by Alex Archer
She left the last bit of it unsaid, confident that the queen had gotten the message.
Satisfied that they both understood each other, the queen took her leave and left Annja with her new guides.
As it turned out, neither of them spoke English. She decided that this would make things difficult but not impossible; she’d worked with non-English-speaking guides before and in this case she had the advantage of having been over the territory once before. At some point, things should start to look familiar.
Her biggest concern was the injury to her head. She’d had a chance to take a look at it since her audience with the king and one thing was certain—she was going to need some medical attention as soon as she got back to the mainland. There was no doubt that she had a concussion—the dizziness, nausea and general difficulty remembering things were proof enough of that—but she was worried she might have a fractured skull, or worse. She wouldn’t feel comfortable until she had it checked out.
Nothing to be done about it now. She’d deal with any problems if and when they arose.
She indicated with hand motions that she was ready and her two guides took off at a solid trot. Annja fell in line and followed suit. They took her across the city to the far wall of the cavern, close to where they had entered the first time. Instead of taking the switchbacks up the main wall to the opening high above, the guides stuck to the ground floor, taking an underground tunnel that led them deeper under the side of the mountain.
At any other time she would have been fascinated by the route her guides took her through. It was clear they had been this way before; all of the tunnels and passageways looked the same to her but they had no trouble picking out which branch or turn they should take at any time during their march. Their footfalls were the only sound they made as they moved, and after a while Annja began to feel as if she was following ghosts, so lightly and quietly did they move. Her own steps sounded clunky and loud in comparison.
Time seemed to blur and blend together as they moved through that underground realm. Tunnel after tunnel, chamber after chamber, they ran on. They only stopped for water breaks on rare occasions and even then they were short. The guides had been given orders to get Annja to Chatham Bay as quickly as possible and they had no intentions of letting their queen down.
At one point they came to a section where the tunnel had collapsed and a pile of debris blocked their way forward. After a brief discussion between her guides, Annja was led into a narrower tunnel that she was told should take them around the blockage. The same uneasiness she’d experienced while entering Knowles’s dig site a few days ago came over her thanks to the closeness of the walls and ceiling. She just kept telling herself to breathe easy and that got her through.
After descending for quite some time, they began heading back upward, which Annja took to be a good sign. Another long stretch of climbing, and finally Annja could see the sun. Moments later they emerged into the sunlight.
Annja had been on her feet for almost thirty-six hours by the time they emerged from the tunnels. The exit from the cave deposited her on a promontory in the jungle that was part of a north-south ridgeline a few miles away from Chatham Bay. If she’d had a pair of binoculars, she might have been able to make out the Pride anchored in the bay, but it was just too far away without them.
She turned to thank her guides and found herself alone, the two Incan warriors having already disappeared back into the tunnels, no doubt on their way home.
If only her job were that easy. Unfortunately, the hard part was still to come.
She sat down and had some water and a couple of pieces of fruit, wanting some energy for the final leg of the trip. If she could reach the bay before the sun set, she’d be in a good position to deal with the others come morning.
When she was finished, she slipped her pack over her shoulders and headed off down the slope in front of her.
She hadn’t gone far before she began to run into difficulties.
She was moving through virgin jungle, so her speed was reduced substantially from her travel through the tunnels. What she’d thought would only take a few hours quickly became a half day or more, and Annja wasn’t certain that she had that much time. If Claire beat her to the boat...
Annja pushed on.
And on.
And on.
As the sun began to go down in the later afternoon, Annja was barely able to keep her eyes open. One wrong step and she’d stumble off the ledge and break her neck on an outcropping of rock.
She needed to rest.
She spent a few minutes hunting about to find a suitable tree that she could climb into with limited energy expenditure and then lashed herself to the branch with a short piece of rope to keep from falling off in the middle of the night.
The knot on the rope was barely tied before her eyes fluttered shut and she slept.
* * *
ANNJA AWOKE TO THE FEELING of being in a bed with clean sheets tucked in tightly on either side. When she tried to move her arms and legs, she found she couldn’t do so; she was strapped in as securely as if she were in a straitjacket.
Wait a minute. Strapped in? Straitjacket?
Her eyes snapped open.
A massive snake encircled her, its gold-black scales gleaming wetly in the morning dew.
Anaconda!
The snake had wrapped itself multiple times around her body, from about shin level to just below her neck. Its head slithered back and forth about a foot away from her own, its tongue flicking out repeatedly as if to test the air. Annja had the sense that it was watching her, waiting for that sign of weakness to show that the prey was all but finished.
The coils tightened as the snake pulled its body forward, exerting more crushing force against her own. Some of her air left her in a bit of a rush. Annja knew that all the snake needed to do was tighten itself up a little bit more and she wouldn’t have any strength left to fight it off.
The pressure against her body was also starting to cause her head to ache; what started as a low-grade pain would soon spread into a migraine that would be just as debilitating as the coils around her flesh. She needed to get free and she needed to do it quickly.
One of her hands was free. The other was trapped beneath the thick coils of the snake’s body. The snake was as wide around as her thigh and had to be at least fifteen feet long. There was no chance she was just going to be able to grab this thing with her free hand and pull it off.
No, more extreme measures were required.
Annja willed her sword into her hand and nearly sighed with relief when it appeared there without a problem. The broadsword was bulky and not all that maneuverable in a tight space, but it was razor sharp and should do the job nicely.
The tricky part was going to be right after she made the first cut. The snake would instinctively tighten up and might even strike at her with its teeth. Short of lopping off its head with a single blow, she was going to have to deal with both attacks at the same time. If she didn’t finish the job quickly after that, she was going to be in serious trouble. Nothing to be done for it, though; she had to get free and this was the only method of doing so.
Annja took a deep breath, kept her eyes on the snake’s head and then struck with the sword, slashing it against one of the snake’s many coils.
The snake’s body parted like butter, the sword driving deep into its flesh.
The snake struck in response to the pain, but thankfully, Annja had been waiting for it to do that very thing and she was able to jerk her head out of the way in the last second before the teeth could sink into her face.
It recoiled, preparing to strike again, but so was Annja. Her sword flashed a second time and this time it cut clean through the coil, severing a section from the lower half of its body.
Instantly she could breathe easier and move better.
The great beast hissed in anger and lunged.
It was the move Annja had been waiting for. As the beast’s neck extended, Annja used her newfound dexterity to wield the sword with improved accuracy, slashing through the snake’s neck and severing its head.
36
Chatham Bay
Cocos Island
After shrugging off the snake’s corpse, Annja untied herself from the tree and swung down to the ground. The sun told her it was somewhere around 10:00 a.m., much later than she’d intended to sleep. Another consequence of her head injury, no doubt, and one she hadn’t thought to plan for in advance.
She hoped it wouldn’t cost her the race.
Annja wolfed down a quick breakfast of dried meat and fruit, followed it with some water and then shouldered her pack and got to her feet. The sleep had done her some good; her thoughts felt clearer and she wasn’t having as much difficulty seeing any longer.
None of which will matter if they beat you to the Pride, so get moving!
As she drew closer to the coast, the vegetation became a bit less tangled and she was able to make better progress. But she began to worry about running into Claire’s little band of thieves unexpectedly; they were all armed and wouldn’t think twice about putting a bullet through her head. She began to move more circumspectly and keep her ears and eyes open for any sign of her former comrades.
She came to the river they’d followed upstream and cautiously moved along its bank until she reached the point where Dr. Knowles’s Kodiaks had been abandoned. When they’d first encountered them, Annja had thought they’d fallen victim to a crocodile attack. Now that she knew what was happening on the island, she suspected the damage had been done in a more intentional fashion. She just hoped she wouldn’t find their motor launches in the same condition.
It didn’t take long from that point to reach the beach where they’d started this whole disaster a few days before. Annja hung back in the trees at first, scoping out the beach before moving around to the point where they’d hidden the launches from the Pride.
That was when she got her first shock.
One of the launches was missing.
Fear that she was too late tried to overwhelm her, but she fought it down and ignored it. It would only be too late on the day they pried her sword from her cold fingers. Until then, there was always a chance.
She stepped out onto the beach, expecting the sniper’s bullet to reach out and touch her instantly, but none came. She hurried over to where the boats had been left and examined the ground. The slide marks indicating where the second boat had been slipped back into the water were partially filled with water but still held a fair bit of their cohesion. That meant they were reasonably new. She was just about to check the remaining launch when the sound of a boat’s engine caught her attention.
She looked out into the bay, toward the sound, and saw with dismay that someone had just fired up the engine to the Neptune’s Pride.
It wasn’t hard to figure out who that someone was.
They had beaten her to the beach.
Not by much, that was clear, but it might be enough.
Might be enough? You’ve got a functional boat right in front of you that can outrace the Pride over short distances. Get moving before you miss your shot!
Her examination of the launch killed that idea before it could get off the ground, however. The launch and the engine seemed intact; Claire was clever enough to know there was no sense in destroying a perfectly good boat when all one had to do was empty the gas tank.
Most of the precious liquid had seeped into the sand, leaving just dregs at the bottom of the tank. Those dregs might be enough to get her out to the Pride, but if she needed to do any maneuvering she’d be stranded in the open water.
Think, Annja, think.
Then she had it.
The Sea Dancer!
They had left it anchored in Wafer Bay, just around the promontory from Chatham. It wasn’t far, especially not by sea, and if the Dancer was still there, she shouldn’t have any trouble reaching it via the launch. If the Dancer wasn’t there any longer, she could always row into Wafer Bay and not be stranded out to sea as she might be if she tried to reach the Pride with what little gas was left.
Another glance out into the bay showed the Pride starting to move and that settled it for her. The Dancer, it was.
Annja moved to the prow of the boat and pushed it backward, out into the surf. She kept going until it floated free and then jumped aboard. She used an oar to get it turned in the right direction and then tried to start her up.
The engine coughed and then died.
“Come on, don’t do this...” she muttered and then tried again.
The engine coughed once, twice and then roared to life. Annja didn’t waste any time, just spun the wheel and headed the launch toward the mouth of the bay as quickly as she could.
She knew the sound of the launch’s motor wouldn’t be heard over the deeper, louder sound generated by the Pride’s diesel engines but she was worried someone might be looking back in her direction as she brought the boat out of the bay. All it would take would be a couple of decently aimed rifle shots and the boat would go from seaworthy to a crumbling wreck in moments. She kept herself down as low as she could, reducing the chance of taking a bullet, and only stood back up in the cockpit when she’d rounded the peninsula separating the two bays.
She had her fingers on both hands crossed as she raced into Wafer Bay, her eyes scanning the water ahead, searching for the Sea Dancer....
There she was, right where they’d left her days before. The sight of the expedition vessel bobbing in the gentle surf was one of the most beautiful things she’d seen in a while, Annja thought.
She turned the launch slightly to put it on an intercept course and gave it more gas.
The engine responded by sputtering several times, coughing once and then falling silent.
Annja pounded the instrument panel in frustration.
The boat had been moving at a good clip before the engine died so she let it coast in the proper direction while she tried to restart it. By the third attempt she knew her efforts were futile; the launch was out of gas and wouldn’t be going anywhere anytime soon.
Thankfully, the tide was going in and the launch was already moving toward the waiting vessel. With the help of an oar, she managed to get the launch over to the Sea Dancer with only a slight delay.
Once aboard, Annja went straight to the bridge and began firing up the engines. She’d been on enough boats of this size that it wasn’t long before she was hauling in the anchor in preparation to chase down the Pride.
Once that was stowed, Annja brought the Dancer about and pointed her at the open water to the east. It was roughly three hundred and thirty kilometers to the coast of Costa Rica. They would start to hit pleasure-boat traffic about one hundred and fifty kilometers offshore, which left her roughly the same amount of distance in which to catch Claire and the others in the Pride.
One hundred and fifty kilometers.
Didn’t seem like much but Annja was confident that she could do it.
And every passing kilometer brought her closer.
37
Open water
West of Costa Rica
It took her nearly two hours to overcome the Pride’s lead and then catch up with the vessel.
They were in international waters at this point, a long way from either Cocos Island or Costa Rica.
Which was good, given what she was going to do next.
She got close enough that she knew the pilot of the other boat, most likely Hugo, had to be aware of her now and so she reached up and flipped on the switch for the loudspeaker.
“Neptune’s Pride, this is Sea Dancer. You are harboring fugitives from justice and are
ordered to stop and accept an immediate boarding. I say again, Neptune’s Pride, this is Sea Dancer, over.”
Annja began to steer the Dancer closer to the other vessel, crowding her, trying to get her to turn and heave to. The pilot of the other vessel recognized her tactics and continually tried to avoid her. They crossed paths several times and came alarmingly close to collisions along the sides and sterns of the ships but none of that slowed the other vessel down. When such jockeying for position didn’t work after nearly ten minutes, the crew of the Pride tried something new.
They stuck a rifle barrel out the back window of the bridge and fired upon her.
Annja threw herself to the deck as high-velocity bullets shattered the glass along the front-bridge windows and ricocheted around the command room.
From her spot on the floor, Annja called them a few choice names while the hail of gunfire danced about the room. Thankfully, none of it hit her or any of the important bridge controls. It would be pure luck if it did, but then again, luck hadn’t been so kind to her on this trip of late and she fully expected every vital part of the bridge to take at least one, maybe two, bullets right through it.
When the firing slowed, Annja reached up, grabbed the wheel and put the Dancer on a forty-five-degree angle relative to the Pride, sending the two ships apart from each other.
As the Dancer pulled away from the slower and less maneuverable Pride, Annja put it on autopilot and went back to dig through some of the gear they had down below. She was specifically looking for something that might help her get the other boat to slow down enough to allow her to board it.
She found what she was looking for in the ship’s locker.
It was known as a prop fouler, and devices like it had become popular as antipirate devices following their use by conservationists who used them to jamb up the propellers of the Japanese whaling vessels they were protesting against. It was basically a large weighted net made from Kevlar rope that was thrown into the wake of the propellers where it would be sucked forward into the blades of the ship, effectively jamming them. Earlier versions had been basic nets that were easily unwound from the propellers by simply putting the engines into reverse. The latest versions were not only made out of stronger material, but were weighted like this one to make them much harder to get off the driveshaft and propeller blades.