He could see nothing but darkness, but the noises proved more terrifying than any vision. He could hear more shouts than gunfire now. He heard calls of surrender, Bertoni pleading for the lives of the survivors, a spatter of gunfire, then, most horrifying of all, laughter. After that, silence.
Ahmed clutched his knees tighter to his chest in a vain attempt to stop trembling. Part of him wanted to run, try his luck overboard like the fool earlier, anything but wait in darkness for the ruthless killers to find him.
At the clang of the engine room door being kicked open, he tucked in tighter. Footsteps. A metallic smashing sound as the engineer’s rolling desk chair was shoved aside. The adrenaline-pumped boasts of two men speaking Arabic. They were searching the engineer’s desk. Then more footsteps descending the steel stairs to the engine room. Two, quick shots, followed closely by two thuds. Bodies falling to the floor.
“Check them. One of them could have found the Emerald.” The man was speaking English, American English.
“You just had to shoot them, didn’t you? Couldn’t just ask. I was beginning to like these guys. A pirate’s life for me.” Muffled sounds, coughing, then banging of metal being tossed and turned onto the metal floor. “The Emerald’s not in their pockets, and I’m not doing a body search on a corpse.”
“You’ll cut open their innards if The Prophet tells you to.”
“Hold on. Check out this blood trail.”
Ahmed stopped breathing. They knew. His leg throbbed. The blood from his wound. He had been a fool. He had led them right to him.
The rumbling start of an oversized outboard motor. A speedboat starting up.
“Damn. That’s got to be Mishad. He’s getting away.”
The footsteps retreated up the stairs. Ahmed realized he wasn’t breathing. He sucked in oxygen. More gunshots rang out from somewhere on deck.
A deafening blast concussed through the ship, pounding into his head and chest. The Aquila lurched perilously on its side, then lolled back upright. Ahmed pressed his palms against his ears to steady his dizziness. Mishad must have hit the Aquila with a rocket. Through the ringing, he could barely make out another sound, even more terrifying than the blast, rushing water. The cold fingers of the Atlantic reached into his hiding place. No more time. He had to hope that the Americans were killed by the rocket blast.
Ahmed twisted and kicked out the circuit board. The lights were out, but a stream of daylight tumbled down the metal stairs, along with a powerful cascade of ocean water. The frothy water swirled and eddied across the engine room floor. Already it had nearly covered the corpses of the two pirates and lifted them into a macabre float. Ahmed slogged past them. The ship listed at an alarming rate.
He strained to hear voices from the deck above, but he could hear only the ringing in his ears and the horrifying sound of ocean gushing into the Aquila. He grabbed the handrail, barely able to pull himself against the force of the water cascading furiously down the stairs. Water sprayed onto his face, the salty brine fingering his lips like a murderer lusting after his horrific death.
Ahmed yanked himself onto the foredeck, then up the last set of stairs to daylight. He rushed across the threshold, and tripped, stumbling over something wet and soft. A body. Bertoni. Ahmed’s stomach lurched. The captain’s grimace of death was very nearly a smile. He raced, limping, dragging his leg, across the deck. Quickly, he ducked. The two Americans hadn’t been killed. They were dressed as Mishad’s pirates in ragged khakis and cast-off t-shirts and were hurriedly lowering themselves into the remaining speedboat. They shoved off and started after the other speedboat, now some 150 meters away.
Another explosion. A rocket ripped through the Americans’ speedboat and into the Aquila, sending body parts and metal shards screaming into the sea and sky. The concussion knocked Ahmed backwards. If not for Bertoni’s body, Ahmed’s head would have been cracked against the steel door. His ears rang. He could no longer hear the water, but could feel its power coursing over the railings. Ahmed gasped for breath, toppled and rolled across the deck, splashing into the water, the cold ocean slapping him into focus as he fell below the surface.
For a moment, all was muted and slow-moving beneath the chaos above the surface. But the stab of the salt on his wound nearly knocked him unconscious. He kicked towards the sunlight, but was held back. The jagged metal from the blast hole in the hull hooked the hem of his djellaba. A fingerless forearm floated towards him from the ship’s hull. Frantically, he ripped his clothing free and surfaced. He swam as hard and fast as he could. He turned to see the bow of the Aquila slip into the sea, then huge air bubbles rising and bursting, creating a boiling stew of bodies and flotsam.
Ahmed was utterly alone in the vast ocean. The image of the missionary haunted him, the sole survivor five hundred years earlier, bound mercilessly to a flotsam of decking as his caravel sank before his eyes, not able to choose life nor death. His God had saved him, for what? So that Ahmed could bear witness to more brutal death? That’s when he saw it, the pirate’s speedboat, bobbing in the waves not one hundred meters distant, its motor silent.
Ahmed swam for it. The salt water knifed his leg wound. He ignored it. He thought of the shark he had seen earlier. He hoped, revoltingly, that the shark would feed on his dead shipmates before him.
As he neared the speedboat, he could see the pirate, slumped over the wheel. His back was red with blood, but was he dead? Ahmed approached cautiously, every splash deafening the ringing in his ear. The pirate remained still. He could see now, it was Mishad. He called to him, “Mishad!” As far as Mishad knew, Ahmed had completed his mission, pushed the button that alerted him to attack. No answer.
With great difficulty and the last of his strength, Ahmed hoisted himself over the gunwale. He crawled to Mishad and pulled him back. His face had been obliterated. Ahmed gagged. His stomach heaved. He summoned will from deep within, and heaved and shoved Mishad over the side. The body floated for a moment, then sunk with the weight of his sidearm, still holstered.
Ahmed sat in the bloodied seat. He turned the key. The engine stuttered then started with a roar. He dared to realize that he had been saved. He yanked the velvet pouch containing the Emerald from his pocket. He held it over the side, ready to drop it back into the depths where no man would find it. His grasp remained tight. He knew he couldn’t let go. It was as if Allah told him that the power behind the attack, the master of both Mishad and the Americans who killed him, would cause more death and destruction. Ahmed knew, like his ancestor five centuries before him who had passed down the missionary’s letter through generations of his family, that he was destined to help stop that evil power. He knew he had to get the Tear of the Moon Emerald to safety, to the only person who could protect its power from being unleashed, to its guardian. He had made a promise, and he would not break it.
Ahmed pushed the throttle forward. He didn’t look back. His fate lay not in the past, but in the future, and he had to do what he could to change it.
CHAPTER 12
Christa stared towards the dark abyss where Joseph had fallen. The beasts sniffed the rim of the plateau. One of them howled. Joseph had wanted to leave sooner. That kind, brave grandfather was dead, because of her. She had come here to do the right thing. How had it gone so wrong?
A light flashed from the opposite canyon rim. A second bang blasted through the darkness. The beast to the right yelped as it was bodily lifted, and thrown down in a heap. Its paws kicked pathetically. It whimpered, and wobbled back up to all fours. Slowly, with clear menace, the beast to the left with the long snout swiveled its massive jaws towards her. Its eyes flashed red, and it wasn’t the reflection of her headlamp beam.
The beast bared its sharp canines. It emitted a guttural growl. The animal with the gray-tipped mane turned towards her. The two of them stalked closer, their haunches down, their lips stretched back against their teeth.
She snatched up her pack and the sphere, pivoted, dug in her toes and ran. The monsters brayed a
ngrily. Thirty feet to the nearest doorway. Paws slapped at the gravel at her heels. Five feet. A claw tore at the back of her calf. She dove through the open portal, landing hard on the packed earth floor.
The lead beast skidded to a stop at the doorway. He lurched his massive head through the narrow space, his teeth bared in a snarl. A drip of saliva coursed from the point of his canine to the pounded earth floor, landing with a soft fizz. Joseph had said that Skinwalkers could not enter human habitation.
The beast lifted its clawed forepaw, its powerful muscles rippling beneath its ragged black fur. It stepped across the threshold.
The beast stalked towards her. Its breath stank of rotting flesh. But those red eyes, they weren’t the soulless shark eyes of an animal. They were intelligent, scheming. Smart enough to know that she had one option--the open doorway about ten feet behind her, leading back into the cliff dwelling. It would come down to speed, and the animal with four legs would probably win. She spun and sprinted for it. The beast sprang at her.
She ran through and raced towards the far wall, her headlamp beam jagging crazily. The light hit on another opening, darker, narrower, hardly more than a foot wide. It could be a storage room, a dead end. The air smelled old, stale. She’s never fit through. She had to try.
The beast crept into the room, stalking, patient. The armillary sphere, she could heave it at the thing, maybe daze it, or at least distract it. Sacrifice it for a sliver of time to escape through that doorway. She recoiled her arm. “Damn you,” she screamed at it. “Damn you to hell.” She couldn’t let Samuel’s murderers win. She couldn’t let the bastards who shot Joseph grab the prize. She couldn’t let her father down. “You want this? Never!” She pitched the sphere through the narrow portal. She yanked off her pack and threw it in after the sphere, then turned sideways, and squeezed herself into the doorway.
The other two beasts loped into the room. One more foot and she’d be free. Not good. This wasn’t a doorway, it was a stone vise. And it was crushing her. She couldn’t move. The three beasts crouched in a stalking position, haunches tense. The lead beast growled.
This was absurd. She was dead meat. Why weren’t they attacking? She pressed her palms against the coarse sandstone, not caring that it scraped the skin raw. She kicked out with her foot. The lead beast snapped at it. A feint. Did they know that she was between them and the armillary sphere?
A voice seeped through the cool air. Calm down. She sensed it, didn’t hear it. Mom’s voice. This was crazy. It’s not like Mom was helping her from the other side. There was no other side. Her heart hammered. Each breath wedged her in tighter. She couldn’t die like this, through the very act of breathing to stay alive. She couldn’t fail Dad again.
She breathed out, emptying her lungs, collapsing her chest. With one last thrust, she pushed through the opening, landing with a hip-bruising thud. The lead beast sprang at the portal. Its claws scraped the stone. It jabbed in its head, snarling, snapping its teeth. Its hoary breath blew hot on her ankles. But its massive haunches couldn’t fit through the opening.
The beasts hunkered down at the threshold of the portal, and began digging with the vicious determination of a bloodhound on the scent. Damn it. They were creating a tunnel of their own, to get to her. She speared her headlamp beam into the darkness. It didn’t reflect back. This wasn’t a storage room. It was the mouth of a tunnel. Joseph’s tunnel.
She leaned into the tunnel, straining to see, struggling to breathe. The air was thin and heavy at the same time. You can do this, Christa. This mesa is not going to collapse on top of you. She jammed the sphere into her pack and ran. The tunnel narrowed. She ducked to protect her skull from bashing into the rock. The weight of the sphere shifted wildly in her pack. But this tunnel went uphill, not down.
Up to the top of the plateau, or back down into the valley. It didn’t matter. Anywhere but in the black throat of the cliff and its suffocating darkness. Her elbows scraped against the stone walls. It was getting darker. No, the headlamp was dying. It was a rookie mistake, not checking the batteries when she picked it up along with her new “lucky” pack at the trading post. She couldn’t die here, not in this black loneliness, her desiccated corpse left behind for some future and better prepared explorer to find and place on exhibit. Like they’d find Joseph, his body twisted and abandoned in a tangle of creosote bush. Hold it together, Christa.
The blackness engulfed her. This was death. Black. Empty. Hopeless. It gripped her with cold, spindly fingers. Her father had never sounded so desperate, so weak when he called last night. She knew he’d been hurt, though he would never admit it. Her father was dying. That was why he had sent her to find the Turquoise. That was why he hadn’t come himself to hunt down a vital piece of his ultimate treasure. She would never see him again. Never be embraced by his love. Never prove herself worthy of his pride.
She ran on. Her hand scraped against the rough rock sides of the tunnel. Her footsteps rasped against the gravel, violating the utter silence. The headlamp died.
She stopped. Her hand was poised in front of her face. She couldn’t see it. Total darkness. She had to turn back. At least that was a way out. She crept backwards. The tunnel was too narrow to turn around. But the retreat would get wider, easier, and lead her out. To what? A cruel, meaningless death, her flesh eaten away? Even that was easier then plunging forward into the black unknown.
Her father wouldn’t turn back. He wouldn’t surrender to fear. She stopped again. She stretched her arm ahead of her as a guide. She stepped forward.
It seemed an eternity before she felt the split in the tunnel, but it was probably only a few yards. She pawed around. The path on the right sloped downhill. It could be a dead end. The top of the plateau was closer than the valley floor. Joseph had said to head downhill. She had to risk he was right, that history was right. She crept downwards.
Another brief eternity, another split in the tunnel. This time both paths headed downhill. It was too loud, the thunder of her heart, the whooshing of her breath through the utter silence. The air smelled old. She couldn’t think. Just choose. Stay right, always right. Her father taught her that, at the dig in the catacombs. If she had to retrace her steps and choose another route, she could. Never give up, he said. She hated when he said that, but it kept him alive. The path plunged downward, a steep drop. Her boots slid on the slick rock.
Then, in the still air, a hint, no, a definite wisp of fresh, river-cooled air. She crawled towards it, the distant splash of water over rock, and the sweet fragrance of the cottonwood trees.
A light at the end of the tunnel, ahead, a brightening, a gray, not black. Heaven wouldn’t have looked as glorious. Oh God, Dad was right. Never give up. She still had time to save him. Moonlight wove its way through a rough tumble of sage overgrowing the small opening, no more than three feet across and high. She yanked at the sage branches, snapping pieces away, releasing a distinctive herbal scent. She bulldozed her way through the last layer of brush. The spindly branches scratched and scraped her arms and legs. The pain felt like life.
Joseph was right. She had arrived at the bottom of the canyon, a dry, sandy area about twenty yards from a sharp bend in the river, a hundred yards downstream from where she and Joseph had climbed up to the cliff dwelling. Joseph could be back there, somehow miraculously survived the fall. Samuel’s assailant had. Joseph needed help, fast.
She snugged her pack straps tight, raced upriver along the rock wall, careening around the bend in the canyon. She stopped short, her clunky hiking boots clattering the loose rock, and ducked back behind the angle of the canyon. Like they hadn’t seen her, two of them. The bad guys. She plastered herself against the cliff, a sage brush poking at her bare thighs. The river ran fast and shallow here, as it angled down the valley. She strained to hear above the noise of its water splashing and coursing over the polished boulders. No shouts of alarm, but definite voices, coming this way, in a hurry.
Run or retreat. A cavalry riding to her rescue woul
d be nice right now, but that only happened in old westerns with happy endings. The jeep, and any chance of returning with outside help, was parked across the river. Midstream was completely in the open. Easy target, especially slowed down by those slippery rocks.
She pivoted and retreated, racing across the short open ground between the river and the opening to the tunnel back into the cliff. Three gunshots blasted the sand in front of her feet. That stopped her. That meant they didn’t want her dead, not yet. A second chance. One day her optimism was going to get her killed.
“You will not find escape in retreat,” the voice was nasal, just loud enough to be heard above the rushing water.
If he thought fortune cookie philosophy was going to creep her out, he was right. What kind of man shoots first, plays word games later? She raised her hands and pivoted towards him, first taking in the beefy guy on the right with the smoking gun barrel protruding from his meaty paws. He wore a badly tailored black suit. He looked like he’d just buried a bullet-riddled body in a shallow grave. He was six-two, massive enough to make linebacker, but no doubt suspended from school too often to get a football scholarship, opting instead for a PhD from the school of hard knocks. White shirt, no tie, even the silvery moonlight couldn’t soften his jagged features.
A stout man came up beside him. This shorter guy shook his wet, clinging pant cuff with each step, but that’s where any resemblance to a puppy ended. He wore a pristine khaki safari shirt and pants and an orange neckerchief. His Tilley hat brim cast a moonshadow upon a face that was as pale and smooth as moonlight on river-polished granite, marred with eyes like black pinpricks. His cheeks were flaccid, his chin, weak. He had the look of a man who was teased and lonely as a boy who had spent his formative years trying to prove himself worthy. His arrogant smile implied he’d been defiant, or ruthless, enough to succeed.
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