The Bone Hunters

by Robert J. Mrazek

While Alvarez placed the call, Juwan said, “This hermit isn’t fifteen years old. He was an old man when I was a little boy. He has to be pushing ninety.”

  “Ninety,” repeated Zhou, thinking about the math for ten seconds. “That would suggest he might have been fifteen during the Second World War.”

  He looked up at Juwan.

  “The ship we are looking for that carried the Peking Man was sunk in 1942,” said Zhou. “You indicated to us last night that our rivals have been diving on a ship here. That suggests they already knew its location when the call about this man arrived this morning.”

  Alvarez ended his telephone connection and said, “His last name is Jensen.”

  “It cannot be a coincidence,” said Zhou. “He may hold the key to finding the Peking Man on this island.”

  “Your homo,” said Juwan, unwilling yet to challenge the lie.

  “Yes,” said Zhou. “We will need to question this hermit immediately.”

  “My lord,” said Li after reading the transcription, “the message was recorded four hours ago. If it actually went to our enemies, then they are presumably on their way to this island or already there.”

  “A very good point, my son,” agreed Zhou, sounding as if he actually meant it.

  “Do we know if they are armed?” asked Li.

  Alvarez leaned close to Juwan and whispered that whoever had rescued the man from under the guardhouse had taken at least two machine guns.

  “Yes, they are armed,” said Juwan.

  Twenty minutes later, they were exiting the fleet of Humvees by the pier where Zhou’s recovery vessel had been tethered for the duration of the storm. On the way there, Juwan had pressed to have seven of the elite members of his guard unit join in the assault on Dieter’s Island.

  “They know these islands like the backs of their asses,” asserted Juwan, “and how to fight here under these conditions.”

  Before Li could pull his father aside long enough to say that he did not trust the hulking Bahamian any more than his dead mother, Zhou had already agreed to the idea. As they were going aboard the ship, Varna ran from one of the Humvees to join Juwan at the foot of the gangway.

  Reaching up, he hugged the bigger man until Juwan was forced to gently push him away. From the top of the gangway, Li looked down and saw the Panamanian remove an envelope from his pocket and thrust it into Juwan’s hands. In the pelting rain, Juwan just shoved it inside his coat before heading up the gangway.

  He should have killed the Panamanian while he had the chance, thought Li, as he headed inside the passageway to the bridge. As the crew of the recovery vessel loosened the mooring lines and prepared to depart, the assault team leaders assembled on the bridge.

  Colonel Mu had already used the ship’s satellite scanner to project a virtual image of Dieter’s Island on a flat-screen monitor mounted faceup beside the chart table.

  “I would propose that we make separate landings with the ship’s two assault boats,” said Juwan. “Each one is big enough to carry eight fully equipped men.”

  He pointed down at the virtual image of the island on the monitor.

  “Lee Wee here can land one of the boats with his seven men near the beach on the northern edge of the island,” he said, pointing at the map. “I’ll take the other boat with my seven and land on the opposite side near this mangrove swamp. It will make for harder going for us, but we can cut a path through it much faster than Lee Wee’s men.”

  “That is generous,” said Zhou, momentarily bowing his head.

  “There is only one section of high ground on the island and it is somewhere in the middle,” went on Juwan. “I remember that’s where the hermit’s shack used to be before Hurricane Andrew blew it away. We’ll have whoever is there caught in a cross fire.”

  Juwan didn’t tell the little Chinaman that the mangrove swamp where he would be landing was by far the easier assault point. From the one time he was on the island after the hurricane, he knew there was a path through it that would allow them a straight shot to the hermit. Beyond the beach on the north side where Lee Wee was going was a patchy network of bogs. From what the old Chinaman had said, getting to Crazy Dieter first might secure the treasure, whatever it was.

  Li looked at the configuration of the island on the flat screen and said, “Yes. That could work.”

  Aside from what the ape had just said, the plan made sense to him. There would be no way for anyone on the island to escape from between the pincers of the attack. His eyes came to rest on the breast pocket of Juwan’s military fatigues.

  A corner of the white envelope was sticking up. Li could only assume that Varna had written out his confession and, based on the look he had given him in the theater, blamed him for the woman’s death. In truth he had only been defending himself.

  As soon as Brugg read the confession, Li knew, he would come after him. That was a given after what Li had seen him do to the basketball referees with twenty thousand people watching. Li had to somehow find a way to remove the letter from his pocket before Brugg read it or deal with him preemptively as soon as he had the chance on the island.

  Li suddenly felt the ship cant over sharply to the left as it reached open sea, and he almost fell over onto the deck before he could brace his legs. At the same time, a full coffee mug slid straight off the chart table. Li watched as Brugg deftly plucked it out of the air without spilling a drop. For a big man, his reflexes were astonishingly quick.

  “I will not be accompanying you,” said Zhou. “As much as I would like to be there for the recovery of Peking Man, my participation would only be a hindrance to the success of your mission. I can tell you that your success will be rewarded in every way my grateful nation can provide.”

  Juwan showed no reaction as someone thrust open a hatch to the bridge deck and a burst of howling wind slashed through the compartment. The little Chinaman’s words only confirmed that the story of the homo was a dodge. If they were paying him five million dollars to find it, then the real treasure had to be worth far more.

  Zhou left the bridge to go to his private stateroom. Li followed him.

  “This is the most important opportunity I have ever given you,” said Zhou when they were alone, his eyes boring in on Li’s.

  “When we return to China with the fossil, I will see that you are rewarded with a seat on the politburo. Your future as an independent oligarch will be assured.”

  “Thank you, my lord,” said Li.

  “If you do not return with the fossil, do not return,” said Zhou.

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  30 May

  Dieter’s Island

  Off Devil’s Backbone

  North Eleuthera

  Bahamas

  The wind outside the stone hut was easily gusting sixty miles an hour, thought Macaulay as he watched a huge palm frond sail past the window. He glanced at his watch. The storm would reach its peak in a couple of hours. They needed to find the fossil and get back to Mike McGandy’s boat as quickly as possible.

  “When we first came to this place, there was a half-burned shack built by whoever had once lived here,” said Jensen. “The next morning I found an old skiff that had been left behind too. When I felt strong enough, I rowed the wounded man over to the mainland in the dark and left him there on the dock. I later learned the place was called Spanish Wells.”

  “What did you do with the glass containers that were inside the red crate?” asked Lexy gently.

  “I opened the crate a few days later,” said Dieter Jensen. “It contained the bones of a man. I knew from the way they had been carefully packed in the glass containers that he had been a person someone had loved and cared about in his life.”

  The old man’s blue eyes were almost young again as he looked at her. A ghastly smile exposed his almost toothless mouth.

  “My father was a Lutheran minister in Dort
mund,” he said. “I knew the words. I gave him a proper burial out of respect for his family. I said the words over his grave.”

  Lexy remembered the crosses she had seen across the field. “Did you bury him in the cemetery near the pine grove?”

  “I buried a lot of things there over the last seventy years,” he said. “I’ve had many friends, dogs, cats, birds . . . also a man whose body I found in the mangroves after the big hurricane. It’s the only dry ground on the island to bury anything.”

  “Do you remember where you buried the man in the crate?”

  Jensen nodded. “I erected a stout cross over the grave a few months after I got here.”

  “Can you take us to it?” asked Lexy.

  The old man nodded.

  “Do you know who the man was?” he asked, standing up from the chair. “The man in the crate?”

  “Yes,” said Lexy.

  The old man started to open the driftwood door and turned to face them.

  “You must follow in my footsteps,” he said. “Do not stray off the path. There was a time when I was frightened they would try to take me away from here. I put . . . obstacles in their path if they came.”

  “What kind of obstacles?” asked Macaulay.

  “Different things as they came to me,” he said. “Once, I found a small barge beached in the lagoon. It was carrying outdated military stores from the naval base they closed down over there after the war. Before it freed itself and drifted off, I found some . . . good obstacles.”

  Taking in his words, Macaulay handed one of the machine guns to Lexy and strapped the second one over his shoulder. He found a box of bullets for the Lee-Enfield on one of the shelves and loaded the magazine before handing the rifle to Barnaby.

  “Remember to use the right end if you need this,” he said.

  “I was once an Englishman and a Boy Scout,” said Barnaby.

  Two shovels were resting under a lean-to by the wall of the hut, and Macaulay slung them over his free shoulder as they headed out into the pelting rain. They were on the highest point of the island, and Macaulay could see a glimpse of ocean through the tree line.

  Huge wind-driven rollers were pounding ashore near the northern end of the island, the foam-flecked green water surging deep inland before finally stopping to recede back. Jensen came to one of the side paths and led them down it.

  Through the driving rain, the uneven row of wooden crosses that Lexy had seen on their approach to the old man’s hut emerged out of the murky grayness. There were a dozen of them, several with little wooden boards carved with lettering. The graves were surrounded by a crude fence made of mangrove limbs.

  Dieter stopped at a massive fan palm within the small grove of trees that ringed the old man’s cemetery. Lexy saw a fluttering of wings above them and watched the man’s pet frigate bird land nearby on the sand.

  “Sometimes I forget who and what is buried around here,” he said, “but I will always be thankful to this fan palm. I was tied to it when the big hurricane washed over the island. We survived together.”

  Macaulay quickly understood why Jensen had chosen this place for his cemetery. Unlike the boggy muck that coated most of the surface of the low-lying island, the soil was loamy and had good drainage.

  “Keira here,” barked a voice almost drowned out by the wind. It took Macaulay a moment to realize it was coming from the Motorola handheld radio attached to his belt.

  “Back to Keira,” said Macaulay after hitting the transmit button.

  “Time to go,” said McGandy while looking at the LED monitor of his Furuno radar system. “Large vessel approaching . . . definitely coming here . . . extraction now.”

  “Coming,” said Macaulay, throwing down the shovel.

  “We have to go,” said Macaulay, picking up his machine gun.

  “Who is coming?” demanded Dieter Jensen as Lexy hurried him along behind Macaulay and Barnaby. They had reached the main path again that led back to the life raft when Macaulay heard McGandy’s voice again.

  “Too late,” he said. “Two small assault boats detached from ship. One going north round the island . . . the other south toward me.”

  “If you can see them, they can see you. Get out, Keira,” ordered Macaulay.

  “Soon,” said McGandy, ending the call and pulling open one of the bulkhead lockers.

  Macaulay gathered the others around him under the shelter of the grape arbor along the main trail.

  “They obviously know we are here, and we can assume they know that Dieter’s place is on the high ground. If we hole up there, they’ll surround us right away. Our only chance is to have some mobility.”

  “Mobility?” muttered Barnaby, looking at their bedraggled crew.

  “There is a natural chokepoint at the mangrove swamp,” said Macaulay. “It would take hours to cut their way through it. They have to come along the path. One of us can stake out the trail where it opens up and can keep them bottled up there indefinitely.”

  “There is something else waiting for them along that path,” said Jensen.

  Based on the way he was shivering, Lexy thought he was coming down with fever. Barnaby saw it too.

  “I’m a practiced hand now with this blunderbuss, General Macaulay,” he said, still holding the Lee-Enfield. “Just show me where I need to be lurking in ambush when they emerge.”

  Macaulay quickly led him back from the grape arbor past the grove of Chrysophyllum trees. As they were about to clear the tree line, Macaulay saw a small declivity in the ground off to the right beneath the dense foliage. It was about fifty yards from where the path came out of the swamp.

  Pushing through the ground vegetation, he said, “This is as good as we could hope to find. Aside from the muzzle flash of the rifle, they won’t be able to see you. Your field of fire includes twenty yards on both sides of the path in case they try to flank you.”

  “How long should I try to hold?” asked Barnaby, abandoning any attempt at humor.

  “The magazine is full,” said Macaulay. “Ten shots. Just try to keep track of them and save a couple for when you have to pull back.”

  Barnaby unlocked the bolt to open the breech and smoothly shoved it home again to insert a round in the chamber. Macaulay extended his hand and Barnaby took it in his own.

  “Don’t wait too long,” said Macaulay as they shook hands. “I’ll see you back at the ranch.”

  “The good old ranch,” said Barnaby, dropping to his belly and lying behind the declivity.

  Lexy and the old man were waiting for Macaulay when he arrived back at the grape arbor.

  “Where do you think I should meet the group coming in from the other side?” Macaulay asked Jensen.

  “Behind the beach they will have to cross a boggy place,” said the old man. “You want to move them toward the right of it after they come ashore. That row of boulders down there will give you a good firing position.”

  “Barnaby and I will fall back to the stone hut if we have to,” said Macaulay to Lexy. “You stay safe until we get back.”

  Lexy reached out to embrace him for several seconds. Macaulay suddenly heard what sounded like rapid fire from the south side of the island beyond the mangroves.

  “That’s Mike McGandy, I think,” said Macaulay, “giving our friends down there an island welcome.”

  Yanking the bolt back to arm the Steyr AUG machine gun, he headed down the slope toward the row of boulders.

  THIRTY-NINE

  30 May

  Dieter’s Island

  Off Devil’s Backbone

  North Eleuthera

  Bahamas

  “I’m taking automatic fire from across the lagoon,” said Juwan Brugg calmly and evenly into his radio. “Can you take it out?”

  “Yes, we have it,” came back the voice of Colonel Mu from the bridge of the recove
ry vessel.

  Mu could see the position of the boat on the bridge repeater scan. It looked to be about thirty-five feet long and was stopped in the water on the opposite side of the lagoon from the planned landing spot.

  “Arm a Dragonfly,” ordered Mu into the bridge communicator as Zhou sat in the captain’s elevated bridge chair and observed the progress of the mission.

  The ship was violently pitching and rolling in the open sea, which made the Dragonfly a perfect choice. It was a cannon-launched guided projectile system, Chinese-designed, and the latest development in close-in weapon systems.

  “Ready to fire,” came the voice of the gunnery officer in the ship’s fire control center.

  “Lock on the target and fire when ready,” ordered Mu.

  Zhou felt the ship shudder momentarily as it yawed wildly in the heavy sea. Looking out the bridge window, he saw the fiery trail of what looked like a fireworks rocket disappearing into the gloom.

  Ten seconds later, Colonel Mu looked up from the radar screen.

  “The target has disappeared,” he said.

  Juwan stared in awe as the boat across the lagoon exploded before his eyes in a fiery ball of flame. There would be no more trouble from that quarter.

  “Take us in,” he ordered the helmsman.

  A minute earlier, they had been about to run the assault boat up onto the path leading into the mangrove swamp when someone had cut loose at them with what sounded like a Browning Automatic Rifle.

  It had raked the stern of the assault boat, nearly cutting in half one of the men deployed there and badly wounding a second one. When Lieutenant Alvarez said the wounded man would probably not survive, Juwan ordered them both jettisoned over the side.

  He had already lost two of his seven men and they weren’t even on the island yet. Maybe he should have had Lee Wee take this landing spot after all, he thought, as the assault boat came up out of the roiling water and lodged firmly on the path.

  He had them over the side and forming up a few moments later. The point man in the guard unit called out to Juwan to join him farther up the path. When he got there, the guard pointed to an inflated four-man life raft tied bow and stern to the mangrove roots. Juwan gave it a three-second burst with his machine gun.