Serpent's Kiss

by Alex Archer

  “They left before dawn,” Fleet said. “They knew Miss Creed got away, and they probably knew she had captured a phone. They chose to put some distance behind them.” He sighed. “They might even have seen the plane last night and known we were coming.”

  “I know where he’s going,” Annja said. “I saw the map he’s following.”

  Patel looked at the river and the jungle ahead. “Going farther into the interior, against an armed force like that, will be dangerous. It would be better to wait for them to return.”

  “They might not come this way,” Fleet pointed out. “Shivaji may arrange an aerial extraction. Major, I know this is dangerous, but I’d rather not let these people get away if we have a chance to stop them. Shivaji is responsible for several murders.”

  “My orders were to secure Miss Creed,” Patel said. “And to capture Shivaji if I could.”

  “There’s still a chance you could,” Fleet said. “And if he gets away, he’s just going to kill again.”

  “Major,” Annja said, “Rajiv Shivaji believes he’s pursuing a lost treasure out here. If it truly exists, and I don’t know if it does, it could be from one of the earliest civilizations ever discovered in this area. It could be a significant find. Not choosing to protect that would be shameful.”

  Patel grinned beneath his dark-lensed sunglasses. “So by all accounts we get to be heroes here? Either for capturing a wanted killer or for saving a chunk of history? Is that how it is?”

  Annja nodded. “I believe so.”

  “That’s how I’ll note it in my book,” Fleet added.

  Patel took a deep breath. “All right. I’ve always been willing to be a hero. Provided I could survive the experience.” He took a map from his Kevlar vest. “Why don’t you walk me through our destination, Professor?”

  FATIGUE DULLED Goraksh’s mind and pulled at his eyelids as he manned a paddle, but fear kept him awake and moving. If his father was right, the police, the coast guard or the military was at their heels. The worst-case scenario was that all of them were in pursuit.

  Bright morning sunlight danced on the river water and looked like blazing diamond points. Bird squawks and cries echoed over the area. Monkeys screeched and threw themselves through the trees. Large fish filled the river. Turtles sunned themselves on the banks and occasionally slid into the water.

  As he pulled the paddle, Goraksh studied his father’s profile. The man looked fierce and proud, like an old-world explorer sailing into unknown lands and ready to lay claim to them for king and country.

  The automatic weapons carried by the men in the boats jarred drastically with that image, though.

  Minutes later, they rounded a bend of the river that was particularly dense. Short mountains stabbed up from the verdant jungle on the other side. The back of Goraksh’s neck prickled hotly. He jerked his head around and surveyed the riverbanks, only then realizing he was searching for whoever he felt was spying on him.

  It’s nerves, he told himself. That’s all. Just nerves. No one is there.

  “ARE YOU SURE about this?” Major Patel asked.

  As she shaded her eyes against the bright sunlight that penetrated even her sunglasses, Annja studied the wide expanse of the river and the mountains to the right. The river had widened into a large bowl and the water was turgid, almost whirling in one spot. A small tributary fed into the bowl from the northwest.

  “Yes.” Annja pointed at the tributary. “Look at that stream. It’s not enough to feed this river. That’s what tipped off Sahadeva and his friends twenty-five hundred years ago.”

  Patel stared at the hills in front of them. “Do you really think there’s another part of the river that goes underground?”

  “To account for this amount of water, yes. That tributary isn’t part of the river even though it looks like it on the map,” Annja said.

  “It’s hard to imagine that no one’s found this before,” Fleet commented.

  “There’s not much reason to come this far into the interior,” Patel said. “Even less to come to this desolate spot. Too much work would have to be done to make the land habitable, and there aren’t any natural resources that have been found around here. Transportation costs make getting here too expensive. I’m sure you have areas like that in your country.”

  “A few,” Fleet said.

  Patel nodded. “All right, then. Let’s find this subterranean leg of the river.”

  ANNJA EVENTUALLY DISCOVERED the opening. While Patel’s men dived in the clear water and tried to examine the riverbanks, she submerged herself, closed her eyes and tried to connect with the current. It took a moment. Her heartbeat rang in her ears. But she felt the whisper pull of the current feeding into the bowl and turned her face toward it.

  With the sensation locked in her senses, she followed the current to the southeastern riverbank only a few yards from the way they’d paddled into the bowl. She put her hand into the mass of tree roots and found some of them were broken. A piece of fabric impaled on one of the broken roots fluttered in the current. She snatched it and swam to the surface.

  “Over here,” she called. She held up the fabric. “Rajiv and his people have already come this way.”

  The river only went back forty feet without any overhead clearance.

  Annja shone the flashlight she carried upward and finally saw the air pocket that formed against the earthen tomb. When she swam up and took a breath, the air was cold and stank of roots and mold.

  Fleet surfaced beside her. He spit water and breathed deeply. “I was beginning to think that we weren’t going to make it,” he admitted. “I was getting ready to turn back, but you just kept going.”

  “I think the air pocket goes back the rest of the way,” Annja said. “We should be okay from here. Probably if we weren’t so close to the rainy season the air pocket would be larger.”

  “Just large enough,” Fleet said. “That’s all I’m asking.”

  MANAGING TO GET the boats through the underground passage was harder than swimming through. Thankfully they were designed to run underwater if they had to. Paratroopers piloted them, submerged, through the opening and drove them forward with the engines until the river’s roof opened wider and they could once more take their seats in them.

  The water and the cave muffled the engine noises, and Patel felt certain the sound wouldn’t carry. Since they couldn’t hear anyone else, Patel assumed no one else would hear them.

  “How much farther?” Patel asked.

  “Are we there yet?” Annja said with a grin.

  Patel smiled back. “Ah. I suppose it must sound like that.”

  “Shouldn’t be much farther,” Annja said. In truth, though, there was no way to know. Rajiv Shivaji’s handed-down story was inconclusive. She based her judgment on the fact that Sahadeva and his young friends wouldn’t have gone too far into the subterranean river cave without knowing what lay ahead. And they hadn’t been as well prepared as the paratrooper team of Rajiv’s mercenaries.

  It was farther than Annja had believed. At least half a mile passed before they reached the other underground river entrance. Annja, Fleet and two other paratroopers who were strong swimmers swam through the opening.

  They came up in another bowl that was slightly larger than the one they’d entered. The entrance to this bowl was on the bottom, thirty feet from the surface. It was easy to understand how it hadn’t been found because the river would have had to have gone dry before anyone could see it.

  Once they were certain of the way, Annja and the others returned to the subterranean section of the river. Swimming with the current made the trip easier.

  They piled into the submerged boats and held on as they powered through the opening. On the other side, the boat pilots increased the buoyancy of the boats and they surfaced in seconds.

  Annja stared around at the jungle and the slow-moving river that wound through it to the east. The vegetation was lush and thick.

  “Well,” Patel said brightly, “th
at was a bit of fun. Throw in the Pirates of the Caribbean and we might have a tourist attraction.”

  Annja smiled at him.

  “So where’s this lost city?” the major asked.

  Before Annja could answer, gunshots sounded from upriver. There were only a few at first, then a multitude as assault rifles opened up on full-auto.

  35

  Cloaked in the overhang of the craggy faces of the mountains on the south side of the river, the city wasn’t immediately visible. Trees, brush and vines had overgrown it for years.

  Only the remnants of the docks carved out of the stone at the foothills of the mountains remained.

  “There,” Rajiv said.

  Goraksh heard the excitement tightening his father’s voice. In contrast, Goraksh’s stomach churned violently. The stories he’d been told since childhood came back to him full force. The people of Kumari Kandam had been fierce warriors. They’d claimed the heads of opposing warriors in battles.

  Twenty-five hundred years later, Goraksh knew it didn’t matter that some lost drop of their blood flowed in his veins. He was an outsider. They would only recognize him as an enemy.

  At his father’s order, the Zodiacs headed toward shore. They kept the engines off and used the paddles. It wasn’t just to prevent anyone who might be following them from tracking them. It was so anyone who might still live in the city wouldn’t hear them coming.

  The sensation of being watched prickled the back of Goraksh’s neck again. He stared at the morass of tumbled rock and overgrown vegetation.

  Twenty-five hundred years later, he thought, could anything remain of those people?

  Goraksh honestly didn’t think so. Probably the city had been found shortly after Sahadeva had been betrayed and sold to the Roman trade ship. The treasure—if any had ever really existed—had to have been taken.

  The Zodiac bounced when it made contact with the stone dock. The man seated in the prow stepped out and secured the mooring lines to the stone cleats that someone had carved there long in the past.

  Goraksh picked up the assault rifle his father had assigned to him and went forward with the group.

  In back of the docks, the city proper took shape. Despite the overgrowth and fallen rock, Goraksh could see what remained of the plaza. The ground was covered in flagstones that might have been mortared at one time to keep the grass from growing. Now vegetation grew freely between the flagstones and tilted them at treacherous angles.

  The courtyard was almost the size of a soccer field. The length lay along the river, and the width butted into the caves.

  Stone statues of nagas stood outside the largest and most ornate door that had been carved in the mountain-side. The two male nagas stood curled on their serpentine lower bodies. They held shields in one hand and spears in the other. Helmets covered their faces.

  “We must find the throne room,” Rajiv said. “That’s where the treasure is supposed to be kept.” His voice sounded low and hollow in the quietness that filled the city.

  Goraksh followed his father through the arches. Inside, he found the mountain had been gutted. The area had once been a marketplace. Shattered carts and stalls lay in various stages of disrepair. A cistern filled with vegetation growth that had crept in from outside, either through roots seeking a water source or seeds riding air currents through the doorways, occupied the center of the area. Three twenty-foot teak trees took precedence.

  Buildings had been sculpted out of the mountain, too. Once, Goraksh thought, the city must have been beautiful and elegant. Now it was nothing more than a ruin.

  “Search the buildings,” his father ordered. “Find the throne room.”

  Goraksh followed his father across the plaza and into a building. The area was so dark inside that they had to use flashlights to light the way.

  The building had been a shop, filled with shelves and products that had turned to dust over the years. It was filled with shadows that seemed to twist to avoid the light.

  Then one of the shadows stepped forward and attacked.

  “Look out!” Goraksh yelled in warning as he tried to bring up his assault rifle. His flashlight beam, for just an instant, fell across the face of his attacker.

  The man was misshapen, as if all his parts belonged to different individuals. Shaggy white hair and beard plunged past his shoulders. Skin white as paper glowed under the flashlight’s beam. He was naked and bestial. His eyes glowed red in the flashlight beam.

  He carried a thick club. Goraksh saw it for just a moment before it crashed into the side of his head. He fell to the floor and tried to hang on to his senses as gunfire broke out around him. Then a black pit seemed to open up in front of him and he fell into it.

  AT THE SOUND of gunfire, Patel gave the order to start the outboard motors. In seconds the inflatables shot across the river surface. Birds in the trees crowding the riverbanks took flight in bursts of bright colors.

  Annja held on as the boat jarred and jerked. Her sunglasses blunted the wind.

  “Miss Creed,” Fleet called from beside her.

  She looked at him. “Annja,” she said.

  He held up a gun belt containing a semiautomatic pistol. “Do you know how to use one of these?”

  For a moment, she hesitated. She didn’t like guns. She knew how to use them, and she’d used them before, but always in the heat of the moment. To deliberately strap one on and accept the knowledge that she was going to have to do harm to someone else with one of them wasn’t a comfortable thought.

  Still, not helping defend them if it came to that wasn’t acceptable.

  “Yes,” she answered. “I know how to handle small arms.”

  Fleet grinned and the effort pulled at the tiny, fine scars around his eye. “You know the proper nomenclature. Who taught you?”

  “Ex-SAS soldiers while I was working a dig at Hadrian’s Wall,” Annja replied.

  “Well, I can’t fault you for your training, then.” Fleet handed her the pistol and passed over extra magazines.

  “Thank you.” Annja pulled the gun belt around her hips and tested the fit of the pistol in the holster. It pulled free easily.

  Gunshots continued to sound ahead of them. As the boats raced forward, the sounds grew louder.

  GORAKSH WOKE to someone pulling on his arm. He tasted blood in his mouth. When he blinked his eyes open, he saw that his father had hold of him. His father’s flashlight shone on a horrible tableau.

  The man who’d struck him sat slumped against the nearby wall. Bullets had wrecked his face and exploded the back of his head.

  “You shot him?” Goraksh asked.

  “Yes,” his father replied. “I thought he had killed you.”

  Goraksh moved his head gingerly, afraid that it would topple from his shoulders if he wasn’t careful.

  “Can you walk?”

  “Yes. I think so.” Goraksh’s vision was still slightly double. The lack of light didn’t help. He held on to his father’s arm as Rajiv pulled him to his feet. His father’s strength surprised him.

  When he bent down to retrieve his flashlight, Goraksh almost passed out. He curled his fingers around the flashlight and brought it up. He shone it around the room and saw that some of his father’s mercenaries had been killed. The survivors looked frightened.

  Several albino men and women lay sprawled in the room.

  “There were more of them,” Goraksh said.

  “Yes. Things got complicated, but we appear to have fought our way free of them for the moment. More of them are still out there. They won’t remain afraid forever. Maybe not even for long,” Rajiv said.

  “Who are they?”

  “I don’t know.” Rajiv picked Goraksh’s weapon from the stone floor and handed it to him. “Be prepared.”

  “Perhaps we should return to the boats,” Goraksh suggested.

  “And go back empty-handed? Never!”

  The fierceness in his father’s voice let Goraksh know his father would never be dissuaded from
his goal.

  “We have people following us,” Rajiv said. “If we don’t claim the treasure now, or kill those who trail us, we may never get another chance.”

  Goraksh shone his light over the dark areas. He wanted to plead with his father, but he knew even his best efforts would fall on deaf ears.

  Rajiv rallied his men and told them that the gold was too close to leave behind. There was only a slight hesitation in their ranks, but the lure of gold was too much.

  “These are primitives,” Rajiv shouted. He kicked one of the prone bodies. “They caught us by surprise, but now we know they’re here. Now we stay together.”

  Outside the sound of racing outboard motors grew louder. Goraksh listened with a sinking heart. Going back or going forward was the same. Either direction promised uncertainty and potential death. His father would never surrender.

  The group lurched into motion.

  AS THEY CAME around the bend, Annja saw the pirates scattered across the stone pier that had been carved out of the earth on the riverbank. The men took positions and opened fire on the paratrooper boats at once. Minigeysers shot up in the water where the bullets slapped the river.

  One of the paratroopers fell out of the boat beside Annja. Without a second thought, she dived from the boat and went headfirst into the river. The water was clear enough for her to see easily.

  Blood streamed from the paratrooper’s head. Annja couldn’t tell how badly he’d been hit, but she hoped she wasn’t chasing a dead man. Below the man, several boats littered the river bottom. Her heart leaped at the potential for a treasure trove of archaeological finds, but she focused on saving the drowning man.

  She darted behind him, caught him up under the arms in a lifeguard carry and swam for the surface. When she was up top again, she made sure his face was in the open air.

  He was breathing.

  All around her, the battle had taken shape. On his knees, Fleet fired his assault rifle and raked the pier with rounds. Rock fell from the carved arches over the entryways behind the dock area.