What he had not seen as he kept his vigil, because it had grown too dark, was Deke being hurled inside the hot box. As far as he knew, Deke was with the other prisoners, waiting for the midnight hour to arrive so that he could lead them out of the compound.

Had he known the truth, Steele wouldn’t have been biding his time.

He would have been praying.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Rex Faraday had watched as Deacon Cole was dragged away and thrown into the hot box.

It didn’t bode well.

“That’s the end of that,” said Cooper, sidling up next to Faraday. “This is one hell of a mess. What are we going to do?”

“To hell if I know yet,” Faraday replied truthfully.

Cooper just shook his head and walked away. Faraday kept his eyes outward, thinking through his next course of action. It was easier to know what to do in a plane crash, he thought, because at least you had trained for it. This was new territory.

Faraday was not feeling optimistic. He had seen strong-willed men locked in there for days at a time, only to emerge exhausted and broken. In any case, they didn’t have days. The escape plan was set for tonight.

Deke certainly seemed like a tough customer — he hadn’t been imprisoned long enough to be worn down. He still possessed strength and spirit. But it wasn’t his willpower that was the issue so much as time.

Faraday considered that timeline. The escape was scheduled for midnight tonight. When the hour for their deliverance arrived, it appeared likely that Deke was still going to be locked up. He was supposed to be their liaison between the POWs and the rescuers. If he was out of the picture, then who was going to lead them to safety?

He had warned Deke to keep his head down, but he had insisted on butting heads with Mr. Suey by standing up for a prisoner who was struggling to carry rocks from the stream.

Faraday couldn’t blame him. Deke’s actions were understandable, because the Japanese provoked that response in anyone with a sense of justice. The problem was that opposing Mr. Suey was a game that couldn’t be won. The enemy held all the cards.

Now Deke was locked in the hot box, and their entire escape plan was in jeopardy.

Through a crack in the wall, Faraday watched the hot box long after the door to the prisoners’ barracks had been closed and locked. By then it was starting to get dark, and the prison yard slowly fell into gloom.

He didn’t know what he was hoping for, other than some sort of miraculous sign. He saw some activity as their captors brought Deke his evening meal, but then the door to the hot box closed again. Nothing stirred after that.

Having finished with their duties for the day, most of the guards had retired to their barracks. Aside from a pair of guards walking the perimeter each hour, the Japanese remained in their own barracks once the prisoners were locked in for the night. The only lights glowed from the windows of the commandant’s house and the garrison barracks. The surrounding forest looked dark as the sea at night.

For the briefest time, he’d had some fleeting hope that they might all get out of this place. No more starvation diet. No more endless labor moving rocks from one pointless place to another. No more Mr. Suey or Colonel Yamagata terrorizing them with his Samurai bow.

He realized that the idea of freedom had taken root so strongly in the last few hours that the thought of endless days of moving rocks and eating bowls of boiled weeds was almost more than he could take. The carrot had been dangled and taken away again.

Faraday sat back and considered his options. He needed to think this through.

He had a decision to make now that would decide all their fates, and he would have to make it largely on his own. Venezia and Cooper were the only men who knew about the escape plan. They had kept things close to the vest to avoid security leaks, considering that there were men who would rat them out for a single handful of cooked rice. Whatever Faraday decided, he knew that Venezia and Cooper could be counted on to go along with it.

No lights were allowed in the barracks, so they were kept like livestock in a darkened barn. Most had memorized the layout by now so that they could navigate in the dark. There was just enough remaining light to see the men around him. They looked worn out and beaten up. Their clothes were ragged. The air inside the barracks smelled of sweat and funk. Several men suffered from nagging coughs. The stifling heat made it difficult to relax or sleep.

If this wasn’t hell, he didn’t know what was.

He knew that the first step would be to get out of the barracks. Fortunately, their quarters weren’t nearly as solidly built as the hot box. Months before, Cooper had told him how they had managed to find loose boards that could be opened in an emergency, such as a fire. The possibility of escape hadn’t been considered. Faraday had yet to see these loose boards for himself, but he had been promised that they were there.