She clenched a fist in frustration. So much power. She stared at the half-demented professor. Why choose him? All the skull needed was someone stronger, someone with a trained mind.
So why not her?
Spalko knew she must not fail—not so much for the Soviet Union as for herself. Raised in a superstitious Ukrainian village, she had been shunned for her gifts. Witch was the least of the insults cast her way. Villagers ostracized her family. And when she began dissecting small animals in a childlike attempt to understand life and biology, even her mother grew fearful of her. As soon as she was old enough, she fled the mountains and the village. She knew answers would not be found among such closed-minded people. So she headed out into the broader world.
All her life, she had sought to find some reason for who she was, what she was, why she was.
And here in a jungle in South America, she was finally nearing an answer.
She would not let anyone stop her.
Settling back in her seat, she faced forward. Ahead, the mulcher continued to burrow into the heart of the dark jungle. A massive tree crashed into the forest, scattering birds and monkeys.
But McHale was not done. He leaned forward between Spalko and the driver, pointing to the burlap sack.
“That skull. C’mon, it’s all a crock, right? People stare into that thing, work themselves up into a state—self-hypnosis or something maybe. But ESP? Not bloody likely.”
“Why not?” she asked. “Telepathy already exists in man, though in a less developed form.”
“Are you kidding? You actually think you’re psychic?”
“Have you never picked up the phone to find the person you were about to call is already on the line? Is this coincidence? Or some other form of transmission . . . bio-transmission?”
“It’s called luck. Trust me, I know all about it. Mine’s usually bad.”
“Then what about the bond between mother and child? We sent a submarine under the surface with a mother rabbit’s new litter onboard. She remained onshore while one by one, the young rabbits were killed.”
“Lady, you need another hobby.”
She waved away his response. Science was not for the squeamish. “As each young rabbit was slain, the mother’s EEG readings showed reaction at the very instant of death.” She glanced back to him. “There is an organic mind-body link shared by all living creatures. If we could control that collective mind—”
“A’right!” He held up a hand. “Let’s put your money where your mouth is. For double or nothing on my fee, what am I thinking right now?”
He leaned in closer, eye-to-eye with her.
She lifted an eyebrow at his slightly leering expression. “I don’t need psychic powers to surmise that, Mr. McHale.”
“Other than that! C’mon, amuse me. I’m thinking of a question. What’s the answer?”
She stared at him, deep into his eyes. She noted the perspiration on his brow, the slight dilation of his pupils. Lust, worry, anxiety. The constant state of man. She looked deeper. Slowly, the smirk on his face shifted. She pushed into him. He began to shift away, an animal’s response to danger.
She snatched out and held him by the back of the neck. She pulled him closer, while probing deeper. She spoke, her lips almost touching his.
“The answer to your question is: If I feel the slightest need.”
She enjoyed the momentary terror in his eyes. She released him, and he fell back. He mumbled something and retreated into his seat.
The driver glanced to her, his hands clutching the wheel. He spoke in a thick Ukrainian accent. “What was his question, Colonel Doctor?”
Spalko answered, “He wanted to know if I plan to cut his throat once we reach Akator.”
The driver’s fingers tightened on the wheel. He turned away, but she saw his lips move silently, forming a single word in Russian.
Witch.
THIRTY-THREE
“YOU GOTTA BE KIDDING ME!” Mutt shouted.
Marion had known it would come as a shock to her son, but he had to be told. And since Mutt was tied up across from his father—and neither of them could run off—it had seemed like an opportune moment, especially considering their dire situation.
She glanced sidelong at their surroundings.
The three of them were imprisoned in the back of the last truck of the convoy, a canvas-topped personnel carrier. They were seated on benches, and each had been tied to one of the truck’s steel frame supports. They shared the bed of the truck with several crates stamped with Cyrillic lettering—and one large Russian colonel named Dovchenko, who rested a Kalashnikov rifle across his lap.
Marion sat next to Indy, who looked pained and uncomfortable. Mutt looked little better on the other side.
Father and son.
Here they all were, a happy little family.
Mutt still blustered. “My father was British. An RAF pilot. A war hero.” He glared at Indy. “Not some school teacher.”
Marion waited for her son to take a breath. “No, sweetie. Colin was your stepfather. We started dating when you were three months old. He was a good man, but he wasn’t your father.”
Indy straightened next to her and turned. “Wait a minute. Colin as in Colin Williams? You married him? I introduced you!”
Next to Mutt, Dovchenko rolled his eyes at the family melodrama.
Marion didn’t care. “You know, Indy, I think you gave up your vote on who I marry when you decided to break it off a week before our wedding.”
Indy’s voice lost an edge of its high timbre. “It wasn’t going to work, Marion. We both knew that. Who wants to be married to somebody who’s gone half the time?”
“I did!” Marion’s voice cracked a little, and she hated herself for it. He hadn’t earned that emotion from her. He plainly had no idea how much heartache he’d caused her. “And you would’ve known that if you’d asked me.”
Dovchenko lifted his rifle and pounded the butt on the seat boards. “Shut in hell up!”
Everyone looked at him, paused—then turned back to one another.
Indy continued, “Asked you what? To spend most of your life alone?”
“Did you ever think I might’ve liked the peace and quiet?”
“You?”
“Yes, me. You didn’t know. Why didn’t you ever just talk to me?”
“Because we never had an argument that I won.”
“So that’s your excuse, Indy? It’s not my fault that you can’t keep up.”
Indy leaned back, accidentally bumping his fedora over his eyes. He shook his hat back in place. “I was trying not to hurt you, Marion.”
“You damn well failed. Didn’t you wonder years ago why Ox stopped talking to you? He hated that you ran away.”
Mutt stamped his boot on the floor. “Would you two stop it?”
Dovchenko seconded this with a nod.
Indy scowled and swung his chin toward Mutt. “Yeah, Marion, don’t make him listen to Mom and Dad fight.”
Mutt strained at his bonds. “You’re not my dad, okay?”
“You bet I am, kid. And I’ve got news for you—you’re going back to school!”
Mutt’s eyes widened with shock. “What! What happened to there’s not a damn thing wrong with it and don’t let anybody tell you any different?”
“I wasn’t your father then.” Indy frowned at Marion again. “And you should have told me about the kid. I had a right to know.”
“If you recall, you vanished after we broke up.”
“I wrote.”
“A year later. By then Mutt was born and I was married.”
“So then why’d you bother telling me now?”
“Because I thought we were dying.”
Dovchenko shoved up to his feet and cursed a scathing streak in Russian. Though Marion didn’t know the words, her ears still burned. He slapped his rifle down, crossed to a pile of rags, and began balling them up, plainly preparing to gag them.
Indy spoke fast, trying t
o get in the last word. “Don’t worry, Marion. There’s still time. We may die yet.”
Dovchenko turned with a fistful of rags. He crossed to Marion first, ever the gentleman, and bent over her—
Which gave Indy the perfect angle to pitch back in his seat and kick him square in the face with both boots.
Dovchenko spun with a groan and toppled toward Mutt on the other side.
Who was ready as planned.
Mutt struck Dovchenko the same way Indy had, kicking like a kangaroo. Both biker boots smacked him square on the chin. “All yours,” Mutt called over as Dovchenko fell the other way again.
Indy popped the Russian again, coldcocking him with both feet.
“The bigger they are—” Indy mumbled.
“—the harder they fall,” Mutt finished.
Dovchenko toppled and fell flat on the floorboards, unconscious.
Indy called over to Mutt. “Still got that switchblade you stuffed in your boot back at the cemetery?”
Mutt grinned.
Indy matched his expression. “Now, there’s a good boy.”
Indy leaned over Marion, the switchblade in his hands. To get to the ropes, he had to reach behind her. The blade was awkward; the ties were oily and stubborn. He sawed at the ropes, cheek-to-cheek with her.
God, she still smelled great.
Vanilla and spice.
She spoke, her breath tickling his ear. “You know, I wasn’t the only one who moved on.”
“What do you mean?”
“I heard stories about you, Jones. Plenty of women over the years.”
He strained against the ropes. “A few. But they all had the same problem.”
“Yeah, what’s that?”
With a final tug, the rope broke, freeing her wrists. He leaned back and saw no reason to lie, not now. He was nose-to-nose with her.
“They weren’t you, honey.”
Across from him, Marion’s eyes sparked, and her expression shifted ever so subtly, sexily, into a shadow of a grin. Freed at last, she leaned closer, their lips almost touching—
—then out of the corner of his eye, Indy spotted a crate with a familiar military stencil on the outside.
Perfect!
He jerked to his feet and stepped away. To the side, Mutt stood guard over Dovchenko, who still lay sprawled on the floorboards. Indy pushed past the kid toward the crate.
“Jones?” Marion asked.
The box was long. He lifted the lid, praying it wasn’t empty.
It wasn’t.
He stared down at the length of black military steel packed into the straw. As he weighed his options, his fingers traced the weapon’s surface. A moment later, a crooked grin formed on his lips. This would do. But he needed a better vantage point.
He stared up at the canvas roof of the transport carrier.
Good enough.
The switchblade snicked open in his fingers.
Time to get to work.
THIRTY-FOUR
MUTT STEADIED the stack of crates under Jones. “Careful, old man!”
Jones crouched, perched atop the pile as the truck bounced and rattled. He carefully stood up. “Don’t worry about me.”
“I wasn’t. I meant be careful with my switchblade.”
Jones frowned down at him, then reached up to the canvas roof of the personnel carrier. He grabbed a support strut with one hand and stabbed upward with the knife in the other. The blade popped through the truck’s canvas roof. Holding steady to the strut, he dragged the knife and cut a long ragged slice through the thick material. It sounded like a zipper being tugged down. Once done, he snapped the blade closed and tossed the knife down to Mutt.
“Good as new, kid.”
“Better be.”
Jones ignored him, stretched up, and chinned himself through the hole. As Jones shimmied to the roof, Mutt leaned over to stare at his mother, who was shouldering the other side of the stack of crates.
“Him?” he asked.
She shrugged guiltily. “You warm up to him, you’ll see.”
He sighed. “You could’ve told me, Mom.”
“I should’ve, sweetheart. I’m sorry.”
Mutt went over and joined his mother. She put her arm around him and they stared up at the roof together. The man’s shadow crawled across the canvas roof, heading toward the cab.
Jones.
His father.
Mutt shook his head.
Together they stepped over the Russian giant’s slack body and tracked Jones’s shadow. A steel door blocked the bed of the truck from the cab in front. They had dared not use the guard’s rifle. Any shots would have drawn unwanted attention to their escape.
Overhead, Jones’s shadow teetered at the top edge of the rear compartment—then vanished.
A ripping crash followed.
Through a tiny window in the steel door, Mutt spied Jones dropping straight down through the canvas roof and landing square atop the driver.
“He did it—” Mutt said.
The truck lurched to the side, throwing them flying to the left.
“Hold on!” his mother yelled at him.
Hold on? He was still in midair!
Suddenly the truck crashed to a stop with a grind of metal and splintering of wood. Tangled together, he and his mother went tumbling forward as the steel door ahead popped open. They fell straight through it and into the cab.
Mutt hit the dashboard; his mother landed in the passenger seat.
Nose to the windshield, Mutt saw they’d smashed into a tree. Jones kicked open the driver’s-side door and booted out the unconscious man, then dropped into the vacant seat, ground the gear into reverse, and hit the gas. The truck bucked backward. Jones tore the wheel around, popped the gears, and they were moving forward, chasing the convoy.
Mutt pushed himself upright.
To his left, Jones wore a fierce and determined expression.
On his right, his mother grinned back at Jones. “That was a good one.”
Jones shrugged. “Not out of this yet, sweetheart.”
Mutt stared between the two, gaping in horror.
These were his parents?
THIRTY-FIVE
INDY SHIFTED INTO third gear and sent the truck bounding after the convoy. The line of Russian vehicles stretched in a long arc through the jungle, led by the massive machine that chewed and sawed through the rain forest. As Indy neared the rear of the convoy, he studied his adversaries.
He had to hand it to the Russians. They were prepared for every contingency that the forest might throw at them. Amid the jeeps and transport carriers were a couple of odd-looking vehicles. Their chassis were shaped like heavy outboard boats but with wheels beneath them. Clearly they had been engineered as amphibious vehicles and were to be used for river crossings. Ducks was what Mac had called them, but these fowl had teeth. A machine gun had been mounted to the prow of each vehicle.
Still, Indy kept his focus on the smoking, screaming lead vehicle of the convoy.
The jungle-cutter.
The massive machine’s two horizontal blades ripped and sawed a wide path through the jungle, large enough tor the convoy to follow. The path had originally been a raw, overgrown trail, suitable for horses or someone on foot. It ran alongside a wide river. Without the jungle-cutter, passage would have been impossible for the convoy.
Which gave Indy an idea.
His eyes narrowed on that lead vehicle.
“What’s the plan, Jones?” Marion asked from the passenger seat.
He leaned over the wheel, concentrating, calculating. His plan was simple as he explained it: “Get Oxley back, get the skull, and get to Akator before they do.”
A familiar sarcasm filled Marion’s voice. “Oh, is that all?”
Up ahead, the convoy approached an oxbow in the river, a U-shaped turn of the water’s raging course. The line of vehicles began to stretch along the curve.
That should do, but he had to hurry.
Indy shifte
d up to his feet. “Marion, take the wheel!”
She slipped over and grabbed the steering wheel. Turning around, he slid past Mutt, who dropped into the passenger seat. Indy headed into the rear of the truck. The vehicle bobbled under his feet, but Marion steadied it as best she could over the rutted road.
Mutt called to Marion, “What’s he going to do now?”
“Honey, I don’t think he plans that far ahead.”
Ignoring them, Indy dashed into the rear and crossed back to the crate he’d noted earlier. Off to the side, Dovchenko was still out cold on the floor, sprawled on his chest, snoring through a bloody nose.
Indy parted the straw in the crate and extracted the four-foot tube of black steel. The heavy weapon drew a grim smile from him. Its weight instilled a measure of hope. A Soviet hammer-and-sickle had been stamped onto the side of the bazooka. An explosive sixty-millimeter head had already been loaded in one end.
He hauled it up and carried it like a battering ram back toward the cab. When he pushed his way in with it, Mutt’s eyes grew huge.
Indy motioned with the weapon’s explosive head. “Scooch hack a little, will ya, son?”
“Don’t call me that!” But the kid flattened against the seat.
With a little maneuvering, Indy got the unwieldy length pointed out the passenger window. The other end waved in front of Marion’s nose.
Balancing the bazooka on his shoulder, Indy studied the terrain and possible trajectories. The convoy continued around the oxbow, slowly and cautiously rounding the U-shaped bend. Their vehicle—at the end of the convoy—was the last to enter the oxbow, while up at the front the jungle-cutter had made it all the way around.
So at the moment, the two vehicles stood at opposite horns of the U.
Which meant the jungle-cutter lay directly across from Indy.
He lined up his target. He had one plan, one hope, one shot. If the jungle-cutter were taken out of commission, the convoy would be mired in the forest. With that goal in mind, Indy waited as the massive vehicle trundled into his crosshairs. He would have to be certain of his aim. He wouldn’t get a second shot.
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull Page 16
