Chapter 35: rockfall; not amused; found them;


Please note: In the Works Cited portion of Chapter 1 there are suggested music pieces to accompany this and other Chapters to enhance your experience of reading. I hope you enjoy them...

Zuma Rock, Nigeria

Nightfall comes quickly to Zuma Rock and Reese made his way, under cover of darkness, through the brushy landscape. The footing was treacherous there, with tons of shifting scree, sharp broken rock split from the cliff face above. The closer he got to Zuma, the more scree and the bigger the chunks. He'd had to scramble over some of the largest ones, jumbles of slabs near the base of the Rock.

Through binoculars Reese kept track of movements at the opening of the cave – up where the chopper had dropped its winch line. He could still make out shapes moving in the darkness, but he was sure they'd have to wind things up soon. It was too dark to keep going. And the main highway ran right in front of the cave. If the men lit up the inside, anyone on the ground could see them. He was sure they wouldn't want to draw the attention. It'd been risky enough with the chopper hovering at nightfall. If they'd made a mistake, disaster. The blades could have clipped the Rock in a gust of wind, and turned it to a burning wreck at the bottom of the cliffs.

He'd positioned himself where he'd watch for soldiers emerging from the Rock. They'd missed the window for another chopper run to take them off the ledge, and they weren't likely to spend the night in the cave. So he figured they must have a way in and out through the Rock. If he hunkered down outside, he'd see where the opening was when they left.

Sounds carried far at night there. It wasn't long before Reese heard an engine, heavy diesel by the sound, off in the distance. He could see headlights swinging around and then flicking off, so all he could see through the trees then were the running lights on the side of the truck. It looked like some kind of military transport idling on the side closest to the highway. No one got out, so maybe he was right and the truck was here to pick up soldiers.

After an hour, some motion and noise at the base of the Rock caught his eye. He could hear men speaking French, clambering over the rockfall toward the truck. Reese marked the spot on the Rock where they'd come out, and once they were far enough away, he started after it. A black bag with climbing gear hung on his back. There were some tools, long lengths of climbing rope, a harness, and binoculars, plus two liters of water; he'd use the bag later to bring out any finds from the cave.

For now, he needed to watch where he stepped in the darkness. If he was careless and slid on the scree, they'd hear it and come back looking for him. Moonlight was hidden behind high clouds, so as Reese got closer, he aimed a small flashlight to the base of the wall – anyone looking back his way wouldn't see it. He felt along with one hand until it slid into an opening between two of those vertical gouges. If you hadn't known it was there, you would have missed it completely.

Then he clicked the flashlight to a higher setting and aimed it inside. There was a small cave in there, maybe 20 feet deep, with a few flat boulders propped on the floor, like seats. On the far side he could make out stairs carved from the rock, heading up to a hole in the ceiling. No railing. So when he climbed it, he stuck close to the wall side, away from the long drop down to the rock floor.

Above the ceiling the opening became a long run of narrow tunnel just wide enough for one – which meant crawling for long stretches. That called for something better than a flashlight; a headlamp, that he wore above his eyes with straps stretched over the top of his head. It freed up his hands and lit up the space wherever he aimed his eyes. Inside the tunnel, sometimes he crawled on his hands and knees, and sometimes on his belly, pushing himself along with his feet where it was too tight to bend his knees.

The rock walls closed in like a tube around him, barely room for his shoulders and the black bag at times. You couldn't tell up from down, inside. But even in the tunnel, he could tell it sloped upward - from the effort he needed to push himself along. The air inside was hot, dusty, and breathed-out. It smelled like sweat.

In a few places, there were portions that opened into small cave-like areas, where Reese had to stand and climb a wooden ladder to the next run of tunnel. By the time he'd made it to the last run, and found himself looking out into the chamber at the end, he was more than ready to be out of that tunnel. Smeared with dirt, sweating, and thirsty, he was choking on dust and his knee pained from all the crawling. Reese slid the headlamp off and lowered it down to the floor.

He rolled himself out onto the rock floor of the cave and let out a breath. That started a coughing fit and he just laid there on the floor with his knee bent - until thirst made him sit up. There was a wall there in front of him, with a porthole opening in it, and he leaned back against that. From the black bag, he fished out the water bottle and poured some on his head and face.

Dirty water dripped down to his neck and chest. But it felt good after the tunnel. He wiped a wet hand across his mouth and took a swig of the water, swishing it in his mouth and spitting it to one side. Then again, another swish and spit. It helped clear the dust before he took a long drink from the bottle. For all the heat in the tunnel getting here, at least this room was cooler. He sat for a good long while, nursing his knee, and drinking.

Behind him, on the far side of the porthole wall, he could sense a larger open space there. Every sound he made echoed. This must be the end of the tunnel, and where the Nigerian was hiding. But he wasn't here now. And if Reese didn't get busy and find something to help them, they were going to lose him. He capped the bottle and slid it back into the bag.

"Let's get to it, then," he said out loud to himself, and pushed himself up from the floor.

This wasn't good. He could barely stand on his right knee.

With the setting lowered on the flashlight, he aimed through the porthole, angling the beam to the back so it wouldn't spill out the cave opening at the front. A table sat in the center of the largest space, with boxes sitting around it on the floor. The soldiers must still be packing up the place, then.

He stepped around the porthole wall into the main room. Toward the back, there was another opening he could just make out in the dim light and he limped over there next. It was a small room carved from the rock, with a metal frame for a cot inside. Its mattress was tossed on the floor and there were some crates on the floor, too, with clothing and a few books inside.

Reese sat on the cot and leaned forward to look through the crates. The person who wore this clothing must be average height and slender, he thought. And a man's sandal nearby was smaller than his own shoe. In the crate with the books, Reese lifted each one, riffling the pages, checking for anything stuck between, or any handwriting that might give a clue who he was. In one of the books, on the inside front cover, there was something written on the page, but he couldn't make out what in this light. He slid the thin volume into a cargo pocket on his thigh.

Reese aimed the flashlight around the room, but there wasn't much else to see. The mattress from the cot was there and he lifted it to check beneath it. Other than the bed and crates, no furniture in the room. A quick check of the ceiling for any hiding places showed smooth rock everywhere. He tapped on the frame of the bed with his flashlight, listening for any dull sound. One of the legs didn't sound hollow.

Reese stood and tipped the frame on its side. He pulled his knife from a pocket and scraped at a wood plug on the end of the leg. In there, he found a wad of papers rolled up and pushed inside. He took a quick look at the papers and smiled, then folded them into a packet that would fit in the cargo pocket on his thigh.

Once he'd finished re-setting the bedroom, Reese went back out to the main room, and skirted along the wall to the next opening. The kitchen area. The place was wrecked inside, everything ripped open or smashed. A tiny cupboard lay smashed on the floor; bags of flour were slashed and dumped. He saw a few pill bottles scattered among the debris, too, but nothing that looked like a prescription bottle with the man's name on it.

A large, heavy crock sat on a wooden frame in a corner, the only thing left intact. He peeked inside and there was water in it. The sides were cool to touch. Cool water. Sounded good right now, but he decided he wouldn't risk it. Safer to drink from his own bottle instead.

For the next few minutes Reese lifted each piece of debris in the kitchen, anything that could be hiding something beneath it. Then he carefully returned it to the same spot he'd found it, so no one would suspect someone had been there. He was careful not to make any footprints in the flour, either, or drag it out to the rest of the cave, where his boots would leave his prints on the floor.

He squatted down, but searing pain shot through his knee like lightning.

Reese bounced back up to get the weight off it and reached down to grab it. The knee was swollen now - anywhere he touched it, it throbbed. He'd bent the left one all the way, but the right wouldn't take the pressure. Reese stood there on one leg, with the right one bent so he didn't weight it. Damn! He just needed a few minutes with his flashlight, low down where the soldiers might have missed something. If he could just gut it out, he'd be done, and the only thing left to search then was the main room.

Reese lowered himself with his hands, down onto his left knee, with the right leg out behind him. The stretch at the back of the knee pulled hard and that fired the pain again, like a shriek in his knee. He had to bend it. Beads of sweat rolled down his face and he grimaced. Just get it done he said to himself. And he leaned forward with the flashlight, stretching the right leg even more. A pained sound escaped from him into the cave, but he held his position.

Something shiny caught his eye. It was down low, on the underside of the wooden frame that held the crock. Reese leaned closer and aimed the light there. It was something flat, taped to the underside of the wood. If they'd wrecked the crock like everything else in there, the frame would have tipped and the soldiers would have found it.

Reese got to his feet and limped to the crock. With one hand he reached underneath and tried to pull the object off the wood. It took some prying with his knife to get it to release, but when he saw it, he broke into a relieved smile. It was a thin stack of CDs – compact discs, with the letters BKUP on the top one. Harold was going to be very happy.

Clearing, South of Zuma Rock

Kara watched as they unloaded the box from the chopper bay. Inside were the computer, and all of the peripherals their prisoner had had inside the cave. The soldiers showed them video of the setup inside – impressive for such a remote location.

"Take it apart. Take everything," Greer had told them. The soldiers made shuttle runs back and forth, packing and ferrying boxes from their prisoner's home base there in Zuma Rock. Greer had plans to send them to Abuja, too, to take any valuables from the school.

Greer and Kara were finding it difficult to work out here in such a remote location. So things were rapidly coming to a final decision. Their prisoner had given them a story, and a name. He claimed the man that Greer had come to find, the man Greer had known twenty years ago, was dead. Olawale had gone to prison and died there. And this younger man, their prisoner, had taken Olawale's place, his name, even passed himself off as the older man - to take over his business. Olawale had worked for years in Nigeria's cyber-crime world. If anyone knew the key members of that world, it would have been him. Greer was counting on Olawale to give him a name. He was after a ghost, a renegade, someone who'd evaded detection for years, and Greer needed his name.

He believed this renegade could be coerced to help them break the hold Harold Finch and his Team had on Samaritan. If he could find the man, he wouldn't have to count on finding Harold Finch in time. At least, not while Samaritan was down. Olawale would have told them who he was, and once they knew his identity, it wouldn't have been long before they had him. Greer had seen his work first-hand, back in the testing days before Samaritan was ready. But now, with Samaritan going fully online in weeks, there was very little time left. They had to get Samaritan back before the government discovered the sabotage. If reliability was questioned, the government would turn elsewhere, and all of their plans would fail.

Their prisoner could hold the key to finding that renegade. Or maybe, Kara thought, he was the renegade himself. They needed proof that his story was true, so Kara had returned to Abuja to make some inquiries, and to contact their colleague, Martine, still standing by in Dakar. From there in Senegal she had access to any services they might need. She'd been the one to arrange the tactical team out of Cameroon, through one of her French contacts in England. With Samaritan down, they'd had to go back to the old way of doing business. Unfortunately, most things took much longer the old way.

Greer was not amused. When Kara returned without answers to their questions, he'd left and gone looking for Mbah, Commander of the tactical team. She followed after in case things got ugly. Kara didn't trust Mbah. And with Greer in the mood he was now, something could happen between them.

She could hear their voices from Mbah's tent; she pulled back the flap at the door and bent down to enter. Mbah's face was glistening, and his eyes were glaring at Greer. Kara's entrance into his private tent didn't help.

"It's out of the question! No flight to England. We're not flying there!"

Kara winced, expecting the worst, and turned to Greer, her hand moving to her weapon to defend him. But rather than ratcheting the conflict, Greer changed tactics. He took a more conciliatory tone, and with that voice, that mesmerizing voice for which he was known:

"Of course. We realize that you've come a long way on short notice, and we've asked a great deal of you and your men. There should be something in it for you." And Kara watched Mbah's eyes. The glare began to soften, and she watched as Greer turned his resistance into a conversation about 'remuneration', what the appropriate amount might be for a military flight out of Nigeria to, say, Europe.

England?

No, it would have to be France.

France, then.

Inside Zuma Rock

For the main room, Reese wouldn't use his flashlight. The light would pour out the opening at the front of the cave, and someone would see it. Slow-going then, without any light. He limped the entire space in a pattern, checking for anything the soldiers missed. There wasn't much left now. A table in the center must have held the computer, judging by some of the wiring left behind. He checked under the table by feel; nothing left taped there. Then Reese wondered where the power source might be, inside solid rock like this. At night, in the dark, he wouldn't be able to trace it.

The soldiers had packed whatever equipment had been there, and pushed it out to the ledge at the cave opening. A waiting helicopter had pulled it off the ledge and winched it in. It had flown right over the top of him at nightfall.

Reese looked up to the cave opening. He limped forward to the wall next to it. There were scrape marks in the dust and rock on the ledge where the soldiers had pushed the heavy box. A breeze blew in and tousled his hair. Cooler out there, now that night had come.

Reese looked out at the view. Breath-taking if he were a tourist. The long ribbon of highway out of Abuja stretched north and south below, eerily dark now. Headlights appeared then disappeared, like tiny fireflies in the distance - but they were few and far between. Far off on the southern hills were the lights of Abuja, nestled in what looked like a dark valley from up here.

He looked out at the landscape from this vantage point. So little light it was hard to make out the lay of the land. Then his eye caught something. A tiny cluster of lights off to the South, surrounded by dense darkness.

Hadn't the chopper come from the South?

Reese grabbed his bag. The binoculars. Now he was pleased he'd dragged them along through the tunnel. Reese lifted them to his eyes, and found the blur in the distance. He thumbed the focus wheel and brought the light into sharp focus in the glass.

A fire, big, like a bonfire.

And near the fire, the shape of a chopper, parked on the grass. With no landing lights around, they'd used the fire to signal where they were. From high up in Zuma Rock, he could see down into their camp.

Tents. Trucks.

His pulse quickened.

He'd found them.