Prodigal (47 page)

And there, on the prison grounds, she found it.

“Contact,” Lea said.

A single red dot flashed in the middle of her screen—a muted signal, probably underground and masked by tons of concrete and steel. Lea traced it to the largest building in the complex, the inmate dormitory itself. She studied its characteristics, comparing the waveform to the energy patterns at Chernobyl. Though weaker, this one definitely shared the same range of frequencies—and its behavior was too close to be coincidence.

They’re here.

The navigation alarm beeped at her. Lea throttled back, extending the flaps to compensate for reduced speed. According to the monitor, she had arrived at the interception point—nearly 150 kilometers dead west of the island, far enough away to approach without being seen.

Max sounded like he was sitting right next to her.

“Is it a go?” he asked.

“Yeah, Max. I owe you one.”

“Just bring my bird back in one piece, okay?”

“Roger that.”

“And Lea—”

He lapsed into static for a few seconds.

“It was good to meet you.”

Max signed off before she could send a response. Lea glanced over the side, into an abyss that would soon be ablaze in the light of day. She pushed the yoke forward, giving enough rudder to put the ship into a steep spiral, negative g forces making her body float against her harness. Far below, streaks of gold glinted off the top of the waves, fireflies on the surface of the water.

“Okay, Max,” Lea said, “let’s see what this thing can do.”

The aircraft dropped out of the sky like a giant raptor, down on the deck at fifty meters before flattening out its angle of attack—close enough to kick up a plume of vaporized seawater when ventral jets fired to slow its rate of descent. Lea didn’t level off until she hit a scant ten meters, well below the line of sight on the vast horizon, then kicked in forward thrust at full power. A briny mist exploded behind her, leaving a long trail in her wake as she poured on even more speed, invisible in the retreating dark—at least for now.

The controls put up some resistance, even in fly-by-wire, wing surfaces taking greedy hold of the thick atmosphere at sea level. Lea used the onboard computer to maintain altitude, not wanting to pitch the ship down into the drink, and switched on the heads-up display. An infrared image projected itself on the window in front of her, showing an augmented view directly ahead. Lea clicked the magnification a few times until she saw a black monolith rise out of the ocean, framed in the corona of an advancing sunrise.

Rapa Nui.

It was only a speck of land, with a molehill of a volcano that spread across the western side of the island. Lea quickly checked her range. The ship had closed half the distance already, proximity alerts urging her to slow down. She reduced her velocity, banking toward a more southerly vector, laying down a swath of passive sweeps as she went. This close, any sentries the
Inru
might have posted on the beach or atop the mountain should have lit up the infrared—but everything remained in the black, whitecaps breaking against a rocky, windswept shore.

Where are you, Avalon?

Lea routed navigation to her display, taking one last look at the map for her approach. An inlet at the southeastern corner marked her objective—a bitch of a climb to get on the island, but cover enough to keep from being spotted. Thermal imaging turned up clean, which was no surprise. Max, experienced smuggler that he was, had picked the spot as the least likely to have a regular patrol.

Great,
Lea thought.
Now comes the tricky part.

She eased the ship into a perpendicular course, bleeding off speed until she arrived on a straight line that pointed directly at her target. Ventral jets nudged Lea into a hover, crosswinds knocking her from side to side as she tried to maintain position. She reached for a lever on the right side of the cockpit, forcing it down with a heavy
thunk.
Hydraulics engaged in the belly of the aircraft, opening up the gear panels—and extending the long, bladelike hydrofoils that would keep the ship afloat.

Here goes nothing.

Lea throttled back the jets, watching the altimeter tick off to zero. Swells licked against the foils, bouncing her around as she killed all power. The ship then splashed down into the water, so deep that Lea felt a momentary panic at going under—until just as suddenly, it bobbed back up again. A surge of ocean rushed in to displace the fading whine of the engines, overwhelming Lea with dizziness before she could make the adjustment from air to sea. She gripped the sides of her chair, and somehow the craft stayed upright—exactly as Max had advertised.

“Son of a bitch works,” she muttered.

Leaning forward, Lea rubbed fog off the window. Just beyond, a few kilometers away, Rapa Nui emerged from the predawn gloom. Switching over to the hydrodynamic drive, she fired up the impellers and tried to maneuver. The ship responded smoothly, a stone skipping across the surface of a pond.

Lea headed in.

The inlet was narrow, shielded from above by a weathered outcropping choked with dense vegetation. Lea retracted the wings before she slipped inside, proceeding at idle as far as she could go. Then she dropped anchor and shut down, unbuckling herself and popping the canopy open. Cool air rushed into the cockpit, carrying with it the sounds of the island—a cacophony of lapping waves and hissing steam, underscored by a constant, wailing wind. Missing from all the noise was any indication of life. Even the seagulls were gone, adding a stark loneliness to a place that had seen its share of misery.

Just like Chernobyl.

Climbing out, Lea shivered against a chill that bit right through her flight suit. She stayed low while she shimmied onto the top of the fuselage, holding on tight wherever she could. A merciless gale pounded her the entire way, threatening to blow her over the side—but somehow she made it to the end of the starboard wing, near the steep face of a craggy wall. She reached out, barely touching its surface before the tide moved the ship farther away, almost toppling her before she regained her balance. This was going to be even harder than she thought.

It’s still easier than going for a swim.

Down below, the seething water told her that wasn’t even an option.
Okay,
she told herself, planting her hands and feet against the surface of the wing.
Let’s try that again.
This time she waited for the ship to inch even closer, avoiding an impulse to lunge at the wall. Then, all at once, a single swell almost slammed her into an overhang. Lea ducked to keep from smashing her head, then watched in panic as the ship started to retreat again.

She jumped.

Her fingers dug into the porous volcanic rock, tearing out clumps that fell into her face. Scrambling blindly, she hoisted herself far enough to swing her legs up and get some footing—her boots digging in, jamming their way into a fissure. Dangling there, she looked back down in time to see even bigger fragments plunging into the water—a drop far enough to dash her to pieces if she fell.

Don’t think about that. Just keep going.

Muscles aching, she groaned into a swirling wind. With one hand she probed farther up the wall, stretching until her joints popped, and grabbed the first hold that didn’t feel like it would break. She then did it with the other hand, wriggling as far as she could go before releasing her feet. Gravity swiped at Lea, dragging her into a painful scrape before she could stop herself—but by then, she had firmly wedged herself in.

Releasing a breath, Lea began to climb.

She went slowly at first, testing out every ledge, only moving faster as she reached the top. Lea eased her head out into the open, squinting against the frigid maelstrom that blew across the desolate landscape. She retrieved a small pair of binoculars from her pocket, scanning the immediate area for signs of recent activity. In the dirty gray light, everything appeared leaden—drained of color, vitality, and substance, a shadow play of reality. A short distance away, the prison complex stood behind a perimeter of sagging fences, corroded piles of razor wire curling under the old guard towers.

Lea zoomed in on each of them in turn, looking for human silhouettes among the jagged debris. Nobody was watching, at least that she could see, though the lack of obvious security had her worried. Her instincts told her this was all wrong, that it had the feel and the smell of a trap—but Lea wasn’t here to take the
Inru
by surprise. If they captured her, that was fine—just as long as they took her to Avalon.

Assuming they don’t blow your head off first.

Wary of that possibility, she surfaced with her hands in the air. Lea remained that way for a couple of minutes, standing out in the open and making herself a target, waiting for the spotlight or a flash of pulse fire to find her—but the
Inru
didn’t rise to the occasion. A squeak of sheet metal dancing in the wind sounded an eerie call, but under that was only silence. If the
Inru
were out there, they meant for Lea to come to them.

She set out for the prison.

Gravel crunched beneath Lea’s feet, marking some old road carved out by the smugglers who used to call this place home. It wound its way inland from the shore, past the
moai
—giant stone faces carved by the island’s original inhabitants, their expressions worn by time and erosion, lonely sentinels to the passage of centuries. They stood in mute witness to the depredations of human occupation—everything from the ancient evils of disease and starvation to the unthinkable cannibalism that followed, a history of violence that paled in comparison to the horrors unleashed after the Zone Authority arrived. Only after the prison doors were closed and the last inmate shipped off did Rapa Nui finally find some semblance of peace—but it was restless, haunted by a past that seemed to cry out from every darkened corner.

Lea stopped in the shadow of the
moai,
one in a line of six that lay in ruins just outside the prison grounds. She climbed onto the toppled sculpture, scouting the area again from a higher vantage point. Morning quickly seeped in from the east, improving her visibility, but exposed no hidden dangers. The path ahead looked secure, leading up to the wire and directly toward the warden’s house. Behind that, a few meters farther, the dilapidated shell of the inmate dormitory stared back at her through broken windows—its main entrance hanging wide open in a crooked welcome.

Lea put the binoculars away, suddenly aware of how naked she felt without a rifle in her hands. She had chosen to come here under a banner of truce, but now that the moment arrived she regretted it—enough for her to check the stash she had packed before leaving Santiago. At first, she only planned to bring her integrator—but Max had insisted on something with a little more punch.

Take it from an old wiseguy,
the hammerjack had told her.
You never walk into a deal without some backup.

“Your lips to God’s ears, Max,” Lea whispered, feeling around the hidden compartments under her arms. One held a flat canister of Pollex explosive, which Max had rigged with a contact fuse. The other concealed a single-shot hand cannon with an armor-piercing, gas-expanding round in the chamber. Neither one of them evened the odds against an all-out fight, but at least they would give her cover long enough to get the hell out of there—if it came to that.

And those things have a tendency to happen,
Lea thought, reaching for the last weapon she carried—the only one she trusted in real combat. The quicksilver hummed in her hand, its blade contained within a magnetic sheath. Bringing it to a meeting with Avalon entailed considerable risk, given their recent history—but the woman probably expected nothing less. Whatever else she had become, Avalon was above all things a warrior. To arrive completely unarmed would only betray weakness on Lea’s part—a mistake that would end this negotiation before it even began.

Assuming Avalon even wants to negotiate.

Lea put the quicksilver away, then slid down to the ground. Making a run for the wire, she waited there for a short time with her back against the fence, catching her breath while she searched for an easy opening. She found a spot where the chain link had turned brittle from rust and kicked a hole straight through. Her efforts raised a terrible racket, making Lea cringe—but nobody stormed out of the guardhouses to meet her. For all she knew, she was the first person to set foot on this island in years.

Keep telling yourself that.

Crouching to her knees, Lea peeled the fence apart, then crawled underneath. The warden’s house was closest, so she checked that building out first. She darted around the outside, stealing glances through windows, catching a few half glimpses in the filth that choked the cracked and pitted glass. Winding her way toward the back, she cracked a door open and poked her head inside. Anything that might have remained after the prison closed had long since been looted, with only piles of squatters’ slag and fading graffiti left behind as a reminder.

A thick layer of dust also covered the floor. Lea looked for footprints but found no signs of any recent disturbance. Either the
Inru
employed ghosts to do their dirty work, or nobody had been here in a very long time.