creating a bright ball of flame that tore across the cabin in a tidal wave of heat and light. Thunder ripped through the enclosed space with the ferocity of a jackhammer, stinging Jones’s ears despite the presence of his hands. Shards of metal sliced through the mattress, narrowly avoiding the exposed flesh of his back.
Slightly dazed from the jolt, Jones peeked over the tattered barrier to see how much damage had been done. Large streaks of red and orange danced from the far wall toward the unprotected surface of the beamed ceiling. Billowy puffs of smoke filled the enclosed space, making it tough for him to breathe. The door, shaken free from the concussion of the blast, sat unhinged and heavily dented, covered in debris and awash in flames. And the guard was . . .
Wait, where was the guard?
Jones knew he’d hit him—he had to have hit him, didn’t he?—so, despite the crackling flames that raged throughout the cabin, he climbed over the mattress and searched for a body. It didn’t matter that the fire was quickly becoming an inferno, shooting tiny embers into the air like bottle rockets. He needed to find the guard. He had to get the man’s gun and take his keys. He had to question the bastard about Payne and Ariane before it was too late.
Hell, he had to do something to even the odds.
Unfortunately, the blaze was making his mission impossible. The smoke grew thicker and blacker every second, limiting his vision to a scant few feet. And the heat was so intense that Jones felt like he was standing in the core of an active volcano, one that was getting angrier by the minute. But still he searched, heroically digging through scraps of plastic and wood, hunting for the guard until he could take no more, until the hair on his arms literally started to sear like ants under a magnifying glass.
At that point he decided to flee the firestorm before he fried in its wake.
Covering his eyes with both hands, Jones ran from the burning cabin, shielding his head from the flames as he burst through the smoldering doorway. The nighttime air brought him instant relief, but he wasn’t able to enjoy it. Jones realized that the Posse would be there any moment to investigate, and when they arrived he needed to be long gone. Using the orange glow of the cabin as his torch, he probed the area for cover, but his plans to flee were quickly altered. Before he found a hiding place, Jones noticed the guard sprawled on the nearby sod, a weapon sitting on the ground next to him.
No time to waste.
He rushed to the man’s side and grabbed his TEC-DC9 pistol. Then, in a moment of greed, he frisked him, looking for anything that could help, and as he did he made a startling discovery.
The injured man was Payne.
CHAPTER 44
BECAUSE of the black fatigues and face paint that Payne had found in the first cabin, he looked like a Posse member in the darkness. It wasn’t until Jones stared at Payne’s face in the light of the fire that he recognized his best friend.
“Is there a reason you tried to blow me up?” Payne asked. He staggered to his feet, shaken from the powerful blast but injury free.
“I thought you were a guard,” Jones argued.
“If you don’t want to hang out anymore, that’s fine! But you don’t have to blow me up.”
Payne shook his head in mock anger, then jogged away from the cabin. He knew the Posse would be arriving shortly, and he didn’t want to be there when they did. Once they were far enough away from the scene, he turned back toward Jones and unlocked his handcuffs.
“What was that stuff anyway? It had some serious kick.”
“Some kind of high-tech chemical explosive. Some African guy with bad teeth strapped the sucker to my leg to prevent my escape.”
“Hakeem did that?” The thought of Ndjai in the Devil’s Box made him laugh. “Locking a soldier in a wooden cabin with a firebomb? Pretty good thinking on his part, huh?”
“That was more than just a firebomb. That was a first-rate piece of hardware. I’m not sure what we’ve stumbled onto, but the Posse isn’t hurting for cash. Not with that kind of technology lying around.”
“You don’t know the half of it. Let me show you what I found.”
Payne led Jones to the first cabin that he had explored. Instead of containing prisoners like he thought it