The Soul Collectors

75

Knowles's gruff voice barked across her headset: 'Mount up, people.'

Darby stood, crouching forward, and grabbed an O-ring on the ceiling for balance.

'Our FLIR picked up a collection of warm spots,' Knowles said. 'These images aren't clear because of our current distance from the site and because of the tree cover. We don't want to risk flying in for a closer look and alerting anyone who may be down there waiting for our arrival. These warm spots aren't moving.'

Nobody said it but everyone was thinking the same thing: bodies. Buried bodies. A possible mass grave site.

'Bravo One, McCormick and Farrell,' Knowles said. 'We're dropping you south of the target. Proceed ahead a thousand metres to what appears to be a clearing. Bravo Two, Clark and Reggie, we'll drop you north of the location. All of you are to treat this as though you're stepping into a potential hot zone. In other words, be aware of traps. Take nothing for granted. We'll be monitoring the area and radioing updates. Make sure you all do the same. Questions?'

There were none.

Knowles gripped the side door handle. Darby reached down and grabbed the thick rope with her gloved hands.

The aft door slid open. Cold wind rushed inside the cabin and the engine roared against her ears as she moved to the opened doorway, which looked out on a black sky peppered with bright stars. She affixed the rope to her harness, threw the dangling end out of the copter and stepped outside, on to the railing. Got her boots planted firmly and, gripping the rope, leaned backwards into the air, waiting for her partner, Farrell.

She gave her zip-line a final check. Looked good. She flipped the night-vision goggles down across her eyes and in the bright ambient green glow of light saw that Farrell had got himself into position. A bend of the knees and she pushed herself off the railing, falling through the awful dark, her stomach jumping with anticipation and worry.

She kept her grip steady as she whisked past leaves and tree branches. She saw the rushing ground, slowed her descent and hit it softly. She released the rope, and as it climbed back up and into the air she noticed she could barely hear the copter above the wind whistling through the trees and shaking the branches.

Her partner hit the ground a moment later, a little more roughly. He stumbled and she had to help him release his zip-line.

Standing behind a tree, she scanned the surrounding area, saw nothing but trees and leafy ground. They searched the flat and bumpy areas ahead, and then the trees and ground and boulders for any moving shapes.

She hand-signalled to Farrell and he nodded and stepped out from behind a tree. Up came his HK submachine gun with a silencer and flash suppressor. They fell into step with each other, their backs nearly touching, and moved forward in a two-by-two formation, checking the ground before each step, the dark forest lit up by their night-vision goggles, the wind camouflaging the sounds of twigs and branches snapped by their boots.

It was slow work. Several minutes later she heard Clark from Bravo Two whisper over her headset: 'Command, this is Bravo Two. We've discovered a path east of the clearing. Permission to investigate.'

'Permission granted,' Knowles replied. 'Proceed, Bravo Two.'

Ten more minutes and up ahead she spotted the clearing she had been instructed to reach.

Definitely man-made. Someone had removed the trees and stumps in a space roughly the size of a basketball court, the ground covered with snapped branches, some looking as if they had been stabbed into the ground and -

Darby took another few steps before hand-signalling to Farrell to stop. She pointed ahead to the clearing and Farrell looked down the length of her arm and she heard him mumble, 'Jesus.'

She called it in: 'Command, this is Bravo One. I have a partial visual on the clearing. I'm seeing at least three hands sticking out of the ground. They don't seem to be moving, but I won't know until I get a closer look.'

A short pause, and then Knowles replied: 'Acknowledged. We don't have a visual so walk us through it. Proceed with caution. I repeat, proceed with caution.'

You don't have to tell me twice, she thought. The whole scene smacked of a Grand Guignol performance, only she wasn't dealing with theatre of the macabre. These hands belonged to real people, not actors. These people weren't pretending to be dead, they were dead.

Jack Casey's wife and daughter flashed through her mind and Darby wondered with a sickening dread if one or both had been buried somewhere up ahead. She advanced slowly, a single word worming its way through her thoughts: trap.

These people worked too hard to remain hidden in the shadows — and had done so successfully — so why would they bury their victims with their hands sticking out of the ground for us to find?

Two tight, bright beams emerged at the opposite end of the clearing — the path Bravo Two had mentioned. She could see Clark and Reggie sweeping the beams of their tactical lights across the ground.

Clark's voice spoke over her headset: 'Command, we've come across a hatch of some sort. It's covered in… a camouflage blanket you could call it. It's made of these fake leaves, like the kind my wife buys at craft stores. I don't know how else to describe it.'

Darby reached the edge of clearing and saw a sea of hands sticking out from underneath the dirt — there were dozens of them hanging in the air, lifeless.

'Hatch is locked with a padlock and chains,' Clark said. 'The chain's got some slack so I think we can lift it up enough to take a look and see what's down there.'

Darby glanced at the path. The black guy, Reggie, lifted up the hatch — a big door mounted against the earth, the top covered by a camouflage blanket of fake leaves. She heard a rattle of chains as the door rose about a foot and then came to a jarring stop.

Clark, down on his knees, moved his tactical light through the foot-long gap.

'There's a ladder,' Clark said. 'Goes down to a hall made of stone.' Coughing and gagging sounds followed, and then he said, 'Christ it reeks like an outhouse. I'm seeing candles inside lanterns and they're hanging on the stone walls.'

Darby thought about the walls behind Sarah Casey's Plexiglas cell as Knowles said, 'Anyone down there?'

'Negative, Command. If we're going to go down there, we'll need bolt cutters.'

'I've got them,' Darby said. 'Standby, Bravo Two. Command, I've reached the clearing.'

Darby clipped her weapon to the front of her vest. Straight ahead she spotted a set of hands, the thin wrists bound together by rope, the fingers crooked, broken.

She flipped up her night-vision goggles. She covered her mike as she leaned into Farrell and said, 'Give me some light.'

Farrell turned on the tactical light mounted underneath his HK and focused the beam on the bound hands. Darby leaned forward and grabbed the wrists. She pulled hard, then staggered and tumbled sideways against the ground.