Chapter 12:

Sarah dumped some water on the back of his head to wake him. Chuck gasped and flailed his arms and sputtered for a moment before he gathered himself enough to glare up at her.

"Morning, sunshine," she said. "Time to track down that WiFi signal."

"You couldn't find a different way to wake me up?"

She shrugged. "I tried nibbling your ear while you slept. You just mumbled something happy sounding and tried to go back to spooning. I thought it might get weird to escalate much beyond that, so. Cold water."

Chuck grumbled under his breath and looked around for his clothes. They were missing again this morning.

Things between them remained... unquantified... and Chuck was beginning to think that maybe her continued reluctance to broach the subject was laden with hidden meaning. The night before, they had decided to wait until morning to set out in search of the WiFi transmitter, and one thing had lead to another. More than once, as it happened, but neither of them could seem to come up with the courage to ask, much less answer, the big questions in the cold light of day.

Chuck's phone was back up to about 40 percent battery, according to the readout, but the WiFi signal was trickier than he thought.

His iPhone's standard WiFi detection only gave him a signal indicator in bars, not in percent, and remained stubbornly at 0 bars no matter where he went on the beach, which would make using it as a dowsing rod of sorts a little inefficient. Sarah unwrapped an energy bar and nibbled unenthusiastically while Chuck worked. His sideline programming iPhone apps came in handy, and it only took him fifteen minutes to hack in some truly ugly code.

"So," Sarah said when he was finished. "What did all that mad typing accomplish?"

He turned the phone so she could see. "Instead of the regular app, this one re-purposes the GPS receiver and the WiFi antenna, and okay..." he paused and changed tactics when her eyes started to glaze over, "Imagine that WiFi signal is magnetic north; I just turned my phone into a compass."

"Oh, cool," Sarah said, turning in place slightly to test things out. "So we just follow the arrow?"

"Yup."

She smooched him on the cheek and grinned toothily. "Anybody ever tell you how awesome you are?"

He laughed. "Yes, but I prefer it coming from you than from Captain Awesome."

"Who?"

"Ellie's fiance."

"And you actually call your sister's boyfriend..."

"Captain Awesome, yes," Chuck said. "Because everything he does is awesome. White-water rafting, skydiving, bungee jumping. Flossing."

Sarah laughed and shook her head. "Yes, well, right now I'd settle for being able to brush my teeth."

"I know," Chuck said accusingly. "You packed everything else. Next time toss some Colgate in the emergency backpack, will ya?"

She stuck her tongue out at him and they set off into the jungle.

Using Chuck's cellphone WiFi signal strength to sniff out the other people on the island, whoever they were, wasn't as easy as it seemed. Of course, nothing had gone strictly to plan for him this week. After only a hundred yards following the arrow on his custom-built iPhone, they ran into a ravine. The jungle just stopped for ten feet or so, falling away in a knife-edged abyss of bare stone in either direction. "What the hell kind of island is this," Chuck demanded, "Cliffs, mountains, ravines? What's next a desert?"

"In all fairness to the island, Chuck? "This is probably just more of that first stone formation."

Chuck grumbled under his breath. "Still doesn't help. How many extra miles are we going to have to walk now?"

"You're just grumpy because you didn't eat breakfast. Have an energy bar, and I'll try and think of something."

Chuck peered down the ravine and sighed, and rooted in his backpack. He had never much cared for the things, and finding them his only sure food supply wasn't improving his opinion of them. By the time he was finished, Sarah came tromping back out of the jungle, a spool of freshly cut vine looped around her body.

"You sure you weren't a lumberjack in a previous life?"

"Please," she said, "All I did was cut down a vine."

"To make a rope bridge out of!"

"Yeah, but now that I've got the thing, I don't really know how to do this," she admitted.

"Oh, right. Huh," Chuck said. "We could make a lasso and throw it over that stump."

"Great!" Sarah said. "You know how to make a lasso?"

Chuck seemed to deflate. "I was hoping you'd know. Can't we just make a huge slipknot in the vine?"

Sarah took the spool of vine off and played with the ends. "I don't know, if the bark or skin or whatever cracks it might not support our weight. It might be safer in the long run to just go around."

She frowned and peered across the ravine, judging the distance again. "Oh! I've got an idea."

"Lay it on me."

"Easier to just show you." Sarah unspooled the vine, counting off every loop. "I think we've got about fifty feet of vine, that stump can't be twenty feet away, you think?"

"Closer to fifteen, I'd guess. I think I'm catching on to your plan. It should work."

"Good. So I'm not crazy?"

Chuck laughed. "I never said that. But this will probably work."

She glared at him briefly, and began playing out the vine in a long 'U' shape with the open end facing away from the ravine. With Chuck holding on securely to the loose ends behind her, Sarah flipped the 'bottom' half of the 'U' back over the both of them, took a quick couple steps toward the edge and whipped the center section of vine over the ravine. It fell a couple of feet short of the stump, and Chuck and Sarah had a quick brainstorming session while he reeled the line back in.

It took them three more tries before they got the vine hooked over the stump. From there Chuck and Sarah tied the two loose ends that remained on their side of the ravine around the boles of sturdy-looking nearby trees.

Of course then, they couldn't agree who should go first. "I'm heavier. I should go first in case the vine breaks."

"I'm lighter," Sarah said. "And if it breaks it'll be on this side, where the knots are tied. It'll be easier if I'm already across to toss the vine back to you."

"And what if it breaks and you fall in the ravine?"

"Look, it's not even going to be an issue. If anyone's going to break the vine it's going to be you."

"Still," Chuck said. "He really didn't want to make her go across the untested vine-bridge first, but judging by the set of her jaw, his arguments hadn't been good enough."

And so Sarah inched her way across the ravine, upside down, legs wrapped around one line, and hanging with both hands from the other to spread her weight across the doubled vine. She made it across with little trouble.

Chuck frowned at the vines he needed to traverse and shook his head, shrugging out of his pack. "Here, let's not tempt fate, huh," he said and tossed his pack across the chasm. "Catch!"

Sarah cursed and had to lunge forward to snag one of the shoulder straps when his throw came up the teeniest bit short. "Sorry," Chuck grimaced, but she waved it off and set the pack aside.

"Don't throw the rifle, okay?"

Chuck nodded and attempted to duplicate the fairly acrobatic way that Sarah had crossed the gap, but he was notably heavier than she was, and his hands quickly started cramping up. He stopped, swaying in the air with the vine looped in the crook of his elbow as he caught his breath. "Uh, Chuck?" Sarah said. "You might want to cut the break short? Looks like the knots are coming loose."

Sarah leaned out as far as she could and grabbed hold of him as soon as he came in range, tugging him off the makeshift bridge just as the vine parted. They landed in a heap on the edge of the ravine. Sarah grunted.
"Ow, sorry," Chuck said, pushing up so he wasn't crushing her anymore. "You okay?"

"Yeah," she said. "But no more rope bridges unless we take a class or something."

"I concur."

From there, the little arrow on the WiFi compass took them deeper into the jungle. Thick underbrush and vines stretched across the way, and Chuck and Sarah had to take turns with the heavy survival knife hacking away at the vegetation in order to make any headway. It was sweaty work, even trying to skirt around the heaviest concentrations of vines, and before they had gone a mile, both Chuck and Sarah had emptied their canteens. Chuck held his canteen upside down over his mouth and sighed when the last drop fell out onto his tongue. He wiped perspiration off his forehead and glanced back at the trail they had carved through the jungle. It was hard to see that there even was a trail, and he scowled to see it.

"How the heck are we going to get back?" he grumbled.

Sarah shifted her shotgun on its strap to get more comfortable. "If nothing else, we can follow the coastline around. It'll take longer, but... well, maybe not, if we're going through heavy jungle like this much longer. Still. There's got to be water, maybe shelter or something at this place that's transmitting WiFi, right? Maybe even, dare I say it? Air conditioning? Somebody will come back to check on the place eventually."

Chuck groaned. "Give me the knife."

"Okay," she said. "Why?"

"I think I'm getting a second wind. You said the magic words. Air conditioning!"

The jungle began to thin out in another couple hundred feet, and they didn't have to spend as much time hacking at vines. But Chuck noticed a decided incline to make up for it. He glanced at his phone and nodded. The signal strength was up to thirty percent. The math was a little fiddly, but the closer they got, the faster that number would rise. Where back at the beach they'd barely been getting 1 percent, it had taken nearly a mile to get to thirty percent. It was probably a third of that distance at most before they arrived at the tower. And it would have to be a substantial transmitter; no standard commercial wireless router would transmit that far, unless there were repeaters all over the island. He hadn't really thought about that part until now. The first thought that popped into his head was military. Some kind of government installation might have... it was another mystery, no way to know. He'd let himself forget about all the others, for the most part. Being stranded on a deserted island was bad enough without letting his brain kick around the other puzzles he had no way of solving. The coordinates, the case, all those dead bodies. He grimaced and shook his head, pressing on regardless. "We've got to be getting close now," he said.

Finally they came out into a clearing, a small rocky outcropping that protruded up above the canopy and gave a clear view of the island beyond the cliffs where they had washed ashore. For the first time, Chuck and Sarah got an idea of just how big the island was. Or how small. They had come more than half way across the island. From their vantage point, looking back, they could see the cliffs in the distance maybe a mile off. In the other direction, where the WiFi was coming from, was a verdant carpet of grass, with scattered stands of trees on a gentle slope with an out-flung arm of the jungle they had waded through screening most of the way down to beaches little more than half a mile away.

And there it was, sticking out like the proverbial sore thumb, an old World War II bunker of some kind, surrounded by a razor-wire topped fence. The fence-line was right up against the edge of the jungle, threatening to be overrun in places where someone had been pruning back the vegetation. The pruning suggested that someone was still occupying the bunker.

Chuck's eyes widened. "Oh, no," he said.

"What?"

"You don't think... this is one of those islands where they never stopped fighting world war II? That could be pretty bad for us."

Sarah had her binoculars out, sweeping the compound. "Highly doubtful, WiFi, remember? And I don't think they had satellite dishes back in the 1940s either."

She passed the field glasses over and stood close so he could sight down her arm. "Huh," he said. "That looks like a new installation. Can't be more than ten years old."

"How can you tell?"

"The size of the dishes mostly," he said. "That and the generators are too small to be vintage. Somebody must have set up shop here fairly recently."

"So chances are good somebody will be around to roll out the welcome wagon," she said, leading the way down off the outcropping in the direction of the fence-line. Chuck squatted down and pulled his survival knife once more, testing the fence to see if it was electrified.

"Yay," he said softly. "I didn't get electrocuted."

"There wasn't a safer way to do that?"

He shrugged. "Probably, but I doubt those generators would have enough juice to power a high voltage fence anyway. Calculated risk. You got a wire cutter or something?"

"Should be one on the knife. That little notch at the back of the blade."

Chuck nodded and set to. He grunted with effort and one of the wires in the chain-link fence gave with an audible snap. "This is going to take a while."

"Hang on," Sarah said. "They're probably not going to look kindly on visitors, you think?"

"Why not? Security isn't all that tight. I don't see any cameras or anything. Not even a trespassers will be shot sign. And the fence isn't even electrified."

"Well, its an uncharted island. Why bother with signs?" she said. "But they bothered with the razor-wire, is my point."

"I was hoping you wouldn't think so too," Chuck said. "If it was just me, we could write it off as paranoia, and everything would work out fine. But, yeah, I've been getting a bad feeling about this place for a while."

"Uncharted island base. Best case it's pirates." Sarah scrunched up her nose and dug out her binoculars to make another scan of the compound.

"I was thinking military, but yeah. Pirates seems more likely, now that I think about it." Chuck scowled. He should have said something earlier, but the prospect of civilization had been too tempting. He'd tried to shut those frankly quite reasonable worries out of his head a little too well. "I suppose we could just head back to the beach, and rig the sat phone. I'm just thinking now, these people might have patrols out, and either way if it's the Philippine military or pirates. If we get spotted we're in for a not so warm welcome."

Sarah tensed. "Somebody is coming out. Get down, hurry," she hissed. They hid behind a nearby tree and Sarah shaded her binoculars with one hand. It wasn't perfect, but it should mitigate the chances of the men noticing a flare of sunlight off the lenses. An odd stuttering sound reached them across the expanse of cleared ground between Chuck and Sarah and the concrete bunker. Chuck quirked an eyebrow. "Is that?"

"A jeep," she said. "Yeah. Island's not that big. Must be some lazy pirates."

"Probably driving in supplies from the dock," Chuck said. "Did you see a dock? There's got to be one somewhere."

"I don't see one. Maybe it's on the far side of the bunker. Or past the jungle off on the right?" She shrugged. "I'm not- oh, crap."

"What is it?"

She shook her head and passed the binoculars to him again. He found the jeep easily enough, and could make out the occupants pretty well. "Is that one guy wearing a hood?"

"Yeah, Chuck," she said. "They've got a prisoner."

He put the binoculars down and slumped with his back against the tree. "They're going to kill him, aren't they?"

"Yeah, probably."

"They're not military."

"No," she said. "They're not in uniform. Which means they're pirates, and they're going to murder that guy."

"Well, then we've got to stop them."

Sarah heaved a much put-upon sigh. "I was afraid you were going to say that."

They followed the fence-line, trying to get as close to the men in the Jeep as possible while staying in the concealing jungle. "Did you see how they were armed?"

"AKs, same as Garret's goons," Sarah said. "But that doesn't necessarily mean anything. The AK 47 is like the Model T of guns, isn't it?"

"Yeah, but, it makes things easier on us," he said. "Assuming there's more of them in the bunker, they're expecting to hear a couple shots from one of these, right?" Chuck racked the charging handle on his AK and tucked the stock in tight to his shoulder. He swallowed nervously, and hoped Sarah didn't pick up on it.

It wasn't difficult to find the Jeep. The two probably-pirate gunmen had stopped within thirty feet of the fence-line, near one of the sections where the jungle had nearly overtaken the chain-link and razor-wire barrier.

Chuck and Sarah stopped and watched. Chuck frowned and whispered. "What are they arguing about?"

"Probably who has to dig the grave," she said softly. Chuck nodded, and the two men flipped a coin. The obvious loser began to dig. They would probably alternate shifts digging. "If we cut through the fence with the survival knife, they might hear it. Any ideas?"

Chuck glanced around, and then eyed Sarah. "What?" Sarah demanded.

"How attached are you to your wetsuit sleeves?"

She wriggled her arms out of her sleeves so Chuck could cut them free, and use the thick neoprene fabric to muffle the sound of metal on metal as he worked to cut a hole in the fence. Thankfully, the two men were still pre-occupied with their work, and judging from their tones, taunting the prisoner about his soon to be finished grave. It took Chuck and Sarah minutes that felt like hours to get a hole cut in the fence that would let them crawl through without painful scrapes or potential clothes snags. Chuck glanced up and saw the gunmen changing positions, the fresher man going down to begin his shift digging. Silence was paramount at the moment. Chuck went through the fence first, and stayed prone. Any sudden movements might draw the eye of either of the two gunmen. The grave was deepening; the soil must have been fairly loose. It wouldn't be long before they finished digging. Chuck wriggled closer, Sarah at his side, but stopped when he was close enough to be confident of his shot. About seventy feet, maybe eighty. Twenty five yards. It suddenly seemed like a hundred. Chuck tried to slow his breathing. Twenty five yards was doable. It was within pistol range and he had a rifle. Chuck swallowed again.

One of the gunmen headed back over to the Jeep and hauled the prisoner out, shoving him toward the grave. He shouted to the other man, and twenty five yards away, still hidden in the edge of jungle that had crept through the fence, Chuck couldn't quite make it out. But he knew what it meant. Only seconds now, before they would kill the prisoner and roll him into that shallow grave. Moment of truth.

He tapped Sarah on the shoulder and held up five fingers, then four, tucking the thumb in, before he put the AK back up to his cheek, still counting silently in his head.

Three. It was so different this time. He hadn't had time to think about it the first time, when he'd simply reacted.

Two. He'd seen the shadow of the gunman on the wall of the boathouse and turned, spraying and quite literally praying. This time, he was striking from ambush and if he'd had the luxury of another course of action, maybe he could have found a different way to handle it. The moment seemed to stretch out. But there were no other options. He couldn't sit back and watch a man be killed in cold blood.

One. So he would kill in cold blood. The horrible crushing, inescapable nature of the moment tried to seize his heart in a cold vise. His jaw tightened. Time's up.

Squeeze. Bring rifle down from recoil. Reacquire sight picture. Squeeze again. All in the space of a second, almost mechanical.

Two red blots in the man's back; one in the spine, one just left of center, only a couple inches apart. The gunman crumpled lifelessly to the ground and the prisoner stood stock still for just a moment before he dove to one side flat on his belly. Sarah was up and running, shotgun in hand even as the second shot echoed. Chuck was only a few steps behind her. The second one in the grave threw down his shovel and shouted something, not alarmed at first, just... Chuck imagined it being something along the lines of 'warn me before you do that, jerk,' thinking it had been his companion who fired the shots. He spotted the man's head poking out of the grave, the shock evident at suddenly staring down out the muzzle of Sarah's shotgun. "Don't," she said in a tone that brooked no nonsense. He went for his sidearm anyway, and Sarah's shotgun bucked in her hands.

Chuck went to the man on the ground. "It's alright," he said. His own voice surprised him. Calm, reassuring. How the hell could that be? "You're going to be alright, but we gotta get moving." Chuck pulled the hood from the prisoner's head and gaped in shock when he recognized the face behind the broken nose and black eye.

"Bryce?" Chuck said incredulously.

"Chuck?" Larkin groaned.

"What the hell are you doing here?" they said together.

TO BE CONTINUED...

A/N: So... am I in trouble for that cliffhanger? Drop me a review and let me know. Like I said, we're coming up on the end of this story fast.