by Alex Archer
The noise continued—the sound of the pickaxes, the water dripping, the labored breathing of the henchmen, all added to the greedy scene Dillon had orchestrated. Annja’s head ached and she mulled over the possibilities of how to best these men without putting Moons and Edgar in jeopardy.
“This will not go unfound,” she said. Conversation...she wanted to keep Dillon talking, get as much information as possible. “Somehow word of all of this will get out, your buyers, the laboratories you’ve been using to help smuggle the poached stones. And the money—that much money is going to be noticed by someone. Brazil, America, you’ll be hunted and arrested. Besides, you have blood on your hands—”
He beamed. “Blood emeralds. I like the sound of that, Miss Creed. Not the same connotation as blood diamonds, and a far better ring to it, don’t you think?” He fingered the ring hanging from his neck. “Oh, I know word of this monster gem will surface. But my men and I have no worries about ever being caught. My partner has all the contingencies covered. I chose him well. No law will be able to reach me.” He took a step closer and she smelled him, sweat mixed the heady loam of the rainforest, and under that an expensive cologne. “There are places in this world, opulent, civil places that will welcome us. My money is already safely there, waiting for me, waiting to be added to. I’ve a place in mind where there is no extradition, where I will be embraced and protected, and where I will live like an emperor.” He tucked the emerald ring back under his shirt.
He would kill her, and Moons and Edgar, maybe some of his men in the mix before it was all done. Arthur Dillon might not have started out evil. She remembered that on their first meeting he’d talked about a brother dying of bone cancer, his grandfather with Alzheimer’s, and that he’d melanoma himself. He might have started out altruistic, truly searching for cures in the rainforest. But the glitter of the emeralds had wholly corrupted him.
Now it was a matter of finding the right opening to take him down.
“And so I am presented with the complication of you.” Dillon stroked his chin. “I value life, Miss Creed. I truly do. Life is so very short as it is, and I hate to even contemplate the prospect of taking anyone’s last breath. You say I have blood on my hands. Maybe? But not of my doing. A few natives...but they forced the issue, and I didn’t pull the trigger.”
He turned away from her and Annja felt the sword in her mind, considered this an opportunity. But there was the henchman watching Moons and Edgar, and one man still held a gun to her back.
She would have to wait, biding her time.
Dillon stepped between two of his men and touched the massive gem in the wall. “I wonder how deep it goes into the rock? How big she really is and how many billions she will bring?” He retreated so the men could continue chipping away. They were all being so careful, even Moons and Edgar, Annja noticed. None of them wanted to mar the stone. The radio at his waist crackled and he answered it. He spoke softly, but Annja caught some of it.
“How many—”
A crackling response she couldn’t make out.
“—are you sure there’s only one?”
Another indecipherable response.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Dillon grumbled. “Be certain there’s only one. Be certain! Bring him down now.”
One more response.
“Yes. Alive.” He hooked the radio to his belt and spun. “Another complication.”
“Let them go,” Annja suggested, nodding toward Moons and Edgar. “You don’t need any more blood on—”
“I really don’t want to kill anyone,” Dillon said. The look in his eyes seemed chaotic as he glanced around the cavernous chamber, his finger circling the button on the radio like it was a worry stone. “Diseases kill enough people. Cancer.”
“I thought you were hell-bent on finding a cure for cancer and Alzheimer’s. Don’t those things matter to you anymore?”
His expression of anger sent a shiver down her back. “I intend to use some of my money to pursue those cures, Miss Creed. Green is the answer, the right amount of money, the right plants. I will not give up while I breathe. I will find cures. All this money...it will make everything easier, finding the solutions for the world’s most horrible diseases, and in the process I’ll live like a king. Life will be much more pleasant all the way around, eh?” He rubbed his chin again and Annja noticed scars there and on the side of his face, souvenirs of his melanoma. “I don’t want to kill you.”
But he was going to try, she thought. Still, now wasn’t the time to make a break for freedom, as Moons and Edgar likely wouldn’t fare well. She had to put them first. “Then keep them here, Moons and Edgar, helping you with the emeralds.” She inclined her head toward the two. “Keep them until you quit the mine. When that giant emerald gets air-lifted out of here, you could let them go.”
“I’d like to do that,” Dillon said. “Truly, I would. And I had considered that. But they’re such troublemakers. I think I will have to—”
Moons turned and Annja saw that her dirty face was streaked from where she’d been crying. Edgar stopped for just a moment, but then kept going with the pick. The other miners hadn’t missed a beat either.
“We won’t be trouble, me and Edgar. We won’t say anything. I promise. I don’t care about your emeralds. I was only worried about the forest. Don’t you see—”
Dillon let her prattle on. Moons started crying again, and Edgar hesitated, but kept working. There were footfalls nearby, shuffling and cursing.
“Regardez salaud! Vous porcs immondes!”
Annja’s throat tightened. That was Roux’s voice. He’d followed her to the camp, just like he’d followed her to Brazil. When he emerged through the narrow opening, she noted his bruised and scraped face, wrists bound in front of him and hands bloody—it threw another wrench into the situation. Hammond was behind him, a sneer on his hard face, two Taurus pistols in his hands, and helmet light shining in her eyes.
“Here’s your other complication, Mr. Dillon. He was alone. And, yeah, I’m sure of it.”
Annja squinted through the light and got a closer look at Roux. They’d beaten him. Roux could well hold his own in a fight, and he’d certainly done some damage to Hammond. The thug’s lip was swollen and the nose canted to the side—broken. Dried blood was caked under his nostrils. No doubt he’d cleaned himself up a little before coming down here. Roux had done a number on him.
“Guy wouldn’t give a name, but I figure he was with the television woman.”
“Miss Creed,” Dillon said. “Call her Miss Creed, Ham.”
“He has to be with her. Just look at him, groomed, like he’s a producer type. Never saw him on their boat.” Hammond clocked Roux hard enough on the back of the head to drop him. Roux landed on his knees and let out a groan. Annja wanted to shout at her friend. Why did you come here? Why didn’t you protect yourself, stay hidden until the authorities arrived? But she kept her mouth shut and focused on the sword, keeping it at bay.
She mentally calculated the distance to Hammond, to the guy watching Moons and Edgar, figuring angles of attack and likely outcomes. Moons and Edgar could be shot before she could get to the gun pointed at them.
Moons was still blabbering away. “In fact, we’ll keep mining for you. We’re young and able. Look how we’ve helped so far.”
“Shut up,” Edgar whispered.
“We’ve been working nonstop since—”
“Enough!” Dillon shouted. The workmen stopped, too.
Annja felt the gun pressed harder into her back.
“I don’t want your blood on my hands, sir. So I’m not going to kill you,” Dillon said. “I’ll let the river do that.” He motioned to Hammond who tugged Roux to his feet. The other henchmen grabbed Moons and Edgar.
Had she waited too late to act? Moons and Edgar were forced down the passage first, t
hen Roux with Hammond behind him. It had to be now, she thought. In a heartbeat the sword was in her hand. And in the same heartbeat the butt of the gun was slammed into the side of her head.
Chapter 30
Annja heard voices as she began to regain consciousness. Charlemagne? Joan of Arc? No, those were from a dream. And it would be so good to be deep in that dream right now, walking in the forest with King Charlemagne and talking about swords and saving France. No one else in the world to bother them.
Annja concentrated and fought to clear her head. She wanted to take in the real conversation swirling around her. She recognized Roux’s voice and Hammond’s. Moons’s, too, the girl sounding panic-stricken, and then she heard scuffling.
Annja struggled to open her eyes but the memory of pressure underwater forced her down.
The noises all spun together.
She shouted at herself to wake up.
Had a punch been thrown? Hopefully Roux had thrown it; the old man was good in a fight. Another punch. A grunt. A groan. More scuffling.
Edgar was shouting. Dillon was saying something about a crevice.
“Throw them down the hole.” It was Hammond’s voice.
Just as her eyes fluttered open she felt someone kick her side...then again. Fully conscious now and flailing to grab onto something, she could only see rock and the glow of lanterns. Another kick. She was rolling and then falling. The sword was in one hand and her free hand was waving around for a purchase. She couldn’t see anyone to swing the blade at.
It was all dark.
Dark.
Oh, but she hated that word.
Falling fast, Annja caught only a musty scent of old wood. In a heartbeat she plunged and hit the ground. The impact sent the sword from her hand and tore the breath from her lungs. Every inch of her ached.
She pushed herself to her knees; there was a body under her—Moons. The girl had fallen on her stomach, and the hard hat with the light...that was where the pale beam came from. Fortunate the light hadn’t broken. It sent a beam across the stone floor that was littered with rocks, dead leaves and bones. Bones were everywhere. How many people had Dillon dumped in this hole?
From overhead came the screech of bats disturbed by all the action. Dillon had tossed them in a cave.
Down the hole, Hammond had said. This had to be below the emerald mine.
Annja gently turned Moons over, setting the hard hat where the beam illuminated the girl. Annja felt for a pulse, just as she heard voices from above.
“Please don’t do—” It was Edgar’s voice.
There was the flapping of material and a dull thud. The bats shrieked louder.
Annja, still feeling for a pulse on Moons and finding none, saw Edgar flat on his back only a few feet away. They’d dumped him down here, too. His helmet had rolled away and was rocking, its light playing shadows on the cave wall.
Edgar twitched, moaned, and his eyes closed.
No pulse on Moons, but Annja knew CPR. She wasn’t going to give up on the girl.
“Look out below!” Hammond shouted.
There was more flapping material, another body coming down. Annja had just enough time to reach over and pull Edgar out of the way. Roux, his hands still tied, landed where Edgar had been. Roux wasn’t moving, but Annja wasn’t worried about him—somehow he’d always survived.
Annja cursed. Above her there was scant light, but Annja could make out Hammond’s face leering through the hole in the floor. The hole was barely big enough for a body to pass through it. Hammond rolled something over the top, covering the hole. The bats started to settle down.
Annja swore again as she felt Edgar’s neck to make certain he was alive. She found a steady pulse. She turned all her attention to Moons.
Annja alternated chest compressions with mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. The routine became a mantra...thirty compressions, two breaths, thirty compressions, two breaths. Annja had remarkable stamina, but even she was wearing down. Such a dangerous situation was taking its ugly toll.
“Don’t die on me,” Annja pleaded. “Don’t die, Moons.” A first responder kept up lifesaving techniques until either the professionals arrived or the victim started breathing.
Thirty compressions. Two breaths.
“Don’t die.”
But Moons was dead. Annja went at it minutes longer before rocking back on her haunches, spent and furious, acknowledging the girl’s lifeless body.
“You say you don’t want to kill anyone, Dillon? You might not have pushed her, but this blood is on you.” Tears of rage and sorrow welled in her eyes as she shuffled on her knees to Edgar. She felt his head, neck, back. He seemed to be intact, but definitely unconscious—fortunate for him at the moment. “You’re the real monster,” Annja continued to rant; she needed to vent her ire. Every profane word she knew spilled out in rapid succession. “I came to the Amazon looking for monsters, and I found one. I found the king of all monsters.”
Edgar’s arm was bent at an odd angle. Definitely broken. Maybe he’d put out his arm to stop his fall, a reflexive action. Annja stretched and grabbed Edgar’s helmet, sitting it so that it highlighted his arm.
“That’s definitely not good.” She ripped the sleeve off his shirt so she could get a better look. Gingerly feeling it, she figured it was broken in more than one place. Edgar needed an emergency room. Annja had first aid training, but this damage went beyond her expertise. She muttered another string of foul words aimed at Dillon and then took a glance at some of the bones in the cavern, finding four that looked like ribs and that would work as splints.
She began to treat Edgar’s arm when she saw that Roux was stirring. “This is going to hurt, Edgar. Please stay unconscious a while longer.” She did her best to realign the bones in his arm, the humerous first, splinting it with two ribs, tying them with the discarded shirtsleeve.
She tugged off Moons’s shirt and ripped it into strips, then took off Moons’s belt. It took Annja considerably longer to work on Edgar’s lower arm, splinted it, wrapped it with the T-shirt strips, and then used the belt as a sling to help immobilize it. Finally, she retrieved Moons’s fanny pack and looked inside for anything useful. She found a pocketknife and stuffed it into her already-overstuffed pockets. The fanny pack became a makeshift pillow she gently placed under Edgar’s head. Still, he hadn’t moved. Angling the light, she opened his eyelids; the pupils were uneven. Great, a concussion.
“Annja.” Roux had come to. “Annja—”
“I heard you, give me a moment.”
“Annja, my legs are broken.”
Annja suspected the only reason she hadn’t broken any bones was that Moons had cushioned her fall. She picked up one of the hard hats, put it on, adjusted the light and checked on her next patient, using the pocketknife to free his hands.
Roux’s legs were twisted at odd angles, not the way legs were meant to bend. A bone protruded from his skin and jeans in one spot, the denim dark with blood that continued to gush. He’d propped himself up on his elbows.
“What am I supposed to—”
“You may have to set them, Annja. I can do it if I have to, but—” A pause. “But if you don’t mind—”
Had this happened to him before? She went to work, noting that his hands were clenched into fists and an expression of pure pain crossed his face. He refused to cry out. “Do I splint them?”
“No.” His hands unclenched slightly, and then formed fists again. “Just leave me be awhile.”
She stepped away. Though she was curious, she nevertheless didn’t want to watch him regenerate or be reborn or whatever it was that happened to always save him. Let that be his mystery. Her mystery remained how Joan’s sword had come to her. The sword was still within reach, she knew, but she had no cause to call it at the moment. Now that her companions had been tended to,
it was time to check out her surroundings.
Up was first, since that was where she needed to go. Up to get out of here. Her hip still bothered her where she’d been shot, but it was dull and annoying and wasn’t bad enough to stop her. The beam barely reached the ceiling, which she guessed was thirty feet up, maybe a little more. The hole had been covered, and there was no way—short of flying—to reach it. That opening, the only one that she could see, was too far from the walls, which looked impossible to climb anyway, all smooth and covered with...paintings.
Am I dreaming?
Annja literally pinched herself, thinking maybe the whole episode of falling through the hole...was another nightmare, an extension of the Dslala dreaming ritual. No such luck. This was all achingly real.
But the paintings...she’d seen them before, in a dream. Primitive, but discernible, remarkably preserved, the colors—red, black and violet reasonably bright. They depicted amazing beasts. In one the creature was on all fours, slothlike, but not sloth-sized as an almost stick figure of a man was in front of it. In the next series, it showed the creature rising up and standing on its hind legs. In the next, it showed the creature breaking something large, maybe a log or a tree. There were other creatures depicted, half-men half-fish, birds with the heads of men, jaguars with the heads of men and more.
The bones. She padded closer to a pile and moved them around with the toe of her boot. Some were human, or at least similar to human—she couldn’t be certain without closer examination. But a couple of the skulls were abnormally large and shaped oddly, like the combination of a cow and an ape. Perhaps the beasts depicted on the wall. She sensed that this place was ancient, though people had been down here recently. Annja saw that some of the smaller bones had been shattered, as if someone had walked on them. And a callous soul had dropped a chocolate bar wrapper. Dillon’s men, or maybe Dillon himself had come down here to make sure there were no emerald veins.
Emeralds were found closer to the surface.
