn’t care.

“Run!” I shouted, breaking into a sprint.