by Dan McGirt
Jack braked hard. The sudden stop toppled two of Galahad’s opponents off the back of the truck. Jack scanned left and right to get his bearings as he popped the truck into first gear. Fort Jackson was the main army base on San Marcos, located on the outskirts of Corbett City. He recalled the layout from his study of satellite photos. The military police station was near the center of the base, flanked by barracks for several hundred men, a mess hall, motor pool, officer quarters, parade ground, infirmary, and other support buildings. Jack sped toward the main gate down a weathered blacktop roadway.
Chatter on the truck radio confirmed what the shrill warning sirens wailing from every side suggested – all of Fort Jackson was mobilizing to recapture them.
In the bed of the truck Galahad hurled himself at the remaining knot of soldiers. Two lunged to meet him. Galahad hit them in a flying tackle. They went down in a jumble of limbs. Gal elbow-smashed one man in the throat and drove the heel of his palm into the other’s nose.
A rifle butt pistoned down at Gal’s head. He ducked to take the blow on his shoulder instead. The soldier raised his weapon for another strike, while his remaining comrade brought the muzzle of his rifle around, intending to shoot Galahad point blank.
Galahad surged up and spread his arms, hooking each man by the knee and tipping them back. Their balance was uncertain on the rocking, swaying truck. Gal’s lunge sent them spinning off the back. The shooter hit the road head first; the other soldier landed on his back. The lead LandRanger in pursuit swerved to miss them.
One of the soldiers sprawled behind Galahad moaned. Gal picked up a rifle and smacked the man in the head, then did a quick check to be sure the other five San Marcans still aboard were indeed unconscious.
Galahad leaned around to shout in the driver’s window, “All clear, kemo sabe.”
“Hang on!” said Jack. “We’re about to take the two dollar tour.”
The main gate of Fort Jackson was ahead. Bright yellow hydraulic road blockers obstructed lane. The spikes pointed outward, meant to deter a vehicle heading into the base, not one leaving it, yet denied exit via the gate nevertheless. The base’s perimeter was enclosed by a high chain-link fence topped with razor wire.
Jack jumped the curb and aimed at the nearest stretch of fence, picking up speed. The guards fired their rifles, bullets thumping off the side of the truck and splintering the wooden slats of the back rail.
“Head down, Gal!”
“Chod!”
Galahad curled into a ball behind the cab. The truck blasted through the fence, flattening the steel mesh and uprooting three fence poles.
The lead LandRanger tried to follow, only to get razor wire snarled around its front tires. The other two LandRangers picked their way carefully through the gap in the fence.
The highway beside the base led south into Corbett City or north along the coast line. Jack turned away from the city. Two transfer trucks full of soldiers and a pair of armored patrol vehicles with mounted machine guns pulled up to the gate, waiting for the barriers to drop so they could join the chase.
“How is it no matter where we go, we end up with the entire local army chasing us?” said Galahad.
“That isn’t their whole army, Gal.”
“Are you sure?”
“There are a couple of barracks on the other side of the island. At least half the army is over there.”
“So you’re saying we’re surrounded.”
“It’s an island, Gal. We started out surrounded.”
“I assume we’re not headed for the airport.”
“No. I’m looking for a big cliff to drive this truck over.”
Galahad closed his eyes and shook his head wearily. “Of course you are.”
“Put a shirt on, Gal. It’s going to be a long day.”
14: Pathway to Peril
Jack wedged the tire iron against the accelerator, yanked away the makeshift chock on the brake pedal and jumped back as the truck lurched forward. The diesel beast gathered speed down a stretch of narrow mountain road until it reached the curve. With no one at the wheel, the truck continued straight across the sandy shoulder and over the edge of an almost vertical cliff. The growl of the engine became a receding whine that abruptly ended with a loud whoomp as eleven tons of truck slammed into the rocks three hundred feet below.
“You weren’t kidding about driving over a cliff,” said Galahad.
“No.”
“Sometimes I can’t tell.”
“The river moves fast through that ravine,” said Jack. He picked up a machete they had liberated from the truck. “It will take them a few hours to inspect the wreckage and decide we’re not in there. If we’re lucky they’ll conclude our bodies washed out to sea.”
“So we’re dead again.”
“For a while.” Jack led Galahad to the trailhead of an almost imperceptible footpath leading into the wall of trees and flowering vines beside the road. “Come on.”
“Where to?”
“It’s a surprise.”
“My joy is boundless,” Galahad deadpanned. “You know how I love surprises.”
They were outfitted in uniforms and gear stripped from the soldiers overpowered by Galahad; they had left the unconscious men in an old tobacco barn after briefly taking shelter there. Dressed as they were, Jack and Gal might have passed for a pair of San Marcos troopers themselves, but for Jack’s famous face and Galahad’s strong Monoga features and shoulder length hair. Still, BDUs were an improvement over prison orange.
It took more than an hour of evasive driving – and Galahad shooting down a helicopter – to elude their pursuers. From monitoring radio traffic, Jack knew the island nation’s army of eleven hundred troops was mobilized to find them, along with air assets and the National Police. It was only a matter of time until they were cornered. But if all went according to plan they’d be off San Marcos before that happened.
“Our target is west of that ridge,” said Jack, pointing to a line of hills. “A three-hour hike, maybe four, keeping to cover.”
“Three,” said Galahad, increasing his pace to a fast trot. “The sooner we get there, the sooner we can leave.”
Jack laughed. “I like your attitude.”
“Don’t start on my attitude,” said Galahad. “I’ve been nothing but seasick, shot at, shocked, and stabbed since I got out of bed yesterday. I should have stayed in Idaho.”
“You don’t fool me, Gal. I couldn’t have kept you there, missing out on all this fun.”
Galahad snorted his derision. “You’d be surprised.”
“Right.”
“Tell me how you intend to find a missing ship in the middle of this jungle.”
“I don’t.” Jack frowned. “I don’t expect to find it at all.”
“And your friend Cassi?”
“RISA ransacked San Marcos military and government computer files while we were at the MP post. She found no record of Sandpiper or its crew being in custody.”
“Makes sense. I still say the thing on that video sank the ship, not the trigger-happy locals.”
“A reasonable conclusion,” agreed Jack. “I hoped the San Marcans had found survivors. They might not announce it, but they would log it.”
“Every military has their forms in triplicate,” agreed Galahad. “I surely filled out my share.”
“Right,” said Jack. “Which leads me to conclude there were no survivors. Or none the San Marcans found. That’s what we came here to learn.”
“We came here because we were captured at sea.”
“What better way to get inside a San Marcos army base?”
“Feh,” said Gal. He rolled his eyes. “You would have me believe getting captured was your plan all along?”
“You know my best plans are improvisational.”
“I know they’re something, kemo sabe.”
“Either way, we now know the crew aren’t on San Marcos.”
“So why aren’t we back on the water looking for them?”
“MARISA and the SARAs have that covered,” said Jack. “Not to mention the U.S. Coast Guard. I haven’t given up hope, but I suspect I’ll have bad news for Jeff and Marian.”
“Still doesn’t tell me why we’re here.”
“If I can’t bring Cassi back to her parents, I at least want to know why she died.”
“Because a big tentacle monster sank her ship, man.” A few steps later something occurred to Galahad. “It is still out there. As I think of this, I become more enthused about being a fugitive on this island. We’re at least on dry land.”
“For now.”
“I’m surprised you don’t have us in a dinghy rowing after some oversized octopus, harpoon in hand. It is unlike you to resist the temptation of a cryptid chase.”
Jack smiled. “You’re still mad about Loch Ness.”
“I hate the smell of burning hair. Especially when it is mine.”
“That was the firebug Templar’s fault.”
“You say.”
“This isn’t about chasing a cryptid.”
“What then?”
“Deepfire is the key. If an aquatic megafauna attacked Sandpiper, it is connected to whatever the Special Engineering Group is doing on that platform.”
“I’ll buy that. SEG is always up to no good,” said Galahad. “But what’s so important here on San Marcos?”
“You’ll see,” said Jack. He edged past Galahad.
Gal bit his tongue. Jack was in one of his mysterious moods, holding back his ideas while they cycled through that genius brain of his a few thousand times a minute. Jack knew, or suspected, or intuited more about the situation than he was willing to say. It was Jack’s way – never forthcoming until he was certain his answers were sound, the facts supported his conclusions, and every identifiable source of error had been considered and eliminated. Only then would he explain fully.
Unless, as Galahad often suspected, Jack made it up as he went along. Either way, he’d get nothing more from him right now. Jack could be a real kamenay that way. Follow me into death and danger – I’ll tell you why later.
The distant drone of a prop plane’s engine, muffled by the forest canopy, reached their ears. Galahad looked up. Only small patches of sky were visible, and no plane. Good – if you can’t see them, chances are they can’t see you. The pilot of that helo he downed earlier had foolishly brought his aircraft in range of Galahad’s carbine. The plane’s pilot was unlikely to make the same mistake.
They marched on in silence, barely leaving a trace of their passage despite the ground-eating pace they kept. Jack, with the endurance of an ultra-marathoner, could run for hours, barely breaking a sweat even in the sub-tropical heat of San Marcos. This wasn’t because he actually ran marathons, much less ultras. Too time-consuming and inefficient. Rather, Jack constantly experimented on himself, designing and redesigning a personal regimen of diet, supplements, body hacks, and exercises to extend the boundaries of peak performance, mental and physical.
Galahad did it the hard way. He earned his endurance by maintaining the warrior traditions of the Monoga, beginning at age six. The U.S. Army’s Ranger School was a picnic compared to the ordeals of the war lodge. Galahad was trained to survive and thrive in any climate, any terrain, under any conditions. Which was a good thing, considering the heaps of hoyat Jack routinely dragged him into.
The narrow trail, almost obscured by shrubs and vines, followed the forested rim of a winding gorge for almost two miles. At the bottom of the steep cliffs along which Jack and Galahad ran flowed a tumultuous river, wild with rapids and cascades. Then the river bent away to the east while the trail hooked north, threading towards the gap between the green slopes of two of what the locals called mountains but what Galahad, a son of the Rockies, considered little more than small hills.
How Jack knew of this almost invisible path without having set foot on San Marcos before, Galahad didn’t bother to ask. Jack was a geography nut who memorized maps, ancient or new, almost at a glance. The man was a human GPS system. He probably found this track on some old Spanish map he had studied ten years ago, or from some equally unlikely source. Galahad questioned many things about his friend, but never his sense of direction.
A brief thunderstorm thoroughly soaked the two adventurers as they mounted the final rise in the trail. They reached a small clearing in the saddleback between the two hilltops. Galahad stopped beside Jack as he looked down on the verdant valley on the west side of the ridge.
“You have got to be kidding me,” said Galahad.
Below them lay a roughly oval basin oriented east to west, almost two miles long end to end, and a mile wide. A terraced earthen mound rose from the surrounding jungle near the center of the valley. It was more than four hundred yards long end-to-end, its platform-like upper surface covering almost three acres. Atop the mound was a series of interconnected stone structures, plazas, and courts. At the west end of the complex was a nine-level pyramid more than two hundred feet tall, facing a shorter companion pyramid on the east side of the plaza. A wide ceremonial staircase rippled down the south face of the mound like an undulating stone carpet to reach the valley floor. Galahad recognized the construction as Maya.
“Sina'an Muul,” said Jack. “Loosely translated, Scorpion Pyramid or Temple of the Scorpion.” He pointed to the roof comb of the taller pyramid. Though its edges were softened by centuries of exposure to wind and rain, the outline of a scorpion with pincers extended skyward was plainly discernible.
Galahad spat. “Another damn lost city.” Somewhere nearby, a tropical bird called out raucously.
“It’s not lost, Gal. Sina’an Muul was abandoned by the Maya circa 900 AD and discovered by the Spanish in the sixteenth century. Helstrom did an extensive site survey in 1924.”
“Fascinating, I’m sure.”
“You sound less than impressed.”
“No good comes of disturbing the houses of the dead. Also, the Monoga and Maya were sworn enemies.” Galahad made the triple-finger sign. “Also, I hate scorpions.”
Jack laughed. “All quite reasonable.”
“We didn’t come for sightseeing. Why the detour?”
“Under that pyramid is a mural I want to see.”
“Uh-huh. And this mural has to do with our missing ship and the big tentacle?”
“Naturally,” said Jack. He slapped Galahad on the back. “Come on, Gal. It will be fun.”
15: On Guard
Jack and Galahad crouched behind a screen of ferns and broad-leafed shrubs, the last cover before fifty yards of open ground – a lawn of close-cut carpet grass – that lay between the edge of the rain forest and the base of the central mound. Their slow and stealthy descent into the valley had been uneventful, despite several overflights by the circling reconnaissance plane. Their pursuers appeared to be giving no special attention to this area.
“You think the fence is electrified?” asked Galahad.
A high cyclone fence topped with concertina wire bisected the open zone into an inner and outer perimeter. A deeply-rutted gravel track looped around the mound inside the fence.
Jack shook his head. “That fence is for access control, not hard defense.”
“How is this place not crawling with tourists? Seems it would be a gold mine, like Chichen Itza or Tikal.”
“Well, all the scorpions for one thing,” said Jack.
Galahad froze. “Please say you are kidding me, in your cruel white eyes way.”
“Only a little. Professor Helstrom found cisterns full of dead scorpions during his excavations.”
“Dead scorpion is fine. Dead scorpion is good.”
“Most of them were, anyway. The original Spanish name for San Marcos was Isla de los Alacranes. The Spaniards avoided it for most of a century despite the island’s obvious strategic location. Too many large and aggressive scorpions with man-killing venom.”
“We’re leaving now.”
Jack laughed. “The San Marcos scorpions were pre
tty well eradicated once permanent settlements were established.”
“You say ‘pretty well eradicated.’ That is not ‘eradicated.’ I am wise to your forked tongue, kemo sabe.”
“Scorpions won’t be a problem,” said Jack. “The real trick is that Sina’an Muul is a restricted military site. That means surveillance and patrols.”
Galahad cut his eyes at Jack. “You want to sneak into a scorpion pyramid guarded by the same army combing the island for us. So you can look at some old wall paintings.”
“Yes. Getting in may be as simple as hopping the fence and climbing the mound on this side.”
Galahad scowled. “Nothing is ever that simple. Motion sensors.”
Jack was doubtful. “Useless. Too much wildlife.”
“Cameras.”
“Pole-mounted, fifty-meter spacing at ground level. More on top of the mound. We can assume thorough coverage.”
“I can shoot a few of them dark.” Galahad patted the Ruker carbine he held.
“That only announces we’re here.”
“Then we may as well wave and smile as we walk up.”
“We could at that,” mused Jack.
“There is no stealthy way up that mound until sundown. If I plink the cameras they won’t know our exact position.”
Jack grinned. “I’m thinking we stroll around to the guard station at the far end. We are in uniform, after all.”
Galahad got it. “We might get close enough to take them out first. Crazy enough to maybe, possibly, work.” He plucked a small object from the ground and pocketed it.
“And buy us more time inside,” said Jack.
“If not, study your mural fast. I see a single scorpion, you’ll study it alone while I wait outside.”
“Actually, that’s what I had in mind.”
“Oh? Say on, kemo sabe. I like the sound of this.”
“You take overwatch on the pyramid. I locate the mural chamber, get what I need, then meet you up top.”
