City of nope, p.21
City of Nope, page 21
part #3 of The Excoms Series
As it came nearer, she noticed a halo of orange light leaking through a window, about twenty meters above water level, near the back end of the shadow. The bridge?
Now that the ship was nearly parallel to them, its shadowy form separated more from that of the jungle, allowing Ananke to make out several structures on board. In addition to the wide tower the light was coming from, there were at least two other structures midship, made up of several interconnected beams, creating what she guessed were cranes used for the loading and unloading of cargo.
This had to be one of the ships that picked up the goods produced at the City. She and the team were on the right track.
The ship had probably entered the river as soon as it had gotten dark, loaded up, and was now on its way out so that it would be at sea again before the sun came up. To maintain its anonymity, the City would not want any vessels near its dock in daylight.
The team waited until the ship had moved several hundred meters downriver before maneuvering the Zodiac out from under the brush. Dylan started the motor again and aimed them upriver.
“How much farther?” Ananke asked.
Rosario, who was monitoring their position on her satellite phone, said, “San Christophe is about two kilometers ahead.”
“And the dock?”
“You mean for the City?”
“Yeah.”
“Another eighteen beyond that.”
Ananke stared at the river.
“What are you thinking?” Rosario asked.
Ananke watched the water for another few seconds before saying, “I’m thinking that if there’s another ship being loaded right now, it would be a good opportunity to see these people in action.” She turned to Dylan. “How long should it take us?”
“Not more than an hour. As long as there aren’t many more ships we need to hide from.”
Ananke nodded. “Let’s pay them a visit.”
They had to hide two more times, in both instances from patrol ships similar to the one that had stopped the Green Eyed Dawn. A kilometer shy of the dock, they turned off the motor, switched to the paddles, and rowed along the same side of the river the dock was on.
Four hundred meters away, Ananke caught sight of the ship tied to the dock and motioned for everyone to stop paddling.
The vessel was maybe half the size of the one that had passed them earlier. She could see motion on the ship and the dock, but it was difficult to make out any details. The reason had to do with the lights illuminating the area. Not only were they very dim, they were also tinted blue. This should have made it impossible for any work to get done, but she could see one of the cranes hoisting a shipping container off the dock and swinging it toward the deck of the boat.
The crews must be wearing some kind of night vision eyewear, she thought. A remote area like this blazing with light would draw unwanted attention from passing aircraft, whereas the blue lights they were using would likely go unnoticed.
They paddled on until they found a small open stretch of shore a few hundred meters from the ship. After disembarking, they tied up the Zodiac under some more brush. Ricky handed out pistols while Liesel distributed comm gear. After making sure they were all keyed into the same encrypted channel, they slipped into the jungle.
Though they didn’t have far to travel, the going was difficult, and several times they had to double back when the way forward proved unpassable. Finally, the brush thinned, and Ananke could see the blue glow beyond. She motioned for the others to huddle around her.
“Liesel, Ricky, head south a hundred meters or so, then turn east and scope out the road. Rosario and Dylan, you’re with me.”
Liesel and Ricky headed off, while Ananke led Rosario and Dylan to just shy of where the jungle stopped and the dock started.
There were about twenty people on the land side, and around half as many visible on the ship. As she’d suspected, all were wearing goggles strapped around their heads. A shipping container was being lowered into the hold. Only three more were waiting, so it appeared the operation was nearing its end.
Ananke studied the dockworkers. There were two distinct groups—the ones doing the actual work, and the armed personnel watching over them. The former group was uniformly dressed in tan T-shirts and matching pants, while the guards wore army camouflage and carried assault rifles. The men on the ship were dressed in clothes that made her think they were part of the vessel’s crew.
Ananke noted the name of the ship—the Sebastian Cole IV—so she could pass that on to the Administrator. She hadn’t been able to get the same info on the other cargo vessel, but could give an approximate time it had sailed into the sea. Hopefully it would be enough for the Administrator’s researchers to find it.
At the Sebastian Cole IV, the empty crane lines rose and moved back over the dock. As they lowered to the next container, Ricky came over the comm. “We’re at the road.”
Ananke was too close to the dock to risk talking, so she clicked her mic once to indicate she understood.
“Get this,” he said. “Rosario was right. It is paved. I mean, like a real highway. It’s wide enough for probably three lanes, too. It must have taken a hell of a lot of work to rip the path through the jungle and put it here.”
She clicked again.
For the next few minutes, she, Rosario, and Dylan watched as the cargo lines were connected to the next container. Once everything was set, the box was lifted into the air. At this pace, the ship would be loaded and ready to go in the next ten minutes.
Ananke caught Rosario’s and Dylan’s attention and motioned that they were done here. She led them around toward the road. “Ananke for Ricky or Liesel, what’s your exact position?”
No response.
“Ricky, Liesel. Come in.”
“Sorry, boss. We’re here.”
“I need your location.”
“We, um—” He fell silent. When he spoke again, his voice was barely audible. “Give us a minute.”
Ananke exchanged looks with Rosario and Dylan. All three picked up their pace.
The road stretched from the back of the dock—a hundred meters to Ricky and Liesel’s left—to where it disappeared into the jungle to the south, cutting a line through the vegetation like a fire break.
Rosario had said it was paved, but Ricky hadn’t really believed that until he laid eyes on it. Three lanes of thick asphalt, missing only the lane lines.
Almost as strange and out of place as the road itself was the camouflage canopy stretched a dozen meters above it, blotting out all but a few stars.
After reporting to Ananke, Ricky checked both ways down the road. He could see some of the blue glow toward the dock, but there were no people or vehicles in sight. He started to step out from cover but Liesel grabbed his arm, giving him a what-are-you-doing look.
“It’s okay,” he whispered. “Just a quick check.”
She frowned.
“There’s no one around,” he said. “Nothing’s going to happen.”
She hesitated before letting him go.
Ricky crouched and crept out to the center of the road. He leaned down until his face was hovering above the surface. There were tire-sized grooves in the asphalt, telling him the vehicles that used it were a) heavy, and b) fond of driving the exact same path over and over. He scanned the road. Two sets of dual grooves, one per direction, he guessed.
He looked toward the dock, envisioning the trucks coming and going. In order to load two cargo ships, there had to be a whole mess of vehicles bringing the containers to the river in a steady stream.
Unless…
He looked toward the dock again.
Huh.
About twenty-five meters short of where the dock began, there appeared to be a wide break in the jungle, on the eastern side of the road. He’d missed it the first time he looked that way, his gaze taken in by the blue glow.
He waved to Liesel to follow him and scooted into the jungle on the other side of the road.
“What are you doing?” she asked when she caught up to him.
“I think there’s something up ahead.”
Before he could take a step, Liesel grabbed his shoulder.
“What something?”
“I saw some kind of opening down there.”
“Opening? What kind?”
“Some kind.”
He calmly removed her hand from his shoulder and started moving again.
This part of the jungle had been partially cleared, so it was easier to pass through than the area where they’d come ashore. Probably kept that way to prevent the brush from growing out onto the road.
In just over a minute, they reached another clearing, this one extending perpendicularly to the road.
Ricky scanned it from the cover of the brush. To his left was the break he’d seen, connecting it to the jungle highway. The opening was plenty wide enough for fully loaded trucks to pass through. Judging from the handful of shipping containers stacked near the far end, this was a storage and staging area. There was even a high-tech rail system on which containers could be manually transported to the docks. So that meant the trucks could deliver the containers during the day, before the boats arrived.
No trucks were here at the moment, but there was a bus, which Ricky guessed was worker transportation. There would also have to be some living quarters in the area. With all the expensive equipment and stored containers around, they’d be crazy not to have a twenty-four-hour security presence. The only place where that could be was to the east side of the dock.
He looked at the bus. Like the whole area, it was illuminated by only a bit of the blue light seeping through the trees. If the vehicle was for the workers, and there was no reason to think it wasn’t, then it would be heading back to the City when things wrapped up.
And if that was the case, it might be a way for one of the team members to get inside the place.
“I’m going to check the bus out,” he whispered.
“What? No. That is a terrible—”
Before Liesel could grab him, he moved out from the trees and sneaked across the clearing. He could sense her following but didn’t look back.
It was an old tourist-type bus, with three hatches along the bottom that opened to luggage space. If the space wasn’t used, someone could covertly travel in there. He pulled on one of the handles but it was locked.
Liesel poked him in the back as he went to try the next one. She looked at him like he was crazy and pointed toward the front of the bus.
He frowned, not understanding.
She led him to the front corner and gestured for him to look around it. He leaned out and spotted a pedestrian passageway through the brush that appeared to lead to the dock. And within the passage was the silhouette of a man heading toward the clearing, the red glow of a cigarette hovering by his side.
“Ananke for Ricky or Liesel,” Ananke said over the comm. “What’s your exact position?”
Ricky pulled back around and looked at Liesel.
Ananke called again.
Ricky whispered, “Sorry, boss. We’re here.”
“I need your location.”
“We’re, um—” He heard a step coming from around the bus, toward the passageway. Taking his volume down even more, he said, “Give us a minute.”
He could now hear steps in the clearing, moving toward the bus at a steady but unhurried pace. “Rigo!” someone shouted. “Rigo, wake up!”
A bump from inside the bus.
Ricky and Liesel ducked as the driver brought his seat back to its normal position and opened the bus’s door.
“I’m up, I’m up,” the driver—Rigo—said.
The other man stopped walking. “Fifteen-minute warning.”
“Got it.”
Ricky led Liesel around the back of the bus. It had no rear window, just a ladder attached to the back, leading up to a large luggage rack on the roof. Looking under the vehicle, he watched the other man walk back to the passageway.
The bus’s engine rumbled to life.
There was opportunity here that would be a shame to waste. But as much as Ricky thought hitching a ride would be a good idea, he knew he couldn’t do anything without getting Ananke’s okay first.
“Come on,” he whispered.
He headed back until he was sure he and Liesel couldn’t be seen in the shadows, and turned for the jungle.
When they reached it, he flicked on his comm. “Ananke, where are you?”
“At the road. Where the hell are you?”
“We’ll be right there. Meet us seventy-five meters back from the dock.”
Ananke, Rosario, and Dylan repositioned to the approximate meeting point, and waited.
Ananke expected Ricky and Liesel to appear from within the jungle around them, so she was taken off guard when Dylan said, “There they are,” and pointed at the road, where Ricky and Liesel were emerging from the other side.
“What were you doing over there?” she asked when the two reached her.
“Look, we’ve only got a few minutes so you’ve got to listen to me,” Ricky said.
“What do you mean we’ve—”
“Ananke, please. I promise I’ll tell you everything.”
She took a breath. “Okay, talk.”
He briefed her on what he and Liesel had found and explained his idea. When he finished, no one said a word.
He looked at Ananke. “Well?”
“You know there’s an excellent chance of getting caught,” she said.
“I don’t intend to let that happen.”
“But you don’t even know what you’ll be getting yourself into.”
“Which is exactly why we need to do this.”
He was right. At some point they would have to scout the City, which would mean a twenty-kilometer hike through the jungle. “The signal amplifier is back at the boat,” she said. “We won’t be able to get it in time, so you won’t be able to reach us.”
“Then set a pickup time. Say, tomorrow night after it gets dark. Seven thirty.”
She considered it, then nodded. “Okay. But don’t go inside the City. Stay in the jungle around it. The moment you think there might be trouble, you get out of there. Promise me or you’re staying here.”
“I might need to get closer. We need to know what we’re up against.”
“I said promise me.”
He frowned. “Okay, I promise.”
“I have something that might help,” Liesel said. She pulled off her backpack and handed it to him. “The drone, plus some food, a knife, and matches...”
The drone was a high-end stealth model—small, with a high-res camera, and rotors that ran near silently.
“Is the drone a good idea?” Ananke asked.
“I’ll only use it if it’s safe.”
“Don’t take this the wrong way, but I’m not sure you know how to judge that.”
He snorted. “Don’t worry. I’ll apply the Ananke Rule.”
Her eyes narrowed. “What’s the Ananke Rule?”
“Simple. I ask myself, what would Ananke do?”
“You should do that with everything,” Rosario said.
Back toward the dock, they could hear the bus’s engine rev.
“I need to get a little farther down, I think,” he said.
Together, they jogged just inside the jungle until they were nearly two hundred meters from the dock.
Ninety seconds later, the bus pulled onto the road, heading their way, headlights on but much dimmer than standard ones. Ricky stepped to the edge of the jungle.
“Hey,” Ananke said.
He looked back.
“Thanks for asking instead of just doing it on your own.”
“See, sometimes I can learn.”
Seconds later, the bus’s headlights lit up the brush near them as it passed.
The moment their surroundings fell back into darkness, Ricky sprinted from the brush to the back of the bus. At first it looked like he wouldn’t be able to catch it, but he stretched out a hand, grabbed the ladder on the back, and pulled himself up.
Ananke and the others watched until the bus disappeared.
Chapter Twenty-One
Holding on to the ladder was not as difficult as Ricky had feared. The road remained relatively smooth, offering up few bumps or dips that might knock him off. The driver kept his speed slow enough that even if Ricky had fallen, he probably wouldn’t have suffered more than a few cuts and bruises.
Okay, maybe a broken wrist.
Since there was no rear window through which someone might see him, he considered climbing onto the roof where he could stretch out on the luggage rack. But he was concerned his presence on the roof might be heard. So he hugged the rungs, shifting his weight between his arms to keep either from getting too stiff.
Kilometer after kilometer, the scene around him remained an unchanging corridor of dark jungle to either side and opaque netting above, making him fight hard to keep from zoning out.
Around what he figured was the fifteen-kilometer mark, the bus slowed. He crept up the ladder and peered over the roof.
Dammit.
Sitting at the left side of the road, about a hundred and fifty meters ahead, was a hut. Two floodlights pumping out blue light—like at the dock—were mounted atop a pair of poles on either side of the asphalt, across which were four wide metal pillars sticking up about a meter high.
As the bus neared the roadblock, two armed guards wearing goggles exited the hut and took up positions beside the road.
Ricky knew his current location was untenable. If the guards didn’t perform a walk-around of the bus when it stopped, they’d at least glance at the back as the vehicle drove off and see Ricky hanging there.
He had only two choices. The first was to hop off and slip into the jungle, then hope he could sneak around the roadblock and jump back onto the bus as it drove away. But that would only occur if everything went his way, and the guards didn’t happen to be looking when he climbed back onto the ladder.
Or he could ignore his earlier concerns and climb onto the roof, lie as flat as possible, and hope the guards would check things only at ground level. At least with this method, when the bus drove away, the luggage rack would hide him.
