PRECIPICE Read Online Free PDF Page B

career by getting back with his team and having a new mission. He was grateful as well for a chance to serve his country in a new and different capacity. Duty was an old and faithful friend to him, a steering force. He’d felt lost during the few months he’d spent without it. Plus, he was tired of sitting on the sidelines, and itching to get back in the fight.
    Harris took the steps two at a time. The floor plan was so tight in the old building that there was nowhere to retrofit an elevator, so only hardy souls could work on the third floor. He reached the top landing and turned left, walking to the end of the hall and a plain wooden door with “Export Logistics, LLC” stenciled in black on a smoked glass windowpane. He opened the door and walked into the reception area, marveling at the absolute seventies unattractiveness of the burgundy and olive block print carpet and the crumbling furniture that looked like it was purchased from Goodwill. The receptionist smiled and gave a little wave from behind a battered metal desk as Harris proceeded directly across the room past her and into the master office.
    Sutherland looked up from a file he was reading and stood. He took off his reading glasses, rubbed the bridge of his nose as his face pinched, then reached across the desk to shake hands with Harris.
    “Blake, good to see you. How was rafting?”
    Harris was a bit startled—he was still getting used to his new first name, and also to being addressed by this man with anything other than his rank. “It was good, sir. I feel like we learned a lot, although I’m not sure it will be enough.”
    “Well, let’s get down to nuts and bolts and see then, shall we?” Sutherland took a seat behind his desk and spun his flat monitor on its swivel mount to where they could both view the screen, and Harris perched on the edge of the desk and leaned in to get a better view. Sutherland made a few clicks of the mouse, pulling up a satellite view of what appeared to be a mountainous area of lush, green forest. Bisecting the picture in gentle curls was a ribbon of white running generally from the top left of the screen to the bottom right. From this distant view no human structures were visible in the image, and the brightness of the white on the river only hinted at the rapids and cataracts that might lie within the deep gorge. Harris had seen the images before, but he was looking at them with new eyes after his weekend on the river.
    Sutherland’s middle finger rolled the scroll wheel on his mouse, slowly zooming in on an area in the middle of the screen. The blur of white began to resolve into distinct rapids and waterfalls, and the green blobs into individual mountains coated in what appeared to be impenetrably thick foliage. Nearly continuous cliff walls became visible along the top of the gorge, and the view zoomed in on one particularly cliffed-out spot next to a round bowl of blue-green water. A white smear of rapids came down the river and turned to pure white across the edge of where it met the bowl. The pool was surrounded on all sides by cliff walls, with only one small tendril of iridescent aquamarine water exiting opposite the white. Above the pool, tucked on the edge of the cliff wall, Harris could now make out the camouflaged forms of four thatched roofs—two round and two square. The tan of the dried palm leaves they were constructed from blended almost seamlessly into the blanket of jungle that draped over to obscure and break up their edges. As the picture zoomed in even more and clarified, Harris could see that two of the structures opened onto a stone patio that blended into the rocks at the edge of the cliff overlooking the waterfall and pool.
    “How high is the falls?” Harris asked.
    “We’re pretty sure it’s around sixty feet. You can see the weakness in the cliff wall just above the edge. That’s the point where we feel it’s possible to ascend from the river. It’s still quite vertical, but lower