SKELETON GOLD: Dark Tide (James Pace Book 4)

by Andy Lucas

  An hour after they started drinking, with a surprisingly hot autumn sun bathing the roof of the habitat, Sarah found herself falling into the warm embrace of someone she’d barely met, and who held her tightly as the silent tears turned into wracking, agonised sobs. Even in her alcohol-fuelled state, she managed to keep from spilling the true extend of the Corporation’s business to Charlene but the pain was very real, driving her soul towards a dangerous, dark precipice.

  Charlene was surprised at how quickly events had moved into such turbulent waters but pulling Sarah into a tight hug was the most natural thing in the world, and she held her until the worst of the waves crested, then passed.

  She already liked Sarah and felt her own heart breaking to see her in such a mess. Clearly, losing James was still so fresh that her only coping strategy had been to ignore it; keeping busy and trying not to face the reality. Now, she’d needed to talk and that urgent, burning desire to connect with someone else had opened the floodgates. Distraught and angry, it was what had always been brewing.

  Time blurred and when Sarah finally drew breath without trembling, she only knew that she felt happy in Charlene’s arms. Charlene held her slightly more softly, stroking her hair gently and whispering soothing words of comfort. What those words were, Sarah could never recall, but eventually she felt strong enough to pull away and sit up, feeling slightly sheepish as she wiped the smears of running mascara from her cheeks. Her head spun from the wine, blurring the moment.

  That was when everything shifted. Sarah suddenly noticed the scent of Jimmy Choo on the breeze, wafting from Charlene’s neck. Overwhelming feelings of gratitude, combined with the heady power of the wine, served to make the kiss as natural as it was necessary. Leaning in together, their lips entwined so gently as to barely touch, grazing in a delicate circle before pressing together more firmly. No words were spoken.

  Sarah’s lips parted readily to receive Charlene’s sweet, warm tongue. She had never kissed another woman before, having never experimented in her younger years, and the sensation of Charlene’s tongue stud enhanced the surge of exhilaration that blossomed in her sluggish mind.

  Falling back together on the blanket, the kiss grew long and lingering. Charlene knew that Sarah wasn’t gay but they were both drunk and a bit of fooling around couldn’t do any harm.

  She was determined to keep things at kissing, and not take advantage of Sarah’s vulnerability, but the kiss soon fired passions in both of them, speeding up. When Sarah slipped on top of her, and started kissing her neck, any thought of restraint evaporated.

  Charlene naturally found her hands on Sarah’s back and was unable to stop sliding them down over her skirt, feeling the warmth of bare buttocks suddenly beneath her fingers. Flipping her over, she slid a hand expertly between Sarah’s legs, slipping them under the thin material of lace knickers to probe her wetness very gently. Sarah moaned softly, reaching her own hands under Charlene’s vest to caress her small breasts, tweaking the nipples between her fingers.

  Lost in the moment, neither thought to stop but that was as far as the moment went. Whatever it was, or may have become, was lost a second later as the screech of a warning siren sounded from back inside the control room, jerking them from the heat of passion and sending Sarah half running, half stumbling off the roof, followed closely by a breathless Charlene.

  The alarm was part of a state-of-the-art security system that McEntire had installed in the base prior to handing it over to James Pace. The nature of the covert airship added an additional layer of security but Doyle McEntire had been taking no chances with his new employee, especially as his daughter had seen fit to fall in love with him.

  The siren alerted Sarah to a security breach of the woodland’s outer perimeter. A series of concealed ground pressure sensors and tree-mounted motion detectors ringed the small woodland. At this stage, there was nothing to worry about, Sarah knew.

  ‘Probably just an amorous bloody squirrel, feeling the urge,’ she slurred, suddenly angry at her own state.

  ‘I know the feeling,’ flushed Charlene coyly, drawing the faintest of smiles from Sarah.

  Flicking a switch, a small screen flickered into life on one of the main consoles, as she activated the network of security cameras; all safely tucked up, heavily concealed in multiple branches throughout the woods. Charlene’s thoughts moved from being impressed, to terrified, within moments as one of the cameras picked up a man slowly walking into shot. The image was in high definition, full colour and crisp enough to read the menace on his features.

  After slipping beneath the cover of the thick, overhead foliage, the stranger had paused long enough to pull an automatic rifle from the fishing rod bag. Sarah caught her breath as she now saw the gun carried easily in his hands. He was clearly no stranger to handling it.

  ‘Oh my God,’ said Charlene, her voice instantly icy with fear. ‘Is that a gun?’ She knew the answer even before she’d finished asking the question but her heart still plunged as she watched Sarah’s head nod.

  ‘It’s fine,’ Sarah sighed, her head immediately clear and focused again She knew what was about to happen next.

  ‘How can it be fine?’ asked Charlene, not understanding. ‘He’s got a gun and he’s coming this way.’

  ‘You don’t need to watch this,’ Sarah warned.

  ‘Watch? What? We need to get out of here, or pull up the drawbridge, or hide.’

  ‘We could cut loose from the rope bridge, if that’s what you mean,’ Sarah agreed, ‘but it won’t be necessary.’

  Then the man stopped dead in his tracks with a look of surprise clearly etched onto his face, before crumpling at the knees and collapsing to the dirt. Only as he fell did the figure that had crept up behind him become visible. Bloodied knife in hand, where the lethal blade had just been inserted between the vertebrae of the upper neck, the new figure stooped down and checked to see that his victim was dead. Satisfied, he straightened upright and proceeded to drag the corpse away, deeper into the woods.

  Not wanting, or needing, to see any more of the macabre show, Sarah switched off the cameras and a strange, detached tranquillity returned to the control room.

  ‘I am sorry you had to see that,’ Sarah muttered. She knew their sentinel would have spotted the intruder. Whoever he was, he had signed his own death warrant by entering the wood carrying a gun.

  Perhaps Charlene needed to know what she was getting herself involved in. Not that she had any real choice in the matter, not now that ARC had decided to target her. The McEntire Corporation was her only chance to keep breathing and her father, she knew, would protect the young woman with every asset he possessed.

  Despite the alcohol already consumed, Sarah walked over to a stainless steel drinks cabinet, bolted against one of the far walls. She poured them each a large glass of her dead lover’s favourite, single-barrelled, Jack Daniels bourbon. Not bothering with ice, as he had always shunned, she handed Charlene her drink and they both sat down on one of the large sofas. Surprisingly, Sarah’s hands were steady, unlike her guest. Charlene’s sweaty, quavering grip threatened to shake and shiver the amber liquid in her glass all over the floor.

  The silence was palpable and remained for some time. In the end, it was only broken by the sound of Sarah’s encrypted satellite phone ringing from where it sat, on a nearby console. Under the circumstances, she answered it, despite the caller identification flashing up that the caller was her father.

  He asked her if she was okay, having been notified of the incident, and ordered that she relocate to one of the safe houses. It was far too dangerous to stay where she was, he reasoned. ARC was clearly far more determined an opponent than they had first thought.

  Doyle McEntire was man who always got what he wanted. Powerful and influential, in multiple fields, he couldn’t remember the last time anyone had refused him a request. Sarah did just that.

  ‘I have no intention of leaving here,’ she told him icily. ‘Your security was highly effective. Nobody
will be trying anything like that again. We are safe here.’

  ‘This isn’t a choice, Sarah,’ McEntire began but that was as far as he got before the buzzing of a hung-up call echoed in his ear. His daughter, like him, had little sense of compromise. He toyed with the idea of calling her back but he knew it would be futile. Her tone had been clear. Instead, sighing, he ordered a team of four additional security operatives to join the wood guard. They would arrive within the hour, with enough heavy weaponry to start a small war, if needed.

  With appetites already sated and the booze beginning to thicken their heads again, now that the shock had passed, Sarah and Charlene switched to tea and headed back outside, only to find a chill wind and dark clouds suddenly scudding rapidly above the inflatable ring. The first drops of cold rain fell in moments and they just had enough time to clear away the picnic stuff into the basket and return to the warm, dry inner sanctum.

  Making her excuses, Charlene went back down to the main deck, shut herself in her room, flung herself down on the bed and began to sob. It was still only mid-afternoon but her entire psyche felt drained and she was suddenly overcome with a crushing desire to sleep, her eyelids leaden and irritated. A growing headache behind her left eye threatened a migraine attack so she closed the blinds and lay down on her back. Within five minutes she fell into a deep, troubled, exhausted slumber.

  Sarah had been glad to see Charlene leave and paced the floor of the control room like a caged leopard, moving restlessly beneath the gaze of wide-eyed, gawking school children, pressing in on rusting iron bars, trying to understand what had just happened between them.

  Making a decision, she picked up her phone again and punched in a name. The phone was answered at the other end before the second ring and she nearly broke down at the sound of the solid, reassuring voice on the other end.

  Baker was preparing his team of six men and they were nearly ready to head out to the area of the sinking, to see what clues they could turn up. One of the company’s Falcon jets was waiting for them at a private departure area secreted at Southend Airport. But he always had time for Sarah, especially knowing how heartbroken she was.

  He listened intently to what she said, not interrupting. When she finished, he mulled over her words, formulating an appropriate response. She wanted to go with him, to try and find Pace’s body, and bring him home. She would leave Charlene safely at the base. Baker could come and collect her himself. Her father never had to know.

  Baker could never betray Doyle McEntire in this manner, especially if it meant placing his only child in harm’s way. He refused, as gently as he could, assuring her that he would find Pace and Hammond. She had to trust him.

  Sarah had expected him to refuse and was about to try another tack when everything suddenly, dramatically, changed.

  Mid-sentence in placating her, Baker’s attention was suddenly diverted by an urgent message that one of his men brought him, hastily scrawled on a piece of paper. The words that stared up at him hit him in the chest with the force of a 9mm hollow-tip round, delivered at point-blank range. Despite years of strict self-disciple, he could not prevent a whoop of delight from escaping his lips.

  On the other end, Sarah heard the commotion and wondered what was going on. She wasn’t kept in the dark for long. Within a couple of seconds, Baker’s voice was back on the line, this time seeming lighter and almost musical in its intonation.

  ‘What’s happening?’ she demanded, trying to suppress the sense of infectious excitement. ‘Is everything okay?’

  ‘Better than okay,’ Baker replied happily. Sarah could not see the huge grin on the old soldier’s face but she could hear it. There was a pause, brief but hanging for a seeming eternity.

  ‘What’s going on? Tell me, please?’

  ‘James is alive, Sarah. He’s still in danger but I can sort that out,’ he promised her. ‘I’m going to get him back for you and I’m leaving right now.’

  ‘Alive?’

  ‘Yep. Your father just received a radio broadcast, boosted by one of our listening stations in the San Carlos. There’s not much detail, just some rough coordinates from the coastal shelf in the Antarctic.’

  ‘And Max?’

  ‘No news about Max, not yet,’ he added quickly. ‘The signal was cut off abruptly but there is enough to set my team down in the ball park. I have to go, Sarah. I will keep in touch.’

  ‘Bring him back to me,’ she pleaded softly, eyes suddenly brimming with relieved tears.

  ‘I will. I promise, I will.’

  Then Baker was gone and Sarah could not breathe. Her phone dropped from her suddenly numb fingers as she fainted, crumpling hard to the floor but blissfully unaware of the impact pain as her stunned consciousness temporarily withdrew from the world.

  10

  After getting over the shock of his discovery in the garage, Pace decided to conduct a more thorough exploration of the base. He discovered the old transmitter in a small side office, off the main corridor that ran from the lower catacombs up to the garage area. Most of the rooms were deserted, with just a scattering of old, dusty stores, chairs, metal bed frames and general domestic clutter. Strangely, there was still no sign of any scientific equipment, not anywhere. Perhaps it had all been shipped out years before when the missing British occupants vacated? The corpses he had discovered earlier were, after all, German submariners.

  The venerable set was covered with the obligatory coating of dust and still plugged in to a small diesel generator that was vented by a thin metal chimney that disappeared through the rocky ceiling. Not having much experience with such old sets, it had taken a few minutes of dusting and studying before he’d managed to fathom how it worked.

  Pace did not know why he had even bothered checking the generator. After all, out here in the middle of nowhere, there would be nobody to pick up a radio signal, even if the transmitter could be coaxed back into life.

  Still, an inner instinct to survive spurred him on and he was pleasantly surprised to find a few inches of fuel still present at the bottom of the small tank, easily reached by his probing fingertips. All the connections were checked and okay.

  The generator had a manual starting handle, similar to those very first cars in the late nineteenth century. Any battery start would have been out of the question after so many decades.

  The crank gears were frozen in place but a few minutes of wrestling, coaxing, pleading and cursing eventually worked the mechanism free. An old can of yellow grease, spotted on a small shelf in the corner, had a finger-smear left in the tin but it was just enough to lubricate the newly-freed crank. A few moments later, it was moving easily in his hand.

  ‘Here goes nothing,’ Pace hoped. After manually pumping some of the fuel through the system, he gave the crank a hard, double turn. What should have happened was that the old generator spluttered, choked and then remained defiantly lifeless. What actually happened was that it sparked into life immediately, running sweetly after a couple of initial pops.

  ‘Blood hell,’ he marvelled, then dared to turn the heavy black dial that fed the power into the radio. Still disbelieving, he watched a couple of the orange lights blink on as if they had only been turned off the night before, their lights steady and sure with no hint of flicker. In time to this resurrection, the room was immediately filled with a loud hissing, crackling from long dead speakers that startled him, despite him half hoping it might happen.

  Seating himself rather gingerly into a creaky wooden chair in front of the set, he picked up a small microphone and flicked a switch on the set to divert the line into its transmit mode. What he wouldn’t have given for a satellite phone at that moment.

  Pressing down on the handset button, he spoke firmly but with little hope of being heard.

  ‘Mayday. Mayday. This is an emergency broadcast, over. My name is James Pace, survivor from the shipwreck of the McEntire vessel, Sea Otter. I am marooned at an abandoned military facility on the coast of Antarctica, I think within twenty miles o
f McMurdo Station. I cannot tell exactly where so please lock on to this signal, over. Mayday, Mayday.’

  Pace had no idea if the antenna that connected through the hole in the ceiling was even still erected; somewhere out in the icy tundra. He was no fool and realised that the chances of anyone hearing his distress call were virtually non-existent. Strangely, it felt good to have tried and he felt a warm rush of adrenaline that kicked off the chilly lethargy that was beginning to creep back into his bones.

  He turned the set back into its receive mode and turned a large dial around, scanning the hissing airwaves for any sign of a signal. Nothing.

  Leaving the set switched on, he headed back along the passageway to the garage, where he collected a small pile of useful items. Blankets, a couple of fleece coats, paraffin lamps, still full and ready to go. Most important were a dozen old tins of corned beef, peaches and condensed milk that he’d discovered at the back of a large tool cupboard in the garage itself. Overlooked by the hurriedly vacating scientists, they were perhaps someone’s secret stash. The tins were intact and free from rust.

  Having worked with several survival instructors, on harsh courses run on Exmoor during his time in the RAF, Pace knew that the food inside would still be fine to eat as long as the tins were as sealed. Any slight hole would render the contents spoiled but they all looked fine. The freezing temperature of the wide garage would also have helped preserve the food. Some of the nutrients and vitamins would have bled off over the years, for sure but there would still be enough to keep him alive for a while.

  Pace was even more convinced about the tins when he shook two of the milk ones and felt no movement inside. The liquid was frozen solid. Perfect.

  Finding a large fire bucket in one corner, already filled with oily rags, he wasted no time in moving it into a clear space, far enough away from his recent discovery so as not to risk igniting the edges of the tarpaulin that he’d managed to manhandle back over it.