by Jonah Buck
“And probably sole access to extremely lucrative and patentable resources.”
Pick shrugged in a that’s the way it goes gesture.
“So let me get this straight. Yersinia and Herschel Hobhouse are willing to pay me ten thousand dollars just to toss some critters and plant samples from this island in a terrarium and bring them back to you?”
“Well, yes and no,” Pick said.
Aha! Denise thought. Here’s where they try to take all the money away.
“You do get ten thousand dollars more or less just for traveling to the island inspecting its flora and fauna; however, if you’re able to capture some specific specimens alive, the ones we’re not entirely sure exist, you’ll receive one hundred thousand dollars.”
Denise blinked. “One hund—How much was that again? I think I misheard you.”
“No, you heard me correctly. One hundred thousand dollars. That’s a one followed by five zeros. But that’s only if you’re able to capture a specimen alive, just to be clear. We’re not expecting that to be easy. You’re guaranteed the ten thousand. There’s just a ninety thousand dollar bonus if certain conditions are met.”
“Alright, you have my attention.”
“Good. We’ve already signed on nine other hunters. You’ll be the tenth. Mr. Hobhouse would like nothing better than to give each of you one hundred grand, but we don’t even know for sure what we’re expecting on the island.”
Denise had never done live captures before. This was similar to hunting, but maybe she could actually do this. Plus, if there was ten thousand dollars just for showing up, that was almost too good to be true.
“So, I’m not expected to kill anything?” She wanted to make that perfectly clear to herself.
“No. It’s more like a biological scavenger hunt, assuming you don’t have anything against that. You don’t have to fire a gun at all the whole time you’re on the island, if you don’t want to. If you like the sound of that, I can show you the contract you’d be signing with Yersinia and Mr. Hobhouse. The ship sets out tomorrow.”
“There must be a catch,” Denise said.
“There is one thing in the contract I’ll point out to you. You might call it a catch of sorts.”
“Oh, really. And what’s that?”
“You’ll be staying on the island for an entire month.”
“That’s not bad.”
“But we only pay you if you survive.”
TWO
THE SHIELD OF MITHRIDATES
Denise held the tray of food in front of her. Hot pancakes. Scrambled eggs. Crispy-looking bacon. An apple. It had been a long time since she’d woken up this early in the morning, and it had been almost as long since she took a solid breakfast.
Her stomach did a little loop de loop as the cabin boy pointed her in the direction of the ship’s dining room. Not only was her body adjusting back to trying to eat real food, but the gentle swaying of the ship was just enough to keep her perpetually off balance.
The Shield of Mithridates was a small cargo ship that had been retrofitted into a sort of floating hospital and luxury yacht. The ship belonged to Yersinia, and it had already picked up the other hunters from various points around the globe, and now it was steaming north up the coast of Africa, toward the Dutch East Indies.
Denise hadn’t met any of the other hunters yet. She’d forgotten to ask Pick about them. All she knew was that a few of them were Americans, some were Europeans, and at least one other was from South Africa.
She moved down the short hallway from her bunkroom and entered a wide open space. Light from a dozen huge windows swept into the dining room, leaving a panoramic view of the ocean and the distant shore. Tasteful art pieces hung on the wall that blocked off the kitchen. And sweet Jiminy Christmas, there was even a grand piano in one corner of the room. Denise felt like she’d stepped into some seaborne version of the Stork Club.
Several long, stately tables ran down the length of the room, but only one of them was occupied. Six men sat at the table, laughing and telling stories. They weren’t dressed like the ship’s crew, so these must be her hunting companions.
Denise debated turning around and going back to eat in her cabin, but she forced herself forward. Even if she didn’t want to discuss why she’d quit her hunting career with a group of strangers, she’d agreed to live for a month on a relatively tiny island with these people. She might as well introduce herself and get to know them.
Three of them had their backs to her and hadn’t noticed her yet. As she walked closer, the three who were facing her dead on grew quiet and watched her approach.
She set her tray down next to one of the men turned away from her and forced a smile onto her face. Better to be friendly, even if she didn’t really want to be.
“Hi, I’m Denise. You all must be the rest of the hunt team,” she said.
The man she’d set her tray closest to looked down at it. “Hey, more food. Perfect. Just what I was hoping for.” He reached over with a fork and scooped Denise’s pancakes onto his own plate. Slicing at them, he popped a syrupy morsel into his mouth.
“Whoa. Hey, those are mine. I’m not part of the kitchen staff. I’m another one of the hunters Yersinia hired.”
“Oh, I know you’re not part of the kitchen crew, love,” the pancake thief said between another big mouthful. “I just don’t care.”
“Gentlemen, really now. Let’s just hold on a moment here,” the hunter across from Denise said. He had dark eyes and long hair, and he looked just a tad like Oscar Wilde.
“Ooh, eggs. Don’t mind if I do,” the man next to Oscar Wilde said, shoveling some of Denise’s scrambled eggs onto his own plate. She slapped his spoon away, sending quivering egg gobbets down the length of the table. Someone else managed to spear her bacon and cart it off like a hyena stealing part of a lion’s kill while the big cat was distracted.
Mr. Pancake Thief tried to grab her apple as well, and she slammed her fist down on his hand, smashing it against the table. He yelped and dropped the apple. Oscar Wilde’s neighbor made a grab for it, but Denise snatched it up before he could.
“You assholes!” she shouted.
The man at the far end of the table pounded a calloused fist on the table. Plates and silverware jumped and rattled as if the ship had just grazed a reef. The raucousness at the table died away. A few stray lumps of scrambled eggs wobbled where they’d landed.
“That is enough,” the man said, his voice rumbling out of his thick chest in a growl.
Denise hadn’t paid the man any attention during the scrum for her food because she’d come up behind him. She didn’t need to see his face to recognize that voice, though. She’d heard it plenty over the years.
“Balthazar van Rensburg,” she said. The huge Boer hunter must be the other South African hunter hired for this expedition. Balthazar was a big man. Denise could combine any two of the other hunters at the table, and Balthazar van Rensburg could still eat them for dinner and then rip the arm off a third for dessert.
Even though Balthazar was probably the age of her father, almost none of the big Boer’s mass was fat. His arms were thick with slabs of muscle and scar tissue. His chest was as thick around as a steam engine bellows, and the chair he sat in looked like it was under visible strain not to splinter apart under his mass. He was almost as big as the game he hunted.
Since the last time Denise had seen him, his hairline had retreated further, and what hairs were up there were increasingly silver-grey. His face was still the same though, as craggy and wind-beaten as a catcher’s mitt that had been used too much and then left out in the sun.
He owned his own hunting business operating out of Pretoria. As some of the best hunters in the land that perfected the safari adventure, their paths crossed often. Far more often than either of them would like.
“Denise DeMarco. They told me that this was a trip for real hunters. What are you doing here?”
“And they told me that I wouldn’t get to see
any big, dumb animals until we actually got to the island. They releasing you and your monkey troupe back into the wild for scientific study? Maybe putting a tag in your ear so they can track you later?”
Balthazar van Rensburg had never liked her. Not since the very first moment they’d met. He’d already had a great reputation as a hunter, and she’d been eager to meet him. Her father had never introduced the two of them, so she’d expected to have a polite exchange of professional courtesies. Instead, he’d shouted at her and said some truly reprehensible things until she left. Every time they’d met after that had gone about the same. This was quite tame by their personal standards.
Frankly, she didn’t know why Balthazar was such a brute. Just as frankly, she didn’t care. Assholes were assholes were assholes. There was no point in studying them, trying to tease out why they were the way they were.
She’d made a few enemies since breaking into the hunting field and subsequently breaking out of it. Lately, it was because she’d burned some bridges, but sometimes some hulk of testosterone just couldn’t accept that a girl was a better hunter than him. Some fellow hunters took it as a personal affront that she’d dared to steal the secret of firearms from the hunting gods, and now they wanted her chained to a boulder at Mount Asshole so a vulture could tear out her liver every day.
Assholes all the way down. And Balthazar van Rensburg was their philosopher-king as far as she was concerned.
“No one wants you here, Denise,” Balthazar said.
“For the record, I don’t have a problem with her here,” Oscar Wilde said.
“Noted and overruled, Silas,” Balthazar said, shooting the dark-eyed man a dirty look.
“I’d rather not eat at the slop trough with the pigs anyway,” Denise said.
“Go find somewhere else to enjoy that apple of yours. Or better yet, just throw yourself overboard and head for shore. I want you out of my sight.”
Denise bounced her apple up and down in her hands, debating whether or not to throw it at Balthazar’s head. Instead, she leaned over and spat into the remaining eggs on her plate. She slid the tray to the center of the table, knocking over a glass of water in the process. “Eat up. My compliments,” she said.
Storming away from the table, she didn’t look back as she stomped onto the ship’s deck. Her heart thundered in her chest, and her teeth ground together hard enough to make her entire jaw ache. She just wanted to grab every one of the other hunters by the scruff of the neck and slam their faces against the table. She felt bile and rage churn in her stomach, an acidic maelstrom.
Part of her just wanted to retreat back to her cabin and give up. There must be some booze secreted away on this ship. She could just hole up and leave the cretins to their fun. They could turn around and drop her off back at the nearest port. She didn’t want to share an island, no matter the size, with those imbeciles. Her fingers were clenched so hard against her palms that her nails were in danger of gouging into her skin.
“Ahoy there,” a voice called. “You must be one of the new hunters that we picked up. Want to join us for breakfast?”
She looked up in surprise. There was another table out on the open deck, apparently for anyone who preferred to eat under the sun and stars. A sun umbrella kept the light off the two people sitting there, plates of food in front of them. A third figure, an Asian man, stood by the railing apart from the other two people.
One of the people at the table, a woman with her hair tied back in a long braid, waved at Denise. The other figure, a black man, lifted a fork in her direction by way of greeting.
“Ahoy there,” he said again. He turned to the woman. “Wait, is ‘ahoy’ the right word? Avast? Eh, screw it; it’s fun to say. Ahoy there. Welcome to Scalawags’ Cove, home to miserable wretches and scurvy dogs. Looks like you met some of your new colleagues. Want to join us at the cool kids’ table instead?”
“Sure.” Denise smiled at them. “You three are part of the expedition, too? Did you get kicked out by Balthazar and his cronies as well?”
“Yes. I’m Gail Darrow,” the woman said, offering her hand. Denise shook it. “I’ve only barely met Mr. van Rensburg, but he’s not the reason I prefer to eat out here. I take my meals out on the deck to get away from Jubal Hayes. He’s a sack of badger crap but without the charm.”
“I didn’t catch anyone’s names in there,” Denise said. She felt a pang of annoyance that Balthazar was apparently only unpleasant to her.
Gail described the man who had first started stealing Denise’s pancakes. “That’s Jubal Hayes.”
“Oh. Him. We met. It didn’t go over well.”
“And I’m Harrison Quint, New Orleans native, wild hog hunter by trade, and handsome devil by nature. Pleased to meet you. I’m sure you’re charmed already.” The black man offered his hand, and Denise shook with him as well.
“Denise DeMarco. I run a safari company in Cape Town. Did you say you’re a hog hunter?”
“That’s right. Big wild boars. They get huge in the South. Coarse, thick bristles. Tusks like razors. Tempers like nitroglycerine. They’re mean sonsofbitches. I once saw one, I swear to God, it was fifteen feet from snout to tail, and it killed an adult gator. Gored it to death. They get onto peoples’ farms, uproot all the crops, knock down the fences, and people hire me to exterminate them.
“Well, technically, they hire my assistant, Clark. He’s a big white boy that looks like some Italian master chiseled his features out of marble. He drives the truck up to the front door of any given plantation that gives us a call. Then he introduces himself as Mr. Harrison Quint, owner of a fine small business, upstanding citizen, and hirer of poor, illiterate jigaboo assistants like myself. Pretty soon, Mr. Imperial Grand Dragon is giving Clark a mint julip and is halfway to offering him his third daughter for marriage. Trust me, folks down there react a lot better to an eloquent white boy than they do seeing a black man with a fearsome big rifle marching straight up their driveway. Once we get out in the forest or the bayou, I take the gun and Clark spots for me. Works like a charm.” Harrison smiled wide.
Denise had to admit that Harrison had a clever system in place, given that America and South Africa both got their undies in a bunch about blacks. She was thinking more about the fact that he was a hog hunter, though.
Even with the non-disclosure agreement and the contract signed, Roger Pick hadn’t offered many details about exactly what she could expect on this expedition. She’d expected most of the other hunters to have safari experience like herself.
“Gail, what do you hunt?” Denise asked.
“I have a hunting and fur trading business in Montana. Nothing big, but it’s been a modest success since I opened it. If somebody wants to hunt bears, elk, bison, wolves, deer, or anything else in the region, I can take care of them.”
“What do you hunt, Denise?”
“These days, nothing. I got out of the business a little while ago, but it used to be African big game.” She didn’t bother to explain why she refused to hunt anymore. “They made it hard to turn this offer down, though.”
A hand grasped her shoulder. “Oh, that’s by design. We wanted the absolute best for this expedition, so I made sure we got them.”
Denise turned around to find herself face to face with a man she’d never met before. He had eyes the color of rich honey and hair that ruffled in the sea breeze. Even though he wore a dress shirt unbuttoned at the top, he also had a well-groomed little beard that would have looked at home on a Bohemian painter.
“Hello, Denise. We haven’t formally met, but I’m Herschel Hobhouse. I work with Yersinia’s research and development department to explore new avenues for researching medicine and biological sciences. I see you’ve already met Harrison and Gail. Has Shinzo introduced himself yet?”
“That might take a while. That guy likes to keep to himself,” Harrison whispered in Denise’s direction.
At that moment, an absolutely gigantic golden eagle swept over the ship. Its wings flared o
pen, spreading over seven feet wide. Fluttering and screeching, the fearsome-looking bird swooped down at them.
Shinzo held up an arm clad in a long leather glove. The eagle landed on his forearm, its talons sinking into the leather sheath. He reached into a pouch and fed a little tidbit of something to the eagle. The bird gobbled the hunk of meat down and then stared at the assembled onlookers with keen, intelligent eyes.
“Mr. Takagari is joining us all the way from Japan,” Hobhouse said. “He’s a master falconer.”
Shinzo merely nodded in her direction. Then, his bird flapped its wings and lifted itself into the air. With another screech, it took off over the ocean, sailing above the rolling blue waters. Denise might have put money on the golden eagle versus an older model biplane fighter.
“Have you met the other hunters yet? Silas Horne, Creighton Montgomery, Jubal Hayes, Andris Razan, Dr. Grant Marlow, and Balthazar van Rensburg should all be finishing breakfast inside.”
“I’ve met them,” Denise said, trying not to sound too sour.
“How are you enjoying the Shield of Mithridates so far? Are your quarters to your liking?” After meeting Balthazar and company, Denise was afraid this entire voyage would be absolutely miserable.
“It’s an impressive ship,” she said, unsure what else to say. The vessel was obvious top of the line, but she knew the savanna, not boats.
“Indeed it is. Officially, it belongs to Yersinia. Sometimes, it’s taken out and used to wine and dine various executives or company benefactors. Yersinia does a lot of charity work, so we like to throw a black tie event every once in a while for some of our more generous donors. We get some of the best chefs in New York on board, and we sail down the coast for a night. It’s amazing.
“Usually, though, we temporarily lease out the ship to governments that have seen a major disaster or ongoing strife, and she serves as a floating hospital. We keep some Yersinia staff and doctors on board, and we treat everything we can. The cargo hold can be swapped out into a bay of triage suites and emergency rooms in a matter of hours. We treat everything from endemic diseases to gunshot wounds here. It’s really fantastic work.”