The Bone Hunters

by Robert J. Mrazek

  The rain had stopped for the first time since he and his father arrived. Li had overheard one of Brugg’s house staff say it was only the calm before the real storm. The low, brassy sky looked as if it was ready to unleash another torrent at any moment.

  Two armed guards were standing by the iron-mesh gate cut into the base of the wall that separated the compound from the beach. When Li told them in English that he was going swimming, the first one looked at him as if he was crazy. The second one swung the gate open and allowed him to pass through.

  On the beach, he quickly stripped off his clothes. As the wind-driven sand peppered his naked body, he watched as another huge roller came crashing into shore. Timing it perfectly, he dove into the receding wave and began to swim.

  His body cut swiftly through the whitecaps that crowned the green slashing waves. Once again, his father had diminished him, this time in front of the gigantic simpleton. He was treating Brugg with a respect he never displayed toward his own son.

  As always, Li found his release in the water. With an almost effortless crawl, he drove through the roiling sea, his mouth barely opening against his left shoulder with exquisite precision to take in air with a minimum of wasted effort.

  Wo hèn ta . . . I hate him, he silently screamed with each stroke. Wo hèn ta, Wo hèn ta, Wo hèn ta.

  When he stopped to look around, he saw that he was several hundred meters off the beach in front of the compound. It began raining again as he turned and began the journey back. Nearing the shoreline, he raised his head from the water and saw someone standing at the edge of the beach frantically waving his hands. When Li was close enough to body-surf the next wave into the shoreline, he saw it was the Panamanian Varna.

  “I saw you from the window,” said Varna. “I could not believe you were going to do it . . . I thought you were going to drown.”

  Over the Panamanian’s shoulder, Li could see the two guards at the sea wall gate staring at them. Li put his clothes back on. Together, they walked to the mansion house. Inside, Li asked Varna if there was an exercise facility in the house.

  “Of course,” said the Panamanian. “I designed it myself.”

  “I would like to work out with you,” said Li.

  Varna’s face lit up with pleasure. “I would be honored to join you.”

  Varna’s training facility was located on the fourth floor near the bedroom he shared with Juwan. It was state-of-the-art, with Cybex treadmills, elliptical trainers, recumbent bikes, Stairmasters, rowing machines, and a Rogue Power Rack.

  Varna was contentedly bench-pressing three hundred pounds to demonstrate his own fitness standard when he saw Li begin to take his clothes off again. Naked, the Chinese came over to the Power Rack and stared down at Varna as the Panamanian replaced the weight bar. Li was already aroused.

  “I will take you back to China with me,” he said, gazing into the Panamanian’s brown foxlike eyes. “You will be safe and respected.”

  “No, I can’t go with you,” said Varna. “I love Juwan.”

  “You can’t love him. The man is a monster,” said Li.

  “I am Juwan’s,” said Varna.

  “Then what were you doing on the beach?” demanded Li.

  “I was only worried that you would do harm to yourself,” said Varna. “You are our guests.”

  “I’m more than a guest,” said Li, forcing the Panamanian to his knees. “I think you’re a despicable cock tease. I have had many.”

  When Varna continued to resist, Li slapped him hard in the face. He put all his hate into the blow. Varna seemed to shrink in front of his eyes. Li ordered him to take off his workout pants. He never heard the door to the workout facility swing open behind them.

  “Varna,” came the low voice of Black Mamba. “You bitch.”

  Mamba reached the Rogue Power Rack in two bearlike bounds. Varna was already scuttling backward when she clubbed the side of Li’s head with her right fist. It felt like a sledgehammer blow and his head was already ringing as she grasped Li’s left shoulder in a viselike grip.

  Ducking downward, Li pivoted and grabbed her massive left wrist, using all his strength to force her fingers back from the palm. Although she clouted him in the head again with her right fist, he felt the familiar mist thickening in his eyes as he bore down on her fingers with relentless pressure. He heard the four bones break with a crunching sound followed by her loud grunt of pain.

  Mamba’s face was twisted into a frightening mask of agony as he put his right shoulder into her massive belly and drove her onto her back. When she opened her mouth to scream for help, he raised his leg and stomped her, driving the heel of his foot into her throat.

  She let out a bleating whimper and then two loud snorts as she desperately tried to breathe through her crushed larynx. Li continued to stand on her throat until she issued a last keening wail and her breathing stopped. Li stepped down from her body. He felt the mist in his eyes fade away as he looked into the stunned face of Varna.

  “You will help me dispose of her or I will tell your giant imbecile you killed her after she found us together.”

  • • •

  Macaulay’s smartphone kept ringing until it finally switched over to his recorded answer.

  “It’s Tommy Somervell again,” said Macaulay. “He wouldn’t be calling if it wasn’t something really important.”

  “Is your phone encrypted?” asked Barnaby.

  “As well as one can be these days,” said Macaulay.

  “Take it,” said Barnaby when the phone began ringing again a minute later.

  Macaulay put it on the speaker attachment.

  “I’ll be brief, dear boy,” said Tommy Somervell. “June Corcoran is dead, but she hopefully put us on the right trail. I have no idea how this fits into what you have already learned, but here it is. The butcher who commanded the U-113 that sank the Prins Willem was searching the floating wreckage after torpedoing the ship when there was a secondary explosion that rocked the U-boat. One of the lookouts was lost overboard, but no one noticed it until they were ready to dive. By then, he couldn’t be found.”

  “Could von Bulow have picked up the crates?” asked Macaulay.

  “There is nothing in his personal log,” said Tommy, “but I have a few more details about the lookout. He was only fifteen years old and was apparently a beloved mascot among the crew . . . an apprentice seaman named Dieter Jensen.”

  “Repeat that,” said Macaulay.

  “Dieter Jensen,” said Somervell, his voice echoing across the room of the fish shack.

  Mike McGandy grinned and nodded at Macaulay.

  “Thanks, Tommy. I’m sorry about June,” said Macaulay before ending the connection.

  “Dieter Jensen is the old hermit you met out there,” said McGandy. “That’s why they call it Dieter’s Island.”

  “If he’s the same man, how could he have gotten there?” asked Macaulay. “It must be five miles or more from where the Prins Willem went down.”

  “Who knows?” said Barnaby. “As Conan Doyle wrote, if you eliminate all the other possibilities, it has to be the answer.”

  “He must have been the one who saved Morrissey’s life,” said Lexy. “You remember that Morrissey said he heard a strange voice while he was floating in the sea.”

  “And what were they floating on?” said Barnaby.

  “A thousand-to-one shot,” said Macaulay.

  “Ten thousand,” said Barnaby, “but we have to find out.”

  Turning to Mike McGandy, Macaulay said, “When did you say the storm was going to peak?”

  “Sometime this afternoon,” he said.

  Macaulay checked his watch. “That gives us at least three hours to get out there and back. Is your dive boat seaworthy?”

  McGandy nodded and said, “But you’re going to get mighty wet.”

 
“How long will it take to get out there?”

  “The seas are running four to six feet right now with long, deep swells. I can probably make fifteen knots, so figure about thirty minutes each way.”

  Using his good hand, Chris Kimball punched their GPS coordinates into his cell phone and checked the latest forecast.

  “Winds are now predicted to hit a hundred miles an hour by this afternoon,” he said, “along with eighteen-foot seas.”

  “We’ll be back well before then,” said McGandy. “At least we’d better be. When Hurricane Andrew came through, Dieter’s Island was underwater.”

  “When do we leave?” asked Kimball.

  “You’re not going with that shoulder,” said Macaulay. Turning to Barnaby, he said, “And you’re not either, old man.”

  “Try to stop me, General,” said Barnaby. “I’m in charge of this party. If you don’t like it, call the president.”

  THIRTY-FIVE

  30 May

  Casa Grande Brugg

  Dunmore Town

  North Eleuthera

  Bahamas

  Juwan returned to his compound with a feeling of new respect for the old Chinese after visiting Zhou’s newly arrived ship in the harbor. Cleverly disguised as a fishing trawler, it was a lethal military platform, with a bank of cruise missile launchers, antiship missiles, and modern Gatling guns. It was also a deep-sea recovery vessel, with an internal diving platform and a submersible that could explore the ocean bottom and retrieve whatever it was they were searching for.

  Zhou introduced Juwan to the Chinese military team that had also arrived aboard the vessel. Juwan was favorably impressed. There were only twenty of them, but they reminded him of his own men, the type who would enjoy cutting a man’s heart out, removing his tongue, or crushing his groin with a well-placed kick. These men would have to be reckoned with, he decided, after they located the treasure.

  He also noticed that everybody on the ship called the old Chinese lord, as in Yes, my lord. No, my lord. They were almost bowing and scraping to him at every turn. Juwan thought he could get to like having a similar title. Lord Juwan. It sounded good.

  “Where is my mother?” he asked Alvarez upon returning home.

  “I don’t know,” said Alvarez.

  “Find her,” demanded Juwan.

  When he reached the fourth floor and walked into the bedroom, he saw Varna disappearing into the bathroom, and then the sound of the lock being turned from inside. Juwan had already decided to give him more time to get over his recent disappointments. He would make it up to him, he decided, as he listened to Varna’s choked sobs through the door.

  Deciding to take a nap while they waited for the search for the archaeologists to produce results, he lay down on the bed. Feeling a chill from the raging downpour outside, he reached down for the duvet that Varna always left neatly folded at the foot of the bed. It wasn’t there. He lay back and thought about all the weird things that had happened over the previous two days, finally falling asleep as the rain slashed at the windows of the French doors.

  • • •

  The wipers on McGandy’s Land Rover were losing the battle to keep its windshield clear as he drove them across the commercial wharf at the foot of Dunmore Town toward the finger pier where his dive boat was tied up. Aside from an elderly man who was boarding up the downstairs windows of his store, the wharf area was deserted.

  McGandy parked his Land Rover next to his boat slip. Wearing yellow rain slickers and hats, Barnaby and Lexy stepped aboard while Macaulay removed the large canvas duffel bag from the trunk of the vehicle and carried it behind them.

  McGandy unlocked the steel cabin door to the wheelhouse and they stowed the gear against the side bulkhead of the almost-new Munson custom dive boat. It was thirty-four feet long with a ten-foot beam.

  “Catamaran hull,” said Macaulay admiringly.

  “It’ll give us additional stability in seas like the ones we’re heading into,” said McGandy, turning a switch on the steering console and firing up the two Yamaha outboard 250s. “In a calm sea, she’ll do forty-five.”

  Lexy untied the bow and stern lines and McGandy nosed the boat away from the slip and along the pier toward the open sea. As they came out into the channel, Barnaby heard the sudden whine of a loud siren.

  “Get down,” ordered McGandy.

  Across the harbor, the local police patrol boat was bearing down on one of the superyachts that had just slipped its mooring and was preparing to head out to sea. A Dunmore Town policeman with a loud hailer stood in the bow of the police boat.

  “Return to your mooring,” he demanded. “No one leaves the harbor.”

  “They’re making sure you’re not aboard one of the big yachts,” said McGandy. “Just in case.”

  The Munson dive boat was painted dark gray and it blended into the dark curtain of driving rain as they motored along the far side of the channel leading out to the Devil’s Backbone.

  “Even if they see us, there is no way they can catch us,” said McGandy.

  Within a minute, they were cloaked from view in the harbor by heavy mist and rain. McGandy swung the wheel to starboard toward the Devil’s Backbone and gunned both engines. The bow rose and surged forward. Behind them a rooster tail of white foam arced high over the roiling green sea.

  Once they were out on the open water, the waves quickly grew to ten feet, each one separated by a long roller. The bow of the Munson would breast one of the waves and then surge down into the following trough before rising back to meet the next one. Each time it smacked down on a cresting wave, two wings of sea spray would erupt from under the hull. McGandy stood braced at the wheel, his eyes trying to take in every shift in the direction of the sea.

  Conflicting patterns of waves began hitting them broadside, driving the boat over at an alarming angle before regaining its stability. Hit by both at once, the boat would skid sideways before McGandy could bring it back on course.

  The seas grew even more intimidating after they passed through the cut in the Devil’s Backbone and were out into the true ocean. They began climbing mountainous slopes of water before careening down the following trough like an elevator in free fall.

  Lexy felt her stomach churning as she sat wedged in the corner of the cushioned bench along the bulkhead. Sea spray and rain lashed the windows with a loud drumming sound and the wind rose from a moaning whine to a full-throated howl.

  “There is always a chance for a rogue wave,” McGandy called out, searching the sea ahead of them.

  Through the windshield, the clouds above them were almost pure black. McGandy could see occasional flashes of lightning deep inside them. The smell in the air was raw and primeval as if churned from great depths.

  Macaulay had unzipped the canvas duffel bag and had begun cleaning the first of the two Steyr AUG machine guns he and McGandy had taken from the guards during the rescue of Carlos.

  “Brugg chose his armory well,” said Macaulay, soaking a clean cloth with solvent before cleaning the barrel.

  “It’s really light,” said Lexy, picking up the second one.

  “They’re called bull pups,” said Macaulay. “By placing the magazine back here in the stock behind the trigger group, they were able to shorten it to thirty inches. It weighs less than ten pounds.”

  He showed her how to operate the bolt action before fitting one of the thirty-round polymer box magazines into the chamber.

  “Pulling the trigger all the way back gives you fully automatic fire,” he said. “This button on the left exposes the red dot, which means it’s ready to fire.”

  “I hope Alexandra does not need to play with any of your toys,” said Barnaby, looking on from the bench. “We can assume that Jensen doesn’t know we are coming, certainly not in this mess.”

  “He was armed the last time we were out there,” said Lexy. “It
only makes sense to take precautions.”

  The continued battering from the conflicting wave action had turned Barnaby’s face almost lime green.

  “Keep your eyes on the horizon, Dr. Finchem,” said McGandy, taking in his condition.

  “Where exactly is that?” said Barnaby tartly, and McGandy grinned.

  Macaulay was looking toward the stern when he saw the fifteen-foot-high green wall of a rogue wave slam over the port side and fill the rear deck to the gunwales with seawater. It surged forward toward the wheelhouse and hammered against the sealed cabin door before the immensity of the weight drove the stern under.

  With the outboard engines completely covered by the boiling sea, McGandy swung the wheel toward the next broadside wave. As the water drained out through the scuppers, the transom of the boat and its two smoking engines slowly emerged from the sea. Barnaby stared back at them and wondered what their fate would be if one or both failed in the face of the hammering they were taking.

  McGandy seemed to divine his thoughts.

  “Don’t worry about the boat,” he said. “I keep her at the top of the line.”

  “That is very reassuring, Mr. McGandy,” he said as he leaned over an empty five-gallon cleaning bucket and heaved up the contents of his stomach. The sour odor immediately filled the cabin and almost induced Lexy to follow his example.

  “We’ll be there soon,” said McGandy after checking the color ten-inch LED on his Furuno navigation system. “Visibility is down to about two hundred feet. I’ll be taking us in on instruments.”

  Fifteen minutes later Lexy saw the tall mangrove swamp at the end of Dieter’s Island emerge from the curtain of rain and mist.

  “The best place to land you is a footpath I saw the only time I came out here to bring him medical supplies when he got sick and radioed for help,” said McGandy. “He wouldn’t allow me to set foot on the island even though he could barely walk. I had to toss him the kit from the water. The path is off to the right of this mangrove swamp.”