“What now?” inquired Cord. “I have to report in to my editor – at least I can file a few paragraphs on this mess.”
The scientific detective shook his head, rubbed his jaw. “No, Al, I would appreciate it if you didn’t. I want to keep this quiet for now. Things are beginning to reveal themselves in my mind and I can see the path.”
He paused, then looked toward the Hudson River.
“Two paths, actually, but with one single destination. And I’m determined to follow them both to that conclusion.”
Chapter Four
MIDNIGHT SWIM
Pushing the boat away from the dock, Lynn Lash slipped the oars into the chilly water and pointed himself at the center point of the river. Back on the dock, Al Cord struck up a halfhearted wave as he watched the skiff depart.
The small craft was laden with scientific equipment, including a cumbersome apparatus that looked like something out of a radio station’s control booth. With it, there was simply no room for the stocky reporter; Lash, dressed in a bulky coat and a timeworn fedora, was taking to the water alone to further the hunt for the Hudson River Monster.
Lash looked all around him as he pulled on the oars, feeling a bit uncomfortable about being out on the river in the middle of the night. But, as he had seen himself, the thing in the water, whatever it was, seemed to be nocturnal. So, nighttime it was, despite the plummeting temperature and distinct lack of clear vision.
Reaching his destination, a point roughly halfway between the city and the Jersey shore, Lash pulled in his oars and prepared his experiment.
From out of a chest on the bottom of the boat he hefted a miniature watercraft shaped like a small torpedo and sporting a propeller and rotating fins to each side. Looking it over, Lash pulled up a small antenna from the thing’s topside and, satisfied with it, carefully placed it in the water.
He flipped a few switches on his control board and a tiny light on the craft glowed in correspondence with a telltale on the panel. The detective then twisted two large dials and pulled back on a lever.
The watercraft gave a little start and then began to move away from the skiff.
After coming to the conclusion that another search for the so-called monster was the next step in his investigations, Lash jumped at the chance to use his new radio wave-controlled equipment. The little craft was performing perfectly as it completed several loops around his boat and then dived into the cold waters of the Hudson. He checked his screen and noted its signal strength: clear and strong.
“All right, Mr. Monster,” he said to himself, peering intently at the control board, “any time now.”
The miniature submersible was equipped with the ability to send back object detection waves along its radio signal, which Lash hoped would give him the heads up should any large, unnatural bodies suddenly appear on or in the river.
He got his heads up sooner than later.
Lash’s screen revealed his craft was being approached by a good-sized object moving in rapidly from the north. Then, the clear signal wavered, hiccupped, and disappeared.
He jerked his eyes from the board and scanned the water. Nothing.
Then, out of the corner of his eye, he spotted Al Cord back on the dock, jumping up and down, waving his arms.
Swiveling his head back to the north, he witnessed an immense dark hump splitting the water only twenty feet from his skiff. It bore down on him at incredible speed, throwing off a soaking spray of water to both sides.
Lash clutched at both sides of his boat, but it was far too late. The impact came a half second later, a jarring, bone wrenching crash that sent him, his equipment and the jagged remains of the boat up and into the freezing waters of the river.
The detective plunged below the surface, somehow avoiding the debris of his experiments and skiff. The water gripped him like a vise, cold and cloying. Fighting down a natural rise of panic, he tried to orient himself and quickly reach the surface. Whatever it was that had destroyed his boat was most likely still nearby and potentially still dangerous.
He reached into a pocket of his bulky jacket and pushed in on a pad there. Instantly, his immediate vicinity was suffused with light. Lash had taken the clever initiative of fitting his coat with small flashlights that he’d sewn into the material front and back. The lights were charged by batteries fully protected from the elements. He now knew that they worked underwater, at least for the moment.
Looking down into the river all around him, it was then that he discovered something else, something unquestionably more fascinating.
There wasn’t a single monster in the Hudson River that night.
There were two.
His scientific curiosity overwhelmed him as he watched the two beasts swim close to each other and then abruptly part, one darting off with a great undulation of body, tail and fins. Then, the remaining thing slowly turned toward him.
One part of Lynn Lash’s brain screamed go, leave, while another part, the analytical portion, whispered plesiosaur, amazing.
The sensible half of his brain won out, though, and he stroked to the surface for air. Once there he gulped in copious amounts of the stuff, then, after only a moment’s hesitation, dived back down into the chilly waters.
Lash was just in time to catch a glimpse of the monster as it dived toward the city side of the river and down into the cold, dark depths. Somewhere below him rested the incredible Midtown Tunnel project, an unfinished dream of connecting two states, two cities. He wondered if the monster was up to more mischief concerning the construction.
Reaching again into his pockets, he pressed at different spots on the lining and heat, blessed heat, began to spread out from several areas along his coat. An exothermic reaction from the mixing of water mixed together with magnesium sulfate in packets, the warmth gave him the strength to pursue his target.
The feeble light from his coat only illuminated his immediate area, but it was enough to put him back on the track of the beast. Before he knew what was happening, though, Lash felt himself grabbed by a potent current or suction and pulled along bodily in the wake of the monster.
His coat lights faltering and the air in his lungs expiring, he soon lost a sense of up and down as the darkness and the cold engulfed him completely.
*****
Air! Precious air assailed him as he came up out of the water and into an enclosed space.
Lynn Lash shook the water from his face and rubbed at his eyes, blinking from the artificial illumination in the strange space. He realized with a start that it appeared to be nothing less than an underground subway station, either abandoned or perhaps never finished or utilized at all. The detective surmised that he had come through a flooded tunnel that somehow connected the river with the station, an alien and forgotten part of the New York system.
High overhead he saw a tiled, arched ceiling. The pool of water he found himself in stretched from one end of the space to the other, a massive area that could encompass a monster from prehistoric times.
And so it did.
Lash looked across the surface of the water and watched as a gigantic black hump broke through and rose up to the floor of the station: the monster, no doubt. He looked around for a weapon, futilely.
Then, a portion of the skin on the thing’s back cracked open and lifted up. Human heads popped up from the opening and several men poured out of the creature and onto the platform.
A submarine! Cleverly disguised as a gigantic river monster, Lash saw the incredible design and production that had gone into the confounding craft, a submersible fitted with intricate, flexible limbs and a head and neck which he guessed doubled as both periscope and battering ram. From afar, the craft would be almost indistinguishable from a living thing.
And its owners had two of the craft; he had seen it with his own eyes.
Lash floated over to a spot next to the floor of the station, hiding himself as well he could beneath a lip at the edge of the platform, but still allowing him some line of sight f
or the proceedings. He saw that at least half the dozen or so men who exited the submersible were Asian.
A smell suddenly came to his nostrils, pungent and strong. It was the smell of some sort of cooking, yet also his elusive scent from the days before.
All at once, memories rushed in on Lash, flooding him with recognition of the odor.
Fugu, he thought to himself; masked by spices and other condiments perhaps, but assuredly the prized delicacy of a certain Asian nation. A nation that had recently committed egregious acts of invasion and cruelty upon its neighbors. A nation of which the men on the platform were most certainly native.
A dark haired figure that Lynn guessed to be the leader of the pack spun on his heel and faced a Western gentleman who stood at the forefront of the few others of his kind.
“Idiocy!” bellowed the man in heavily accented English. He raised his hands above his head to emphasize his point. “Why did we employ you into our service?” he continued, clearly frustrated. “We cannot move so easily among your society, so we have paid you – handsomely – to do much work for us. And for what? Idiocy!”
“Not our fault,” expressed the Canadian. “That Lash is a tough customer. Besides, haven’t you gotten enough girls by now, anyway?”
“Our officers demand more. They carry the weight of the commands of our celestial Emperor, so they are to be rewarded with the white females. Soon, this entire wretched nation shall be under our rule and its citizens openly subject to our pleasure, but for now, we have been ordered to continue to bring them these…morsels for their consumption. I do not question this, nor should you!”
The Canadian frowned, took a wary step back from the man. From the tense exchange, Lash sensed that the entire deal was beginning to go south, rotting from within. At least he knew now the secret behind the disappearances. And the monster.
“Only a few more females are demanded,” soothed the Asian leader. “Then, we and our dragon will return to my beautiful country and await the inevitable order for full invasion.”
His hand gestured toward the submersible as he spoke; his “dragon,” Lash realized. The other craft might at that very moment be out harvesting more young girls from the city!
He had to do something – but what?
“Come!” said the leader, looking around at his own men and his hirelings. “Let us not quibble and squabble anew. Come and eat with us and we shall then discuss our further plans…”
The head of the Followers of Negus glanced at his own fellows, the look on his face indicating his surprise at the offer. Obviously this was something new and not entirely unwelcome to the men.
Picking up a dish from a table near a cooking area, the Asian leader bowed and indicated that the hirelings should each take a small plate from a stack and hold it out for their portions.
“This is fugu,” announced the man proudly. “It is the food of the gods, and of our ancestors. It is an honor in itself, so rare and delicious it is. To consume it is to take within you the fire of strength, of masculinity…of divinity.”
The Western men smiled at each other, evidently pleased by the man’s words. They all held out their plates and watched as a measure of the fugu was placed on each of them.
In the water, off to one side, Lynn Lash clamped down hard on his tongue, a cry of alarm threatening to burst out of his mouth. To yell now, to say anything, would surely bring about his own swift death.
He knew this delicacy, a variety of pufferfish called the “river pig,” most likely Takifugu rubripes. He had encountered it long ago in his younger days of travel around the globe.
Conflicted, Lash could only float there and remain a mute witness to what was to come next.
The leader of the dragon boat nodded to his own men who all took some of the fish, served fried as Fugu Kara-age, onto their own plates. He then raised his chopsticks and his voice.
“Eat, gentlemen. It is an honor to share our meal with you.”
The fish was raised to mouths, bites taken, portions chewed, swallowed. Lash found himself holding his breath, wide eyed.
When each man had finished his fugu, there were smiles all around the circle.
Suddenly, one of the westerners coughed. Then another and another. Hands clutched at stomachs, then throats. Silent questions appeared on faces, confusion over what was happening to each one of them.
Within a minute, not a single one of the white men could move. But their eyes revealed that they were fully conscious and screaming without sound from within.
Lash swore to himself at the treachery of it all. The pufferfish’s organs contained death in the form of a poison called tetrodotoxin. Only the most highly skilled of culinary wizards could prepare fugu in the exacting fashion so as to remove that which was edible and that which brought complete paralyzation and then asphyxiation.
The hirelings had been fed the poisoned portions. Their hosts had not.
Lash knew that the fish was used in many secret societies throughout the small aggressor nation as a binding of sorts, a strengthening of each group’s mission and makeup. The men who had been abducting the girls and perpetrating the monster hoax had obviously been consuming great amounts of fugu during their stay, thus the permeating smell of it on their lackeys and in their wake.
He had no sooner wondered how long it would take for the men on the platform to begin to choke and asphyxiate when he watched in horror as the Asians one by one pushed each paralyzed man directly into the water.
The detective swiftly pushed himself back and under the water, for fear of being spotted. Anger, hot and sword-edged, lanced through him. He had no love for the men who had both attempted to deceive him and attack him, but precious few deserved such a horrific fate.
He turned in the water to orient himself and came face-to-face with the Canadian, only inches away from him.
The man’s eyes were wide as saucers, terror etched into their every line, every circle. Frozen into the same position in which he had held up on the platform, he floated away from Lash, the bubbles from his open mouth diminishing and petering away to nothingness.
Lash broke the surface of the water once more and listened at the lip of the platform.
“…is the end of that,” came the leader’s voice, speaking in his own language. “A loose end now tied up. Prepare the dragon – we will give the people of this city another ‘sighting’ of their monster and then claim our next nightingales.”
Picking through the foreign tongue, trying to translate it in his head, he heard his own name spoken as a question by another.
“Lynn Lash,” shot back the leader, “is of no more concern to us.”
Throwing daggers with his eyes, the scientific detective swore there and then that he’d be of very, very great concern to the band of kidnappers and murderers.
Even if it was the very last thing he’d ever do for his country.
Chapter Five
OIL AND WATER
He knew with scientific accuracy he couldn’t go out the same way he’d come in.
Calming himself, Lynn Lash studied his surroundings. He counted a total of seven men, including the leader, there on the platform. Only one had heeded his leader’s directive to prepare the sub; the others were still gathered around their meal, placing slices of the fugu into a wide metal bowl of hot oil over a small stove.
It would have to do, thought the genius to himself. Now or never.
Slipping both hands up and out of the water he grasped the lip of the platform and tensed the muscles in his arms. Waiting for just the right moment, he pulled himself up as swiftly as humanly possible.
The men around the stove looked up at the dripping wet Lash, puzzled at the sudden and almost supernatural sight of him. They froze, gifting Lash with the opportunity he’d hoped for.
Pulling a small white pouch from one of his coat pockets he crushed it in his hand and raised it to his lips, all the while moving quickly toward the huddled mass of men.
Already he felt the he
at from the combination of water and magnesium sulfate in the wax paper packet, one of his own special designs. He tore the packet open with his teeth and threw its contents into the pan of hot oil and fish.
The pan exploded into seething, sizzling chaos, the water flash-boiling the moment it hit the oil and instantaneous clouds of steam filling the air.
The men around the pan screamed in surprise but also in pain – the hot oil ate at the skin of their hands, their necks and their faces. The magnesium sulfate had served to magnify the heat, riddling the men with searing barbs of sharp agony.
Lynn Lash didn’t wait for what might come next. Spying a pistol on a nearby table he snatched it up and wheeled around to fire at the men’s leader.
The man was gone, like a wraith.
Lash spun around, desperate to find him, knowing full well the extent of his cunning and deviousness. He heard a clank of metal on metal and squeezed off a shot in its general direction.
A loud bark of cursing in a foreign tongue told him his shot had come close to the mark. Lash swiveled in place, remembering the men behind him, wary of their recovery from the hot oil. Unfortunately, steam still filled the air of the forgotten station, obscuring everything within view.
Angry hornets of lead suddenly tore at the edges of his jacket, narrowly missing his body. Without hesitation he pumped one bullet after another into the steam around the stove. Cries of anguish tore through the air. The sounds of bodies slumping over and hitting the platform were sweet music to Lash’s ears.
But how many had he hit? How many of the foreign devils were left?
Lash dove for cover behind a crop of furniture off to one side of the large area of the station. More cursing assailed his ears. Then came the sound of soft crying, mewling.
He looked all around, searching for the sound’s origin. He spotted an opening along a wall to his right; it was covered with what looked like the door to a jail cell. Or a cage.
Scooting over to the door, a horrific, stomach churning sight came into view.
The New Adventures of Lynn Lash Page 10