by Fritz Galt
He had felt little concern for the millions of souls who had been removed from their caveman existence. After all, they were being moved out of the valley and into modern cities built expressly for them. The loss of great mountains was regrettable, but the lake would be even more beautiful.
And the loss of cultural and historical artifacts was also sad, but as Little Liang had pointed out at the party plenum that spring, there were far more interesting parts of China that had yet to be exploited for tourism.
No, he had no regrets that these Buddha statues were seeing their last days.
Already, the statue’s knees were covered in water.
His knees?
The oarsman crouched lower under the ceiling and mopped his brow. The caves were cool, not hot. Was the guy getting nervous?
Then Yang felt the boat scrape up against something. He looked around. The elevated stern was rubbing against the cave’s ceiling. The idiot oarsman must have pushed them too far into the cave.
Water began to lap at the Buddha’s thighs, but not in a good way. The combined weight of their small armada of sampans couldn’t have possibly raised the water level in so large a cave.
Suddenly, without warning, the oarsman plunged into the water, rocking the boat violently.
“Son of a monkey!” the Minister of Culture cried. “We nearly capsized.”
Now more buoyant, the sampan became firmly wedged against the ceiling.
The oarsman never reappeared.
“The fool can’t swim,” Yang said.
He looked around at the other men. Alarm was written on their faces, and a damp concern was registered on the crotch of their pants.
He looked at the cave’s entrance. The opening had once been a massive rounded aperture. It had become but a thin crescent.
That was strange. Was the river rising?
Then his worst fear came true. The sampan began to tilt sideways. He felt himself sliding closer to the water.
“We’re drowning!” a man cried from another craft further in the recesses of the cave.
Yang heard the sound of a boat capsizing and the splash of several men.
“I can’t swim!” someone yelled.
In the rapidly disappearing light, Yang made out three old men floundering in the water. They desperately clawed over each other to hold onto their overturning sampan.
Then his own boat flipped over. He grabbed for his cell phone just as he was immersed in the cold, black water. Why didn’t he get the aqua-pouch for the thing, he thought to himself with some irony.
Chapter 30
Earl led May away from the mayhem on the dam. They crossed a grassy field where a lone helicopter sat unattended.
“Listen,” he said, and pulled to a halt. “I know you’ve got a mixed history flying these things, but we need to rescue Brad. He’s up in the Valley of the Caves trying to keep the Central Committee from drowning in the caverns.”
“Brad? He will be dying up there. The committee, too.” Her face was turning pink with emotion. “Liang cannot win this time!”
She climbed aboard the helicopter, and Earl debated whether he should join her.
Secure in the cockpit, she began her preflight check.
Boy, these Chinese girls were multi-talented. With that comforting thought in mind, he followed her into the four-seater.
Once inside, he found a crash helmet in the co-pilot’s seat and quickly crammed it on. But before he could figure out where to sit, May had the chopper’s engine accelerating to full speed.
“Prepare to lift off,” she said into her lip mike.
Earl fell back in the co-pilot’s seat and scrambled to find the proper buckle for his seatbelt.
“So how do we find them?” he asked, as the chopper began to climb.
“First we look,” she said calmly into the mike. “If anyone continues alive, they will be climbing up to be at the higher ground.”
He loved the low, mellifluous voice coming at him through the headset. It instantly set him at ease and reminded him of Jade, minus the tortured English.
He leaned back and allowed himself to soak in her voice, on Brad’s behalf.
A wall of water moved in on Brad. The entire levee must have given way.
“Run uphill, sir,” he cried.
The serene tributary was beginning to froth at his feet.
The old anthropologist was hobbling along the water’s edge. His slippers slid into the water several times.
Brad shouted out a phrase from Boy Scout days. “Climb to safety.”
The old man was just about to reach a cave, but part of the steep slope collapsed above him and turned into an unscalable cliff.
Where was Dr. Yu trying to take him? Into the cave? Then the guy leaned over a large boulder.
“What are you doing?”
Dr. Yu lifted out a bulging canvas bag. “Bones,” he said.
“The country’s entire government is going to drown in some caves upriver,” Brad cried in exasperation.
“Oh? But these are important, too.”
Brad closed his eyes and nodded. He understood the scientist’s perspective all too well. “Then let me carry the specimens.”
“Be careful, my young friend.” Yu handed him the sack. “These are not bones for the dog. I have carbon-dated and authenticated them. These are the remains of 600,000-year-old Homo sapiens.”
Oh Lord. Yu had found the Holy Grail of anthropology. He was carrying what was essentially the Adam and Eve of modern man.
He knew from the surrounding geological layering that the scientist was right on the mark concerning the age of the find. And nobody could confuse a Homo sapiens with a Homo erectus. One just had to look at the absence of a retromolar gap, the existence of a chin, and the delicacy of the brow.
Whereas surviving physical evidence had long shown that the latest forms of Homo erectus died out half a million years ago and Homo sapiens appeared shortly thereafter two hundred thousand years later, this remarkable find demonstrated that the two species co-existed for at least a hundred thousand years and in the same region of the world. One species did not immediately replace the other, holding out the possibility that the two had interbred to form modern man.
Waves washed up to his knees. What was he thinking about? He had to keep the bag dry. He looked up at the cliff before them. There was no way he could scale that thing. Dr. Yu slipped once more, and Brad barely caught his arm. Jeez, the old man could have been pulled away by the surging water.
Just then, Brad heard a chopper buzzing toward them.
He didn’t need any more distractions. He had to find a way up that cliff.
“Look,” Dr. Yu said.
Brad turned and looked. In the cockpit, a dark form deftly worked the controls to pivot the light military helicopter. The pilot’s face came into full view.
It was enough to make his manhood surge. May had come to the rescue, for once.
“Oh yeah. Come on, baby!” he shouted. “I found your dad!”
But when he looked to where he was pointing, the scientist was gone.
The only thing left in his hands was the bag containing the discoveries. Dr. Yu must have slipped into the river while Brad was looking at the chopper. Man, May was going to be pissed.
He scanned the turbulent water. Its surface was further swept about by the downdraft from the rotor blades.
Then Brad spotted a man drawn out into the swift current, white hair plastered to his face. “There he is!” he shouted, and pointed to the center of the flooded tributary.
He looked up to catch May’s attention. But inexplicably she was turning the helicopter around.
Away from her father.
In the narrowing pocket of air, all the committee members were spluttering epithets as they spat out water.
It was as dark as midnight, but Prime Minister Yang could visualize the angry faces behind the voices.
“This was Liang’s idea.”
“He put us up to it.�
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“He never sent in anyone to warn us.”
“The boatmen brought us here to die.”
“Order, please,” Yang spoke up for the first time.
One of the voices turned to him. “We hold Liang responsible for this situation.”
“That’s because he wanted us dead,” Yang said.
In a uniform slosh of water, the rest turned to him.
“How do you know?”
“I tried to call President Qian just before we entered the cave,” he said. “There was no answer.”
“You have a cell phone?”
“Yes, but it will not work from within the cave. I tried.”
Silence pervaded the diminishing cavity of air. The only sound was that of water creeping up the cave walls.
Yang resumed his explanation. “Liang has taken out the entire ruling apparatus of the party in one stroke,” he said. “He will be the next president.”
In the stunned silence that followed, there came a frail voice.
“Then this is the end for us.”
Yang shifted his weight higher on the rock to which he was clinging, the cell phone still in one hand above the water. The crown of his head butted up against the roof of the cave.
“We have to conserve oxygen,” he said. “I move that we stop talking.”
Chapter 31
Brad looked at the old man, who was barely afloat in the water, then down at the sack in his hands, and finally at the rising water that tore at his legs.
He had only a moment to consider his options. For just then a sleek pair of patrolling helicopters appeared over a ridge on the far side of the river. Their cannons began erupting with explosive automatic fire. Perhaps they were under strict orders to shoot down any unauthorized aircraft during the opening ceremony.
The attacking helicopters were spitting deadly fire directly at May’s chopper, but stray bullets landed all about him. He hunkered down in a futile attempt to find cover among the rocks.
May climbed abruptly and drew the fire away from his position. Then she spun about and returned fire, rising all the while. The tracer bullets from the enemy choppers followed in her wake. They narrowly missed her skids and the underside of her fuselage.
If she was preoccupied defending herself, it was up to him to do something to help her drowning father. But what about the sack of bones?
Saving the bones might rewrite history. Saving May’s father, on the other hand, might serve to cement their relationship.
The thought of death by drowning was viscerally revolting to him, as opposed to plummeting to his death from an austere precipice. Now, that was a way to go.
The pounding gunfire overhead thundered in his gut.
His life seemed to have boiled down to the two options, the personal and the historic. He could launch himself into a maelstrom of water to save the father of his greatest love. Or he could embrace the bag, protect it with his whole being, scramble upwards and give mankind the gift of knowing its true heritage, and thereby rescue the truth for posterity, revitalize his own theories of modern man’s origins, and restore some of his lost credibility.
For a brief instant the image of his stepfather’s triumphant face appeared before him. But there was more to saving the bag of bones than pure vindication. Professor Richter and all those bullies like him needed to be stopped, put in their place. For they were part of some unholy conspiracy that threatened to trample the rights of decent people everywhere. In the end, rescuing the bones wasn’t a selfish act at all.
And you believe that?
“Shut up! I’ve had it with you. Get out of my head.”
Everything to come is held in this moment.
“Okay. Okay!” he screamed. “When in doubt, stick with what I know best: insanity!”
And with that, he launched himself into the swift current, the top of the bag clinched firmly between his teeth.
Excellent decision.
Brad resurfaced after his plunge and was spun about by the turbulent water.
Gradually he got his bearings. All his deliberations on the riverbank must have taken a mere instant, for he could still see the white cork of Dr. Yu’s head bobbing toward the center of the swollen river.
Even though fully immersed in water, he began to taste the bag in his mouth. Its oily canvas tasted like the dust of the excavation site. It reeked of the dry work of anthropology. The work he had loved all his life. After all those millennia of being buried, the bones could use a brief rinse.
He took off toward May’s father with a strong, scissor-kick, carried along by an incoming wall of water.
The tidal wave picked him up and raised him several feet above the surface. For a moment, his feet were kicking at dry air. He was coming in fast on the old man.
“Look out. Grab my hand,” he shouted.
The old man turned around. It was not a moment too soon. The poor guy looked exhausted. He seemed to be inhaling more water than air.
Brad saw him reach up feebly. He grabbed the old guy’s hand and held it fast, all the while tumbling forward in front of the wave that quickly dragged both of them down under the surface. He opened his eyes in the cold, quiet environment. He could see light racing across the pebbly river bottom as the wave rushed overhead.
The scientist was grunting underwater, but Brad held him tight. With a swift push off the river bottom, he rose to the surface and heaved Dr. Yu upward with him.
“Hold on!” he yelled at Dr. Yu through a closed jaw. The current tugged at the bag and threatened to pull it from his mouth. But Brad was like a pit bull, never letting go.
He dogpaddled behind the old guy and slipped an arm under his shoulder and around his chest.
The anthropologist coughed and gasped, unable to speak. His eyes were nearly rolled back in his head.
The guy was certainly tough. May came from good stock.
You will have beautiful babies.
Oh, great. Good to know. He would cling to that thought while they both drowned.
With the old man’s head resting against his neck and the bag pulling like a hooked salmon against his teeth, he made a desperate bid for the far shoreline. He had to cut diagonally across the current.
But the river was going too fast. If he hit the rocky embankment, at the very least he’d be knocked senseless, and possibly he and his hapless human cargo would be killed.
To make matters worse, large pieces of metal were washing up against him. Some nearly rammed him in the back of the head. He looked around wildly. The glass bubble of a helicopter fuselage floated briskly past him like a giant air bubble.
Oh God. Was that May?
He reached out to grab it, but in a second it was gone.
Then he had to watch out for other pieces of debris that might impale him. It must have been some air battle. May would not have gone down without a fight.
Just then a giant shadow hovered overhead and a burst of downdraft blew in his face. For a brief moment, the turbulent waves subsided into a circle of enlarging rings, like a pebble dropped in a lake.
He heard a splash and a plunk. Something hit the water just behind him. Was it a grenade?
He whirled around. To his surprise, something was hanging from the helicopter. It was a rope ladder.
But he was swept away from it as the current sped him along. The helicopter raced ahead, slowed down, and managed to drag the ladder over his head.
He reached up with his free hand and was able to grab hold of it. He looped his arm around one of the rungs.
It tore at his sore shoulder.
With all the waterlogged weight he carried, it was all he could do just to hang on.
Drip. Drip.
Sullivan was beginning to doubt that he could last through the day. In truth, he wasn’t even sure of the time. Had he been sitting there in the dark for forty-five minutes or five hours?
The effect of the darkness on his psyche was profound. Because of the restraints at his forearms, hands, ankles and
forehead, his sense of his body became focused almost exclusively on his single upturned wrist.
Drip.
For a while he tried to occupy his mind with mental calculations: multiplication tables, temperature conversions, and thirty-year mortgage rates. He eventually lost the necessary powers of concentration and began to grind his teeth and pop his jawbone while tensing against the straps that bound him.
Drip. Drip. Drip.
He began to regret not having that talk with his son and imagined the scenario over and over again. Then his thoughts reverted to images of giant bells and the hunchback that was ringing them in unison with the drumming against his wrist.
Come on. It was only water drops, after all. Why should it bother him so much?
He had to ride this out. His son didn’t need to find and lose his father all on the same day.
Brad could tell that the helicopter pilot was clever, following the torrent, matching its speed, and waiting for a relatively safe place to pull Dr. Yu and him toward shore.
Several hundred meters later, far beyond the caves and on the opposite shore, they got their chance. What appeared to be a giant sandbank caused a backwash at a bend in the river. If they could only be guided out of the floodtide and toward the calm eddy, he might be able to crawl out of the water.
But his ladder arm was beginning to give way under the load. He couldn’t hold on much longer.
“Hang in there, sir,” he grunted. They were towed out of the swirling current into a calm pool. Then his feet struck sand, and they were safe at last.
He let go of the ladder and struggled to drag Dr. Yu out of the water.
Brad sat down with exhaustion on the edge of the embankment. He cradled the old man’s head in his lap, and the bag of bones rested securely by his side.
He waved the all-clear signal to the chopper. Now, if he could only stay above the rising waterline.
The helicopter lifted higher, turned cautiously, then set down on a rocky outcropping about ten meters higher in elevation.
A familiar, dwarf-like figure was the first out of the cockpit and scrambled down the slope.