Serpent's Kiss

by Alex Archer

  “Have we got all the opium?” Rajiv asked.

  “Yes,” Karam replied.

  “Get aboard our ship. Quickly.” Rajiv glanced over his shoulder and spotted Goraksh. “Move.”

  Goraksh went as fast as he dared. He slipped on the railing and nearly plunged into the water between the boats. His father caught him and pulled him onto the ship.

  “Make sail! Make sail!” Rajiv roared. He grabbed the lines and unfurled the sails himself as he aided the crew.

  The packets of cooked opium sat on the Black Swan’s deck.

  Terrified, Goraksh stood at the railing and watched as the coast guard vessel sped toward them. There was no doubt about the ship’s destination.

  The ship was an old one. India had put the coast guard arm into effect in 1978 to aid the navy in patrolling the nearly five-thousand-mile-long coastline. Still, it possessed diesel engines and was making a good speed. Goraksh was certain they would be overtaken before they could get into international waters.

  “Open the hold!” Rajiv yelled. “Quickly, quickly!”

  The hold opened as the Black Swan’s sail filled with air and the prow cut into the water. One of the crew handed up an RPG-7. Rajiv took the rocket launcher and ran to the stern.

  Unable to believe what he was seeing, Goraksh followed. Surely his father didn’t intend to attack the coast guard ship. Even though it was one of the older craft in service, it still had deck guns and her crew would be armed.

  Instead, Rajiv took aim at the Grimjoy sitting dead in the water. The rocket streaked across the water and struck the yacht’s engine compartment. Flames jetted up and quickly spread.

  Rajiv turned to one of the crew and took another rocket from the utility bag the man carried. While the yacht burned, he fit the second rocket to the launcher.

  “We can’t take the chance that we left someone alive on the yacht,” Rajiv said. “Sail south toward international water. Thank the gods that we’ve got a strong wind.”

  Goraksh didn’t think his father sounded as confident as usual. Tense and nauseous with fear, Goraksh watched as the coast guard ship altered its heading and steered for the burning yacht.

  7

  The four men in the speedboat concentrated on the dig members in the shallows near the cliff. All of the men had their backs to Annja as she treaded water and weighed her options. She had no doubt that violence was coming. She’d been around enough of it to recognize the signs.

  Since she’d found the missing piece of the sword and claimed it as her own—or been claimed by it—she’d been thrown into a number of dangerous situations. She realized she was growing accustomed to it.

  “I’m Professor Rai,” Lochata announced.

  “You’re the boss?” the man with the rifle asked.

  “I am.”

  “There’s no man?”

  “No.”

  The man took a cigar from behind one of his sunburned ears, shoved it into his mouth and lit it with a lighter from his shorts’ pocket. “Why would they put a woman in charge?”

  Reluctantly, Annja released the gold coins she’d found and let them drop back to the sea floor. She marked the spot in her memory as best as she could and hoped that she would be able to find them again later. She dropped the snorkel, too, and swam toward the speedboat.

  “I don’t know,” Lochata said.

  “We’re here to take your valuables,” the man said.

  “Valuables?” Lochata asked. “These are college students. They don’t have money. I don’t have any money. Nothing more than a few rupees.”

  “Then we’ll take their computers and game systems,” the man said. “Never seen college students without computers and game systems. Especially American college students.” He waggled a forefinger. “And we know you have American students, old woman. We’ve heard about you.”

  “Then you also probably heard that we were hit by the tsunami last night. We lost everything,” Lochata said.

  “Don’t lie to me,” the man said.

  “I’m not lying. We’re waiting for help to arrive. The helicopter should be here at any time.”

  “If you’re waiting for help, you’re going to be waiting a while. A lot of villages were hit. They’re not going to care about you.” The man shifted his gaze among the college students. “You’ve got a lot of pretty girls.” He pointed at one of the British women. “You. Come over here.”

  The young woman stepped back. Two of the young men, one of them Jason Kim, stepped in front of her to protect her.

  The man’s voice grew more threatening. “I told you to get over here.” He worked the bolt action on the rifle. “If you don’t, I’m going to shoot you through the head and move on to the next girl that catches my eye.”

  Annja reached the speedboat’s starboard side. The craft sat low in the water now that it wasn’t moving.

  She caught hold of the boat’s prow just in front of the windscreen. She thought about drawing the sword. It was there just within her reach. It would be awfully hard to explain, she thought. She decided not to pull the sword into the battle unless she had to. If she did need it, getting the weapon would only take a moment.

  She pulled herself up and out of the water, then into a squat as the boat tilted toward her. Fear thrilled through her as she moved to stand. She was afraid of getting hurt, but mostly she was afraid of getting one of the students or Professor Rai hurt.

  If you don’t do anything, she told herself, they’re going to get hurt anyway. These men are predators.

  From the corner of her eye, Annja saw the man with the rifle turn toward her. Surprise turned his face slack, but he kept moving. Annja lashed out with a foot and caught the rifle as the man attempted to swing it around. The rifle roared and the bullet flew wide of its intended mark. Propelled by the kick, the rifle flew out of the man’s hands.

  That went better than I expected, she thought. Then she pushed herself to keep moving. The other men were in motion, as well.

  Annja relaxed her arms and went down in a forward roll. The speedboat’s hull felt blistering hot against her back for just a moment, then she was on her feet again. The gunman still stood there, but he was reaching for a pistol tucked in the front of his shorts.

  Fluidly, Annja spun into a side kick that caught the man in the face. The kick landed a little sooner than she’d expected, and pain shot up her leg.

  Turn the foot, she chided herself. The impact should be against the ridge, not the flat of your foot, not the toes. You’ll break the toes.

  The kick had landed solidly enough, though. The man flew over the side of the boat as if he’d been fired out of a cannon. Before he hit in the water, Annja was already in motion.

  The other three men swung their weapons in her direction. She dived over the windscreen and caught the man in the stern on the shoulders. She grabbed hold of the man’s shirt and turned her body into a fulcrum as she swung down.

  When she landed in a crouch behind the man on the gunwale, Annja hooked her hands under the man’s arms, pulled him back toward her and threw him into the water, as well. He sailed over her as she swung around to face the remaining men.

  She went on the offensive at once. A quick step to the right put her out of the lead man’s sights and profiled him squarely in front of his partner. Annja took up a boxing stance but didn’t want to risk further damaging her hands.

  Instead, she threw Krav Maga elbow punches and knee kicks that collided with the man’s face, groin and inner thighs. He couldn’t defend against her attack and crumpled almost at once.

  Even with the limited space, Annja executed a perfect spinning back kick to his jaw. The man’s head snapped sideways and he fell into the sea.

  The last man had a pistol out. He tried to point it at Annja. She stepped closer and backhanded the man hard enough to stagger him. With a quick move, she plucked the pistol from his hand and threw it into the ocean. A backward blow to the temple sent him in a senseless sprawl to the deck.

&nbs
p; Silence swept the shoreline as if the world had held its breath. Then the dig site members exploded with cheering and clapping.

  Annja scooped up a pistol one of the men had dropped, checked the magazine and gazed out into the water.

  The first man she’d thrown overboard had hold of the speedboat and was pulling himself up. Blood leaked from his nostrils.

  “No,” Annja said calmly as she aimed the pistol at him. “You’re staying in the water until I’m ready for you to come out.”

  The man spit curses and threats.

  Annja rapped him on the head with the gun butt, then grabbed a fistful of his hair and shoved him underwater. He fought to break her hold but couldn’t. His fingers slid off her arm. She held him under long enough for him to realize how helpless he was.

  When he stopped struggling, Annja brought the man’s head and shoulders out of the sea. He grabbed hold of the boat’s gunwale and coughed up water.

  “Any more bad behavior,” she told him, “and I won’t pull you back up.” It was an empty threat but the man didn’t know that.

  A quick glance back into the water showed that the other men she’d kicked into the sea still floated there with arms and legs outstretched. They weren’t in any immediate danger of drowning.

  Annja turned to the controls with the intention of using the maritime radio to signal for help.

  One look at the torn wiring and the space where the radio had once been let her know that plan wasn’t going to work.

  “WHAT YOU DID back there was incredible,” Lochata said.

  Annja sat on a rock and finished lacing up her hiking boots. While she’d waded in the shallows she’d left her boots in the sun in hope that they’d dry out. They hadn’t. She didn’t like putting them on while they were still wet, but in case they had trouble with their four prisoners, she wanted protection for her feet from the bits of coral and sharp rocks.

  Lochata handed her a bottle of water. “Skills like that generally aren’t in the repertoire of an academic.”

  “I’m not your average academic,” Annja said. She uncapped the bottle and drank. She felt parched, but she made herself drink slowly.

  “Are you all right? During all the excitement I forgot to ask,” the professor said.

  “I’m fine.” Annja’s foot still hurt a little, but it was a slight and temporary pain. She knew that from previous experiences.

  “Weren’t you scared?”

  “At the time, not so much. I didn’t really have time to think about it. But now?” Annja held up a hand and let the professor witness her quivering fingers. Annoyed by her weakness, she flexed her hand and made a fist several times.

  “Are you afraid now?”

  Annja peered across the clearing at the four men seated on the shore with their backs to the cliffs. Their hands and feet had been secured with ordnance tape Annja had found in their tool kit aboard the boat.

  “No, not really. But when everything slows down and you think of what could have happened, sometimes it can seem scary all over again. The main thing is no one got hurt.”

  “WANT SOMETHING to eat?”

  Annja looked up from the sketch of the ocean seabed she was doing and saw Jason standing beside her. He held out a baked fish wrapped in a palm leaf.

  “Sure. Thanks.” Annja took the fish and found it almost too hot to hold.

  “What are you going to do with your prisoners?” Jason asked.

  Annja glanced over at the men.

  The leader’s face was swollen, and blood had crusted on his chin. Two of his companions slept, turned just enough to balance against the rocks at their backs. The fourth man sat in morose silence.

  “We’re going to turn them over to the coast guard,” Annja replied.

  Jason squatted beside her. Apprehension pulled at his mouth and eyes. “Do you think they meant it?”

  “Meant what?” Annja was so involved in thinking about the gold coins that she wasn’t tracking the conversation well. She tried hard to remember what they’d looked like. All she could remember for certain was that they hadn’t been of a uniform size.

  “That part about killing us all when they got released,” Jason said.

  The prisoners had threatened to take revenge on everyone involved in the dig crew if they weren’t released. Annja had offered to tape their mouths shut. Since the leader couldn’t breathe out of his nose so well, he’d been the first to fall silent. The others had quickly followed his example.

  “No.” Annja pinched off a piece of fish and ate it. She savored the juices and was surprised at the flavor. “Is that garlic?”

  Jason nodded. “Professor Rai found marjoram, thyme and wild onions. That stuff grows wild here. Guess that’s why India was one of the main ports of call along the spice trade routes.”

  “Yes,” Annja said, smiling.

  “I was wondering if she knew what she was doing with the herbs. I thought maybe she was going to have us eating weeds. But she was right.”

  “Botany is a major part of archaeology. If you’re going to study in this field, you have to know plants. Living and extinct.”

  “She said her mother had an herb garden.”

  Annja smiled. “That probably helped.”

  “I’m serious.” Jason’s voice was low, almost a whisper.

  “About what?” Annja tried to remember what they’d been talking about.

  “You know.” Jason slid his eyes toward the prisoners. “Those guys.”

  Annja swallowed. “Those guys are going to have very full lives just dealing with all the charges against them. Since you’re here, and I’m here, for that matter, the United States embassy is going to be involved. I think those guys are going to jail and not coming back for a very long time.”

  Jason nodded and seemed to relax a little. He rocked back on his heels and flopped onto the sand beside Annja.

  “Would you have shot that guy?” he asked. “If he’d kept coming out of the water?”

  Annja looked in the young man’s eyes and tried to remember when she’d been that sheltered and innocent. Even growing up in the orphanage with all the nuns, she hadn’t been totally protected. New Orleans, proud and predatory, had stood just outside the fence.

  “What would you have done?” Annja asked softly.

  Jason braced his forearms on his knees and shook his head. “I don’t know. I hope I’d have been strong enough to shoot him.”

  “Not strong enough,” Annja corrected. “Scared enough.”

  “Scared enough?” Jason said.

  Annja nodded. “If you think you can handle a situation, you tend to build in second guesses. Should I do this or this? What happens if this goes wrong? What happens if I fail?” She was quiet for a moment. “Nature gave us a fight-or-flight response. Hardwired it right into our brains. When we’re threatened, when we’re scared enough, we simply react. In violent situations, I’ve learned that it’s better to react than to think about reacting.”

  “You’ve learned?” Jason smiled nervously. “You’ve been involved in a lot of stuff like this?”

  Annja thought about that for a moment and wondered how best to answer it. “Probably more than a lot of people.”

  “Do you get used to it?”

  “No. Not really.”

  “You seemed like you knew exactly what you were doing.”

  “I trained in a gym to fight. That’s not the same as what happened today.”

  “Why?” Jason asked.

  “In the gym you know they’re not going to kill you.”

  TWILIGHT SETTLED over the shoreline. Her work in her journal had totally absorbed her.

  “Hey,” someone called out. “There’s something caught in the tide.”

  Annja looked up at the incoming tide. It was calm and peaceful. Of course, things had been pretty peaceful last night until the tsunami hit, she reminded herself.

  She scanned the whitecaps as they rolled to the shore. The bonfire they’d lit for the coast guard to find them was
bright. Silver moonlight turned the sea a dusky gray.

  Flashlight beams played over the water for a moment, then focused on an object twisting slowly on the waves. Every now and again it crested the whitecaps. It resembled a manta ray.

  But no manta ray Annja had ever seen boasted a hollow-eyed skull riding it.

  8

  Annja shoved her journal and pen into her backpack. She grabbed her Mini Maglite from one of the outside pockets and stood. The sand slid out from underfoot. She’d taken three steps toward the sea before she remembered the pistol she’d taken from the men.

  She returned for it and tucked it into the back of her waistband. After taking the handgun and a couple of spare magazines for it, she’d thrown the other weapons into the sea. None of the other dig members knew how to use a pistol or rifle with any degree of skill. Even if they did, shooting someone was a whole different matter.

  “That’s a skull!” someone said.

  “Man, you’re imagining things.”

  “No, I swear. I saw a skull out there.”

  Most of the dig members scooted in toward the fire. Fear of the darkness and what lies in it was natural.

  Lochata joined Annja. They walked down to the pounding surf together.

  “Did you see it?” the professor asked quietly.

  “Yes.” Annja shone her light at the coiling mass riding in from the sea.

  “Was it a skull?” The professor asked.

  “It looked like a skull.”

  “Perhaps it was from the sacrificial pit.”

  For the professor to mention that, Annja knew Lochata was concerned that it came from somewhere else.

  The mass mired up fifteen feet from the shore. It bobbed in the water, and every now and again the moonlight gave a hint of rounded ivory in the folds of whatever had floated in from the sea.

  Annja stripped off her hiking boots and stepped into the water.

  “Do you want company?” Lochata asked.

  “No.”

  “Good. Let me know if you need me.”