Shadow Tyrants

TWENTY-ONE

Raven Malloy watched Juan fall to the ground from the trio of shots, but she let Eddie and Linc tend to him. She needed to go after the woman with MacD. His crossbow was already reloaded.

They took off down the beach and then into the jungle, where the woman’s footprints disappeared into the trees. The dense foliage provided cover for her, but it would also make it difficult for her to move quickly and silently.

Raven stopped and put up her hand. They both listened for the sound of crunching foliage, but everything was quiet.

“Ah saved her life,” MacD whispered. “Why did she shoot the Chairman?”

Raven thought about the plain jumpsuit the woman wore. “She might have been a passenger on that plane, which puts her here for a year and half. She doesn’t know who her enemies are anymore.”

“Or who her friends are.”

“We need to find her before she runs into her real enemies.”

MacD nodded to her right. “She stopped about a hundred yards that way.”

Raven looked in that direction, but she couldn’t see anything. “How do you know?”

“Ah’ve been a hunter all my life,” he said with a cockeyed smile. “Ah could track a hummingbird through a hurricane.”

Raven shrugged. MacD was always saying stuff like that. Not being a hunter herself, she couldn’t tell if he was right. She’d grown up on military bases, and then worked in the Military Police after joining the Army, spending most of her time tracking people using clues of a different kind. But one of the things she’d learned since being added to the Oregon crew was that her new colleagues were experts in their fields. If MacD said the woman was hiding behind a tree a hundred yards away, Raven accepted it without question.

“Let me talk to her,” she said. “I don’t think your kind of charm is going to work in this situation.” As an investigator, one of Raven’s specialties was talking to people and gaining their trust.

“Whatever you say,” MacD said. “But Ah’m going to keep an eye on you.” He raised the crossbow.

“Keep an eye on my six,” she said, pointing in the other direction. “Those gunshots may have drawn unwanted attention.”

He nodded, and she crept forward.

She went fifty yards and stopped, still far out of range of a person not trained in how to use a handgun.

“Miss,” she called out. “My name is Raven Malloy. My team and I aren’t here to hurt you.”

There was no response, but now Raven could see a little bit of a black jumpsuit moving behind a palm tree.

“I know you’re scared. I would be, too. We know that you’ve been stuck on this island for a long time. We saw the plane. But you’ll be safer with us than you would be with the friends of that man who was about to kill you.”

“Stay away!” the woman called back. “I know about Bedtime!”

Raven moved a little closer. “I don’t know what that means. We want to help you.”

“You’re here to kill us all!”

“We don’t want to kill anyone.”

“You killed that guard.”

“My squadmate did that with good reason,” Raven said. “Wasn’t the guard going to shoot you?”

“Well… yes.”

“Then I’d say we just happened to have good timing. Come out, and we’ll take you home.”

There was a rustle of bushes, and the woman emerged holding the pistol at her side. She was of Indian descent, but she spoke with an American accent.

“Either you’re lying and you’d find me eventually because I have no place to go on this speck of an island or you’re telling the truth, which makes more sense because you could have easily shot us both back there. Am I wrong to hope?”

Raven walked forward, her weapon slung across her back. “You’re not wrong. What’s your name?”

“Lyla Dhawan. Where am I?”

“An island west of India.”

Lyla paused as that sunk in. “But your accent isn’t Indian. Are you American?”

Raven nodded and took the pistol before shaking her hand.

“Who are you people? Special Forces?”

“Something like that,” Raven said. “We got a tip that something wasn’t right on the island, so we came to check it out. We were told it was inhabited by a hostile indigenous tribe.”

“Apparently, they died off in a disease outbreak ten years ago, but nobody found out. My captors let the Indian government think it was still populated by natives.”

MacD emerged from the jungle. “It won’t be populated by anyone much longer. We should get going… Hi, Ah’m MacD.”

Lyla was surprised to see him appear out of nowhere, but she said, “Hello.” Then a stricken expression suddenly crossed her face. “Oh, no! That was your friend back on the beach, wasn’t it? I killed him!”

“I doubt that,” Raven said. “Let’s go make sure.”

The two of them escorted Lyla back to the beach, keeping their heads on the swivel for any more guards.

When they reached the others, Juan was on his feet, walking toward them with Linc and Eddie.

“My fault,” Juan said. “I don’t look like a rescuer at the moment, do I?”

Raven introduced Lyla to them.

“I’m so sorry about shooting you,” Lyla said. “I didn’t know you were the good guys.”

“You’re not a bad shot,” Juan said, massaging the area over a hole in his vest. “One of them got me right in the chest. Luckily, my body armor is rated for pistol fire.” He said nothing about the slice another bullet had taken out of his collar just inches from his neck.

“You mentioned something called Bedtime,” Raven said to Lyla. “What did you mean?”

“It’s a protocol for eliminating all evidence on the island of what we’ve been doing here. That guard was about to begin carrying it out when you saved me.”

“Then we need to get you out of here,” Juan said.

“Those gunshots might be bringing more guards this way,” Eddie said as he watched the path from the jungle.

“Not right away,” Lyla said. “They’ll probably think it was me being executed. We probably have a little time before they send someone out to check.”

“Is it just you on the island,” Juan said, “or are there other prisoners as well in that building?”

“Building? Oh, the shed.” Lyla nodded. “There are nineteen of us here. They’re going to be killed if we don’t get them out of the facility.”

Linc looked at her with a puzzled expression. “Facility? You mean, they’ve been keeping nineteen of you in that little shed for over a year?”

Lyla shook her head. “The shed is only the top part. It’s where they keep the storage containers and tractor. There’s a whole underground complex on this island. And if I understand the Bedtime protocol correctly, they’re going to blow up the entire place with the prisoners still inside.”