by Buck Sanders
“Well, I don’t know about you, but I’m pleased,” she said, rolling toward Slayton on the huge king-sized bed. She was luxuriously wound up in the sheet, almost mummified, her hair in glorious disarray, her body smelling warm and familiar. She pulled herself onto Slayton’s chest and propped her head on a fist.
“This place is like Haskell’s,” she said. “The service is terrific. Smashing. Etcetera.”
“This is intermission. The show’s not over yet,” Slayton said from the back of his throat.
“Are you going to talk to me now, sir?”
“Hm?”
“I’ve been waiting all evening for you to tell me what on earth is bothering you. Are you going to keep playing diversionary games, or are you going to let me help you a little bit?”
It did not take Slayton long to ponder her offer. “There is a man, part of your tour. My department—which is not important—wants him. So far he could be anyone on the tour, but I’m fairly convinced he’s one of those faceless Arab workers.”
Naturally she was interested—she had gotten what she wanted. “Who is he, Ben? What has he done?”
Slayton’s eyes were focused in the darkness somewhere beyond the foot of the vast bed. “He’s an international terrorist. He’s killed maybe a hundred and fifty, two hundred people by himself. He’s been responsible for the deaths of hundreds more. His students and stunt gangs have murdered thousands in the name of terrorism.
“He came here on the Star of Egypt. He got here just in time to supervise the unloading of what I’m sure are smuggled weapons. He has eyes on the President of the United States, and I am convinced he’ll use the tour to get to the President. I have to find out who he is and stop him. And so far, not too much luck. But I know he’s here. And I’m going to get him. I hope he’s ready.”
Her expression took on tones of serious shock. “Ben…” The words failed her for a moment. “Good god, I didn’t have any idea…”
“And no, I’m not kidding.”
They remained in silence for a few moments, each assimilating the new patterns of thought. Though Slayton’s new trust in Shauna was elementary, he was convinced she could offer some tidbit, some inconsistency which would unlock the puzzle for him. Anything she could call forth was important. The details on the nine components of mortals was a fundamental part of Rashid Haman’s ancestral past—perhaps he was tapped into that mythology somehow, perhaps he could be predicted, Slayton theorized, along the lines of genetic vice. Damn it all, this was his own specialty! In a word, his calling was troubleshooting. Defeat from someone like Haman was unacceptable.
Shauna sensed that what Slayton needed most were details, raw material with which to work, like the background research, or Wilma’s dockside photography.
“Those tampered boxes suddenly seem awfully important,” she said. “You’ll see them tomorrow, I suppose.”
“Tonight,” said Slayton. “I think now is the best time for this sort of thing.”
It took her no time at all. “Agreed,” she said, pulling herself up and kissing him again. “We’ll get back to this later.”
She began to bounce off the bed, but Slayton caught her arm in the dark. “Wait a minute.”
“What…?”
“Shhh!” Slayton was scanning the room furiously in the dim light. He pulled her by the arm, back onto the bed, laying his palm against her in a silent entreaty to stay right where she was as he slowly rose, naked and vulnerable.
She saw him, the bluish glow through the closed curtain illuminating his tight, hard-muscled frame. He took slow and cautious paces, head darting around at what she imagined might be small noises that perhaps she could not even hear. He was near the foot of the bed, his arms extended, fingers spread, treading carefully.
What Shauna Ramsey saw next must have looked pretty amazing.
Ben Slayton seemed to shoot up and out, straight up into the air, then flying out sideways, flipping, coming down on his shoulders a good distance from the bed, and rolling efficiently to a combat crouch some ten feet from the bed. She started to move, but his voice rang out in the darkness.
“Stay right where you are, Shauna! Don’t move a muscle!”
He smacked the light switches in the far corner of the suite’s bedroom with the heel of his hand, and at once lights blazed on near the door, on the desk, and beside the bed. At the same time, at the foot of the bed, Shauna saw a flat black, reptilian snout poke tentatively up. It weaved skittishly, a forked tongue of pale pink underlaid with black mottles, testing the air.
Her jaws cemented together and her entire body tried to shrink back against the headboard. It was a massive effort just to turn her head because of the trembling that had overcome the muscles in her neck. The thing was close enough for her to discern the square patterns of scales surrounding its nostrils and the almost imperceptible juncture of its mouth and jaw. The tongue slithered in and out of the tiny gap below the nostrils. Within that mouth were the fangs, short and lethal.
Slayton cast frantically around for a weapon, an object with which to put distance between himself and the huge snake now partially on the floor and climbing up the bed. The damned thing was a monster, black as death and fully as big around as the wine bottle which lay somewhere on the floor to Shauna’s left, now empty.
He tried to seize the desk lamp, but it was bolted to the table. The desk chair was heavy and unwieldly, but there was no time, and it was the only object at hand. Most of Shauna’s luggage and possessions were unpacked in the adjacent room of the suite.
He rushed across the room, thinking two things, and fighting to balance them. The swing would be all biceps, he would instinctively extend his arms full-length no matter how he planned it, since his body was reflexively intimidated by the sheer size of the creature before him. That, and considering the girth of the thing and the musculature that size implied, the impact of the chair might not faze it too much.
But it was slithering closer to the terrified Shauna, and that gave him the adrenalin he needed.
Slayton swung the chair in a sweeping arc across the top of the bed. His charge had brought his feet within inches of the coiled body still on the floor.
He lucked out, clipping the snake’s massive skull with one of the lower chair legs, propelling it partially off the big bed. Momentum betrayed him, and he followed the heavy chair, losing his balance and falling sideways onto the bed. The mattress bounced thickly. As he fell, tilted at an angle, he saw the snake’s head rise in mid-air, recovering from the force of the blow. It began to crank around toward him.
Slayton used what falling momentum he had left to push himself further up on the bed, far enough to grasp Shauna’s arm in a viselike grip and employ an elementary push-and-pull judo tactic to throw her clear of the bed on the side opposite the snake. She cried out in pain as her arm was unceremoniously wrenched, but now she was clear, scrambling naked toward the door connecting the rooms of the suite.
For Slayton, it was too late. If he jumped, his leg would be pegged by a pair of fangs. Was cobra venom the type that turned your brain to jelly, or the kind that paralyzed your nervous system, suffocating you? It did not matter. The hood was aggressively extended full-out. The head, like a tank turret, weaved for a good strike position mere feet distant. Slayton could not take his eyes off the thing.
His right arm scooped up a pillow and thrust it forward just in time to deflect the first strike. Slayton had not seen it coming—it was so fast—but his body could not remain frozen. The serpent gaffed into the pillow and instantly withdrew, resuming its striking stance, looking for a new opening, like a hungry boxer.
Slayton held the pillow defensively, trying to cover the maximal striking area. When it lanced out again, there was a microsecond in which Slayton knew the strike was coming, and he reacted instantly. As the head blurred into motion, he managed to swat it to the left by swinging the pillow.
Like a taut, expensive armature, the head began to rebound, almost arrogantly, co
nvinced of its structural superiority. But by that time Slayton’s other hand had come into play, one-two, and tossed the sheet over its head as the third strike came, and the snake, momentarily disoriented, landed near Slayton’s thigh.
He clamped his hand down on the shape under the sheet, fervently hoping he was close enough to the head to avoid it coiling double and biting his hand. All bets were off.
If he could not maintain a stranglehold on the thrashing head and body, it would be the end.
Holding its head under the sheet, feeling the creature bunch and writhe in his grip, Slayton came to his knees and rolled off the far side of the bed, dragging the snake with him, stretching its body rigid and straight for a brief second. He thumped onto the floor. Coils looped over the bed and twined around Slayton’s naked legs as the incredibly powerful thing flopped around in his grip, which, thanks to the sheet, was losing ground fast.
The empty wine bottle was wedged beneath his leg. He found the neck and yanked it out.
He pushed the shape down to the carpet as the coils cinched tightly around his legs, curling around his groin like a deadly harness. The bobbing head beneath the sheet moved free as he sacrificed grip for swinging force and brought the butt of the bottle up and over, smashing it down onto the snake’s head.
The movement caused the bottle to glance off to one side, stunning, but not stopping the reptile.
Slayton slammed the flat of his hand against the shape and bashed it three quick times against the carpet, an animal grunt escaping him each time. There was a liquid crunch, and the sheet began to darken in his hands. Slayton kept swinging and smashing until the sound was like someone striking a wet sponge, and then he fell backward, slumping against the wall in the narrow space between it and the bed, the black coils imprisoning his legs and privates slacking their pressure in death.
His hands were covered with blood, his body glazed with sweat. He lay in the corner, panting, trying to stabilize. The inky blotches on the sheet expanded and bordered into each other, forming a glowing blossom of red.
Shauna stood petrified, her arms bracketing the door frame. “Ben? Ben!”
“Yeah,” Slayton said, voice hoarse, limply waving a hand in the air. His other hand covered his eyes. The blood, thinned by his sweat, trickled down his face. He could smell it.
Once, with Art Stannard and Gabriel Whitman in Texas, Slayton had played the game known as rattlesnake tag. The. object was to grab a rattler tossed at you by someone else in the circle, grab it by the tail and swing it around, and then toss it at someone else. You had to catch it in flight. Skill determined which end of a spinning snake you might grab. The rattlers were sometimes six feet long.
The dead thing on the floor was well over twelve feet long, and twice as big around as the rattlers Slayton recalled.
He rose unsteadily, pushing the snake away. He weaved, crawled over the surface of the bed, and fell on the floor.
Shauna’s paralysis broke, and she ran to help him.
“I think I’m going to be sick,” he said, in a small voice.
She helped him get to his feet and led him to the bathroom. She wanted to stay as far away from the bed area as possible. She closed the door, hugging the wall as Slayton gave up his magnificent Haskell’s dinner to the Washington sewer system. When she heard the sound of water running, she reopened the door. Steam was filling up the bathroom.
He turned and took her in his arms and they held onto each other for a moment. He blew out his breath finally and said, “I hope that wasn’t a pet of yours, or something.”
The sound she made was half laugh, half sob. She grabbed two fistfuls of his hair and kissed him.
There are no people so life-embracing as those who have faced death together. Slayton and Shauna made fervent love in the tub, drenching the entire bathroom. And then again.
At last they lay deep in steam and cloudy suds, his head buttressed against the faucet and hers at the opposite end, psychologically cleansed as well as physically drained.
“Let’s get dressed and dispose of the garbage,” he said in even tones, now fully under control. He tickled one of her generous nipples with his big toe, causing lazy eddies in the water. “I want to see those crates you mentioned tonight.”
“How are you going to—” She looked toward the door.
“I am going to go to wherever the ice and soft drink machines are to be found in this lodge, and steal the plastic bag out of the trash can you always find there. I’m going to touch that monster out there one more time, and then pack him and the sheet out of your sight and mine. If I get my sense of humor back between now and then, I may just leave our visitor in the hotel swimming pool. Or maybe the wishing well in the lobby.”
“Ben, does this mean…?”
“Darlin’, this has everything to do with what I was just telling you about. We’d better get started.”
10
“These marks were on the crates before we ever opened them up,” said Shauna. “Like they were pried open.”
“But nothing’s missing,” said Slayton.
“Right. Now look at this. This box was ninety percent padding and fiber; there’s a space in the middle where something rested—something fairly big, by the size of the box and the size of the impression left by whatever was removed. It’s part of our shipment, and it was accounted for on the manifest of the Star of Egypt. But whatever was in here is gone.” She shrugged.
The Seth-Olet exhibit, now uncrated for the most part, nevertheless required that the shipping materials be maintained almost as carefully as the artifacts themselves. It was three o’clock in the morning, and with the benediction of the Sparta men, Slayton and Shauna were mucking about in the boxes, now disconnected from the tractor trucks, adding chunks to the puzzle.
Slayton examined the box Shauna said had been pried open. It was composed of multiple layers of cardboard, slatted wood for structural rigidity, and many thicknesses of padding. It was designed to keep its hard side outward, its soft sides toward the contents.
Slayton looked at her briefly and said, “May I?” indicating the wall of the box. She nodded.
He drummed his fingers against the flat wood, sounding the material. Abruptly he stepped back, pivoting at the waist and driving the heel of his hand into the solid wood with considerable force. It cracked hollowly and collapsed inward, the outside facing apparently turning out to be only thin plywood.
“Look inside,” he said.
“You didn’t come all the way through,” she told him.
“Yeah. But look at my arm.” It was sunk into the side of the box to the elbow, yet she could not see his hand within. “Dummy facing,” he said. “Where once there was padding, now there is a hidden storage area. If you casually ripped off the lid, it wouldn’t give itself away, but if you knew which nails to yank out, you could slide this whole section out, like the door of an elevator—a lift—clean out the compartment, and replace it.” He tapped the wood.
There was a rueful expression on Shauna’s face in the semidarkness. “And nobody finds out until long after the ship docks…” she said, looking pained. “Not only that, but the optimum protection for the artifacts we’re supposed to get from these is gone. Oh, bloody hell!”
Slayton felt like a teacher giving a familiar lecture once too often. “And since, when you’re a smuggler, it never pays to put all your eggs in one basket, you employ several methods in case the cover gets pulled on one or two of them en route. Here we have a gimmicked box. But this—” He indicated the second huge crate Shauna had pointed out to him. “—is the result of a faked manifest. This says it’s yours, but it isn’t. And there are probably two or three more gimmicks we haven’t spotted yet.”
“What could take up so much room?”
“Well, the only thing truly harder than weapons to smuggle is large groups of people, and that’s out. I’m thinking guns. I’ve seen some photos to back that up. Conversely,” he added, “dope is the easiest thing in the universe t
o sneak in and out of countries. That people still get caught at it is a testament to their amateurishness. But guns—”
He paced around some of the other boxes, browsing, considering other angles he didn’t really need, now that he had satisfied himself that the smuggling had been real—he did not expect to find leftovers hanging around.
“Guns you can get anywhere, especially in the United States. Any shmuck can buy one, even stolen military stock, automatic weapons, explosives—no trouble here. America is the land of free enterprise. You smuggle guns if you need disposable weapons in a hurry, or if you don’t trust anyone outside to handle your armaments. The catch is, to smuggle guns and have it be worthwhile, you’ve got to smuggle a lot of guns.” More to himself than anything, he said, “He not only got himself past us, but his goddam arsenal too.”
“You know, that crate with all the straw would be the perfect thing to ship over a—” Her voice caught, just slightly. “—a big snake like that.”
“King cobra,” Slayton said. “Jesus. The only time I’d ever seen one of those things was on a reptile farm. They grow to be eighteen, twenty feet long, sometimes more. Which is just about twenty feet too long for my taste.”
“I couldn’t believe what you did back there,” she said. “To think that that thing might have been on the ship with us the whole time…”
“Yeah,” Slayton said, suddenly brightening. “Somebody had to tend to it—if only to make sure it didn’t die in transit.”
“Sorry,” said Shauna. “Can’t help you. No herpetologists that I know of in the bunch.” Then she said, “I know a sneaky way that might help us, though.”
Slayton raised his eyebrows, attentive.
“Ahmed Sadi… uh, is rather enamored of our own Maggie. It’s her hair. If she quizzed him on this, he’d turn the work crew inside out trying to fill the bill. We might wind up with just a scapegoat, but it’s more than we have at the moment.”