Cryptozoica

by Mark Ellis

  As he reeled away, trying to raise his subgun and clear his vision at the same time, Bai Suzhen performed a half spin on the ball of one foot and drove the sword into the man’s midsection. As he doubled over she snatched the dao sword from his slack fingers.

  A Ghost Shadow soldier shouted in wordless fury and whirled toward her, stroking a short snare-drum rattle from his weapon. Bullets thumped very rapidly just above Bai Suzhen’s head and then she was among the invaders. She thrust the jian at the man who had fired at her but he danced aside, managing to block the sword with the frame of his subgun.

  She slashed the heavy edge of the dao across a man’s wrist and with a faint wet sound, the blade sliced off the soldier’s right hand. He screamed, clutching his blood-spurting stump, eyes bugging out. Whirling around him, back to his back, Bai Suzhen executed a half-turn, the dao and the jian cutting arcs in the air.

  The crossed blades sank into a soldier’s neck, catching it between a long scissors of steel. The razor keen metal grated against vertebrae, then she whipped the two swords free, leaving the man to clap his hands to both sides of his throat, trying to staunch the river of blood.

  With the speed of a striking serpent, Bai Suzhen constantly shifted position so none of the men could achieve a proper aim with their subguns. If they fired, they would kill their own. She pivoted, slashing backhanded with the jian. The razored tip sliced through a man’s belly.

  As he staggered away, she received a jarring blow between her shoulder blades. She lurched forward, throwing her arms wide to avoid impaling herself on her own swords and managed to execute a somersault like an acrobat, bouncing back to her feet.

  When she regained her balance, she faced Jimmy Cao, aiming a big-bored Casull .454 revolver directly at her heart. The barrel gleamed with a blue-satin finish. An unlit cigarette dangled from between the man’s lips. He was dressed very casually in a multi-colored tropical print shirt and white jeans as if he planned to attend a beach party right after the massacre. Braided gold chains glinted at the base of his neck. His upswept black hair glistened with a combination of pomade and sweat.

  Although he affected a calm semi-smirk, Bai noticed how the barrel of the pistol trembled and the sweat beaded in the sparse hairs on his upper lip. “Nice boat,” he said in English. “A little too traditional for me.”

  “And it’s all messed up with your men’s blood, too,” Bai retorted, not lowering her swords.

  Jimmy Cao’s smirk faltered. “We won, didn’t we?”

  Bai Suzhen didn’t do a head count. Instead, she stated flatly, “There is no way in hell the council would have sanctioned this insanity, Jimmy.”

  His lips skinned back over his teeth in a malevolent grin. “You’re right. But you made a very stupid mistake leaving Zhou Zhi alive.”

  “So you and he are working together? The Ghost Shadows and the Blue Lotus? I should have known when I saw those Nanai…that’s Zhou Zhi’s clan of pigs.”

  Cao gestured with the barrel of his pistol. “Drop the stickers, bitch.”

  “Why should I?”

  Jimmy Cao turned his head and spoke rapidly over his shoulder. Two men wearing Ghost Shadow headbands dragged Pai Chu forward. His head lolled loosely on his neck and his face was masked by a layer of blood sliding from his hairline. They forced him to his knees.

  Cao pointed the pistol at Chu “You should do it because not all of your men are dead. But I’ll fucking make them all that way if you decide you’re a complication instead of an asset.”

  Bai drew in a long breath through her nostrils and tossed the swords down on the deck, the blades chiming. Instantly, a man grabbed her wrists, twisting her arms up behind her in painful hammerlocks.

  Between clenched teeth, she said, “None of the triads would authorize this kind of action against one of their own. What are you really up to, Jimmy?”

  He swaggered close to her, idly passing the barrel of the revolver back and forth before her eyes. “I might tell you if you asked the right questions, white serpent-whore of good fortune.”

  “Which is what?” she snapped. “What size dick extender you use?”

  Without warning, Cao kicked her, a whipping crescent kick with his left leg that caught her on the right side of her head. She would have fallen if not for the man gripping her arms. She sagged, knees turning to rubber, her vision blackening at the edges. Her ears rang and she tasted the salt of her own blood.

  Then, slowly she straightened up, fighting her way out of unconsciousness. She blinked away the amoeba-shaped floaters swimming across her eyes, tossed her hair back and stared steadily at Jimmy Cao. His face had gone red, twisted with savage anger.

  “You’re a stupid, arrogant lesbian bitch and you have no place in United Bamboo.” He spoke in Thai so she would be sure to understand him. “The council will reward me for getting rid of you.”

  “You still haven’t told me what you want.”

  “What do you think?” He returned to English. “Your signature on a sales agreement to Aubrey Belleau. I knew you wouldn’t do it willingly. I bet that fucking Tombstone Jack talked you out of it. I know you met with him this morning. So, I’m forcing the issue…you’re going to sell your shares of Cryptozoica Enterprises to that limey midget and you’re going to do it today.”

  Howard Flitcroft’s voice announced, “That limey midget isn’t here and he’s not likely to be any time soon.”

  Heads and gun barrels swiveled toward Flitcroft as he walked casually from the direction of the quarterdeck. He held his hands up at shoulder level. A Ghost Shadow soldier grabbed him by the arms, twirled him around and roughly patted him down. The man pulled Flitcroft’s cell phone from his pocket and tossed it to Cao, who barely gave it a glance.

  “I figured we’d have to hunt you down, Flitcroft,” Cao said. “You saved me some time and trouble. What do you mean, Belleau isn’t here?”

  Matter-of-factly, making a show of straightening his clothes, Flitcroft declared, “He’s trapped on Big Tamtung.”

  “You’re lying.”

  Flitcroft shook his head. “I have no reason to.” He nodded toward the cell phone in Cao’s hand. “A few minutes ago, I got a call from my assistant, Bertram Pendlebury. He received a shortwave distress call from Mouzi, that little Maori mechanic.”

  “So?” demanded Cao impatiently.

  “She reported that Kavanaugh’s helicopter had crashed and they needed a pick up.”

  Bai Suzhen stiffened, inhaling a nervous breath. “Was anyone hurt?”

  Flitcroft shook his head. “Not seriously.”

  “You’re so full of shit,” Jimmy Cao sneered.

  “Call Pendlebury and ask him.”

  “He’d lie, too. Everybody here is full of shit.”

  Flitcroft shrugged. “You saw the chopper flying away from here, didn’t you?”

  Cao nodded reflectively. “Yeah.”

  “You haven’t seen it come back, have you?”

  “Get to the point, Flitcroft.”

  “I’m sure you know Belleau and that valet of his were aboard the chopper. Now they’re marooned on Big Tamtung with no way to get back here…and with about a dozen different kinds of animals that would swallow a pint-sized paleontologist in one bite.”

  Bai Suzhen laughed, despite the drill-bit of pain boring into her facial muscles. “In that case, it really doesn’t matter if you have my signature or not, if the other principal is in some monster’s belly. Financiers and Cryptozoica Enterprises always seem to cancel one another out.”

  Jimmy Cao’s face became swollen with another surge of rage. His eyes slitted. His breath hissed out between his teeth and he set himself to kick her again.

  Flitcroft interposed hastily, “There’s another option.”

  Cao paused but he did not take his eyes off Bai. “I’m listening.”

  “You can buy my shares. I’m the majority stockholder.”

  Cao cut his gaze toward him. Contemptuously, he said, “I don’t want your shares, R
itchie Rich. We’ll get them anyway, by and by.”

  Bai Suzhen angled an eyebrow at the smaller man. “What does Belleau offer you, Jimmy? He knows there’s something valuable on Big Tamtung besides some prehistoric wildlife…that’s the only reason you started the major push for me to repay United Bamboo by selling my shares to him.”

  Cao snickered and tapped his temple with the bore of the pistol. “You finally figured it out? Took you long enough.”

  “What does Belleau know?” Flitcroft demanded, forgetting for an instant the guns directed at him.

  “I might be inclined to give you a hint,” Cao replied, “if you can give me a hint of how I can get Belleau safely off Big Tamtung. It would also be a good way for you to keep yourself alive.”

  “So you’d just go and pick him?”

  Cao nodded. “More or less.”

  “What about the people who are with him?”

  “I’d rescue them, too, of course.”

  “Of course,” Bai intoned.

  “What happened here was business. I’d have no reason to leave anyone stranded over there on that shithole. Where would they most likely be?”

  “Don’t tell him anything,” said Bai Suzhen, her tone edged with sharp warning.

  “I know what I’m doing,” Flitcroft countered. “This is just a negotiation. Belleau and the others are probably at the Petting Zoo site by now. It’s about sixteen miles inland from the westside shore.”

  “Petting Zoo?” echoed Cao skeptically. “How do I get to it?”

  “Without a chopper, there’s only one way,” answered Flitcroft, a smug smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. “By boat, up the Thunder Lizard River. You can reach the river on the east side of the island and you follow it right to the site, about twenty miles.”

  Jimmy Cao matched the man’s smile. “That seems easy enough, thanks.”

  Flitcroft’s smile widened. “It’s not really. You’ll need a guide, someone who’s been there.”

  “Hey, guess what,” Cao said in a silky soft croon. “I have one.” He tossed the cell phone back to Flitcroft and from a holster at the small of his back, he produced an AceS satphone, a mate to the one Flitcroft had seen in Belleau’s possession. “I’ll just have the midget talk me through it.”

  Flitcroft swallowed hard, clutching his phone. “You’re making a mistake, kid. You can’t trust Belleau.”

  “What a coincidence,” Cao said smoothly. “You can’t trust me, either.”

  Cao raised the revolver and squeezed the trigger. The pistol banged like door slamming shut. Howard Flitcroft grunted, slapping a hand against his chest. He stood silently for a second, then carefully looked at the palm of his hand. It glistened with wet crimson. Without uttering a word, he toppled heavily to the deck.

  Adjusting his aim slightly, Jimmy Cao fired another shot, the heavy caliber round slamming through the center of Pai Chu’s forehead. A mist of blood surrounded the rear of his skull and he fell backwards, half on top of Flitcroft.

  Cao focused his gaze on Bai Suzhen. “Both of them were complications. Are you going to be an asset or a complication?”

  “What do you mean?” she demanded, pitching her voice low to disguise a tremor of fury.

  “My boat can’t navigate shallow waters. She has a fixed fin keel and she’d run aground in less than six feet of water. What about this obsolete hulk of yours? It’s flat-bottomed, right? Can it make it up the river Flitcroft talked about?”

  Bai Suzhen presented the image of pondering the question for a moment. She nodded. “I believe so…if you hadn’t killed all of my crew.”

  “We didn’t kill all of them, babe, just the ones who tried to kill us. Have you been up this river?”

  “Yes,” she lied.

  “Good,” Cao said. “That makes you an asset and not a complication. See how easy it is?”

  In rapid-fire Taiwanese, Jimmy Cao shouted orders to his men, gesturing with his pistol for emphasis. They spread out over the Keying to assume various stations. The man standing behind Bai Suzhen released her.

  Rubbing her wrists to restore circulation, she asked, “What about the dead?”

  Cao shrugged as if the matter was of little importance. “Once we get underway, they go over the side…like all my complications.”

  * * *

  Thunder boomed overhead and raindrops pattered against Flitcroft’s face. He lay doubled up around the bullet wound, his eyes clouded with tears of pain. He breathed through his open mouth, tasting blood and bile. He ruefully eyed the raw, pulsing hole in the center of his chest. It bled profusely, and he thought he saw bits of lung tissue mixed in with the flow. Still, he didn’t hurt as much as he thought he would after being shot through the clavicle, but then he had no other exemplar by which to measure.

  He lay as he thought corpses would lie, boneless and frozen in a posture of pain. The body of Pai Chu draped awkwardly over his hips helped the illusion. He listened to men shouting back and forth and then the rattling clangor of the anchor being winched up.

  Moving slowly, Flitcroft brought his cell phone up to his ear, flipped open the cover with a blood-coated thumb and punched the direct redial key.

  Pendlebury’s voice responded quickly. “What the hell is going on over there, Howard? Fireworks? Some sort of Chinese holiday?”

  In a strained, guttural whisper, Flitcroft said, “I already told you about Jimmy Cao and the Ghost Shadows, Bert. Now you need to tell Jack and Gus. Cao is on his way to Cryptozoica in Bai Suzhen’s boat. She’s his prisoner. He’ll kill her once she signs over her shares to Belleau.”

  “What?” Pendlebury demanded, incredulously.

  “I don’t care how you do it…just reach Jack and Gus––tell them not to trust Belleau. He’s working with the Ghost Shadows. They’ll kill everybody.”

  “Are you all right?” asked Pendlebury worriedly. “You sound sick or something.”

  “Or something,” Flitcroft managed to husk out. “Just do what I said. And tell Merriam…” His trailed off when he realized he could not think of any message he wanted conveyed to his wife.

  “Tell Merriam what?” pressed Pendlebury. “Howard, tell her what?”

  With grim satisfaction, he decided that having no parting message whatsoever was a fitting epitaph for a man who had lived his kind of life.

  “Goodbye, Bert,” he said softly and folded the cover over the phone.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  The wind died down to no more than an intermittent breeze. The rain slacked off to a steady drizzle, then only a spritzing. Lightning still arced across the sky, but the heart of the storm had moved away. The humidity rising in its wake was oppressive. Streamers of mist curled up from the surface of the Thunder Lizard River. The sun peeked out from behind the thick fleece of cloud cover, casting a sullen scarlet glow against the distant thunderheads.

  Crowe eased off on the throttle of the Alley Oop, the engine roar becoming a muted, idling rumble, the props churning the water to foam.

  “I think I’ve worked out the bugs,” he said loudly. “We can cast off once everybody is aboard.”

  Kavanaugh climbed out onto the dock to disengage the hoist cables from the eyebolts affixed to the prow and stern of the Nautique 226. He gestured to Honoré. She left the shelter of the lean-to. “Celebrity lady scientists first and casualties second.”

  Honoré gave him a nervous smile and stepped down into the boat, sitting in one of the eight swivel chairs. McQuay followed, handing down his camcorder to Mouzi first. Belleau and Oakshott moved to the edge of the dock.

  The big man began to step down into the boat, stretching out a leg. Kavanaugh planted a foot square on the seat of Oakshott’s pants and gave him a shove. With a wild waving of arms and a surprisingly deep-throated bellow, Oakshott plunged headfirst into the river between the hull of the boat and the dock.

  Face contorting with shock and anger, Belleau whirled on Kavanaugh—and stared directly into the bore of the Bren Ten automatic. Confu
sed and frightened, Honoré began to rise from her chair, but Mouzi kept her seated with a firm hand on her shoulder.

  “Don’t move,” Mouzi ordered.

  The pistol that appeared in Crowe’s hand was another inducement to do as the girl said. Sputtering and coughing, Oakshott grasped the rail running the length of the boat and heaved his head and shoulders out of the water.

  “Stay right there, tiny,” commanded Crowe, leveling the M15 autopistol at his head.

  Lips working as if he didn’t know whether to yell, speak or laugh, Belleau’s gaze jumped from Crowe to Kavanaugh to Honoré and then back to the gun in Kavanaugh’s hand.

  “What the bloody hell are you doing?” he finally managed to shrill. “Are you mad?”

  “I’m royally pissed, if that’s what you mean by mad,” Kavanaugh said grimly. “We all are.”

  “What is happening?” Honoré demanded, bewildered. “Why are you doing this?”

  “Ask the past president of the Lollipop Guild here,” Kavanaugh said. “He’s in on it.”

  “In on what?” Belleau asked, his eyes narrowed.

  “Your pal Jimmy Cao just took Bai Suzhen prisoner,” Crowe declared. “He and his Ghost Shadows are on their way to rescue you and probably kill us. For all we know, he killed Howard Flitcroft.”

  Honoré’s face drained of color. Her “What?” was a ragged, aspirated half-gasp. “How can you know this?”

  “Flitcroft told Bertram Pendlebury and Bertram told us,” Mouzi said. “When we radioed him a few minutes ago.”

  Honoré started to rise again and when Mouzi held her down, she slapped the girl’s hand away. “I didn’t have anything to do with this.”

  “Me, either,” McQuay said querulously. “I work for Mr. Flitcroft.”

  Oakshott grunted, fingers flexing on the rail. He peered uneasily down at the surface of the river. “There’s something swimming down here, mates…something large.”