Callsign: King (Jack Sigler) (Chesspocalypse #1)

Is that what’s happening to her?

And if what she had found in the cave had awakened some kind of link to a collective subconscious—one that could affect human behavior—what did Manifold have planned for it?

He knew he wasn’t going to get those answers from her, and he sensed he was nearing the point where her singular desire to return to the cave would make her less cooperative, more demanding. It was time to get moving.

King drove the lead vehicle, with Felice and Moses as passengers. Felice had not spoken more than a few words since their earlier discussion, and as they drove she simply stared out the window, as if hoping to catch a glimpse of their destination, despite the fact that it lay hundreds of miles to the north. Moses responded to King’s questions, but likewise showed little interest in conversation, leaving King alone with his thoughts, which given the uncertainty surrounding Sara’s fate, was not a good thing.

As he drove, King’s realized that he was scanning the road ahead for signs of an ambush or improvised explosive device placement, habits that had become second nature when he had driven in Afghanistan and Iraq. Ethiopia was no war zone, though there were reports of bandits in remote regions, and intel suggesting a burgeoning Al Qaida presence. After the events of the previous day, maybe a little paranoia was a good thing.

While Moses had been out gathering the supplies for the expedition, King had done some shopping as well. He had contacted a more-or-less trustworthy black-market arms dealer, and purchased a used but serviceable Dragunov SVD, equipped with a detachable PSO-1 scope. It wasn’t his first choice, but Russian weapons were more readily available. The sniper rifle’s accessories package included a bayonet, which he decided would make a decent substitute for his beloved KA-BAR knife. The dealer had delivered the rifle, along with 500 rounds of 7.62 mm and several boxes of 9 mm rounds for the MP-5. King felt a little better prepared than he had upon arriving in Addis Ababa, but knew that surviving possible future encounters would depend more on good luck and good judgment than on firepower alone. And he already felt like he’d used up a year’s worth of good luck.

The day passed uneventfully. They kept to the main highway, traveling north as far as the city of Komolcha, where they ate and refueled, and then traveled east to Semera, the new regional capital of the Afar district. Although there were several hours of daylight remaining, they found lodging and spent the night there. Beyond Semera, there would be little in the way of creature comforts.

Felice seemed to grow more anxious, and more solitary, with each mile traveled. King left her alone. He doubted there was anything more she could tell him, and if there were, it would have to wait until she was ready, until she satisfied the compulsion that was drawing her back to the mysterious cave in the Rift Valley. Moses similarly kept to himself, conversing with the other hired men only to the extent that his duties as translator and de facto expedition manager required him to do so. Like Felice, he also seemed to be in the grip of an external force, not a subconscious homing instinct, but something less specific—the gravity of personal destiny.

King had managed to get the young man to volunteer a little about himself. Moses was a college graduate, but mired in the same economic torpor that kept so many in Africa from rising above the circumstances of their birth. Perhaps, King surmised, he saw the success of this expedition, coming as it did on the heels of the failure of the first, as a way to break that cycle.

That evening, King checked in with Deep Blue, but the conversation was brief; there was nothing to report. No news on Manifold’s activities, and no word from Sara. As troubling as the uncertainty was, no news was good news.