Page 55 of Mastermind

“What?” she asks.

“I need to discourage them.”

“With what? A backhanded Instagram compliment?”

An intelligent primate doesn’t need to have watched a dozen prison-break movies to understand what just happened. Chimps hunt other chimpanzees and monkeys. They’re accustomed to clever thinking and on-the-fly adaptation. They’re extremely fast learners when it comes to matters of survival.

The light through the tiny hole suddenly vanishes, which means a chimpanzee is inspecting our means of escape.

Bang!

I fire through the hole just to the side of the creature, intending only to wound him. There’s a loud scream, followed by angry thrashing as a chimpanzee starts flailing. Unfortunately, I don’t know if I grazed or mortally wounded it.

Also, unfortunately, I just shot at a chimp. I didn’t want that to happen. They’re victims of circumstance like we are.

The light vanishes again. I fire a second time to the side.

There’s a thud and the sound of feet running away. That should buy us a little time until the chimps realize they can just punch their way through the tiles.

When that happens, it’s game over.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

SURVIVAL

Jessica and I keep moving, or at least she gracefully moves through the crawl space while I drag myself through the tiny passage, feeling every pebble and loose drywall nail in my kneecaps. Our illumination is a small penlight she’s using to guide the way.

We’re about thirty yards from the server room entrance when she stops moving and rolls onto her back, angling her ear at the floor above us. I stop moving and do the same.

The footsteps are quiet and stealthy, but the chimps, or at least some of them, are directly above. They can hear us. How long before . . .

Scratch. Scratch.

Chimpanzee nails trying to fit between the gaps in the floor tiles.

Damn.

It’s one thing if a chimp gets down here and we have a line of fire to shoot them. It’s another if they figure out how to pull the tiles free and yank us out from our crawl space.

Scratch.

Scratch.

I’d fire again, but I’m afraid it will only create a new hole that they can use to lift up the tile.

“Keep going for the exit,” I tell Jessica. “I think they’re following my clumsy ass, not yours.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Hope you figure something out? Maybe there’s a fire-suppression system. You could try to reach that and turn it on.”

“All right,” she says reluctantly. “The Thai military is at least a half hour away.”

“How do you know that?” I ask.

“I texted for help.”

I have no idea when she did that, but I’m glad at least one of us was thinking a little more multidimensionally.