by Alex Archer
The fight’s end brought something akin to anticlimax. The defeated were stoic. But something about their body language at first suggested apprehensiveness to Annja. Although he had never said so, Millstone’s words had suggested to her he belonged to some kind of religious sect—if these men indeed belonged to the group he claimed to speak for. If it was true they’d been safeguarding the relic for centuries, they were likely willing enough to give their lives to their holy cause. The issue was just how severe a form their martyrdom was likely to take.
But martyrdom did not seem to be on their captors’ agenda. They permitted their captives to tend to their wounded, and even drove out a mule-style utility vehicle to load five men too badly hurt to walk. Meanwhile the crew was ushered out of the disabled Hercules, supporting one of their number who appeared to have broken or sprained an ankle. Otherwise they seemed uninjured. Annja had no way of knowing if any had been left inside the airplane dead.
The victors marched the prisoners at gunpoint into a small Quonset-style building a quarter mile from where Annja hid, back by the airfield’s main buildings. She took a pair of very compact binoculars from her pack to watch. The half-cylinder corrugated-steel structure had bars over the windows, she saw, evidently to fend off pilferage. The Asian-looking men wheeled over a few handcarts loaded with cases of water, left them inside for the prisoners and locked them in.
On the whole, it was more as if a sporting event had ended than a brief, bloody battle. In fact Annja couldn’t remember watching a sporting event whose participants had been so calm and well-behaved when it was over. Although she’d never been much for spectator sports.
She transferred her attention back to the C-130. A big bulldozer came clanking out from among the airfield buildings and hauled the monster airplane out of the ditch on a chain affixed to its undercarriage. She was startled that the dozer could budge it.
The aircraft’s tail ramp was let down. As Annja watched in an agony of growing frustration, a gang of men pushed the yellow pine casket containing the relic down the ramp. Annja was startled to see just how large it was. With much loud grunting and what Annja was pretty sure was cursing—even if it was in no language known to her—they wrestled it onto another one of the low, small flatbed mules.
A dock stood on the shore south of the airfield. Annja expected them to trundle the artifact straightaway there, load it onto a ship and sail away across the horizon, beyond her grasp forever. The storms her informant had warned her of still hovered west and north of the island, but if the vessel headed that way it would vanish from sight of the ever-vigilant satellites within a couple of hundred miles.
She almost wept with relief when instead of turning off toward the beach the mule carrying the casket kept heading down the runway toward a Quonset hangar. She recalled that she had seen no vessels of any size at this end of the island when they flew over it, only some small craft pulled up on a couple of beaches, fishing or pleasure craft. Clearly, the victors had no means at hand of moving their prize off the island.
Annja watched as the mystery men drove the utility truck inside the hangar and then came back out, locking the artifact away. Then she started trying to judge how close she could work her way to the buildings under cover of the brush and trees.
THE ANSWER WAS, not close enough.
She was able to work her way to within perhaps five hundred yards of the hangar south of the runway where the artifact was locked up. She spent the next several hours in frustration and increasing apprehension that whatever mode of transport the Asian fighters were waiting for would arrive at any moment and whisk the coffin away. She’d carefully nursed a couple of bottles of water she’d packed in her pack, all the time wishing she had some of the water the victors had supplied the vanquished. And she played all-you-can-eat buffet to all the island’s mosquitoes. She hoped this wasn’t a malaria zone.
The bulk of the victorious forces retreated to what she guessed was the little airfield’s lounge, such as it was. Pairs of watchful men patrolled the buildings on foot. Two stood guard before each of the structures where the relic and its would-be protectors were secured. She wasn’t certain just whom they were supposed to be guarding against. She saw no sign of any local inhabitants. They were smart enough to stay out of the way of all these heavily armed men. Likewise the local French-colonial officials.
The sun set. As usual in the South Pacific, the sunset, though adequately breathtaking in terms of splashes and bands of orange and gold and scarlet, was not a drawn-out affair. The sun went away, it got dark. Even more bugs came out, or at least more vocal ones.
Keeping to the undergrowth, Annja worked her way around to the west of the main buildings. If the winning team had night-vision equipment she was sunk. But if they did they didn’t seem to be using it. She wondered if victory had made them overconfident.
They are, she thought grimly, if I have anything to say about it.
The field was not particularly well-lit. There was no illumination around the runways. There was probably no budget to keep them lit at night unless there were planes landing or taking off. The blank rears of the two locked buildings were unguarded.
She timed the foot patrols. They came her way about every fifteen minutes. When she was sure of this she slipped in among the buildings. She then hid behind some crates while the next patrol passed.
When they were out of the way Annja moved quickly to the rear of the hangar where the relic was. It had huge double doors and a person-sized door to the side. The walls were thin metal. She could see through the barred windows that the interior was mostly dark.
She frowned at the metal end wall. Whatever you do, she thought, do it quickly.
She summoned the sword. Reversing her grip and taking the hilt in both hands she pressed its tip against the slightly rusty wall to the right of the door. She pressed hard.
The blade punched through the metal with a slight squeal, like cutting up a can with tin snips, with a bit of musical saw thrown in. The noise sounded loud as a cannon to her. She realized, after she calmed herself with a few deep abdominal breaths, that for anyone farther than ten feet away it wouldn’t have been audible above the saw and chirp and trill of the nocturnal insects.
She pulled down. The sword cut the thin wall easily, like a box-cutter through not particularly stout cardboard. The metal squealed protest, but as long as she kept the cutting slow, it didn’t do so too loudly.
Annja cut from the level of her head to the ground. Withdrawing the sword, she turned its blade horizontal and pierced the wall again at the top of the first cut she had made. She sliced right to left for about three feet. Skin beginning to crawl for fear of guards happening by she made another similar cut a couple of inches from the ground. Then she released the sword.
She pushed on the metal door she had cut. The steel bent with a louder noise than cutting it had made. She went rigid. No shouts or shots came her way.
As quietly as she could she pushed the flap open far enough to squeeze through. Then she pushed it back roughly into place. The hangar’s rear was dark and the patrolling guards had shown no particular interest in it. She hoped they’d see nothing amiss.
Apart from some worktables, shelves and metal cabinets along the walls, the hangar was empty except for the mule with the casket loaded onto it. She went to it, examined it. There were no markings on the outside of the big box except some tool-marks, indicating it had been jimmied open and then resealed.
Climbing up on the open-topped vehicle’s seat Annja checked the crate’s lid. It was nailed down. Calling back the sword, she slipped the blade into the crack between the lid and the crate’s end. Leaning on it and working it around a little—but gently, to avoid warping the wood and making it evident it had been tampered with again—she got a foot of the blade inside. Then she levered up the corner with a groan.
She bit her lip. She burned to look inside, even though she suspected all she would see was the coffin. Or, more likely, whatever packing mate
rial was used to protect it and keep it from banging around inside the crate.
But that would entail getting the lid all the way off. She doubted she’d have time.
As if to make her mind up for her she heard voices. Men were approaching the front of the warehouse, hailing the guards. Again, she could not understand or identify the language they spoke.
She reached into a cargo pocket of her shorts. From it she took out a small circular object—surprisingly small, considering its function. She pried up the corner just enough to glimpse strawlike plastic packing material inside and a glint of gray metal. Slipping the circular object inside, she tamped it with her fingers so it slid down between the packing-stuff and the wood of the crate, safely out of view. Then, jumping up to put all her weight on the corner of the lid, she pushed it back in place.
A loud rattling told her the padlock was being removed from the big front doors. Annja rabbited toward the shadows at the hangar’s rear. Stabbing the sword through the metal flap, she quickly levered it open far enough to slip through. She gasped as a ragged edge cut her left forearm.
Then she was through. With a squealing rumble the double front doors began to open. Annja slipped the sword into the cut from outside and torqued the flap closed again.
She darted to another building nearby. Crouching there, panting more from stress than exertion, she checked her watch. If the patrols kept to their schedule one must have gone past thirteen minutes ago. She had less than two minutes to get clear.
A quick check of her arm showed her the cut wasn’t bad. But she didn’t want to leave a blood trail. She quickly whipped off her shirt, leaving her torso bare but for a sports bra to the tender mercies of the biting night bugs. She tied it quickly around her arm as a makeshift bandage. Then she sprinted back for the shelter of the woods.
Just in time she dropped on her belly in the shadows. This time she panted because she was legitimately winded. It had been a close race. The two guards passed as she glanced back.
More lights showed on the hangar’s far end as the mule and its precious cargo were driven out into the night. Evidently the transport had arrived. The coffin was slipping through Annja’s grasp again.
She had known that might happen. It was the most likely outcome. After all, the little charter plane she’d flown on couldn’t have held the crate, much less carried it away from the island. She couldn’t even lift the thing by herself.
Disciplining herself to breathe through her nose deeply into her abdomen, Annja could not help grinning with triumph. She had come prepared.
This time, when the coffin in its crate was loaded onto the ship, it would carry with it the compact GPS transmitter she had slipped inside.
15
There were worse places to be stuck than on the beach in Tahiti.
Lying on her towel on Maeva Beach, with a colorful sarong wrapped around her waist and the island of Moorea rising picturesquely across the turquoise waters of the lagoon like a cinder cone covered in lush tropical vegetation, Annja chafed at paradise. The coffin and its mysterious contents were slowly making their way across the Pacific to the Philippines. And there was nothing she could do but think.
When, sometime before midnight, the inhabitants of Le Rêve had crept out of the hiding places they had so prudently found when the crazy foreigners started shooting up their island, Annja had pitched her best hysterical American tourist act for them. The French-speaking locals, both native Polynesians and colonial expats, were sympathetic. They were pretty shaken up too, although both sides of the firefight had treated the few inhabitants they dealt with—the ones who hadn’t successfully scampered off into the scrub—with scrupulous politeness. It was like a War of the Gentlemen.
Annja would’ve loved to interview some of the gentlemen, whom the locals saw fit to continue to hold captive in the Quonset warehouse, although they replenished their supply of beverages and gave them food besides. No opportunity presented itself. The islanders were twitchy, understandably, and Annja did not want to call any unwanted attention to herself by pushing too hard to talk to a bunch of captured mercenaries, which the inhabitants believed the American fighters were.
The locals treated Annja in very friendly fashion. She soon relaxed, especially once she realized no one gave much thought to who she was or where she had come from. Since they couldn’t fit her in their minds with either set of combatants, they took for granted she was who and what she said she was, and had arrived by charter plane—and awful luck—shortly after the white guys took over the airfield.
A large and cheerful native family had taken her in. The husband was a machinist who made replacements for cars, boats, aircraft and just about anything else with metal parts that broke for the islanders. It was a lot cheaper than having them shipped there, not to mention quicker. The wife ran a taxi and tour service. The kids, who ranged from toddlers to teens and whose numbers Annja was never sure of, especially since she was pretty sure neighbor kids circulated freely in and out, bombarded her with questions about America in French. She’d at last gotten to sleep in the wee hours of the morning.
Morning brought a French gunboat. It also brought final ruination of Annja’s plans to talk to the prisoners from the previous day’s battle royal. During the night they’d got the hinges off a personnel door and escaped. They left behind the Hercules crew, including the guy with the busted ankle, who were a mixed bag of Americans and Australians and claimed innocence. The French colonial police kept them secluded, but the airfield manager, a fat, cheerful French expatriate from Lyon with an imposing walrus moustache, told Annja the flight crew claimed to be a charter, hired to pick up a cargo and fly it to the United States. They believed the plane could be made airworthy, although how long that would take and how much it was going to cost worried them. The authorities, while not notably sympathetic, seemed inclined to believe them.
More to the point, the authorities believed Annja, especially when she brought out the hysterical American-woman tourist routine again. Age of global paranoia or not, Le Rêve didn’t have much by way of entrance and exit controls at the best of times. The airstrip barely had radar for the roughest-and-readiest form of air-traffic control. She expanded on what she had told the locals. The light charter flight had arrived after the initial takeover but before the Asian dudes attacked. The charter pilot flew away and left her, mainly because he could. She ran off into the weeds and hid until the shooting stopped and the bad men went away. The end.
The colonial cops, if anything, seemed less interested than the locals did. They barely bothered to glance at her passport, which was real. Her story was at once both plausible and impossible either to prove or disprove. Nor could they see her having anything to do with the mysterious firefight, either. After cursory questioning they cut Annja loose.
She had the impression the authorities were simply going to throw their hands in the air on this one and cross their fingers no reports of the battle found their way on to the Internet. Nobody local had gotten dinged, particularly no one from the French-run observatory. As mere astronomers, Annja knew they rated—if possible—lower than archaeologists in the world power structure, but their university would be sure to emit colossal clouds of stench had anything befallen them. No dead bodies were left behind to clutter things up. The property damage could be ascribed to the frequent tropical storms, including the one bearing down on the island even as Annja flew off to Tahiti, southwest of Le Rêve.
So here she was, lying out on the white sand near the Sofitel Maeva Beach Hotel, which was a curious step-design resembling a section cut out of the middle of a Meso-American temple. It was pleasant enough and also relatively cheap, by Tahiti’s ruinous tourist-trap standards, anyway.
She had spent the last two days snorkeling in the lagoon to admire the coral and the brightly colored fish. That and fending off amorous advances from French and American tourists, trying not to get sunburned and slowly going crazy.
Thanks to some software, probably only mi
ldly heinous and illegal, provided by her go-to geeks, Annja could actually track the ship now carrying the coffin in real time. And wasn’t that exciting, she thought. Even watching a jetliner cross the Pacific live would have been like watching nothing happening at all, actually, since on a fifteen-inch laptop screen it would move about an inch an hour. It would look like a still photo. And the ship moved much slower than that.
She took a certain gloomy satisfaction that she couldn’t see it anyway. The long-promised storm system had swallowed the western Pacific, so far as satellite imaging in visible wavelengths was concerned. She was not about to pay the costs of trying to get more close-up pictures of the ship. She hadn’t even gotten to see what it looked like, although she rather guessed it had a sort of pointy end, a sort of flat end, and was longer than it was wide.
Annja fervently hoped that, wherever they were going, the mysterious Asian fighters were seasick every nautical foot of the way. She still wasn’t sure who was playing in the coffin sweepstakes, nor how many players there even were. But she was in no doubt that they were all mightily pissing her off.
She made herself close the laptop. She laid it aside beneath a towel so the sun wouldn’t fry its electronic brain, which without any help ran hot enough to scorch her legs if she got careless about using it on her lap. She spent a fruitless while trying to get in to the book she’d grabbed on a whim at the hotel shop, a novel about the romantic adventures of an intrepid, globe-trotting female archaeologist, the intrigues she got up to and the beautiful, exotic men she got up to them with. She was totally unable to suspend disbelief. These writers have no clue, she thought.
With a sigh she shut the paperback, dropped it back in the string bag she’d bought, tempted as she was to chuck it into the surf. She followed it with the computer. Picking up the bag with one hand and the folded rental chair with the other, and ignoring the odd wolf whistle she trudged back to the hotel.