In another part of the village, the Phantom heard the scream. He drew his pistols and moved hastily toward it. The streets were empty, but he didn’t think the village was deserted. Its condition was too good. There were no fallen walls, no signs of the inevitable decay that results from abandonment.
He tried to stay alert, but he wasn’t in the best condition after spending the night on the pontoon. He’d managed to wedge himself under a strut, and he’d actually fallen asleep a few times, but only briefly. The wind had been cold and constant, penetrating his clothing, numbing his fingers.
But he’d been fast asleep when the plane started its descent and, if not for the strut, he would’ve been tossed off the pontoon. As they dove through the chilly mist, he had no idea where they were or what was below them. Then he smelled the sea air, and a moment later the curtain of fog opened and the waters appeared. As soon as the plane touched down, he slipped off the pontoon and into the relatively warm waters.
He’d spotted the cavern and swam toward it, loosening up his aching body. After a few hundred feet, he paused to watch Drax and the others launch an inflatable raft. He was interested in exploring the cavern, but he wanted to make sure that Drax had the same idea.
After a few minutes, the rafters passed within ten yards of him as he sank below the surface. Then he followed them toward the cavern. He saw how the waves were pushing the raft into the rocks, so he compensated by swimming hard in the opposite direction. He arrived at the cavern entrance a couple minutes behind the rafters.
Now he hurried through the village and ducked down behind a wall when the bridge crossing the channel came into view. Several armed men were walking away with the rafters. To the Phantom’s surprise, no one—not even Quill or Sala or Zephro—were struggling to get away. They seemed to go voluntarily.
There was something familiar about the captors, familiar and loathsome. Then he noticed a design carved into the rock wall of the cavern, a large spider web, the emblem of the Sengh Brotherhood. So, he’d finally found their hideout, or at least one of them.
The sudden attack took Diana by surprise as much as the others. They were quickly surrounded by guns and sabers and pulled out of the raft. A huge, ugly thug with a battered nose, a ragged scar on his cheek, and a permanent snarl ran a hand over her body and leered at her with his one good eye. He wore tattered clothes and a kerchief on his head. She pulled back from him and, as she did, noticed a spider-web tattoo on his forearm.
“This one is mine,” he growled. “All mine.”
“Not in your dreams,” Diana shot back.
Ugly Mug grabbed her with both hands, and instantly Sala sprang forward. She spun Ugly Mug around and kicked him hard in the groin. A second pirate leaped forward and grabbed Sala. Diana returned the favor by slugging the thug and knocking him out cold with a solid right hook. The other attackers raised their sabers and aimed their pistols.
Quill shouted, “Take it easy, my brothers! Stay calm!”
“Brothers?” A burly, bald-headed pirate wearing a dirty kerchief around his neck stepped forward. “What do you mean? Why do you call us brothers?”
Quill pushed up his sleeve, revealing the spiderweb tattoo on his forearm. “We are also members of the Sengh Brotherhood.”
The bald pirate turned and huddled with the others, who kept glancing their way, weapons still raised.
“Nice going,” Drax murmured to Quill.
Diana realized that although Drax might be knowledgeable about the Sengh Brotherhood, he didn’t know all of their secrets. The village was as much of a surprise to him as it had been to her, and his so-called brothers had nearly killed him.
But now, thanks to Quill’s quick thinking, the tension had eased. The bald pirate motioned to them. “Come with us.”
As the group moved off, Diana and Sala straightened their clothes and pushed back their hair. “Good show back there, girl,” Sala said, taking Diana by the arm. “I think we’d better stick together.”
Diana glanced back and saw that Ugly Mug was lurking just behind her. Better to deal with Sala, she thought, than with the thug behind her. “Good idea,” she replied, and hurried ahead.
They walked out of the village, hiked over a mound of loose rocks, and moved toward the wall. There, they climbed over a rock outcropping and stepped into a dark tunnel, its entrance hidden from view. Diana had the feeling she wasn’t going to like this place, and as soon as she was inside, she knew it.
The air smelled like dirty socks. The walls and floors were wet and slippery. They moved along a winding passageway that descended a gentle slope. Squealing rats ran under foot and huge spiders guarded their webs. But what really made her squeamish was the sight of human skeletons, dozens of them, chained to the walls in horribly contorted positions. Not a few had broken bones. These people had not died well.
She wondered how many years they had remained there, reminders of the penalty for misdeeds against the Brotherhood. Or maybe for just being in the wrong place at the wrong time. That was exactly the situation in which she found herself.
Then they passed under a high stone arch and entered an immense chamber. Several large masts, cocked at odd angles, reached up toward the high ceiling. Riggings and unfurled sails hung overhead. Spread out in piles throughout the chamber was the booty plundered from ships and villages. The flags of looted ships were displayed from a yardarm. It was like a trophy room, she thought.
Diana took it all in as she and the others crossed a bridge over a moat. She glanced down into the dark waters, where sharks cruised under the bridge, their fins visible just above the surface of the water.
She had the distinct feeling that the sharks had tasted human flesh, maybe had even developed a preference for it.
At the far end of the enormous chamber, a figure was seated on a wooden throne, which was raised on a platform that resembled a ship’s poop deck. As they moved closer to the man, Diana saw a large banner on the wall behind the throne that displayed the spider-web symbol.
The guards stopped them several yards from the throne, and Diana turned her attention to the man gazing down at them. He had thin lips and piercing dark eyes. He was at least sixty with short gray hair, and he appeared to be of Euro-Asian descent.
He was dressed in a loose-fitting black silk outfit. He wore a short goatee and a gold medallion bearing the spider-web insignia around his neck. His face showed no emotion. He looked neither pleased nor angry at their arrival, but his gaze sent cold licks along her spine.
All around him were relics, no doubt his favorite booty, and prominent among them was a life-sized gold skull, which rested on a pedestal within his reach. Without a doubt, Diana thought, it was the third skull of Touganda, the treasured artifact of power. She glanced at Drax and saw that he couldn’t take his eyes off the glimmering skull. If he knew the man seated on the throne, he gave no indication of it.
“Visitors!” the man said, stroking his chin. “Now let me see, how long has it been since we’ve had visitors down here, thirty fathoms beneath the ocean’s surface . . . in the bowels of this uncharted volcanic island?”
A beat passed before he answered his own question. “Never! Congratulations! You pathetic doomed fools are the first.”
TWENTY-SIX
The laughter of the man on the throne echoed through the chamber as the Phantom darted across the bridge unnoticed. He moved ahead, skulking from one pile of loot to another.
These guys needed a housekeeper, he thought. The place was in more disarray than his Treasure Chamber. There was also a lot of junk mixed in with the loot, broken chairs and tables, pieces of steamer trunks and boats, even a rusted airplane propeller.
When he was within a hundred feet of the throne, he ducked behind a pile of rope at the base of a rigging that reached the ceiling. The Sengh Brotherhood banner stretched across a wall behind the throne. Now he knew for certain that he had finally found their stronghold.
He wanted to get a closer vantage point and remain out o
f view, so he carefully climbed a rigging. When he was near the top, he leaped onto a ledge thirty feet above the floor. He crept forward until he was directly to the side of the throne, which was twenty feet below him. He crouched down in the shadows beyond the illumination of the torches. He could see and hear everything, but was invisible, he believed, to the pirates and their captives.
Ever since one of his ancestors had destroyed the Sengh castle on Bangalla, the line of Phantoms had hunted for the new headquarters. But they had never come to this part of the world. There was something here that had served to protect the Brotherhood over the centuries, and now the Phantom knew what it was. The gold skull.
It glinted in the light of the torches and seemed to possess an illumination of its own. It had the same strange, alien beauty as the other two skulls, the Phantom thought, and mesmerized him.
“Congratulations, Kit.” His father was suddenly sitting on the ledge next to him. “You’ve hit the mother lode! You’ve found the secret hideout of the Sengh Brotherhood.”
He nodded and spoke softly. “I figured as much.”
His father was elated. “I could hug you, my boy,” and he did exactly that, his ghostly arms wrapping around the Phantom’s shoulders as though they were solid. It was an eerie sensation and yet firm enough to seem real.
The elder Walker peered down into the chamber, taking in the entire scene. His tone shifted now from elation to concern. “You’re outnumbered, son.”
Like he hadn’t already figured that out.
Sometimes, Kit thought, his father was more annoying than he was helpful. The Phantom focused his attention on the man who occupied the throne, the nefarious leader of the Brotherhood.
It had been a long time since the two of them had seen each other. But as far as the Phantom was concerned, it wasn’t long enough. He despised the man so deeply he couldn’t even bring himself to utter his name aloud.
He watched as his nemesis motioned to the bald pirate. “Who are these people?”
Before the pirate could speak, Drax stepped forward. “My name is Xander Drax.”
He’d decided the best way of dealing with this little despot was to play his game. Give him some respect, as if he was actually impressed. Make him think that he, Drax, felt subservient to his highness on the wooden throne.
“What?”
Obviously this fellow didn’t keep up on current affairs in America or he would’ve reacted in a little less ignorant manner. “X-A-N-D-E-R D-R-A-X,” he said, spelling it out. Not that it would help if this tyrant was as illiterate as Drax suspected. “Xander Drax. Begins and ends with the letter X.” He raised his chin. “From New York City. And you, sir . . . as long as we’re making introductions and polite chitchat—”
“He’s the Great Kabai Sengh!” snapped the big, bald pirate. “The supreme leader of the Sengh.”
“Direct descendant of the Evil Kabai Sengh, the first leader of the Sengh Brotherhood,” Sengh added.
Diana leaned toward Sala. “If this guy’s the great one, imagine what the evil one was like.”
Drax turned to Quill. “So, you weren’t kidding, these guys are really around. How do you like that?”
“Stop the whispering!” Sengh commanded. “You’re a long way from New York. How did you find this place?”
“I’ll show you,” Drax said.
For the grand finale, he would zing old Sengh. He set his satchel on the floor, and as he reached inside of it, two pirates raised their weapons. But Kabai Sengh motioned them to lower their pistols when Drax lifted out two skulls, one in each hand.
Holding them up for inspection, “These skulls brought me here,” he declared. “The Skulls of Touganda!”
Sengh looked genuinely startled. “How do you know of such matters?” he hissed.
“Oh, I know all about these skulls.” Let him mull that one over. “And the powers they contain—once all three are united: the two I hold, and the one you have there.”
Kabai Sengh glanced at his gold skull. “I am the one who will bring them together.”
Drax took another step closer to Sengh. It was time to straighten the old fellow out. Sengh was far from frail, but he wasn’t exactly robust, either. Drax guessed he could overcome the Sengh leader and use him as a hostage to get his way. But he hoped it wouldn’t come to that. He preferred negotiation to strong-arm tactics, at least as long as the negotiations were working in his favor.
“Look, Great One. I really wasn’t in the market for a partner, but it seems to me we have a mutually beneficial situation here.”
He paused to let Sengh consider his words before he continued. “Think of it this way: you represent the old guard of the grizzled scalawags and Peg-Leg Petes, while I stand for the new order of things—modern and up to date. Just the man to carry our cause onward into the twentieth century.”
“Silence! You have no bargaining power with me, Mr. New York City! I could kill you, all of you, right now, and feed your pretty pink carcasses to the sharks!”
Drax realized that negotiations weren’t going to work. He needed to take Sengh hostage, and fast. But before he could act, Sengh threw him off balance with a single comment. “Besides, Mr. Drax, you don’t have the fourth skull.”
“The fourth skull? What fourth skull? What are you talking about? There is no fourth skull,”
“Yes, there is,” Sengh replied, and smiled for the first time since they’d entered the stronghold.
The Phantom leaned forward so far he nearly fell off the ledge. Perplexed by this new development, he turned to his father and whispered, “Dad, what do you know about this fourth skull?”
He shrugged. “It’s news to me.”
It was a trick, Drax thought. “No, there’s not. There can’t be. I’ve studied it.”
“And I’ve lived it.” He crossed his arms. “Burned ships and villages. Plunged my saber into flesh and bone. Bathed in the blood of my victims. Feasted on their pain and misery. Danced to their screams of agony.” He grinned, his filthy teeth lining up in his mouth like a stained picket fence. “And I’ve relished every minute of it.”
Drax glanced at Zephro. “What a bunch of phony pirate crap.”
“Trust me,” Sengh said. “The fourth skull controls the power of the three. Without it, you have wasted your time . . . and your lives.”
Sengh signaled his men to dispatch the captives. Guns and sabers were suddenly pointed at them as if the men lived to spill blood.
“Wait a minute!” Drax shouted. Once again, he was ready to negotiate. “If anything happens to us, others will come looking. They know where we are. You’ll have an entire army down your throat. Think about that before you slaughter us.”
But Charlie Zephro had other ideas. He pulled a pistol from an ankle holster and aimed it at Kabai Sengh. “That’s a lie. Nobody knows where we are.”
“What’re you doing?” Drax shouted.
“Shut up! Spirit of adventure, ha! It’s every man for himself now.” He turned to Sengh. “Okay, Kabai, now it’s time to sing a different tune. Get me outta here or you really sleep with the fishes. What have you got to say about that?”
Sengh reacted calmly. “Shin nebo.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Zephro asked.
“Oh, it’s just ancient pirate talk for . . . ‘fire the cannon.’ ”
Zephro looked around. “Huh?”
Suddenly he realized that a cannon was pointed directly at him, and the fuse was lit.
As large as the cavern was, the sound of well-wadded and packed gunpowder exploding filled it easily, rippling the stolen standards and even bending the crooked masts.
The small cannon ball whistled through the air and hit Charlie squarely in the gut. The impact was so powerful, he was knocked all the way to the wall, where he crumpled like a lowered flag.
“You see what I mean, Mr. Drax, about your bargaining power here?” Sengh said.
For once, Drax didn’t know what to say.
The b
last of the cannon must have caused something to click inside the Phantom’s head. He snapped his fingers. “Dad, I know where the fourth skull is.”
“You do? Where?”
He didn’t answer. Instead he leaped from his hiding place to the rigging and climbed out over the floor of the chamber.
Diana was stunned by the swift justice Sengh had served upon Zephro. Never mind that the thug deserved whatever was coming to him. Never mind that at all. The point was that whatever plea she might put forward about her own case—that she was a captive herself and had nothing whatsoever to do with this plot—wouldn’t make a difference.
Sengh couldn’t care less about who or what she was. Drawing attention to herself would end her life as suddenly as it had ended Zephro’s.
But Quill had other ideas. “I am Quill, Great Kabai Sengh. A loyal follower and soldier. Look . . .” He pointed to his belt. “I killed the Phantom.”
“You killed the Phantom?” Sengh said.
“Yes, Kabai Sengh.”
He laughed. “Well, join the club. Many of us have killed the Phantom over the years. But he just doesn’t go away!”
Diana looked up and saw the Phantom climbing in the rigging directly overhead. “You can say that again,” she murmured. Sala, who was standing next to her, followed her gaze. The Phantom motioned for them to remain quiet.
The two women glanced at each other in astonishment, then Sala pointed at the floor. “Oh, Diana, you dropped your pearl necklace there on the floor.”
Diana realized that Sala was attempting to divert the attention of anyone who might have noticed them looking up. She immediately dropped to one knee, scooped a hand through the shadows, then adjusted the necklace on her throat. “Thanks. I didn’t realize I’d dropped it.”
Quill shook his head. “I can’t believe that’s all you’re worried about.”
“What do you know?” Sala snapped.
“More than you’ll ever figure out,” Quill snapped back.
“Shut up, both of you,” Drax said.
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