The Covenant of Genesis nwaec-4

by Andy McDermott

  The driver barely managed to duck before the crash. The propeller scythed over him, missing by inches, but the force of the collision slammed his head against a seat.

  Even braced for the impact, Chase was still thrown painfully against the control column. Clutching his bruised chest, he pulled back the throttle. The engine noise dropped to a low grumble.

  He pushed himself up and looked outside. The speedboat was impaled on the Otter’s floats. He climbed out, finding a foothold on the float and edging along it to the plane’s nose. The propeller was still turning, so he jumped into the speedboat’s bow, then hunched down to pass underneath it. The pirate was sprawled across the stern, starting to recover—

  ‘Come in, number seven,’ said Chase, grabbing him and banging his head against the seat again. ‘Your time is up!’

  The pirate swiped an arm at Chase’s face. He responded with a crunching headbutt, breaking the Indonesian’s nose. The man screeched, spitting blood.

  Chase pulled the pirate up by the bandanna round his neck. ‘You speak English?’ he demanded. He doubted the snarled reply was complimentary. ‘Let’s try that again,’ he said, hauling him round so that his head was within inches of the propeller’s buzzing tips. ‘Do? You? Speak? English?’

  ‘Yes!’ shrieked the pirate, eyes wide with terror. He tried to twist away, but Chase forced him closer.

  ‘Why did you attack us?’

  ‘Don’t know! Just a job!’

  ‘Who hired you?’

  Despite his fear, the pirate remained silent. Chase frowned and pushed him into the propeller. Most of the man’s right ear disappeared with a meaty thwat! and a puff of blood. He screamed as Chase pulled him away.

  ‘Who hired you?’ Chase repeated, more forcefully. ‘You’ve only got one more ear, then after that it’s on to the softer bits.’ He glanced down for emphasis.

  ‘Don’t know!’ the pirate wailed. ‘Only Latan knows!’

  ‘Who’s Latan?’

  ‘Boss man, our boss!’

  Chase remembered the ex-military man he’d seen leading the pirates. He looked for the retreating RIB. Like the cruiser, it was now just a dot in the distance, powering away at full speed. ‘Where’s he going?’

  The pirate lashed out in an attempt to break free. Chase rammed a fist into the other man’s stomach, then grabbed him again.

  Thwat!

  ‘Can you still ’ear me?’ said Chase as his prisoner, blood now running down both sides of his head, screamed again. ‘Where’s your base? Where’s Latan going?’

  ‘Mankun Island! Mankun Island!’

  The name meant nothing to Chase, but he could tell from the desperation in the pirate’s voice that he was telling the truth. He pulled him away from the propeller and threw him down in the stern. ‘All right, Van Gogh,’ he growled, ‘stay there and shut up.’ He sat down, one foot on the moaning man’s chest as he tried to piece together what had happened. Whoever had hired this Latan to attack the expedition had been after something very specific, something so valuable - or such a threat - that everybody aboard the Pianosa had to be murdered to cover up the fact.

  It had to be one of the artefacts Nina had found, but how could some old relic be worth so much carnage?

  He saw the camera from Nina’s lab under the rear seat. Whatever it was they’d been after, maybe there was still a picture on the memory card . . .

  Movement caught his attention and he snapped his head round, seeing the menacing fin of a shark briefly break the surface before slipping back under the waves. The blood in the water must have attracted it—

  The pirate twisted out from under his foot, clawing for something behind his back as he took advantage of Chase’s momentary distraction. He sat up, clutching a pistol that had been hidden in his waistband.

  Chase rolled backwards, sweeping a savage kick at the pirate. His heel smashed into his chin with tooth-snapping force. The pirate was thrown back, firing a shot wildly into the air as he toppled over the stern to splash into the sea.

  Heart racing, Chase pulled himself upright to see the pirate surfacing. Blood streaming down his face, he flicked up the gun—

  And was dragged under the water, so shockingly fast that the gun was already submerged again before he could pull the trigger. A plume of bloody froth belched up as the tiger shark which had just clamped its ferocious jaws round the pirate’s chest pulled its meal down into the depths.

  Chase let out a startled half-laugh as he watched predator and prey disappear. He regained his breath, then hummed a few bars from the Jaws theme, looking back towards the half-sunken Pianosa and wondering how long it would take to get back to Nina with a smashed boat stuck to his plane.

  After all, swimming was definitely an unsafe option.

  6

  ‘Attacked by pirates in the morning,’ said Nina, ‘and a twenty-eight-hour flight in the afternoon. I don’t know which is worse.’

  The humour was forced; she was still horribly shaken. But in dealing first with the Coast Guard, then with officials from the Indonesian government after being airlifted to Jakarta, she had concealed her true feelings beneath a mask of officialdom. She was still the leader of the expedition, and she had a responsibility to give the authorities as clear and dispassionate an account of events as possible.

  Now, the United Nations wanted to hear that account as well. In person. A flight had been hastily arranged to return her to New York. Gruelling though the long trip would be, Nina was certain it would pale compared to the interrogation she would endure at the UN.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Chase. ‘Private flight with no other passengers? Horrible. Still, at least you won’t have to worry about getting stuck next to a screaming baby.’

  ‘No, just you looting the minibar.’ Chase’s expression suddenly became evasive. ‘What?’

  ‘Well, the thing is,’ he began, not quite meeting her gaze, ‘I, er . . . won’t be going with you.’

  ‘You what?’

  ‘I’ll come back to New York as soon as I can, I promise! But there’s something I need to do here first.’ He lowered his voice. They were waiting in the United Nations’ offices in Jakarta, and as well as UN staff there were also officials from the Indonesian government and its law enforcement agencies buzzing around. ‘There was something I didn’t tell the cops. I know where the pirates were going: some place called Mankun Island. So I’m going to head over there and have words.’

  ‘Why the hell didn’t you tell them?’ Nina said. ‘If they know where the pirates are, they’ll be able to catch them!’

  ‘No, they won’t - it’ll take too long. Even if they decide to go after the pirates tomorrow, it’ll be too late. They’ll be gone - and we’ll never find out who hired them. But Bejo knows where this island is, and he knows people in the area. We’ll fly up there, get a boat and check the place out tonight. Before those bastards have a chance to fuck off with their money.’

  ‘Or maybe you’ll get yourself killed. And Bejo too.’

  ‘He wants to do it,’ said Chase. ‘The guys on the ship were his friends.’

  She shook her head. ‘Eddie, this is a terrible idea. If anything goes wrong . . .’

  ‘It won’t,’ he assured her.

  ‘I don’t suppose it would make any difference if I told you that I really, really need you with me in New York, and as your boss ordered you to come?’ One look at his expression gave Nina her answer. ‘Yeah, thought not.’

  ‘I’ll be fine,’ he promised. ‘And I’ll keep Bejo out of trouble. Enough people’ve died today. Enough good people,’ he added with chilling emphasis.

  Resigned, Nina rested her head on his shoulder. ‘Just don’t do anything stupid, okay.’

  ‘Hey, you know me, love.’

  ‘That’s why I said it.’ She kissed his cheek, then stood. ‘I’d better get to the airport. Don’t want to keep the UN waiting, huh?’

  ‘Who knows, maybe by the time you get back to New York, I’ll have found out what all this is abou
t.’

  ‘Maybe,’ she echoed glumly. They regarded each other for a long moment, then embraced and kissed.

  ‘See you soon,’ said Chase as they reluctantly moved apart.

  ‘I’d better.’

  ‘We’re close,’ Bejo warned.

  It was now night, a clinging, muggy humidity sticking Chase’s dark shirt to his skin. But he ignored the discomfort as he turned off the little boat’s outboard. ‘You sure it’s the right place?’ he asked. In the distance, he saw a handful of lights.

  ‘Nobody lives on Mankun, not usually,’ Bejo told him. ‘Pirates use it sometimes. Not often, though - too far from shipping lanes.’

  ‘They came a fair old way to get to us, though.’ They were almost eighty miles from where the Pianosa had been attacked: a long run for the pirates to reach their base. But it meant less chance of anyone looking for them here.

  He picked up a pair of battered binoculars for a closer look. The lights resolved themselves into bulbs hung on a cluster of tumbledown wooden shacks on the shore of a small inlet. Beyond them rose damp, dark rainforest. The biggest of the structures extended out into the water, apparently a covered dock. There was a large boat inside. The motor cruiser? It was an expensive vessel - maybe the pirates planned to sell it.

  ‘Mr Eddie,’ Bejo said, voice tense. ‘Look left.’

  Chase panned the binoculars to find what had caught the young man’s eye. Almost invisible against the black water was a boat, a very faint light at its bow. The dim yellow glow picked out the outline of a seated man - and the glint of metal in his hand. A rifle.

  ‘They pretend to be fishing,’ said Bejo. ‘But they’re lookouts. They warn the other pirates if the police or the Coast Guard come - anyone else, they just kill.’

  Scanning left and right, Chase saw two more ‘fishermen’ lurking in the distance. Nobody could get within half a mile of the inlet without being spotted.

  Nobody in a boat, at least.

  He gave the binoculars to Bejo. ‘Okay,’ he said, picking up a sheathed knife, ‘wait here. I’ll signal you when it’s clear to row in.’

  ‘Good luck, Mr Eddie,’ Bejo whispered as Chase climbed into the water, barely making a splash.

  The pirate keeping watch from the small boat was not only bored, but frustrated. Every so often, he heard noises from the shore, whooping and cheering as his comrades celebrated the success of their mission. Sure, not everyone had come back from it, but it wasn’t as though the men were close friends. He barely knew the names of most of them, the entire operation having been put together literally overnight, its members hurriedly recruited from seemingly every desperate dive on the Sumatran islands. What he resented was being stuck out here on guard duty while the others drank and gorged and gambled. Latan had even rounded up some whores from somewhere. And here he was, bobbing half a kilometre away with nothing but a lamp and a Kalashnikov for company . . .

  A small sound brought his thoughts back to his job. It sounded like bubbles breaking the surface. A fish?

  Seeing no sign of any approaching boats, he leaned over to find the source. A couple of bubbles popped a handspan from the boat’s side. The pirate looked more closely, seeing a pale shape below the surface. A big fish. No need for a net; he could just reach in and grab it—

  It reached out and grabbed him.

  Chase’s hand locked round the man’s neck and dragged his face underwater to silence him as his other hand drove the knife deep into his neck with a chut. He kept hold as the pirate thrashed and wriggled . . . then went limp. The AK-47 splashed into the water, bumping against him as it sank. He waited a few seconds until he was sure the man was dead, then surfaced and climbed aboard.

  ‘Don’t rock the boat,’ he told the corpse. He looked out to sea, holding his hand in front of the lamp to signal Bejo.

  Ten minutes later, they were ashore.

  After rowing to meet Chase, Bejo had silently guided the little boat to make landfall a short distance from the rotting buildings, waiting in the water until they were certain there were no patrols on shore. There weren’t. That the pirates only had three men on watch in the boats showed they weren’t expecting trouble.

  They were wrong.

  Bejo pulled the boat ashore as Chase squeezed as much water as he could from his clothes. ‘What’s the plan, Mr Eddie?’

  ‘The plan is for you to stay here and wait for me,’ Chase told him. He could see the young Indonesian’s disappointment even in the dark.

  ‘But I want to come.’ He started towards the shacks.

  Chase held him back. ‘When I said “stay here and wait for me”, I was being polite. What I meant was “stay here so you don’t get your fucking head blown off !” Wait here.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘Stay!’

  ‘I’m not a dog, Mr Eddie!’ Bejo protested in an irritated whisper as Chase cautiously made his way along the waterline.

  He reached the first building, the large covered dock. As he’d thought, the cruiser was inside, the .50-cal still mounted on its bow. It hadn’t even been unloaded, a belt of ammo dangling from it. He shook his head. Amateurs.

  He moved on. The other shacks were lit inside and out by bulbs strung from their roof beams, a generator puttering away somewhere to power them. He crept to the nearest shack and peeped through a gap in the wood. A strong smell of hot grease and searing meat hit him, something sizzling in a large wok atop a camping gas hob. The skinned carcass of a goat hung from the ceiling, chunks of flesh having been crudely carved from it. A man was drunkenly whacking away with a large cleaver.

  It wasn’t Latan. Chase moved on, slipping round the shack to the waterline. A rickety walkway ran along it, connecting the huts to a jetty. The RIB was moored to the latter, along with a couple of small rowing boats.

  It struck him that the RIB was the only boat capable of a fast getaway; the cruiser would have to be untied, started up and reversed out of the dock. Once trouble started - and it would - the inflatable powerboat would be the first place the pirate leader would run.

  He had to make sure Latan didn’t get away. Sabotage the engine, maybe? Or . . .

  A noise behind him, a creak of rotten wood. Chase spun, fists ready to pummel the pirate—

  ‘Mr Eddie!’ squeaked Bejo, throwing up his hands in fright as Chase arrested a blow inches from his face.

  He hauled Bejo into the shadows between two of the shacks. ‘I told you to stay put!’ he hissed.

  ‘They killed my friends!’ the teenager insisted. ‘I want to help - I can help. I just heard some of the pirates talking about Latan. They say he’s waiting for a man to come here with money.’

  ‘They haven’t been paid yet?’ That explained why they were still here, then - and if he could identify Latan’s employer . . . ‘Okay,’ he said reluctantly, ‘stick with me. But do exactly what I tell you, all right?’

  ‘Okay, Mr Eddie,’ Bejo replied, smiling. ‘So what do we do?’

  Junk was scattered round a tree stump between the shacks. Chase picked up a coil of rusted steel cable. ‘Keep watch here, warn me if anyone’s coming.’ He started to creep along the jetty.

  ‘Where are you going?’

  Now it was Chase’s turn to smile. ‘To make sure that boat’s tied up properly.’

  It took a couple of minutes to complete his work. Job done, Chase moved back ashore, and accompanied by Bejo continued his search for the pirate leader. The largest and noisiest shack contained about a dozen men, most of them engrossed in a fast-paced dice game that involved a lot of aggressive shouting as the others looked on and drank.

  Still no sign of Latan. They passed through the shadows to sneak up to a small hut. Sounds of activity came from within, but this definitely wasn’t gambling, except with the possibility of contracting a sexually transmitted disease.

  Feeling uncomfortably like a voyeur, Chase looked through a hole to see a bored-looking woman lying on a ratty mattress as a drunken, sweaty man pounded away at her. The bear
ded Casanova wasn’t Latan, however, so Chase withdrew. He was about to carry on to the next shack when he realised Bejo wasn’t following. He glanced back to see the young Indonesian gawping at the scene inside the hut, mesmerised. In equal parts impatient and amused, he moved back to pull him away—

  A large man with a crooked scar running from his temple to his cheek threw open the gambling den’s door and strode towards the hut, shouting angrily. Chase pushed Bejo down, then froze. He was in shadow, his clothes dark, but the pirate was only a few feet away as he banged on the door. If he looked to the side, even for a moment, his eyes would adjust enough to make out the shapes hiding there.

  But he didn’t, instead continuing to hammer at the door. The man inside said something that was unmistakably the equivalent of ‘Give me another minute!’ This didn’t satisfy the scarred pirate, who kicked the door open and stomped inside. A yelp, some thumping, and then the interrupted lover was flung out into the open, trousers round his ankles. The door slammed shut. The bearded man yelled a half-hearted insult at the hut, then gathered up his dignity and his pants before trudging back to join the men in the gambling den.

  Chase and Bejo remained still until he was inside, then crept round the back of the love shack. The next shack contained only a man sprawled across a bunk, snoring and drooling, with an overturned bottle of whisky beside him. Not Latan. Then a dark, empty shell of a hut, its ceiling half collapsed. They were running out of places to search . . .

  A new noise. Not from the pirates - from the sky. A helicopter.

  Chase and Bejo dropped flat behind some rusting fuel drums as several men emerged from the largest shack. A fierce wind whirled round the camp as the chopper appeared over the trees. The men were armed, but not on alert. They were obviously expecting the new arrival.

  Chase finally spotted Latan, emerging from a small hut at the edge of the derelict settlement. Carrying a canvas bag in one hand, the pirate leader was tugging a shirt over his bare shoulders with the other. He joined his men, and they moved to an open area near the treeline as the helicopter switched on its spotlight and descended.