Ah Matt, she thought. And Alicia. Where are you now and who are you royally pissing off?
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Truth be told, Matt Drake felt more than a little foolish. People told him the Bones of Odin quest sounded a little far-fetched, but searching for a five-hundred-year-old sunken ship in a barren desert really unhinged something inside him. He understood the logic, even the reality of a ship being deposited out here, but then someone had to go and label them ghost galleons or some such and spoil the entire bloody thing.
Bollocks.
He’d have an easier time seeking out an investment banker’s market stall in the middle of Pontefract, Yorkshire.
As darkness fell across the desert he found himself seated with Karin, Lauren, Smyth and Yorgi around a hastily laid campfire. Blankets were spread beneath them, backpacks sitting alongside. The heat that had palled the day was thankfully beginning to dissipate as though someone had left the oven door open. Drake took a long swig of water and surveyed the landscape.
Sand dunes of varying heights undulated all around them, forming a natural valley for their rest. Nobody was under any illusions that the same dunes might last until morning, but the good news was that no storms were incoming. None that could be forecast anyway.
Yer take yer chances, their guide had told them. I ain’t stayin’ out here. And he had slunk off with that slightly terrified blank stare across his features.
So now they sat awaiting their mysterious new guide—Kelly, the old man who would find them in the desert. The Ghost Ship Whisperer, Drake thought with a silent chuckle.
The landscape wasn’t all sand. It was composed of dried roots and barren, gravelly paths. Brown straggly trees. Flat, austere land. A featureless plain lay beyond the dunes, home to few but master of all. The falling night came down like a hammer to an anvil, fast and hard, and soon the lands were blanketed in darkness. A heavy silence descended with it that soon became broken by odd, anomalous sounds.
Drake broke a tense silence. “So, who’s up for Scrabble?”
Karin didn’t look up. Only Yorgi glanced over at him. “Is it you being serious? You did not bring Scrabble, no?”
“No mate, I didn’t. But I did bring this.” He whipped out a silver hip-flask. “A bit of west-coast grit.”
Smyth held out a hand. “I’ll take some of that.”
Drake threw him the flask. “Since we’re here for the night how about a game of ‘I Spy’?”
Now Lauren threw him a withering look. “Really, man? What you gonna say? Something beginning with the letter ‘S’? ’Cause that’s all I see round here.”
Drake rose up on his haunches. “All right, all right, so I’m bored. Look, I’m off to take first watch. Shout me if, you know, one of those bloody galleons rises or jumps out at ya.”
He climbed the constantly shifting hill and studied the backdrop. It was uniform to the degree of pointlessness. Of course, this kind of backdrop made it harder to stand watch. Everything looked the same, ergo nothing moved. And now the darkness was lightly caressing every horizon, blotting out the light and forcing him to rely solely on hearing. He crouched down, getting accustomed to the surroundings and the “normal” sounds that infested the night. A faint wind scuffled through the sand, sending tiny rivulets streaming downhill like a miniature dry river. His friends chatted quietly. A small animal ferreted nearby. Like any other place on earth, the desert had its patterns and its laws. Drake respected and learned them. Below, the campfire crackled and sent a thin, twisting spire of gray smoke into the air. The land was quiet and non-threatening, if a little stealthy. It took ten more minutes for the old man to find them and when he did Drake knew exactly where he would appear. Carefully, he escorted Kelly into the camp.
Smyth eyed the Yorkshireman. “Kudos, dude. I thought he would slip by you.”
“Never happen,” Drake said. “Though it’s so quiet out there it could put a zombie to sleep.”
Kelly stepped to the center of the camp, close by the fire. His hair was white and hung down past his shoulders, straggly to a strand. His clothes were dark, dirty and creased whilst not being torn. Drake, the closest, smelled no odor emanating from him so maybe the rumpled front was just that. When he spoke his voice was rich, intelligent and resonant, as if he’d once been used to lecturing on a circuit.
“I am Kelly, your guide. I can’t promise that you will see the ghost ships, but I can promise that I will try my best to show you. Monies may be paid at the end of our trip. You,” he stared at Drake, “and you,” he nodded at Smyth, “are not like the usual type.”
“Usual type?” Smyth snapped straight back.
“Non-combatants.” Kelly chose an odd description. “You have seen action.”
Drake coughed. “We all have.”
Karin lifted her face from a contemplation of the flames. “And you? Have you ‘seen action’, old man?”
“More’n my fuckin’ fair share,” Kelly rasped with gusto.
Drake clapped him on the back. “And now you’re a ghost ship hunter. Congrats.”
“Ah, so you’re a cynic and a non-believer, yet here you stand. Your mission has to be larger than you.”
“Quick deduction. It is.”
“The ghost ships then,” Kelly took a moment to seat himself and request the hip-flask from Smyth’s tighter-than-usual grip. “Five hundred years ago an abandoned ferry was seen moored in the desert. A huge ship, it broke banks during a violent storm on the Colorado and drifted here. Stories tell of the screams of its crew being battered around the deck, broken and fragmented by the intensity.”
Drake rubbed tired eyes. “Fragmented?”
“Imagine being tossed so violently you don’t know which way is up or down, left or right.”
Drake stared. “Wow, dude, you are so lucky Alicia isn’t here.”
“The ferryboat now resurfaces to the sounds of thunder and the screams of its crew can be heard still.”
Drake listened to the old man’s voice, pitched perfectly to a level just above the crackle of the flames. Timbers spat deep in the fire and, as the desert temperature plummeted, the little group huddled closer as darkness pressed all around.
“The Pearl Ship was seen again only a few years ago. Said to have vanished in the 1600s when a young explorer was carried away by a tidal bore, the craft was beached, full of black pearls and ransacked by the American Indians of the time. They skinned and scalped the man alive, leaving him chained forever to the Pearl Ship as an offering to their gods. When it rises from the dunes he can still be seen, bound to the rigging.”
Drake felt a little shiver despite himself. Kelly was good at creating atmosphere, lowering his voice so even Smyth had to lean forward. Darkness and the snapping, popping fire added to the scenario the old man was creating. Drake himself took a moment to scan the dunes and then listened even more closely, intrigued.
“Of course, the stories of lost galleons are as plentiful as waves in the sea. Add to that a bay that was once attached to an inland sea and an undeniable confirmation of a vanished Spanish treasure ship in the area and you have the stuff of which legends are born. At least, for the fanciful. My own opinion was much the same as yours—” he indicated Drake “—until I saw one for myself.”
“You’ve seen a ship?” Lauren asked. “Out here?”
Kelly nodded vigorously. “I have, young lady. The Spanish galleon of old, I saw, with me bare peepers. And ethereal it rose out of the gloom, as intact as the day it were lost, a wraithlike wooden structure that almost seemed to ride the sand dunes like waves. I stood and I could not move. It was as if I were stuck in quicksand. My heart—it fair beat out of my body. My face, it must have been as white as the specters that inhabited the deck.”
Now Drake broke the mood with a cough. “Specters?”
Kelly shrugged. “P’raps it were me imagination. P’raps not. But something moved on that deck. All around me was a mist, slowly rising, and I couldn’t get no bearings. More than o
nce I felt icy fingers at the nape of my neck. I struggled forward and the ship stayed still. Only now do I realize it was real, not an illusion. This was a tangible vessel, its creaking timbers not the stuff of supernatural nightmare. I approached its huge side and imagined I could see vaporous, impossibly long arms reaching down toward me—either to help me up or drag me into their cold embrace and an eerie doom.”
The old man sat back, swigging from the hip flask, and not even Smyth uttered a sound. Drake frowned as he evaluated the story. Take away all the embellishment and yes, such a thing was possible. But still . . .
“Still another story recounts of a Viking ship,” Kelly went on, to Drake’s surprise. “Described by the local American Indians as an open boat with round metal shields along its side, settled somewhere in the Badlands. Several people were given directions to its location but an earthquake prevented them from reaching the site, swallowing two of the party whole. If we do find the lost ship during our travels, guys, please be careful. Disaster always lurks close by any sighting.”
“How would you even know where to start?” Karin asked quietly, indicating the all-enveloping dark that lurked just outside the influence of the flames and seemed to creep closer with every passing second.
Kelly nodded at her, as if acknowledging an intelligent question. “This is my home, Miss. For many years I have lived here. It can change its appearance in the passing of a storm, as may you and I, but underneath everything is still the same.”
Drake wondered if that was really an answer, but Kelly at least appeared genuine. He noticed the man carried no belongings, no backpack. “You say you live out here?”
“I have an abode not too far away. I’ll be fine for a couple of nights.”
“Wouldn’t it have been easier to meet us at your house?”
“Me space is me own,” Kelly said. “And not to be blatantly publicized.”
“Fair enough.” Drake nodded. “So what’s next? We set out at first light?”
Kelly tipped the flask until no more liquid fell out. “Ya got any more of this?”
“No, mate. But I could warm you a plate of beans.”
Kelly wrinkled his face up. “I’ll pass. Unless—”
Suddenly Drake was up and on his feet, listening hard, as desert noises became scrambled and made no sense. The balance had been broken.
By someone.
Or something.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
They came over the dunes, descending on the small camp like desert apparitions; silent, black and lethal. Drake saw their intent, the weapons they carried—knives in hands that knew how to use them. He kicked at the fire, spreading glowing embers far and wide and spiraling up into the night. Smyth didn’t waste a second meeting the enemy dead on, engaging the first as he hit level ground and grappling for his weapon. Behind him Lauren took out a pistol. Drake met his first attacker, wincing at the thought of a shot ringing out in the desert silence—now that might wake the dead.
But Lauren wasn’t the first to fire. Gunfire shattered the dark. Bullets kicked up sand around his toes.
“Get among them!” he shouted.
There were snipers atop the dunes.
As they separated, more shots rang out. Drake ducked and made to drag Kelly along with him, but several bullets kicked up around the fire . . . and one slammed into the old man, knocking him onto his back. Blood flowed from a stomach wound. As he lay there, a split-second later another projectile hammered into him.
“No!” Drake struggled across to him.
Life had already left his eyes. His chest was still. Drake closed his own eyes for a second, but then his sense of imminent danger sang out—a soldier’s sixth and seventh sense.
Drake caught a knife thrust, averted it, and smashed its initiator on the bridge of the nose. Only a grunt came forth and the man wrenched his arm free, thrusting again. Drake sidestepped, caught him under the chin and tipped him backwards. His body hit the ground with a thud, slipping a little in the streaming sand. Drake was aware of another attacker at his side, registering a misstep even as he fought the first. Quickly, he diverted to the second, striking while the dark-clad man faltered, breaking his windpipe before he even knew he was a target. Drake then heard Yorgi’s warning shout, and glanced beyond the first attacker to see another man had launched himself into the air, using the slope to gain momentum. Drake hit the sand in less than a second. The man flew over, landed at Yorgi’s feet and one more gunshot rang out.
A frantic battle ensued. Drake kept his pistol tucked away and drew his own knife, dispatching two enemy combatants almost immediately. To his left Smyth followed suit. At Karin’s urging, still only minutes into the battle, they angled to the left where a smaller, unmanned sand dune offered a way out. Lauren used her pistol to pepper the top of the dunes, giving the snipers up there plenty to think about. Drake witnessed her lightning-quick magazine change and knew Smyth had spent many hours coaching her.
Not the most obvious way to impress a girl. But then Smyth is hardly typical.
He sidestepped at a rapid rate, taking care to allow for the unstable surface. A bulky figure came straight at him. Drake dipped and hurled the man past his right shoulder, straight into the remains of the fire. A bullet cleaved the air in front of his face, right where he would have been if he hadn’t taken time to deal with the larger figure. Karin was already near the top of the slope, taking risks, urging Smyth and Lauren after her. Yorgi fired into their pursuers. Drake made sure they gained several feet of clear ground.
“Run!” he cried.
With a last look at the old man’s motionless body, Drake pounded up the short slope, seeing Karin and Smyth flying over the top. Yorgi fired his pistol as he ran, but Drake urged him to concentrate on getting his head down and putting some distance between them and their attackers. The darkness around them became absolute as they escaped the vicinity of the still smoldering fire. Drake knew from earlier reconnaissance that running dead east from this position would lead them to a dried-up river bed within minutes. Hopefully Smyth remembered the same. Their pursuers thumped after them, some tangling with fallen bodies, others clearly unsure of their orders now that their quarry had escaped the net.
Drake saw now that there was a little illumination offered by a new sliver of moonlight, its eerie glow adding to the desert’s sinister appeal as it slipped between passing clouds, a hide-and-seek specialist. Smyth hit level ground and stopped to allow the group a chance to reform. Drake risked a look back, and saw dark bodies not far behind.
“We’ll lose them ahead,” Drake said, voice low, showing the way.
He pushed Karin, Lauren and Yorgi ahead, making sure at least two of them were armed, then brought up the rear with Smyth.
“How’d the Pythian assholes find us?” Smyth breathed.
“You think it’s the Pythians?”
“Who the fuck else could it be? They know we’re searching for the ship.”
Drake considered this as he ran. Nicholas Bell was leading this operation and had probably scouted the entire area for miles around, leaving spotters behind. Finding and gaining access to a lost desert ship wasn’t a small-scale operation—it was relatively huge and he’d want first-hand knowledge of any interlopers who might be heading his way.
It was a theory anyway.
The train of thought brought him back around to poor Kelly. Drake had wanted the old man to fulfill his dream of finding the lost galleon, and wondered briefly where his ‘abode’ might be. Somewhere close by. The Badlands out here were so unpredictable it might be an old dwelling or even a cave. He checked behind as they ran, and saw a bunch of darker night following them.
“Yorgi. A couple more bullets please.”
The Russian obliged, aiming into the pursuing throng. Drake saw the land dip ahead just in time as shots were returned. The group raced down toward the dry stream bed, their boots slipping in shale at the bottom. Smyth muttered for them to follow, choosing a direction and heading out. Drak
e heard scrabbling at his back and knew one of their pursuers had broken from the group. Quickly, he turned, bringing his knife up. The man ran straight into it, but, wearing a knife vest, merely grunted. A haymaker smashed into Drake’s jaw, staggering him. Without going down, he kicked out, hitting the exposed pistol and sending it flying through the air. Even this close the man’s features were nothing more than shifting forms of shadow. Precious seconds were slipping by. Drake kicked out the man’s knee and then punished the other place he had no obvious protection—his skull. A sharp cry demonstrated a direct hit. Drake instantly whirled and set off at a sprint, catching up to the others.
“They’re too close,” he said. “We either stand and fight or find a place to hide before we start getting shot in the bloody back.”
“Yeah, maybe this arrow-straight stream bed wasn’t such a good idea,” Karin said.
“How many did we put down?” Lauren panted at her side. “Surely they’ll drop back when they start losing men.”
“Not these guys,” Drake said. “Not if it’s the Pythians. It’s all about overwhelming force now.”
“It feels—” Karin said. “It almost feels like they’ve hit the self-destruct button. Man, I hope so.”
Drake grunted. “Something new will always come along.”
“Man, I hope so.”
Drake eyed Karin, learning nothing in the dark contours of her face. What did that mean exactly? Ahead, Smyth spotted a break in the river bank and aimed for it. Within seconds they were scrabbling and scrambling up a short slope and then headed back into the desert wilderness, the high empty vault of the cool night above.
Drake and Smyth carefully cast around for another mercenary force, one that might be trailing them from above, but it seemed their leader hadn’t thought of such an obvious idea. Drake eyed Smyth with quiet surprise.
“And again we overestimate our enemy.”
“Ain’t the worst thing in the world, bud.”
Drake urged the others past, setting out into the desert. Scraggly brush littered their path, threatening to upturn them and break an ankle at every step. Still, they could not slow down. The sounds of their pursuers were almost as close as ever. It occurred now to Drake that if the team had been at full strength they would already have ended the chase. Here, right now, was a strong argument for never splitting up the group. Not that he could actually do anything about the likes of Alicia or Mai. Both were off fighting their own battles.
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