The Bone Hunters

by Robert J. Mrazek

  Five more commandos were positioned behind trees and rocks farther away along the path. A Chinese man with gold stars on the collar of his uniform was approaching the hut carrying a sodden white towel. Unarmed, he stopped a few feet short of the door.

  “I hope you appreciated my warning,” shouted Li to make his voice heard over the wind. “Now please bring out the man Jensen or I will be forced to kill Dr. Finchem.”

  “He’ll kill him anyway,” said Macaulay from the bed, “and then us.”

  The old man shuffled toward the secured door.

  “I cannot allow the man outside to die over the bones of a man long dead,” he said.

  “Once you show him where the bones are buried, he’ll kill you too,” said Macaulay.

  “Why are the bones so important?” asked Dieter Jensen.

  “They are much older than we led you to believe,” said Lexy. “He may be one of the earliest of our human ancestors. Some people revere him as a god.”

  “If you come out now,” shouted Li, “I give you my word of honor that you will not be harmed. I am only interested in Peking Man. After I have him, you will be free to go.”

  “He’s lying,” said Macaulay.

  “Yes,” agreed Lexy, “but what choice do we have?”

  “Then let it be on your conscience,” shouted Li as he turned around and slowly headed back up the path.

  “I will not allow your friend to be murdered for the sake of a man’s bones, no matter how valuable they might be,” said Dieter.

  Removing the timber beam securing the door, he swung it open and stepped outside into the rain.

  “If you do not harm these people, I will show you the place where the bones are buried,” Jensen called out to Li.

  “It is agreed,” yelled Li. “I am a man of my word.”

  Lexy helped Macaulay to his feet and put her arm under his shoulder to assist him to the open door.

  “He needs help,” called out Lexy.

  Li ordered Brugg’s two commandos to carry Macaulay. Stepping forward, they locked their wrists under his rump and carried him down the path through the driving rain. He lost consciousness again. Lexy joined Barnaby as they reached the side path that led toward Dieter’s cemetery. She saw the open wound on Barnaby’s head and put her arm around him.

  “I deeply regret that my foolhardiness has led us to this end,” he said.

  “I’m an independent woman above all else,” said Lexy. “I’m here because I wanted to be.”

  Closely followed by the armed men, Dieter Jensen didn’t say a word as he led Li and the others into the crudely fenced graveyard. Lexy saw a familiar fluttering of wings above her head and watched as Dieter’s frigate bird landed on top of one of the crosses marking a grave site.

  As the bird sat adjusting its plumage, Lexy heard another shot and watched the bird drop to the ground in a bloody mess of feathers and bone. Jensen looked down at his friend’s remains as Li holstered his semiautomatic pistol.

  “No flying witnesses allowed,” said Li, grinning at the other commandos.

  The pistol shot brought Macaulay up out of his stupor again. The men carrying him had set him back down on the ground near the fenced graveyard with his back to the base of the huge fan palm tree. Barnaby and Lexy were standing alongside him. Two Chinese commandos stood guard with cocked weapons trained on them.

  Fifty feet away, Dieter Jensen walked to a battered old wooden cross on the far edge of the cemetery.

  “Here is where to dig,” he said.

  FORTY-TWO

  30 May

  Dieter’s Island

  Off Devil’s Backbone

  North Eleuthera

  Bahamas

  Dieter picked up a short stick and marked off a five-foot-square section of ground beside the cross.

  “The crate is quite large,” shouted Jensen over the wind as he stepped back from the plot.

  Hearing his words, Barnaby and Macaulay exchanged puzzled glances. They had both seen what remained of the red crate with Chinese lettering on it in the old man’s hut. What crate was he talking about?

  The two shovels that Macaulay had brought along earlier from the stone hut were still lying on the ground where he had left them. Li ordered Brugg’s two surviving commandos to begin digging out the plot.

  The soil was soft and easily dug. A mound of it grew higher as the hole went deeper. Li stood ten feet away with two of his commandos, a triumphant smile on his face. At one point, he looked over at his three captives at the base of the huge fan palm.

  Macaulay caught the momentary unveiled expression in his eyes, the way a feral and hungry fox might look at the captive chickens in the henhouse. He knew Li would have them killed as soon as the Peking Man was safely aboveground.

  The two diggers were down to a depth of three feet when Li heard a loud crunch as one of the shovels struck something hard.

  “Be careful,” he shouted as the men used the edges of the spades to clear the surface of what soon emerged from the loamy soil as the top section of a wooden crate.

  “Come out of there,” ordered Li.

  As the two diggers were climbing out of the hole, Macaulay saw Li motion to the two Chinese standing nearby him. Brugg’s men were walking toward them with satisfied smiles when the two Chinese raised their assault rifles and cut them down with two short bursts. Both were still moving. Li stepped close and shot each of them in the head with his pistol.

  One of the Chinese commandos guarding Macaulay and the others looked down at him and said, “You kill my brother. You next.”

  “Let us see what we have,” said Li, approaching the burial pit. “You had better have been telling the truth, old man.”

  Dieter Jensen was hunched over, leaning awkwardly for support against the nearest cross member. He had seemed to visibly weaken as the two men were digging the hole. Drenched by the pitiless rain, the old man was now shivering almost uncontrollably.

  “You must be careful,” said Jensen. “The glass containers are very fragile.”

  “Remove the top section,” ordered Li.

  The two closest commandos put their assault rifles down and dropped into the large hole. Carefully inserting the edges of the shovels under the cross-hatched wooden cover, they slowly pried it up. The men guarding the prisoners couldn’t contain their curiosity and kept turning to look back at the discovery.

  Macaulay suddenly remembered Dieter Jensen telling them about the things he had found on the barge carrying outdated military supplies. To make obstacles he had said.

  As if in silent communion, Dieter Jensen stared over at Macaulay while continuing to lean on the wooden cross. Without attracting the attention of the commandos in the hole, he slowly waved his index finger in a circle, as if signaling it was time to go.

  Barnaby was already screened from the burial hole by the broad stem of the palm. Macaulay was not. He waited for the guards to look back at the pit again and slid his legs farther around the base. Lexy was still standing fully exposed to the excavated plot, her eyes drawn in sympathy to the old man teetering on the cross at the edge of the hole.

  The two commandos in the pit gently removed the crosshatched crate cover and laid it down next to the hole. Li saw that there were several inches of straw covering the next layer. He ordered the commandos to scoop it away.

  Beneath the straw was a layer of heavy fiberboard. The commandos removed the sheath knives from their belts and inserted them into the outer edges. After cutting around the entire length, they removed the fiberboard layer and tossed it over the wooden crate cover.

  The contents of the crate lay exposed for the first time. Under the sheeting rain, it looked at first to Li like a bed of large orange mushrooms packed in individual wooden compartments. The painted metal crowns of the mushrooms were three inches in diameter. He wondered if the bones were in
dividually packaged under the crowns.

  Behind him, Dieter Jensen picked up one of the shovels and stepped to the edge of the pit. Jumping down on top of the open crate, he lifted the shovel in the air and then rammed the point of it down on one of the orange crowns. Li suddenly realized what they were, that the mushrooms were actually contact fuses on the nose tips of old artillery shells.

  “Kill him,” screamed Li as he pivoted away from the pit and began running.

  One of the commandos in the pit raised the pistol from his belt and shot the old man in the head as he was bringing the shovel down on the contact fuse for a second time.

  Macaulay grabbed Lexy by the knees and heaved her behind the massive base of the palm, enveloping her body under his. His guard turned back to see the movement and aimed his rifle at Macaulay’s back.

  Before he could pull the trigger, a man-made clap of thunder erupted from the burial pit, disintegrating the two commandos inside it along with the already dead Jensen. Seconds later, the shock wave of the blast obliterated everything in the surrounding graveyard as flames from the exploding ordnance erupted a hundred feet into the sky.

  Barnaby watched as the two commandos guarding them were ripped off their feet and driven twenty feet in the air into the stand of pines that fringed the grove. Their bodies came to rest like broken rag dolls, one with his head missing and the other with his arms and legs flung out at impossible angles.

  An unexploded shell landed with a loud thud a few feet away from Macaulay. Still protecting Lexy with his body, he saw the label on the side of the green cylinder. It read 4” NAVAL ILLUMINATING PROJECTILE.

  A British naval star shell, thought Macaulay mechanically, probably military stores from the British naval base shut down at the end of the war. How many of them had detonated? he wondered. It couldn’t have been the whole crate or they would have all been reduced to the bloody pulp that was all that was left of the men in the pit.

  Barnaby gently pulled Macaulay off Lexy and helped her to her feet.

  “We have to get Steve back to the stone hut,” said Lexy, looking down at him.

  Macaulay could barely hear her. He felt something warm running down his cheeks. A steady trickle of blood was streaming from both ears. The still-pounding rain quickly rinsed it away as Lexy and Barnaby began rigging a sling to carry him.

  Barnaby looked for any sign that Li Shen Wui had survived the blast on the other side of the pit. There was nothing recognizable to be seen anymore. All traces of the cemetery and the vegetation beyond it were erased.

  Macaulay passed out again when they were lifting him into the sling.

  FORTY-THREE

  30 May

  Dieter’s Island

  Off Devil’s Backbone

  North Eleuthera

  Bahamas

  Zhou Shen Wui sat wedged into a chair in his stateroom aboard the recovery ship as it rocked and tossed in the brutal sea. He had been violently ill for the last two hours. The sour odor of his vomit filled the room as he waited for the sea to subside long enough to recover the assault boats and retrieve the Peking Man.

  Spray was rattling against the portholes like hailstones as he heard a tap at the stateroom door.

  “Enter,” ordered Zhou.

  It was Colonel Mu. His face was almost as green as Zhou’s, although he had managed to control his stomach. His uniform was sopping wet. It was obvious that he had been outside on the deck and seen the conditions himself.

  “The captain wishes me to respectfully give you his opinion that we can no longer stay here, my lord,” said Mu.

  “We cannot leave until the mission is completed,” said Zhou firmly.

  “My lord, the captain begs to inform you that he cannot hold his position in these seas,” said Mu. “The barometer continues to fall and we are alarmingly close to the reef known locally as the Devil’s Backbone. The captain says that if we do not navigate into safer waters, there is every possibility this ship will founder on the reef.”

  As if to confirm those conditions, the ship began to roll alarmingly over onto its left side. Colonel Mu lost his footing and fell sideways toward the bulkhead. Above his prone body, Zhou could see that the portholes were actually covered with seawater.

  “What have you heard from my son?” demanded Zhou.

  Regaining his footing, Mu held on to the table that was bolted to the deck and said, “We have lost communication with the penetration teams. Each one had a well-trained radioman equipped with a weatherproof transmitter. Both fell silent a short time after they landed on the island.”

  Zhou disentangled himself from his perch as the ship slowly righted itself again and went to the closest porthole. It was like no sea condition he had ever witnessed. The waves seemed as tall as the high-rise buildings in Shanghai. Even the cars of his supertrain would appear like toys against these monstrous and jagged mountains of water. For a moment, he wondered what it must be like for Li and his men on the little island.

  “The captain recommends that we return to the protected anchorage at Dunmore Town until the storm subsides,” said Mu.

  The ship began another slow roll, this one more frightening than the last. Zhou returned to his perch and wedged himself in again. Beyond the stateroom door he could hear loud crashing noises as crockery and glasses broke loose from their cupboards in the dining compartment and smashed on the deck.

  The ship began groaning loudly as it continued its roll. He could see how far the deck was slanted because it looked as if Mu were walking up a steep hill. It was so steep he could no longer stand on it and fell away toward the outer bulkhead. With horror, Zhou realized that the ship was not merely rolling. The deck remained slanted.

  He waited breathlessly as the ship finally stopped rolling and began to come upright again. When it finally did, the motion did not stop, however. It kept rolling straight over to the other side, sending Mu tumbling through the air across the room again.

  It is like living death, thought Zhou as he cracked his head against the corner of the metal cupboard by his chair and felt a jolt of dizzying pain.

  “Tell the captain it is time to go,” said Zhou.

  “Yes, my lord,” said Mu, dragging himself toward the stateroom door.

  FORTY-FOUR

  30 May

  Dieter’s Island

  Off Devil’s Backbone

  North Eleuthera

  Bahamas

  Macaulay awoke to another clap of thunder and the gleam of a kerosene lamp in the shadowy light of the rock hut. He was lying on Dieter Jensen’s bed. The wind was still shrieking like a demented chorus outside. Barnaby sat at the table eating peaches from a fruit jar. Lexy was trying to make the old man’s decrepit radio work with the hand-crank generator.

  “What time is it?” Macaulay asked.

  Lexy’s face lit up.

  “You’re back with us again,” she said.

  “You’ve only been out about thirty minutes,” said Barnaby.

  “I found an ampule of morphine in Dieter’s medical kit and a hypodermic needle,” said Lexy. “Hopefully, it eased some of the pain.”

  Macaulay felt a deep ache inside him. His thigh was no longer on fire, the pain reduced to a dull throb unless he attempted to move it. He knew he couldn’t walk. They would somehow have to carry him when it was time to go, or leave him and come back with more help.

  “No lessening yet in the storm,” said Barnaby, pointing down at the floor with his spoon. Macaulay glanced down. The stone outcropping was covered with six inches of water.

  Barnaby had sealed the window slit opening with a block of coquina rock held in place by Jensen’s heavy iron stove. The stout entrance door was secured with its length of timber inside its iron brackets.

  “Are we expecting anyone?” asked Macaulay.

  “No one has been invited for dinner, but it’s better to
be safe,” said Barnaby, finishing the jar of peaches. “If you’re hungry, I can offer you peaches and coconut milk.”

  His words were still in the air when they heard a loud rapping on the door. A shiver of fear crossed Lexy’s face.

  “If it was our friends from the ship, I doubt they would bother to knock,” said Macaulay.

  “It’s me,” came a voice over the wind. “Mike McGandy.”

  Lexy removed the brace and swung it open. McGandy swept in along with a rush of wind and driving rain. Lexy secured the door behind him.

  “Sweet Jesus, I was sure you were done for,” said Macaulay. “I thought your boat blew up.”

  “It did,” said McGandy, shaking the rain off his poncho and sitting on a rock ledge. Barnaby handed him a fruit jar and he opened it, eating the Caribbean peaches greedily.

  “I wrote off the boat when I decided there was no way I was going to get past that ship,” he said, the juice running down his chin. “I figured if it had assault boats, the ship was equipped with smart weapons, and so I beached it across the lagoon at the closest island. When I opened fire on the assault boat with my BAR, it was from the shoreline. I think I put some hurt into them.”

  “How did you make it back over to Dieter’s island?” asked Macaulay.

  “I swam,” he said.

  “You swam back in this tempest?” asked Barnaby.

  “You don’t think black people know how to swim, Dr. Finchem?” he said in mock anger. “Actually I found one of the scuba rigs undamaged in the wreckage of my boat along with fins and a mask. Underwater it was easy.”

  “What are our chances of getting back across to Dunmore Town?” asked Barnaby. “We’re going to need help from Washington to complete our mission.”

  “The storm should begin to lose power in an hour or so,” said McGandy. “Between now and then, we ought to get Steve down to the mangroves. I found one of the assault boats there and it looks seaworthy. It also has secure radio communications gear aboard.”

  “We don’t have any weapons,” said Lexy. “Did you find any?”