Island 731

11.

Ten feet into the jungle, Kam’s footprints included deep, round heel marks. This was good news because they would catch up to him more quickly if he was walking, but also added one more layer of confusion to the young intern’s disappearance. If he’d entered the jungle in a panicked state, why had he stopped running as soon as he’d no longer been visible? Since then, the footprints revealed a calm, measured gate, which stayed on the muddy path.

This is going to be easy, Hawkins thought. Howie GoodTracks had taught him to notice the minutest aberrations in the natural world. Every scuff, scratch, indentation, or patch of grass bent in the wrong direction told a story. The depth of a footprint in mud could reveal the target’s size, weight, and sex. When tracking people, the gait, or distance between steps, and what part of the foot sank deepest revealed a person’s mind-set—calmly strolling, running flat out, or ambling randomly, like most lost people do. The angle of a bent branch could even hint at the target’s speed and, based on the freshness of the break, when they’d passed through. Skills like these weren’t taught in many schools, and certainly not by people like GoodTracks, who didn’t just know these things, but lived them. With Kam not hiding his path, most of these skills wouldn’t be necessary, but if Kam wandered off the trail, Hawkins would be able to follow him just as easily.

Twenty minutes into their rapid-paced hike, the trail rose up a steep grade. They slowed as they followed the path up, occasionally needing to scale short rock walls. At the top of one such stony rise, Hawkins leaned over the edge and reached his hand down to Joliet.

She took his hand and quickly scaled the eight-foot wall. At the top, she sat with her legs hanging over the edge and caught her breath. Hawkins sat next to her and opened his pack. After taking a swig of water, he offered her the bottle and she helped herself. The air in the jungle felt thick enough to drink and their bodies were saturated. But they still sweated in the late-afternoon heat and needed to drink often.

Hawkins took the bottle from Joliet when she offered it back to him, took one more swig, and capped it. Neither had said a word as they followed the path to this point, but the silence wasn’t uncomfortable. They’d often spent quiet days on the deck of the Magellan, reading books, writing, or just catching some rays. It was one of the things he liked most about her, but the silence was beginning to feel uncomfortable.

Joliet spoke first. “What are you thinking?”

“You don’t want to know,” Hawkins answered. And he believed it. During the last twenty minutes, he’d allowed his imagination to run wild, filling in the blanks of Kam’s disappearance and working out several different scenarios. Some were farfetched and easily dismissed. Others fit, but seemed unlikely, which was unfortunate because they had happy endings. But there was one scenario that nagged at him. The sequence of events lined up and the evidence seemed to support it. Unfortunately, that scenario wouldn’t have a happy ending.

“Can’t be as bad as what I’m thinking,” she replied.

Hawkins knew she wouldn’t give up. Her dogged persistence in all things was one of her attributes that he respected, but with which he often felt annoyed. Still, he’d learned that giving in right away kept things pleasant. “Okay, here’s my theory. Kam and Cahill had some kind of falling out. Best guess is that Kam somehow screwed up the computers by accident. When Cahill confronted him, he ran and ended up on deck. When Cahill followed into the storm, he was knocked overboard. Kam made it back inside and hid until the storm ended. Fearing discipline or even legal action because of Cahill’s death, Kam fled to the island. He wasn’t running from a shark, which is why he ran along the shoreline, rather than straight across it. He ran because he didn’t want to be seen. Concealed in the jungle, he slowed to a walk. Kam feels responsible for Cahill’s death, and possibly for screwing up the ship. That’s my best theory.”

Joliet sagged. “I came up with the same thing. Do you really think Kam would run? If it was an accident—”

“There is the possibility that it wasn’t an accident,” Hawkins said. “That their confrontation on deck ended in violence.”

Joliet’s eyes widened. “You think he murdered Cahill?”

“Not premeditated. But if they fought, and that’s what caused Cahill to fall overboard, it’s still manslaughter.”

Joliet shook her head. “I just can’t picture Kam doing something like that. He’s such a sweet kid, not to mention half the size of Cahill.”

“People do stupid things,” Hawkins replied, thinking of the drunk man who’d been gored by a bison after walking up to the sleeping giant and slapping its snout. “Was Cahill a drinker?” It was an awful thing to hope for, but he wanted Kam to be innocent, too.

“I’ve never seen him drink,” Joliet said. “Not even before we left.”

Captain Drake had taken the crew out to a restaurant the night before they’d left. Hawkins tried to remember that night now, but his own drinking fogged the memory. He did remember flirting with Joliet, and being shot down, but had no memory of Cahill imbibing.

“You didn’t drink that night, either, did you?” he asked.

“Nope, and I remember every word, story, and grope.”

Hawkins froze. He slowly turned to her. “I didn’t…?”

Joliet’s serious expression softened with a smile. “Don’t worry, Ranger. Wasn’t you.” She stood up, brushed off her shorts, and straightened her tight, blue T-shirt.

As she started up the trail again, he stood and gave chase. “Wait, who was it then? If it was Bray, I’m going to—”

Joliet stopped and raised an open palm in his direction. He fell silent and stood next to her. She pointed up the steep, jungle-covered hillside.

“I don’t see anything,” he whispered.

“Between the trees near the top,” she said. “There’s something gray.”

It took him a moment, but when he saw it, the flat gray surface stood out. “The hell?”

His hand went to his waist, feeling the handle of his hunting knife. Its presence put him at ease. “Let’s check it out.”

Following the path, they wound their way up the hillside. As they neared the top, the incline grew steeper and the path became a series of switchbacks. Hawkins didn’t like that they had to pass in front of the aberration several times. Something about it made him wary, and every pass left him feeling more exposed. Vulnerable.

But nothing happened. They followed the last path to the top where it wrapped around a stand of trees. Hawkins’s hand went to his knife again as they rounded the palms, but when he got his first look at what waited for them, he knew the weapon wasn’t needed.

Vines covered much of the gray concrete, but given its location at the top of the hill, Hawkins could see the structure for what it was. “It’s a pillbox.”

“A what?”

“Pillbox. From World War Two. The Japanese must have occupied this island.” Hawkins stepped through the open backside of the concrete octagon. A long, thin opening stretched across the side facing the hill. He looked out and could see patches of the path below. “Anyone advancing up the hillside would have had a hell of a time reaching the top without being cut to pieces by machine gun fire. They probably had a lot of the brush and trees cleared away back then.”

“If this island was occupied during the war,” Joliet said, “why isn’t it on any maps?”

“If the island was never discovered by the U.S., the Japanese stationed here probably just deserted and went home when the war ended.” Hawkins searched the small space for WWII relics, but found nothing. “Looks like they cleaned up shop when they left, too. They didn’t leave a thing behind.”

“Aside from a giant concrete octagon, you mean?”

“Right.” Hawkins turned to a pile of dirt and leaf litter on the side of the room. A splotch of red color next to the debris caught his attention. He knelt down and picked it up. The thick cloth was easily identifiable as a piece of baseball cap. The remnant of a B confirmed Hawkins’s suspicion that it was Kam’s Red Sox cap. That it was ruined was cause for concern—the kid rarely parted from it—but it being here was also the first real evidence that Kam had made it to the island and not drowned in the storm.

“That’s Kam’s hat!” Joliet said, taking the fabric from him.

“Yeah, but why is it—”

A loud squeak made him jump back and Joliet shouted in surprise as a black shape shot across the floor and out the door.

“What… was that?” she asked, catching her breath.

“A rat,” he said. “I think.”

Joliet inched toward the open door, looking for the rodent. “Looks like the Japanese left something else behind, too. Where people go, rats follow.”

“Mmm,” Hawkins said, but he’d only heard half of what she said. He walked back to the window and looked down the hill, scratching his chin.

“What is it?” Joliet asked.

“The rat,” he said.

“You don’t like rats?”

“Rat,” he said. “Singular. Rats tend to live in colonies. Sometimes several hundred in a single colony. And each female in the colony can have sixty young, per year, half of which might be females. Eleven weeks after birth, those females start cranking out young of their own. On an island like this, left to breed for the past seventy years, their population should have expanded until the place was overrun.”

“But it’s not,” Joliet said. “This is the first we’ve seen.”

Hawkins placed his hands on the windowsill, watching the jungle floor below for movement. “And there are plenty of food sources out there. Rats aren’t picky. It’s possible that their population exploded and suffered a massive die-off because of starvation, but that still doesn’t explain the lack of a colony. Rats live just two years. For there to be one rat, there needs to be others, and we run into the colony explosion scenario again, unless…”

“Unless what?”

“Unless something is keeping them in check.”

“What do you mean?”

“There’s a reason Yellowstone is never overrun with rats. They’re there—they’re everywhere—but their population is controlled—” He looked her in the eyes. “By predators. Mountain lions, wolves, foxes, lynxes, bobcats, eagles, hawks, owls, and a variety of other predators keep the rodent and rabbit populations in check.”

“So what? The seagulls here have a taste for rat?” Joliet said with a grin.

“No,” he said, “to keep a rat population down to where they’re not scurrying everywhere requires a healthy population of a number of different predators.”

“How do you know there are different predators?”

“If there were only one species of predator, they would face the same overpopulation issue as the rat. They’d be everywhere. Predators are kept in check by competition. Other hunters.”

Joliet’s smile faded. “How come we’re not seeing them then?”

“Because they’re predators,” Hawkins said, eyes still on the hillside below. “They don’t want to be seen.”