by Alex Archer
Besides, she thought, maybe a few days adrift at sea would teach some of them to take up another profession.
Annja keyed the handheld radio she carried and said, “How much longer?”
“Heading back now” was Marcos’s reply, and soon the two patrol boats nosed up next to the Pride.
One by one the pirates were loaded onto the patrol craft. Several tried to resist, but after the first few were knocked unconscious and dumped aboard the boats, the rest were more compliant.
When it was his turn, Vargas couldn’t resist getting in the last word.
“I will hunt you down for this, Annja Creed,” he told her and followed it up with a long string of curse words.
Annja waited patiently until he was done and then leaned in close.
“Please do,” she told him. “It will give me an excuse to feed you to the sharks.” She smiled, a rather unpleasant smile to show how much she would enjoy it, and Vargas abruptly shut his mouth.
When Annja and the others were back aboard the Pride, the patrol boats were cut free and set adrift.
Claire made the call to the Costa Rican authorities, who agreed to pick up the pirates and hold them for trial provided Claire and the others delivered their statements to the police once they arrived back in Puntarenas. Claire agreed that they would and then hung up the satellite phone.
“Hope that’s the last we see of them,” she said.
Annja nodded her head, not trusting herself to speak. Saying that she hoped this was the last that anyone ever saw of them might just give her employer the wrong impression about her, after all.
Hugo had a little experience piloting a vessel the size of the Pride, so that duty went to him. They had several hours still to go before they reached the island, so Claire, Marcos and Annja took on the task of getting the ship back into shape.
Decks were washed, bloodstains hosed away as best they were able, and Reyes’s body was wrapped in a tarp and stored in the ship’s freezer for proper burial when they returned to the mainland.
When they were finished, they ate a communal meal on the bridge with Hugo and then worked out a shift rotation that would allow them all to get some sleep before they reached the island early the next morning.
With that settled, Annja headed down to her cabin to get some rest.
* * *
MORNING BLOOMED BRIGHT and clear, and they reached the vicinity of Cocos a few hours after sunrise.
Normally at this time of year the waters surrounding Cocos Island would be full of scuba divers. Marine life abounded, particularly large marine species like hammerhead sharks, rays, dolphins and whales, and divers flocked to see them.
This season, however, the waters surrounding the island were as off-limits to visitors as the island itself. Annja wasn’t exactly certain what had caused the temporary closure, something to do with dangerously high concentrations of marine bacteria or some such, if she remembered correctly. Still, she was thankful for the situation just the same. A ban on diving meant she didn’t have to worry about maneuvering the Pride around the smaller vessels that divers habitually used, nor having anyone nosing around the boat while they were searching the island for Claire’s husband.
As a result of the ban, Annja wasn’t expecting to run into any other vessels near the island as Hugo steered the Pride along the shoreline, so the sight of a large yacht in Wafer Bay took her by surprise. So much so, in fact, that she had to rub her eyes to be sure she wasn’t imagining it.
When she checked again, it was still there, bobbing gently in the surf about twenty yards offshore.
“That can’t be right,” Claire said from behind her, and Annja turned to find the other woman looking out at the vessel, as well.
“What can’t be right?”
“I think that’s the Sea Dancer,” Claire said. “Marcos! Bring me the binoculars.”
The big man quickly emerged from the wheelhouse with the requested binoculars in hand, and Claire used them to study the other vessel as they cruised past the inlet. For a while she didn’t say anything, just stared through the glass at the other boat, but just as it was about to pass from view, she abruptly handed the binoculars to Annja.
“I’m right. It is the Sea Dancer,” Claire said. “We have to go back.”
She sent Marcos to pass the news to their pilot and the boat began a ponderous turn to port that would bring them back around in a circle so they could enter the bay.
“What’s so important about the Sea Dancer?” Annja asked as she brought the binoculars up to her own eyes to take a look.
“It’s the ship that brought my husband to the island.”
Annja frowned. “You mean the boat your husband was supposed to call for a pickup, if necessary?”
Claire nodded grimly. “The very same.”
That wasn’t good.
Annja examined the boat through the binoculars as they approached. Claire was right; she could see the ship’s name, Sea Dancer, emblazoned on her side in large letters. It was a sleek yacht-size vessel that had obviously been retrofitted for exploration work, if the crane jutting out over the stern was any indication. There didn’t appear to be anyone aboard, at least no one Annja could see. She scanned the entire ship, from stern to bow, but didn’t notice any movement.
As Hugo brought the Pride about, Annja moved to the other side of the ship in order to keep the Dancer in sight. She hoped to see signs of life, but there was nothing.
An uneasy feeling began to settle into her gut.
What were the chances they’d find Dr. Knowles’s support ship drifting offshore?
She didn’t see any anchor lines, though she supposed they could be on the far side of the vessel, which she couldn’t see from her current position.
“What do you think it’s doing here?” Claire asked.
Annja shrugged. “Probably picked up another charter while waiting on your husband. It’s not all that unusual.”
She didn’t know the captain of the Sea Dancer, but then again she didn’t need to in order to understand him. A boat like this was expensive to operate, and every minute it spent sitting at dock was another minute he wasn’t earning the money he needed to keep her afloat. Working smaller, one-or two-day charters in between his larger-and longer-paying customers was just common sense. Annja wouldn’t be surprised at all if that was what was happening here.
But if you’re right, where are they? that inner voice asked, and she didn’t have an answer.
They anchored a dozen yards away from the Sea Dancer and used one of the Pride’s two motor launches to approach the other vessel. As they drew closer, Marcos cut the engine and let them drift in while Annja stood in the bow and tried to hail anyone aboard.
“Ahoy, Sea Dancer!”
When no one answered, she tried again.
“Ahoy, Sea Dancer! Anyone home?”
They waited, longer this time, but still nothing. With the launch’s engine off, Annja knew her voice was loud enough to be heard throughout most of the boat, and the lack of a response had her nerves jangling.
Maybe they all went ashore, an inner voice said, but she didn’t believe it. There was a sense, a feeling of being deserted, and Annja was convinced that when they boarded her, they’d find that she was right.
Still, no way to know until they did so.
When the boats drifted close enough, Annja jumped from the launch to the deck of the Dancer. A line was tossed over to her and she quickly made it fast, tying the two vessels together. Once she had, she was joined on the other boat by Marcos and Claire.
“Did your husband say how many crew members were aboard the ship when it dropped him off on the island?” Annja asked Claire.
“The captain and four or five others, I think,” the other woman replied.
Annja nodded;
that was about what she’d expected. There should be something here to tell them where they had gone, what might have happened.
After all, five people don’t just vanish into thin air, do they?
Her inner voice was noticeably silent on that issue.
Deciding to start with the bridge, the trio made their way there along the most direct route they could. They called out as they went, hoping to hear a reply, but they didn’t encounter anyone along the way.
On the bridge, things were no better.
All the ship’s systems were up and running, the various consoles glimmering with lights and flashing screens. The GPS was also working, showing the current and proper location of the boat. The radio was intact as well, the dial set for the emergency broadcast station, though that in itself wasn’t a sign that they’d run into trouble. Ships routinely left it on that station after leaving port, Annja knew, so they could quickly call for help if the need arose.
She saw that the anchor was still in its housing, which meant the boat was adrift. Not wanting the vessel to end up beached, Annja triggered the control. A loud clanking sound came from the front of the boat as the anchor was played out and dropped behind them to secure them in place.
They split up and searched the entire vessel. Every door was opened, every room entered. They even made a point of checking the closets and cupboards big enough to stash a body in order to be as thorough as possible.
Annja and Marcos met back on the main deck fifteen minutes later.
“Anything?” Marcos asked.
Annja shook her head. She’d been right; there was no one aboard.
Nor had she found any indication of where the crew had gone or what might have happened to them. There were no notes left behind. No commentary in the ship’s log. Not even an open map on a table somewhere that might give them a clue.
“The motor launches are still in their moorings at the back of the boat,” Marcos said, jerking a thumb over his shoulder in that direction.
“The scuba tanks are in the dive lockers, as well. Five lockers. Five tanks.”
Where on earth had these people gone? Annja wondered.
That was when Claire screamed.
14
They found her in the galley, staring at an object on the tabletop that was partially covered by a piece of tarp. She spun around at their approach, her eyes going wide and her hands coming up defensively before she realized who it was.
Claire pointed at the object on the table behind her and said, “That...thing. What is it?”
Annja cast a quick glance at Marcos, confirming that he was ready to back her up if she needed it, and then crossed to the table. Reaching out with one hand, she drew back the tarp, revealing what lay beneath.
It was a mask, crudely made and, by the color of it, fashioned from native clay. It was humanoid in shape, with the usual features: eyes, ears, nose and mouth. But that was where the similarities ended. The eyes were far too big for the face, appearing to bulge wildly at the viewer. The nose was nothing more than a pair of slits between those oversize eyes, giving the face a decidedly simian look. Its mouth spouted both jagged teeth and two sets of upward-curling tusks, and its ears were large and sticking out from the sides of its neck. Last, but not least, two large, curving horns jutted from either side of its brow.
Oddly enough, Annja recognized it. She’d seen similar depictions before, and while this one wasn’t a perfect copy, the result was similar enough to make her believe they were one and the same.
But what on earth was it doing here? And what connection did it have to the Sea Dancer’s missing crew?
Claire repeated her original question. “What is it?”
“It’s Supay. Or at least a representation of him.”
Claire and Marcos stared at her blankly.
“Supay’s the Incan god of death.”
Marcos must not have heard her correctly. “There’s an inky god of death?” he asked, confusion on his face.
Annja laughed. “Not inky, Incan.”
To be certain he knew what she was talking about, she said, “The Inca were a pre-Columbian tribe that ruled the west coast of South America, from Columbia and Ecuador, down through Peru, and into Argentina and Chile, during the 1400 and 1500s.
“They were quite an advanced people for their time and would probably have continued to flourish if it wasn’t for the Spanish invasion and the coming of the conquistadors, most notably Francisco Pizarro, who had the last Incan emperor strangled in public to show his disdain.”
“Lovely,” Claire said, and Annja couldn’t disagree. There had been much to admire about the Inca. Unfortunately, the same could not be said about the Spanish conquest of South America.
But that was neither here nor there. Nor did it help in any way to explain what the Supay mask was doing in the galley of the Sea Dancer.
She picked up the mask and examined it more closely, looking for something that might indicate where it had come from or who it might belong to. If it was real, it might be worth thousands of dollars, maybe more. If it was a tourist bauble, maybe they could figure out what store it had come from.
But the mask wasn’t about to give up its secrets that easily. There was nothing on the mask, front or back, to indicate where it might have come from. No artist’s signature, no museum’s tag or number. The hardened clay from which it had been formed was of a uniform gray color, but the painted features on the front were bright and vibrant, nearly sparkling in their intensity. Due to their richness, Annja was having a hard time believing the mask was more than a few months old, at best, which would clearly indicate that it wasn’t original. Yet at the same time it had a certain authenticity about it that had her inner archaeologist practically squealing with delight.
Claire said something that Annja didn’t hear.
“Say again?”
“What does it mean?” Claire said, pointing at the mask in Annja’s hands.
Annja shrugged. “It might not mean anything. I don’t know how old it is, so I can’t say if it’s valuable or not. It might just be a souvenir one of the crew picked up during a previous charter.”
“You don’t really believe that, though, do you?”
Annja glanced over at Marcos, gauging how to best answer his question. After a long pause, she finally said, “I don’t really know. It feels like some kind of warning to me, but who’s to say I’m not just reading into it given my familiarity with what I know about Supay and what he represented?”
“Which is?” Claire asked.
“His nickname is Unsavory Death God, so it doesn’t take much imagination to think a mask representing his face might be a warning of some kind.”
“A warning against what?”
Another shrug. “I honestly don’t know,” Annja told her.
And she was telling the truth; she didn’t know. She suspected it had something to do with the treasure hunt in some fashion, but she wasn’t about to tell Claire that.
Of course, Claire was no fool.
“Do you think it has something to do with my husband’s disappearance?” she asked.
Annja was wondering that very thing.
“I’m not sure,” Annja said. “It might. Then again, it might not.”
It was another true statement; there was no doubt about that. But the silence filling the empty boat around them seemed to mock her attempts at being noncommittal.
She knew it was a warning, could feel it down deep in her bones.
But a warning about what?
“It was those damned pirates!” Marcos said suddenly, nodding his head as if to reinforce his words. “They probably hit the Dancer in the past couple of days and then towed the boat here for safekeeping. Dump the bodies, wash the decks and leave the mask to scare off any poachers who might come upon the b
oat before they could get back to it.”
It sounded reasonable until you started to wonder why modern-day pirates would use a sixteenth-century carving to scare off anyone who came aboard. At that point the entire idea fell apart quicker than a house of cards in a sandstorm.
In the end, short of suddenly coming upon one of the Dancer’s crew members—alive and well—there was no way for them to know what had happened here. They found no evidence of foul play. No sign that the crew had gone ashore. Nothing beyond the fact that the boat had been adrift for who knew how long and that someone had left behind a mask that resembled an ancient Incan deity.
Without anything to work from, they had no choice but to abandon the Dancer right where she was and get on with the reason they’d come here in the first place. They left her anchored in place, not wanting the boat to drift with the tide, and climbed back into the motor launch for the short trip back to the Pride. Once aboard, Claire put in a call to the maritime authorities back in Puntarenas, letting them know the location of the Dancer and asking them to attempt to contact the captain by whatever means they had available.
With that accomplished, it was time to find Dr. Knowles.
15
Chatham Bay
Isla del Coco
After returning to the Pride, they continued the remainder of the short distance to Chatham Bay and anchored the Pride just inside the protection of its reef walls. Annja and the others had a hearty breakfast and then set about the task of loading the expedition’s gear into the two motor launches and making it secure. The last thing they needed was to hit a fair-size break and have a week’s worth of food go flying over the side and into the ocean.
For Annja, the work was old hat; she’d done this kind of thing too many times to count. To her surprise it proved to be the same for the other three, as well. They packed the launches quickly and efficiently, so much so that they were ready to go by shortly after nine that morning.