Artifact

by Kevin J. Anderson

  McKendry’s body bounced once on the deck and lay still.

  Keene shouted his friend’s name and skidded on the bike, wiping out as the terrorist fired one more shot and missed. The bullet punctured one of the big metal drums and spilled a harsh-smelling solvent.

  Though he had seen his partner tumble to a bloody halt on the deck, Keene didn’t watch to see if he moved or not. Though the terrorist had a rifle, he had no choice except to charge forward recklessly, yowling like a madman.

  The chattering helicopters came closer, searchlights shining onto the tanker in the water. The terrorist, fixed on completing his mission, glanced upward, then at Keene, measuring the distance between them. Scuttling backward toward the bow and his escape, the man grabbed a grenade from his belt, yanked the pin, and chucked it like an inexperienced baseball player down into one of the open hatches of the small forward oil-storage chambers. He was reaching for his gun when Keene barreled into him.

  The man’s hands tangled in the rifle’s shoulder strap.

  Moving in a blur, Keene wrapped a powerful forearm around his throat and yanked backward as he leaped up, pressing with his knee. He pulled back with all the strength in his shoulders until he heard the man’s neck snap.

  Keene grinned a feral snarl that wasn’t at all a look of triumph. “There—”

  The grenade went off inside the oil chamber.

  Sealed by bulkheads, the explosion wasn’t enough to rip through the double walls of the tanker. But the fire and the pressure wave vomited upward, a powerful geyser slamming like a hot avalanche and hurling Keene and the broken marionette of the already-dead terrorist off into oblivion.

  As he flew into the black void over the sea, he wondered if he would be meeting Satan or Saint Peter. Whichever way he went, he hoped that Arthur and McKendry and the other departed Daredevils would be there.

  The afterlife would be way too dull without them.

  The Oilstar security helicopters came closer, but McKendry knew they would arrive much too late. Selene Trujold and Green Impact had already gotten away.

  He dragged himself forward on his elbows. He couldn’t breathe. Redhot bands of pain tightened around his chest like a medieval torture instrument, and he could feel the gaping wet gunshot hole in his chest, the raw crater of the exit wound in his back. His right side seared where the other shot had grazed his ribs. Shock had diminished most of the pain—that would come later, if he survived long enough—but he could hear the gurgling when he breathed that told him his lung had probably collapsed. He couldn’t tell how much he was bleeding, only that it was too much.

  The curtain of fire from the grenade exploding in the storage tanks had nearly blinded him, but he had seen it throw his friend and the last terrorist overboard.

  There was no time to grieve.

  The most important job right now was to save the tanker. He might die in a few moments from the gunshots, but that would be better than becoming part of the funeral pyre of an exploding oil tanker.

  With his eyesight focused more by sheer determination than because of the quality of light, McKendry crawled forward. The terrorists had left the detonators behind. He had seen the man adjust the timers. At any moment, the explosions would go off, engulfing theYucatán in flame.

  Every movement was the greatest effort he had ever made in his life. Leaving a long trail of blood, like the markings of a scarlet garden slug, he reached the open fuel hatches and the hastily rigged box of detonators and timers that connected all the explosives dropped into the storage tanks. He felt dead already. Hoping to hang on for just a few more seconds, he made one last, impossible effort.

  His outstretched hand touched the connected detonator boxes, and he saw the last few seconds ticking down: fifteen…fourteen…thirteen…

  He worked with the big knife he had taken from the terrorist in the captain’s cabin. The wide macho blade severed the first couple of wires. So weak he could barely lift the knife, he brought it down as if he were chopping onions, again and again.

  Another wire cut, and another.

  In his state, he could not tell how many connections there were, how many remained, but he couldn’t bother with details. His vision was failing, and the blood did not seem to stop pouring out of his wounds. The bright orange glare from the explosion at the bow continued to blind him.

  Joshua Keene was gone, blasted far out into darkness.

  Hoping he had done enough, McKendry raised the big dagger, point downward, and stabbed the central detonator box, skewering it like a bug on the end of a pin. A few sparks erupted, then died.

  It was absolutely the last he could manage. Seeing the helicopters circle for a landing, he collapsed on a deck that smelled of oil and blood as the unmannedYucatán continued to drift into the Caribbean night.

  21

  January crawled toward February, and suddenly, unaccountably, Peta had been back in Grenada for three weeks.

  The first week was spent informing Arthur’s friends and relatives, and her own, about the explosion that had taken his life. The island buzzed with the news. Cried over it. Then, since the Marryshows were townies, they organized a mass at the cathedral in St. George’s.

  The second and third week, Peta kept to herself in her house in St. George’s. She ate sparingly, slept little, and spent much time on her balcony staring down at the town and the shallow waters of the U-shaped inlet known as the Carenage. The small bay was filled with the movement of fishing boats, small yachts, water taxis, and the occasional ferry. Periodically, a cruise ship or schooner anchored in the deeper waters or sailed the edge of the horizon beyond. When she did go out to buy food or go to the bank or simply to take a walk, she found herself annoyed that life in Grenada continued as usual. Preparations for February’s annual Independence Day celebrations were in full swing. People loved and laughed, and fought and died, as if nothing had changed.

  And for them it hadn’t. At least not much. They had lost a hero. Some of them had lost a friend. She had lost so much more than that. Arthur had been her best friend, her mentor, a father figure after her own father’s death; her lover. He had taught her to drive a car and fly a plane, to perform surgery, to live with losing a patient, and to feel humble when she saved one.

  By the end of the fourth week, Peta was able to pull herself together enough to reopen her rooms and reassume the work of caring for her patients and Arthur’s at the small clinic they’d shared. She asked the locum they had left in charge to consider a permanent position—something to which he readily agreed, provided a possible partnership was in the offing—and buried herself in work.

  Now, standing at the end of Quarantine Point, she watched the sunrise brighten the rocks and the sea, and wondered if her life would ever return to a semblance of normalcy.

  She remembered the day her family’s house had caught fire when she was a girl of twelve. Her father had come back into the house and saved her, but his own clothes had turned into wicks that burned him like a giant candle.

  That’s when she’d first met Arthur Marryshow. He fought so hard to save her papa, but there was nothing anyone could do except promise that he would take care of Peta and see that no harm came to her.

  What of your promise now? she thought. How can you protect me when you’re dead?

  Every week since her return, she’d checked in with the Manhattan precinct which was holding Arthur’s few remains while—so she was told—they investigated the accident. Yesterday, they’d told her the investigation was officially closed.

  Her fury knew no bounds. Arthur was gone and she’d never know why or by whose hand.

  Below her, the Rasta who lived behind Bronze House tucked his dreadlocks into his turban and strode into the Caribbean for his morning bath. He must have felt her presence and turned to look upward and wave.

  “Peta.”

  “Ralphie.” She waved back at her old friend. He was a little older than she, but not much. An Oxford-educated geologist and son of a former deputy pri
me minister, Ralph Levine chose to live as a Rasta. He slept in a cave, ran a rudely built hut that he called his geological museum, and carved black coral into jewelry to sell to the tourists.

  Beyond Ralphie, Peta could see the luxury of the Spice Island Hotel, and beyond that the medical school, which occupied the choicest piece of oceanfront property in Grenada. In another week or two the American students would return, and she’d resume teaching there. Those kids had better watch out, she thought. This semester she would brook no unruliness from those spoiled brats.

  Holding her sandals in her hand, Peta footed it back to where the real road came up from Morne Rouge Bay. She walked past Mahogany Run and the Grandview Hotel, crested the ridge, and continued toward her rooms, which lay a mile or two down the road. Along the road she passed several paw paw trees—papaya, as the Americans called them. The fruit on the plants was still small and green, but it reminded her that she was hungry.

  She passed Tabanca on her left and thought about going there for breakfast.Tabanca . Unrequited love. Great view and excellent coffee, but the owner was a perpetually sullen German woman whose lover had sailed away and never returned. She lived there alone, growling at everyone except her large German shepherd. She was a downer, which God knew Peta didn’t need in her life. Not today.

  Reaching the Flamboyant, she made a left turn into the grounds, descended the few steps that led to the Beachside Terrace, their patio restaurant, and breakfasted on papaya and fresh bread and honey. She sweetened her coffee with condensed milk and drank it slowly, watching a small bird enjoy the crumbs at the far edge of the table. The Flamboyant was named after the scarlet trees that dotted the island. It provided its guests with a magnificent view of the three-mile horseshoe of Grand Anse Beach, with its white sand that extended almost half the distance from where she sat to St. George’s.

  This being a Monday, the manager came out to greet her and invite her to come to his regularly scheduled rum punch party. She did not answer him but merely shook her head, so as to discourage communication. After that, for a few minutes, perhaps even an hour, she felt more at peace than she had since New Year’s Eve. Reluctantly, she walked the rest of the way up Camerhogne Park Road to her rooms at the Marquis Complex, put on her shoes and lab coat, and saw her first patient of the day.

  Within minutes, she was absorbed in the work.

  The telephone rang as she was leaving.

  “Peta? Frik.”

  For one misguided moment, Peta thought Frik might have called to see how she was doing. He soon disillusioned her. Wasting no time on pleasantries, he told her that Terris McKendry had been severely injured in a battle to save one of Oilstar’s tankers.

  “He was shot and burned. He’s in bad shape.”

  “Where is he?”

  “He was medevac’d here, to Mount Hope Medical Center. Unless Arthur’s plane is fueled and ready, I’ll send my jet to get you and have a car waiting for you at this end.”

  My plane now, Peta thought, since the reading of his will.

  Because she was Arthur’s student in his lifesaving burn techniques, it stood to reason that Frik would turn to her for help, Peta thought. Still, a “Would you mind coming?” might have been nice.

  “Mount Hope’s a good place,” she said. “I’ll call and let them know I’m on my way.”

  Pleased with herself for having made the arrangements she had with the locum, Peta called him in from his day off. She had left her Honda at the clinic, so getting home to pack a small bag would be no problem. Nor would getting to the airport be a problem, even with a stop first at the closest Barclays Bank for some cash to see her through.

  Standing in line at the bank, she fiddled with the pendant around her neck. When she reached the counter, on a whim, she took off the necklace, sealed it in an envelope, and asked to be escorted to her safe-deposit box.

  Frik’s jet beat her to the airport; his car was waiting for her upon her arrival at Piarco International. She was pleased to see Saaliim behind the wheel and not Frik. He got out and opened the back door.

  “You’re not my chauffeur, Saaliim. I’ll sit in the front with you, if that’s all right.”

  He grinned and she smiled back. She had always liked the Honduran, and the feeling was clearly mutual. “Mr. McKendry in bad shape,” he said when she was settled beside him.

  “I assume Frik’s with him.”

  Saaliim shook his head. “He with Mr. Brousseau out at Dragon’s Mouth.”

  “Simon? He’s not diving, is he?”

  “Yes. As we speak.”

  “Assholes,” Peta muttered. Simon had no business diving in his condition, and Frik had less business encouraging him. She’d have a few things to say to the two of them later. Right now, her focus had to be Terris McKendry.

  Twenty minutes later, Saaliim swerved off the Uriah Butler Highway and into Mount Hope Medical Center’s parking lot. “You want me to come inside, Miss Peta? Or maybe wait outside?”

  Peta thought for a moment. In all likelihood she’d be fully occupied with McKendry for the rest of the day and, by the sound of it, for several days beyond that.

  “You go to come back,” she said, using the Grenadian colloquialism. “I know my way around this hospital all too well. Tell Frik I’ll call him later with a report.”

  The charge nurse, to whom she had spoken several times en route, ushered Peta into McKendry’s private room in the hospital’s small intensive-care section. The last time she’d seen him, not that long ago at Arthur’s apartment, he’d looked fit and well. Now he looked as if he probably wouldn’t make it through the night. He was barely conscious. According to his chart, he had presented in shock, a mess of mud and oil and blood. Her initial cursory examination confirmed that he had been hit by two rifle bullets and that he had sustained some surface burns.

  The burns might leave some scarring but were not enough to be life-threatening. The bullet wounds were a more complex problem. Where a hollow point or frangible round would have pureed the contents of his chest cavity, he had every chance of surviving these wounds.

  The flesh wound along the right flank would heal, even without medical attention. The second shot was less simple: a full-metal-jacketed slug had made a through-and-through penetration of his lower right chest. Fortunately for McKendry, the bullet had not hit a major artery on the way through or a rib on the way out. The former would have exsanguinated him in minutes: the latter would have deflected the bullet, causing major, possibly catastrophic, collateral damage. The through-and-through FMJ chest wound had collapsed the lung, but some bright medic or ED doc along the way had inserted a chest tube and hooked it up to suction; that no doubt had saved McKendry’s life until the local thoracic surgeon got to him and closed the entry and exit wounds.

  Peta discovered further evidence of McKendry’s dumb luck when she examined the exit wound and found it just low enough to miss ripping up his posterior shoulder girdle. An inch higher and he’d be looking at permanent disability. Talk about charmed lives.

  Telling the nurse to set up a bed for her in one of the little rooms adjacent to intensive care, she washed up and put in a call to Frik.

  “It’ll be a while before his next escapade, but with good care and exquisite attention to antisepsis, he’ll make it. His lung’s not reinflating as quickly as I’d like, so I’m going to stay here with him for a few days.”

  Frik sounded relieved. “Thanks, Peta. I’ll be in to see you later this evening. I can’t leave the office right now.”

  “I heard about Simon. Is he all right?”

  “Why wouldn’t he be?”

  “I warned you both that he shouldn’t be diving, Frik.”

  “Well for your information, he’s fine. He had to come up because he used up most of his tank clearing debris from his entry point. I wish I had half his energy. He’s down in Port of Spain now, pretending to be some TV star, but he’s going back to San Gabriel tomorrow to complete the dive.”

  “Alone? No dive bu
ddy?”

  “He seems to prefer it that way.”

  Idiot! Peta thought. She was fed up with all this macho bullshit. When she had stabilized McKendry, she would hitch a ride to San Gabriel. If Manny was in the area, he would take her there; if not, she’d use one of Frik’s speedboats. Not that she particularly wanted to delay her return to Grenada, but in all good conscience she had to take one more shot at warning Simon that his heart probably couldn’t take another dive. If she couldn’t convince him to stop, she would insist on going along. Barring unforeseen setbacks, she should be able to leave McKendry in the hands of the hospital staff in three days, four tops. She would mention it to Frik when he came to see McKendry.

  Ifhe came to see him.

  22

  Thus far, Frik had called several times, but he had not yet made an appearance. Peta was hardly impressed by his lack of compassion and admitted to herself yet one more time that the Oilstar chief was not among her favorite people.

  Two days later, by which time McKendry’s condition had been stabilized, Frikkie showed up at the hospital. He was not a pretty sight. His one eye hadn’t yet fully healed from the explosion that had killed Paul Trujold, and his hand looked as if it had a long way to go before it was good for more than gross manipulation. His visit was short, their conversation brief and more about Simon than Terris; in neither case were his emotions involved.

  “Simon’s in San Gabriel. He hasn’t gone down—in the water—again yet. The weather’s not been conducive. Too much rain, too many currents stirring things around.”

  “You shouldn’t let him—”

  “Let him? May I remind you again that he’s an adult. What he chooses to do is his own business.”

  There was obviously no point in arguing with the man. None at all. “I’d like to see him,” Peta said. “I think I’ll head out to San Gabriel for a day or two. I could use the rest.”

  “What about McKendry?”

  “Terris is a long way from full recovery, but he’s doing well. Barring unforeseen complications, the hospital can manage fine without me. When they think he’s ready, they’ll send him on to rehab. He won’t need me for that, either. If they have to reach me, they can call me in San Gabriel.”