“No talking,” a dazed Rudy whispers under his breath. “No talking…No…Talking…”
“He’s got the key,” Anjali says, as her wrists are unbound and she takes her place beside Kashmiri where he’s now seated behind a great desk carved out of mahogany. “The one who thinks he’s Indiana Jones. He’s got the key that will unlock the Kali statue and reveal her secrets.”
Anjali knows the key will not reveal secrets so much as kill Kali once the statue is unlocked. Maybe she’s not so in love with Kashmiri after all. Maybe she’s not double-crossing us but only playing the situation like she’s double-crossing us…No choice but to calm down and wait to see how it all plays out…
I can’t help but notice that only one item occupies the desktop. It’s an old half-moon shaped dagger with worn leather surrounding the grip. No guns for Kashmiri the Thuggee terrorist. The man is strictly old school.
“Indiana Jones…now that hurts,” I say. “I always thought of myself as Ernest Hemingway meets Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.”
I’m fighting the duct tape that binds my wrists together. It’s a tight fit, but I’ve been in enough hands-tied-behind-my-back situations to know that stitching a pen knife blade to the interior of one’s belt, the razor sharp edge facing outwards, is the prudent thing to do. I’ve also practiced the technique of sawing away at whatever means the bad guys choose to bind me with, be it rope or duct tape, without their having the slightest clue. Like the two armed bandits standing behind me by the door of this dimly lit room, for example. It’s a matter of standing at an angle where they simply don’t notice what I’m doing with my fingers.
“What key?” Rudy says. Then, catching himself. “Oh, yes, of course. That key.”
Kashmiri turns, focuses in on Rudy.
“Who did this man say he was again?” he says.
“He’s the mastermind behind this whole thing,” Tony says. “It’s him you wanna torture.”
“Are you kidding me?” Rudy screams. “Until an hour ago, I’d never seen these people in my life. I’m a citizen of Her Majesty’s Great Britannia and I demand to be released at once.” He smiles. “Then perhaps we’ll discuss the key and its location. For a price of course.”
“Gag this man,” Kashmiri says to Black Beard. The big, black-turbaned man nods to one of the armed Thuggee bandits who immediately approaches Rudy, rips a considerable piece of duct tape from its roll, and attaches it to his chubby face, from ear lobe to ear lobe.
Kashmiri’s sunglasses-shielded eyes back on me.
“Harbans,” he says. “I want you to extract the truth from Mr. Baker regarding the true whereabouts of the key.”
Black Beard/Harbans removes his sash, twirls it around in his two hands so that it forms a thick rope with a solid metal pendant at the end. He approaches me, cocks the sash back as if it were a whip, and readies to strike me with it. But that’s when I hear, “Stop!”
It’s Anjali.
She comes around Kashmiri’s desk.
“Allow me, Kashmiri,” she says, removing the half-moon-shaped dagger off of the desk. “I believe I know precisely how to get Mr. Baker to reveal the location of the key. Then, once I produce it, you may tend to him as you wish.” She laughs. “What’s left of him, that is.”
“Be quick, Anjali,” he says. “We must start our ceremony soon. Maybe you have come here against my wishes. But now that you are here, I would very much like you to be a part of it.” He scans the rest of us with his sunglass shielded eyes. “In fact, I shall very much enjoy having you all as my guests at the ceremony.”
…Another Thuggee ceremony…another sacrifice to Kali…no doubt all three of us fit the bill as sacrificial lambs…
Anjali comes to me, blade gripped in her hand. She looks me in the eye.
“Now, Mr. Baker,” she says, pressing the tip of the knife against the underside of my chin. So hard the pain shoots up into my face, behind my eyeballs. “Where is the key?”
“Don’t do it, Chase,” Tony says over my right shoulder. “They’re gonna kill us anyway. Don’t give the broad the satisfaction.”
Coming from the left, Rudy is screaming something into his gag.
She starts touching me all over like she’s patting me down. And she is. When she comes to my right side leg pocket on my jungle green cargo pants, she unbuttons it, reaches inside like she’s convinced the key is located there. But she knows full well the key is strung around my neck and hidden behind the T-shirt beneath my work-shirt. She removes her hand from my pocket, holds it up with fingers spread as if to demonstrate just how empty it is. Looking up at me, she issues me a wink of her left eye. Not much of wink. Nothing anyone in the know would think twice about. But a wink all the same. She’s playing both sides and doing so with great effectiveness. Maybe even buying us precious time.
She makes a complete search of all my pockets and finishing up by peering down inside my black T-shirt.
“Did you wanna see up my ass too?” I say, finally feeling the sweet release of my duct taped wrists.
She smiles. “I’m sure that won’t be necessary, Mr. Baker.” Turning to Kashmiri. “The key is not on him.”
“Then we will have Harbons take care of him,” the Islamist terrorist turned Thuggee chieftain insists. “Perhaps he hid it somewhere inside the jungle and now it is just waiting there to be found.”
Harbons grabs my arm with his iron grip. But that’s when Anjali steps forward, drives the dagger into the monster’s side.
“Chase run!” she screams.
Harbons falls.
Pulling my hands apart, I turn quick and swift kick the guard on the right in the balls. Tony makes like a bull and rams the other guard with his head, driving him back against the stone wall. Meanwhile, Rudy steps forward, kicks the first guard’s AK-47 out of his hands, so that it lands on the stone floor, slides towards the door.
“Anjali, get Tony’s wrists,” I bark while going for the automatic rifle. Picking it up, I turn and see that Kashmiri has jumped over his desk and taken cover behind it. I trigger a short burst of rounds into it. But that’s when the second guard raises his rifle. Anjali is quicker and runs the blade across his neck, sending a spout of arterial blood against the wall.
“And yet another surprise for the Catholic girl,” I say. “You’re a little too good with a knife.”
“By the grace of God, I go,” she barks.
Kashmiri stands then, an automatic gripped in his shooting hand. He fires, the round ricocheting against the stone wall. I spray his desk once more and he catches a round in the upper left thigh, dropping him on the spot.
Anjali cuts Tony’s wrists free. He picks up a second AK, and we make for the open door. But that’s when Rudy jumps ahead of us. He’s wide-eyed and panicked.
“Oh Christ,” I say. “Cut him loose and get out.”
“You can’t run!” Kashmiri shouts. He quickly changes clips and shoots at will, the rounds whizzing past my head, ricocheting against the stone wall. “You are surrounded on all sides. We will torture you, rip out your hearts, and feed them to Kali. Do you hear me!?!”
I return fire, but he’s once more taking cover behind the desk. I turn back towards the door.
“Just give me one clean shot, asshole,” I say. But no one can hear me above the noise of the gunfire.
I search for Anjali. She’s cutting Rudy’s tape. When he’s free, I shout, “Let’s just go while we have the chance!”
Kashmiri fires again.
This time, I don’t bother with returning fire. Instead, the four of us head back out into the open space, closing the wood doors behind us. Pulling one of the torches off the wall, I stuff it into the openers, securing both doors and locking Kashmiri inside.
For how long, only Kali knows.
29
We stand in silence outside the great wood temple doors until I make out the sound of movement. The unmistakable sound of stone splitting. Something only a digger will recognize immediately.
�
�You hear that, Chase?” Tony says. “Something’s giving way down here.”
“Yeah,” I say. “But where’s it coming from?”
I look all around me. But the louder the harsh noise gets, the more my internal radar begs me to look up. That’s when I see her. The life-sized stone carving of Kali, coming alive, tearing herself from the wall. The stone Kali drops down from the wall, lands on her two feet with an earth-pounding thud. In one of her many hands, she grips a crescent-shaped sword.
“That isn’t real,” Rudy screams. Out the corner of my eye, I see him close his eyes. “It’s not real,” he chants. “It’s not real…It’s not real…Wake up, Rudy. Wake up, Rudy. Wake up…”
She waves her arms with great agility like they are made of flesh and bone and not stone. The big blade slices through the air, barely missing my head. I stumble backward while she swings the blade again, knocking the AK-47 from my hands.
I regain my balance while Kali repositions herself, attempting to separate me from the rest of the gang by standing between us.
“Tony,” I say, “plant a bead on her while I distract her.”
The old excavator shoulders the AK while I back-step slowly, the stone monster following, as planned. That’s when her eyes go wide, her mouth opening and a scream emerging from it that’s so loud it feels as if it’s piercing my eardrums.
She swings the blade at my head, but I’m able to duck in time, dropping to my knees.
“Now, Tony!” I shout. “Send her back to hell!”
Tony opens up with his Kalishnikov, the rounds shattering the stone figure into a dozen pieces which quickly scatter away on their own into the recesses of the underground chamber.
“Let’s get the hell out of here before that Kali freak pulls a Humpty Dumpty and puts herself back together again,” Tony says.
Rudy slowly opens his eyes. “Is she gone?”
“She’s gone,” I say, standing, gathering up the firearm Kali knocked out of my hands. “Thanks for the help. Now let’s get the hell out of here.”
“But what about my son?” Anjali begs. “Where can he possibly be?”
“That’s the question, isn’t it?” I say, pivoting on the balls of my feet, giving the wide open chamber the once over. But what I really want to do right now is ask Anjali how she so innocently happens to know Kashmiri. But there’s no time for that. On second thought. “So how did you and that terrorist get so chummy? Guess you forgot to mention that little tidbit of information.”
She looks at me with her deep, dark eyes.
“Yeah, nice work, lady,” Tony says. “For a second there, I thought we were supper for Kali. I was already counting on how good it would feel to tear your eyeballs out.”
“It’s not as it appears, Chase,” she says. “Kashmiri and I became lovers for a brief time after Singh left me. I truly had no idea he was a terrorist because he only visited me once a month and only at our humble house in Varanasi. He referred to himself as a freedom fighter. That was the extent of it. Something not at all unusual for that area of the world. But you see, he took a great and, what seemed at the time, loving interest in Rajesh. He became like a father to the boy when no one wanted anything to do with him, gifting him with food, clothing, and money even long after we stopped being lovers.
“But then, one day I awoke to find the boy gone. This was not long after Rajesh began proving his saintliness by performing miracles and attracting large crowds of believers. That Kashmiri was behind the abduction, there was no doubt. Only then did I discover the truth about his terrible past. About his terrorist activities with the 313 in Pakistan.”
“Ha,” Rudy says, “a likely story, lady.”
“Well, it’s one we’re gonna have to go with for now,” I say, as I desperately look around for a way out of this place. An alarm is sounding and the sound of jack boots descending into the tunnel echoes down into this chamber.
“The devils are descending, Chase,” Tony says.
“Why didn’t that Kali defend Kashmiri?” says Rudy. “Why wait until we step out of his office to attack us? Shouldn’t she have at least made a guest appearance inside the office? Maybe made the floor open up beneath our feet or something?”
“My guess is Kali has to be summoned to do that,” I say. “What happened out there in the jungle…the face appearing in the ground. The fire and the snakes. And what just happened inside this chamber…Kashmiri is somehow able to summon the devil in short bursts only.”
“We must find a way out of here,” Anjali insists. “Before one of those short bursts of evil turns into a far too long one.”
Pounding coming from inside the big wood doors. Rifle stocks against the wood slabs. Kashmiri and some of his men trying like hell to get out…only a matter of seconds until they succeed.
The flames of the wall-mounted torch and the one I stuck into the door openers are flickering like there’s a breeze blowing inside the big chamber. I recall what Tony said about air vents feeding oxygen into the underground depths and venting the bad CO2 out.
“Spread out everybody,” I say. “Check the walls for an opening. There’s got to be a way out of here.”
“Maybe we should go back into Kashmiri’s office,” Rudy suggests.
The sound of boot-steps getting louder as the Thuggees descend the ramp.
“There’s no time for that,” I insist. “Besides, the first person who steps through that door is a dead man. There’s got to be an opening and it’s got to be here.”
“Why?” Tony says.
“Because, I damn well say so,” I spit.
The boot-steps sound like their only a few feet away, the Thuggees shouting, screaming for blood. The pounding on the wood doors is getting more intense. Then comes multiple gunshots. Bullets bursting through the wood, the torch that holds the openers together bending, about to snap in half, the flame spreading from the torch head, igniting the dry wood doors.
I go to the section of wall where I suspect the breeze is originating from and begin to examine it. Crouching, I feel the wall’s surface with the palms of my hands and my fingertips.
Anjali comes to me then. Tears are falling from her big eyes.
“We search in vain, Chase,” she says, pressing her back to the stone wall. “We’re as good as dead.”
That’s when Anjali disappears.
30
Rather, Anjali doesn’t disappear so much as she accidentally uncovers a secret passage hidden in the stone wall.
“Hey,” Rudy says. “Where’d she go?”
I place my hands on the exact spot where Anjali slipped through the rabbit hole and, after a few carefully placed shoves, the solid rock door spins open on its vertically mounted hinges.
“Well, I’ll be dipped,” Tony says. “This is a Hollywood set.”
I hold the door for the two men as they enter into the dark corridor. Standing a few feet away, her back to me, is Anjali.
“Chase,” she says, turning to me. “Do you hear that?”
“Hear what?” I say, shouldering the AK-47 by its leather belt.
I allow the stone door to close on its own.
“Everyone quiet,” I order.
Taking a step into the corridor, I listen intently. Along with the distinct odor of human sweat, I hear the clanging of metal against metal and metal against rock. I hear voices wailing, crying. I hear something cracking. Short, sharp, cracking. Like the crack of a whip. I add it all up inside my brain.
“This leads to the heart of the diamond mine,” I say.
Rudy lights up at the news. He starts looking around.
“I need a shopping bag,” he says. “Anyone got a plastic shopping bag? I’m not leaving here without my retirement etched in brilliant stone, so to speak.”
“Take it easy, Rudy,” Tony says. “Our first priority is finding Anjali’s kid, our second priority is getting out of here alive.”
“Let’s go, everyone,” I say, my eyes focused on the dim light that seems to be coming from
the mine at the end of what I estimate to be a one hundred meter corridor.
We walk, eyes wide open, at the ready, just in case we’re heading into a trap. But my guess is that this passage serves a distinct purpose other than doing damage to those who tread its stone floor. My guess is that this is a secret corridor for a man like Kashmiri to make a check on the progress of the work being conducted by his band of slave laborers in the mine.
When we come to the end of the corridor, my suspicion rings true. The corridor empties into a small observational area also hewn out of the cave bedrock. There are three distinct round windows carved into a short wall that looks out on a massive mine. My heart nearly skips a beat when I get my first good look at what lies below. All breath escapes my lungs. I’ve never seen anything like it in my life. One thing is now for certain. The legend of the great India diamond mine is absolutely true. But the reason it hasn’t been located in India is because it’s in Nepal, outside the fenced-in perimeter of the Chitwan National Forest. No wonder it’s eluded explorers for centuries.
“Easy everyone,” I say. “Don’t let anyone see your face.”
The operation is enormous. The mine isn’t only comprised of countless chunks of diamonds embedded in the granite walls. It also houses in its core a behemoth blue diamond that must be as big as a two-story house.
“My God in heaven above,” Anjali exhales. “I’ve never seen anything so beautiful surrounded by something so ugly.”
The blue diamond glows in the fire and electric lamplight as though it contains its own electric charge. And perhaps it does. One thing it houses inside a core opening at its very top is the Golden Kali Statue. The Ancient Hindus must have possessed the know-how to drill a hole deep enough into the blue diamond to house the statue, then rigged up a mechanical winch system that would raise it up during the ceremonial processionals. Or, maybe the power discharged by the diamond itself is enough to raise the statue.
“How do we get down there?” Rudy asks. “The only thing keeping me from being rich beyond my wildest dreams is standing here doing nothing.”
Chase Baker and the God Boy: (A Chase Baker Thriller Series Book No. 3) Page 14