Gerallt had been sleeping in a comfortable crotch of the strangler fig because, even with the rainforest critters of the night on the prowl – and that included the black panther, black bear, and caracal – he felt safer and definitely more comfortable than sleeping on the rock floor of the lava tube. That choice made it easier for Horus to find him with a drone just about the time that he was waking Monica up.
“Gerallt. Wake up.”
Gerallt didn’t stir.
“Gerallt. Defro (“wake up” in Welsh).”
Gerallt’s eye’s fluttered.
“Gerallt. Defro. Mae Esteves yn dod i chi. (Esteves is coming for you).”
Gerallt came awake with a start, his rifle in his hands searching for his enemy yet he was steady in his high perch. At first, he perceived nothing, then his vision and hearing honed in and he heard and saw the small drone.
“Ble mae mab beic y gallaf ei anfon at ei fedd. (Where is that son of a bitch that I may send him to his grave?)”
“Relax,” Horus said. “He’s not here. I just had to get you up. It’s important if you really want to kill bob fab i ast (that son of a bitch).”
Gerallt relaxed.
“What’s so important?”
“You have to meet someone. A lady. She will be in danger.”
“Will be? But isn’t?”
“Not yet. When she steps out of Vulcan’s Roost she will be in danger.”
“Vulcan’s Roost?”
“Yes. I forgot to tell you. That is the building in the crater.”
“They’re Greeks?”
“No, lovers of Greek myths.”
“Who is this lady and why will she be in danger?”
“She is Monica Bartlett and ...’
“The bitch rock star?’
“Yes and no. Despite her music she is really a nice lady as you will learn. And when she leaves the building she will be stopped by a guard. She is not allowed to leave the building.”
“And what do you want me to do?”
“Incapacitate the guard for a few minutes so she may give you a means to communicate with me. These drones take too long.”
“And they’re too noisy.”
“Yes, that too.”
“Okay.” And Gerallt started getting ready to descend the strangler fig into the lava tube.
“Remember. Incapacitate. Do not kill the guard. We don’t want them looking for you.”
But Gerallt was halfway down the tree already. He had heard the reminder but there was a woman in danger awaiting rescue and that always meant hurry, hurry, hurry. As it was, he reached the crater mouth of the lava tube before Monica got to the door.
As soon as Gerallt had disappeared down the strangler fig’s hole, the caracal jumped from the neighboring tree to the strangler fig. She made her way down to the hole that led to the lava tube. She smelled and recognized Gerallt’s scent. Curious about the man and his doings, she wanted to follow but the way down the tube wasn’t inviting. So she set about the rest of her nightly doings which had been interrupted by the smell of the man.
Gerallt settled himself to wait and it wasn’t long before a part of the glass wall slid open, a woman stepped out, and the door closed behind her. Gerallt was surprised that she was wearing a peignoir and some kind of cross trainers. What a strange choice, he thought.
The guard saw her immediately, had his rifle pointed at her and was obviously giving her commands. She didn’t move. Just stood there staring ahead. The guard moved in front of her, but she still didn’t move. Then he reached and grabbed her shoulder with his right hand, letting his rifle drop in his left. Stupid move, she’ll... and she did. Quicker than a coiled snake could strike, she grabbed both his shoulders and raised her right knee to his groin – Ouch! – pulling him down toward her as pain struck and then threw her left elbow to his neck. Down for the count! Saves me the trouble.
He was up, out of the lava tube and down the slope – sliding more than climbing down –and across the short distance to where she stood almost before she had recovered her breath from her exertion. She watched him coming and he noticed the glimmer of a smile on her face.
“Hello,” she said. “Are you my knight in shining armor?”
“Doesn’t look like you need one,” Gerallt said, “but I guess that’s what I am – or what I am supposed to be. This guy ... well ... a drone said you had something for me.”
Monica reached up to her left ear and retrieved the earbud and handed it to him.
“Put it in your ...”
“Right.”
“Right ear.”
Gerallt complied.
“This is Horus. Can you hear me?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Now scurry back to your hole. Someone is coming.”
Gerallt turned and ran, climbed the slope like a monkey and was through the bushes before the door behind Monica slid open.
“Quickly, back inside and go left,” Horus said to Monica. “You’re sleepwalking and you’re going to have to meet someone you don’t want to meet, but it is necessary to cover the story.”
Monica did as she was told and walked several steps.
“Turn right. You’re sleepwalking.”
Monica turned right and ran right into Ramiro Esteves.
Chapter 26
Monica stopped and didn’t move.
“Quem?” Ramiro said and then shone a small flashlight in her face. A wicked smile crossed his lips. “Tu!” he said and reached for her. Monica slapped his face as she screamed, turned and ran. She was down the hall and in the door of her room before Ramiro recovered. He raced after her, but Horus had moved a “wall” in both passages between her room and the adjacent rooms and Ramiro had no idea where she had gone. He was ranting and fuming when Horus opened the door to the outside and Ramiro could see the guard just getting up off the ground. Ramiro stormed out and berated the guard who said he had been attacked by some flaming apparition who appeared out of nowhere. Ramiro called him an imbecile, got his name, and returned to the building. On the tile in front of him he saw “
Gerallt watched the confrontation between the guard (Soldado 15) and Ramiro with great pleasure but not as great as it would have been if he could have pulled the trigger. When Ramiro stepped out of the door, he was in Gerallt’s sights for a split second, or so it seemed, and as his finger started to pull the trigger that little voice in his ear said, “It is not time. Be patient.” Gerallt had held the sight on Esteves – mostly between his eyes – for some time and the voice of Horus was not the only one thing that stopped him from pulling the trigger. The other was the fact that he had never fired the rifle and had no idea of the accuracy. He was certain that he would hit Esteves, but he might not kill him, and one chance would be all that he would get. The guard wouldn’t have been a problem but there would be others and he alone couldn’t kill them all. When Esteves left and the guard returned to his duties – He’s toast, Gerallt thought – Gerallt crawled deeper into his lava tube home, stood up and went back to his bed in the strangler fig to get a few more minutes of sleep. But he wasn't able to sleep because the vision of Monica in her peignoir kept popping up in his head.
Once in the safety of her room, Monica collapsed on her bed. She was shaking with fear and anger having confronted Esteves. That look on his face shadowed in the beam of the flashlight was one of the evilest things she had ever seen. Then there was Gerallt. Their meeting hadn’t been a lengthy one and it was in the dark of the night with only light from the hallway inside (thanks to Horus) illuminating the scene. But he was not bad looking, despite needing a shave and a bath. He had looked at her with something other than the business at hand showing in his eyes. Of course, she was a young woman, moderately endowed, good looking (she knew that as most women do) and wearing a peignoir which in good light would have reveal
ed much more of her assets, but her back was to the light. She was going to have to watch out for him. He was going to need help and she would be happy to do it. Anything to get rid of Ramiro and the mere thought of that man caused her to shudder.
Horus had “watched” the meeting of Gerallt and Monica with satisfaction. All he had were the tone of the words and the words themselves as well as the sensory reading the chip in Gerallt’s neck provided. There was definitely more there than an interchange of an earbud. Now he had two trustworthy allies to add to his army of Issaack, Siegfried, and Waldo. That was only five and the enemy was twenty-odd – he wasn't certain about Gloria, Phil and Harvey Gladstone. With them, only time would tell.
Via the implanted chip in his neck, he had followed Gerallt’s path back to the lava tube and stopped him from killing Ramiro but knew that the time would come. Ramiro’s appearance on the scene had not been a surprise as Ramiro took frequent nighttime walks around the Roost’s internal perimeter. He couldn’t stop him because he (Ramiro) was the man in charge or at least he thought he was. There was not a man in charge because Horus was in charge or at least more in control than anyone else. The manner in which Issaack and Siegfried had designed Vulcan’s Roost was such that – at least until the predator contest was over – nothing in the volcanic crater would function without Horus. After that, all it would take was the wiring in of a master control panel and things would function as they were meant to be. But Issaack and Siegfried, in consultation with their staff and Horus, had determined that a takeover was going to happen. It would have been difficult to stop it without installing a large defense force and that was not part of the equation. All that Horus had to do now was figure out how to take the invader’s force out of the equation. And in that respect, his attention kept returning to a book in his growing digital library: The Art of War by Sun Tzu and a passage in The Army on the March.
Ch`i Chieh, in high good humor, granted their prayer; but his army now became increasingly slack and careless. Meanwhile, T`ien Tan got together a thousand oxen, decked them with pieces of red silk, painted their bodies, dragon-like, with colored stripes, and fastened sharp blades on their horns and well-greased rushes on their tails. When night came on, he lighted the ends of the rushes, and drove the oxen through a number of holes which he had pierced in the walls, backing them up with a force of 5000 picked warriors. The animals, maddened with pain, dashed furiously into the enemy's camp where they caused the utmost confusion and dismay; for their tails acted as torches, showing up the hideous pattern on their bodies, and the weapons on their horns killed or wounded any with whom they came into contact. In the meantime, the band of 5000 had crept up with gags in their mouths, and now threw themselves on the enemy. At the same moment a frightful din arose in the city itself, all those that remained behind making as much noise as possible by banging drums and hammering on bronze vessels, until heaven and earth were convulsed by the uproar. Terror-stricken, the Yen army fled in disorder, hotly pursued by the men of Ch`i, who succeeded in slaying their general Ch`i Chien....
Chapter 27
On the predator front that third night or the night of the second day, the black bear was not active because of the wound from the grizzly and the caracal was content with food in the rainforest but things were not calm for everyone. The wolf-coyote pack was on the prowl and, although it had not been planned, the rest of predators were to be involved. The prey in question was the cheetah who also was on the hunt but without a quarry and without a hint that he was one of the hunted. Part of the reason for that was there was little wind and without wind it was difficult to catch a scent. The pack had done it by sight and the lion and tiger would get into the hunt by instinct or just luck. If they could talk they would have said instinct but it’s always debatable when something like this happens in the animal kingdom. The cheetah was just walking though the grass, with the wolf behind him closing carefully and the two coyotes a good distance in front, to be ready if the cheetah ran or to attack to aid the pack’s leader.
Sensing it was time, Lobo the wolf closed the distance and made that last dash to bite at the cheetah’s right Achilles tendon. But as is often the case with both the hunter and the hunted, the cheetah sensed something was wrong and at the very last microsecond took off with Lobo after him but quickly falling behind. When the cheetah had taken off, so too had the coyotes, but after a short turn with them in the lead and closing in on the cheetah’s eventual path, the cheetah shot right past them, his track taking him across Charon (the bridge over the River Styx) and out of the Hade’s Plain onto the Plain of Olympus. And into the waiting arms of Simba the lion and Cleopatra the tiger who had just finished another of their sexual encounters. Simba had walked away, heading for the watering hole at the base of Prometheus’s Aerie, and Cleopatra was lying on the ground thinking about whatever female tigers think about after their tenth sexual encounter in the past twelve hours. The cheetah’s path took him right across Cleopatra and she was up in a flash and after him as he swerved toward the watering hole. Simba had heard the cheetah running and the snarl from his “beloved” Cleopatra. The cheetah was beginning to slow down now and its turn to miss hitting Simba was akin to a speeding car’s turn to miss hitting a wall with rear tires screaming and spewing bits of rubber and smoke. There were no bits of rubber or smoke just a big wounded left flank as Simba expressed his disapproval with a right cross, claws fully extended. The blow sent the cheetah’s rear end into a skid and it tumbled but was up in a flash heading away from the watering hole and across the Plain of Olympus heading for Vulcan’s Forge. Tired and hurting from the lion’s blow the cheetah stopped and like any creature that has eluded its pursuer, it took in a deep breath and looked behind it to see if it was still being chased. And for that reason, it failed to notice Val Killer, who had been on his way to the invader’s compound, launch his attack with his right paw coming across the cheetah’s back and his jaws seizing the cheetah’s neck and with those powerful jaws, the cheetah’s life was over.
The theater’s audience was stunned at the ten minute episode they had just seen. The pack had been left standing in the cheetah’s dust. The cheetah had been injured only because of its path and chance encounter with tiger and the lion. But that had led it right into the waiting jaws of Val Killer the black panther.
“Wow!” Waldo exclaimed, “I haven’t seen ten minutes like that in a long time.”
“Can we run that again?” Issaack asked.
“‘What did I miss?” Harvey Gladstone said as he came through the doors. “And is it really necessary to have those pat downs every time we want to come in here?” This last to Ramiro who was fixated on the screen and watching Val Killer half carrying, half dragging the cheetah’s lifeless body toward the rainforest.
“At least your troops won’t have to worry about another attack from the black panther tonight,” Issaack said to Ramiro.
“Diz iz not going well,” Ramiro said.
“You mean because all three of your first bets bit the dust early?” Siegfried injected.
“I know what he means,” Phil said. “The hyena was killed by the pack, the cougar and jaguar were killed using a knife by his entry – I mean, it was okay they were killed by his entry but it was an illegal weapon.”
“I don’t recall us banning any weapons,” Issaack said, “but continue with your explanation.”
“The grizzly was killed in a free-for-all...”
“It was a Musketeer Brawl,” Harvey Gladstone said, “All for one.”
“Very good,” Waldo said. “Continue, Phil.”
“And now this. It was almost as though the animals got together in council...”
“Like on Survivor,” Harvey Gladstone said.
“And decide to chase the cheetah and tire it out,” Phil said. “But we were expecting to see one-on-one battles for survival and we’re not.”
“We did not know what to expect,” Gloria said. “When you get a bunch of killers together, you don’t know w
hat’s going to happen. This was an experiment and I for one have learned quite a bit about Mother Nature. Animals band together just like humans do. And just to add a bit of religion into this discussion, ‘The meek shall inherit the earth.’”
“Guess it also shows, that you can’t run and hide,” Issaack said.
At this point, Ramiro got up and walked out without a word.
“Was the cheetah one of his bets?” Monica asked.
“Yes,” Phil said.
“Doesn’t know how to pick ‘em, does he?” Monica said.
Chapter 28
“Issaack.”
Issaack didn’t move.
“Issaack, I know you’re awake.”
Issaack didn’t move.
“Come on, Issaack. This is important. I know how to beat Esteves and get control of the island.”
Issaack opened his eyes.
“How?”
“Well, it’s a little involved.”
“Are people going to get hurt?”
“Not the good guys unless something goes terribly amiss.”
“Okay,” Issaack said, rolling over on his back. “I won’t take notes. Tell me.”
“Well, it involves Gerallt.”
“Who?”
“The man Esteves put into the game.”
Issaack sat up.
“He’s dead!”
“No, he’s not.”
“But you said.”
“Yes, I did. I said ‘The man’s vital signs had stopped....’ I forgot to finish with ‘... being reported to you.’ I guess that’s a lie, but it doesn’t matter. If I were human I would have felt good doing it. But I had to let Esteves think he was dead and I thought it best, for the time being, if everyone else believed that too.”
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