Island 731 Page 7

  “What was that?” DeWinter blurted, fear filling her voice.

  “Could be Kam,” Joliet said quickly, and before anyone could offer another possibility, she was off and running across the cluttered deck.

  “Joliet!” Hawkins shouted as he gave chase. “Slow down!” But he could see she had no intention of slowing down. She’d jumped into shark-infested waters to save an already dead turtle. He had no doubt she’d jump in now to save Kam. But they didn’t even know if it was Kam. It could be the shark tearing apart Cahill’s body. It could be any number of things that wouldn’t be wise to dive-bomb.

  Halfway across the debris-strewn deck, Hawkins could see that Joliet wasn’t going to slow down. Ignoring the mess, he risked not watching his step and sprinted forward. Look before you leap, Hawkins thought. The old catchphrase had become cliché over time, but no less effective at saving lives.

  But Joliet seemed unfamiliar with the phrase. She leapt up, planting her right foot on the rail, and bent her legs, ready to spring out into the air. As her leg extended, Hawkins reached an arm around her waist. When she pushed, he pulled.

  For a moment, Hawkins thought she might take them both overboard, but Joliet’s one hundred twenty pounds were no match for Hawkins’s two hundred. Still, the effort it took to pull her back sent them both sprawling to the deck, where she began kicking to get free.

  “What the hell!” she shouted. “Hawkins, let me go!”

  “Calm down,” Hawkins said, and then grunted as he caught an elbow in the gut. He understood the emotions driving her—it could be Kam, and to Joliet, not jumping in meant she was abandoning their friend. Hawkins felt similarly, but the splash could have been made by whatever had taken Cahill, and one close encounter with a predator in any given month was more than enough. If it had been Joliet who was missing, Hawkins might have jumped in himself. As he fought with her, he recognized the strong emotions fueling his fight to keep her on board, and safe. He was hooked like a tuna and she was reeling him steadily in. Of course, she might not talk to him after this. “You need to start thinking things through.”

  As they struggled, Jones stepped past them and looked over the rail.

  “Mark, I swear to God, if you don’t let me go—”

  “Nothing down there,” Jones said.

  The struggle stopped.

  “Would have jumped in for nothing,” the engineer added. “You should listen to your man.”

  Hawkins let go of Joliet. She stood up, gave Hawkins a kick in the leg, and turned on Jones. “He’s not my man.” She stepped up to the rail and looked over the side.

  Jones helped Hawkins to his feet, and gave him a nod. “You did good, son. She’ll thank you later.”

  Hawkins looked at Joliet. “We’ll see about that.”

  When he stepped up to the rail, Joliet was back to business, scouring the water. Hawkins saw nothing, but a few random chunks of flotsam. “There’s nothing down there.”

  He was about to follow up his observation by pointing out that she would have jumped in for nothing, but she pointed toward shore and said, “But something was.”

  Rings of water rippled across the lagoon. But they weren’t just moving away from the Magellan, they were also moving toward it. “Whatever it was that made that splash, it didn’t fall from the ship. It was closer to shore.”

  “It wasn’t Kam,” she said.

  Hawkins scoured the scene with his eyes, looking for some sign of what had been in the water. But like most everything in the ocean, whatever made the splash had left no other trace, save for a few ripples on the surface. That’s when he turned his eyes to the sandy shore and saw something he recognized without any trouble.

  “Footprints,” he said. “On shore.”

  “Where?” Joliet asked. “I don’t see anything.”

  Hawkins pointed toward the prints, but knew she wouldn’t see them. They were indistinct and masked by the glare of the white sand in the bright sun. But he knew footprints when he saw them.

  “Here,” Jones said, tapping Hawkins on the shoulder.

  Hawkins turned to find a small pair of binoculars in Jones’s hands.

  “Like to watch for whales in my free time,” Jones explained.

  The binoculars weren’t very powerful, but they worked well enough to reveal the details on the beach. The footprints were more like toeprints. Whoever had made them was both barefoot, and running. They emerged from water, turned a hard run, cutting a line parallel to the water, and then into the jungle. “Someone was in the water,” he said. “Whoever it was exited the lagoon in a hurry, then moved along the beach.”

  “I knew it was Kam,” Joliet said and then snatched the binoculars from Hawkins’s hands. She searched the beach for herself and lowered the binoculars. “You should have let me go.”

  Hawkins’s patience began to wear thin. “Whoever was in the water—”

  “Kam,” she said.

  “Whoever. He was gone before you got to the rail. If—if—you managed to cross the lagoon without being eaten by whatever took Cahill’s body, you wouldn’t be able to track them in this jungle. It’s too thick.”

  “And you could?”

  Hawkins could see Joliet was responding out of frustration. She liked Kam a lot and was clearly concerned. He was, too. But her knee-jerk reaction would put herself in danger and, if she went tromping through the jungle in hot pursuit, was likely to wipe out any trail left behind. “Yes, Avril. It’s what I do.”

  That sunk in slowly. Joliet’s tense shoulders relaxed. “Sorry.”

  Hawkins thought about his time as a park ranger. He’d loved the job. The outdoors. The scenery. The pay was shit, but the life; it was good. Most of the time. But sometimes people got lost. Or attacked. And when that happened it was Hawkins’s job to find them. He had an almost unnatural ability to find missing people, though he knew it was simply a result of having the best teacher.

  Hawkins grew up in Durango, Colorado, right on the border of the Southern Ute Indian Reservation: 1,058 square miles of protected land, if you ignored the Sky Ute Casino and Resort. Hawkins’s love of nature brought him to the reservation to hike and explore and, after meeting them on a trail, he became friends with Jimmy GoodTracks and his father, Howie, who took the boys hunting whenever possible. Hawkins’s mother had died in childbirth and his father, who never forgave him for it, was a drunk. So Hawkins spent as much time with the GoodTracks as he could.

  Tragedy struck a year into their friendship when Jimmy was hit and killed by a truck, whose driver had fallen asleep at the wheel. Not long after Jimmy’s death, Hawkins’s father up and left. For good. Sharing a mutual grief, Hawkins and Howie GoodTracks adopted each other. While the adoption wasn’t legal, he had no living grandparent or relatives who cared, so no one came calling. They became the father and son both had lost.

  The GoodTracks name came about on account of Howie’s ancestors being expert trackers. Tribe legend said that they could find a man lost in the mountains blindfolded, tracking by scent and sound alone. Howie spent the next six years teaching Hawkins everything he knew. By the time Hawkins went to college, he could follow a trail that was invisible for most people.

  “Your name is fitting,” GoodTracks had said after Hawkins followed a three-week-old trail that had been windswept and rained on to find a feather hidden beneath a stone—a final test. “You see like a hawk.”

  Hawkins had never been more proud. When he finished college with a degree in conservation and a minor in English, he decided to carry on the GoodTracks legacy by becoming a park ranger specializing in rescue and recovery. And no one was better.

  But the beautiful landscape of Yellowstone was sometimes a very dangerous place to be. The scars on Hawkins’s chest were a stark reminder of what could happen when people lower their guard. He’d become so good at his job—a legend in the business of finding people—that it went to his head. Blinded by overconfidence, he’d stood his ground, hunting knife in hand, against a grizzly bear in
tent on ransacking a campsite. The campers had fled, but rather than join them, Hawkins had stayed. The result was etched on his chest … and dead at his feet. He would have likely died himself if one of the campers hadn’t returned and dragged him out of the woods.

  Howie had visited him in the hospital. “You’ve lost respect for the power of nature,” he had said. “Step back and find your path again.”

  Trusting Howie above all else, Hawkins had taken his mentor’s advice and pursued his second passion: writing. But his thoughts and dreams remained in the forest, which he still visited but hadn’t worked in for the past five years. And he wasn’t sure he ever would again. But now, someone—likely Kam—had fled into the jungle and was likely lost.

  Joliet turned to him and said, “Don’t you mean, ‘did’? Past tense. You’re a writer now. You don’t find people lost in the woods anymore.”

  Hawkins looked out at the distant shoreline and the barefoot tracks lining the beach. “Today, I do.”

  9.

  Mark Hawkins’s father had been a strict man. Not the modern “time out” kind of strict. Closer to the “boy, don’t make me take off my belt and give you a whuppin” kind. His father’s belt’s sheen had been worn off, mostly on Hawkins’s backside. But he’d grown accustomed to the anger, and the violence, and even the angriest man, woman, or animal couldn’t make him flinch.

  So when a furious Captain Drake went on a verbal rampage upon hearing the news that Cahill’s body had been snatched away, that Kam was missing and likely lost on the island, and that his ship was still dead in the water for no reason anyone could fathom, he vented his uncommon rage with a string of curses punctuated by throwing a mug across the wheelhouse.

  The sharp crash of shattering porcelain against the hard metal wall snapped the man from his flare-up. He put his hands behind his head and turned away from the crew, taking a deep breath as he looked out at the island.

  Hawkins waited for the man to speak. Joliet, Bray, Jones, and Jim Clifton, the younger of the two Tweedles, stood silent, waiting for the captain to regain his composure.

  Despite being the second-largest man on the ship, outsized only by his brother, Clifton looked ready to bolt. His face glowed red. His bald forehead and jowls were slick was sweat. The big man did not like confrontation. Hawkins felt bad for the man. His job was to cook, a task he and his brother were quite good at, so he wasn’t accustomed to being on the receiving end of the captain’s anger. Hawkins was about to tell the man he could leave when Drake turned to face them again.

  “Let me make sure I understood everything,” the captain said. “A shark took Cahill’s body.”

  “My daughter didn’t think it was a shark,” Jones said.

  Drake nodded. “Noted. But I think we can all agree a shark is the only thing that makes sense.”

  Hawkins, Joliet, and Bray all nodded. Jones didn’t look so sure, but eventually consented. The younger Clifton just stared, looking petrified. Drake noticed and softened his tone. “Jim, how are things in the galley?”

  “Everything works. Power is on so all the food is good. We can cook. Just need to finish cleaning up the, ahh, the mess.”

  Drake offered the man a smile and gave him a pat on the shoulder. “First good news I heard all day. Why don’t you head back down and help Ray finish cleaning. Then see about lunch.”

  “I’ll need mine to go,” Hawkins said.

  “Mine, too,” Joliet added.

  Bray raised his hand. “Make that three.”

  “Okay,” Jim said before hurrying belowdecks.

  When the nervous chef was gone, Drake’s scowl returned and he turned to Hawkins. “May I remind you that I’m the captain of this ship and no one—” He glanced at Joliet. “I mean no one, makes a decision about what happens aboard the Magellan without my say-so.” His eyes turned to Bray. “That goes for you, too, funny man. Am I clear?”

  “Yes, sir,” Hawkins said, knowing that a show of respect would help calm the man.

  “Fine,” Joliet said.

  “You think I’m funny?” Bray asked.

  Hawkins gave his head a slight shake. Drake was an old navy man and as captain of the Magellan, his orders were as though from God himself. Hawkins made a mental note to explain this to Joliet and Bray.

  The captain, to his credit, let their comments slide. “Think you can find him?” Drake asked, looking at Hawkins. The captain knew Hawkins’s past and had no doubt realized that Hawkins intended to look for Kam.

  “There are too many unknowns to give you a definite answer,” Hawkins said. “We don’t know how big the island is, or what kinds of natural dangers there might be.”

  “Natural dangers?” Bray asked.

  Hawkins stepped up to the shattered wheelhouse windshield and looked out at the island. He could smell a hint of something sweet mixed in with the sea air. “Cliffs, sinkholes, sharks. Those kinds of things. If he kept running, it’s possible he injured himself after escaping the water. It seems likely that he was running away from the … shark that took Cahill’s body. If that’s true, we might be lucky and find him not too far from shore.”

  “And if we’re not lucky?” Drake asked.

  “If this island is as big as it looks, and the jungle as thick, it could take some time to find him. Days even. But it is an island. He can only run so far. Our best bet is to take everyone on shore and walk a spaced-out grid until we find him.”

  “Afraid we can’t do that,” Drake said.

  “Sir,” Jones said. “If it would help, my crew can—”

  Drake raised his hand, silencing the engineer. “Kind of you to offer, Jones, but I need you and your crew working on a way to get the ship under manual control. Physically separate the computer system if you can. I want my ship back.”

  “Yes, sir,” Jones said.

  “Are you sure that’s wise?” Joliet asked. “Kam might be able to fix the computers. If something is broken—”

  Drake turned to Joliet. “Unless you can guarantee me that you’ll get Kam back in one piece, and soon, this is the way it’s going to be.”

  “We—I can’t,” Hawkins said. “There are no guarantees with search and rescue.”

  “Jones,” Drake said. “Be gentle.”

  The elder engineer headed for the stairs. “I will. We’ll get started now.”

  Drake stepped up next to Hawkins and they looked at the island together. “I appreciate you leading the search.”

  “Not a problem.”

  Drake gave a confident nod. “You’ll bring him back.”

  Hawkins smiled. It was as close to a pep talk as the gruff captain would offer. “I will,” he said, but then added, “dead or alive.”

  During his years as a ranger, Hawkins had taken part in more than seventy-five search and rescue operations in Yellowstone, most of which he coordinated. Ten of those searches had ended with fatalities. Before every search someone would invariably ask, “Will you find them?” To which he would answer, “yes,” but would then think, “dead or alive.” He’d never expressed that extra bit of information before. For some reason, he felt Drake would appreciate the candor.

  Drake locked eyes with Hawkins. “Can’t ask for anything more. Sometimes people die and there’s nothing we can do about it. Just let me know what you need,” Drake said.

  Hawkins held up a slip of paper upon which he’d written a list of supplies. Nothing extravagant: food, water, bedrolls, first-aid kit, and a radio to communicate with the ship.

  Drake read through the list, but paused halfway through. “Bedrolls?”

  Bray repeated the question. “Wait, bedrolls? You want to sleep out there?”

  “Once we’re out there, we’re not coming back until we find him.”

  Drake crossed his arms. “Sorry, Hawkins, but I want you back on board by the time the sun hugs the horizon.”

  “We’ll lose time and ground,” Hawkins said, losing his patience. “We can only walk so far before turning around. It limits how far w
e can search.”

  “It’s summer,” the captain said. “The days are long. And as you pointed out, this is an island. If he keeps moving, he’ll make it back eventually.”

  “And if he doesn’t?” Joliet asked.

  “Then you better hope Jones figures out how to get my ship back. I don’t need to remind you that we have no propulsion, and no way to contact the outside world. Our food and water will only last so long. You may end up becoming intimately familiar with every nook and cranny of this island.” Drake looked at the list again. “Look, how about this? If you have a solid trail, spend the night. If you’re just running search grids, I want you back.” He offered his hand to Hawkins.

  Hawkins took the captain’s hand and shook it. “Agreed.”

  Drake handed back the list. “Blok is clearing the aft decks. He’ll get you everything you need.”

  “Thank you, Captain,” Hawkins said.

  Drake grunted.

  Joliet rushed toward the outside door. Hawkins followed. Then Bray.

  As they exited the wheelhouse onto the exterior staircase, Bray looked at the jungle and asked, “Are you really planning to stay out there overnight.”

  Hawkins descended the stairs. “Yup.”

  “And if there isn’t a trail? Will we really come back?”

  “There’ll be a trail,” Hawkins said.

  “But what if—”

  Hawkins stopped and turned around. Bray wasn’t understanding. “There will be a trail.” He left out the words “even if we don’t find it,” but Bray seemed to understand.

  “Shit.”

  10.

  The front end of the ten-foot-long inflatable Zodiac boat rose high out of the water as Bray twisted the throttle. Hawkins dove forward, putting his weight on the bow of the Zodiac, but wind and acceleration were working against him.

  “Slow down!” Hawkins shouted, but Bray either couldn’t hear him over the whine of the engine or was ignoring him. Hawkins lifted up his head and peeked over the front end. The distance between the Zodiac and the white sand beach shrank quickly. “You’re going to ground us!”