Black Scorpion (26 page)

FIFTY-EIGHT

F
RENCH
G
UIANA, FIVE YEARS AGO

The gunmen had come in canoe-like crafts that were actually hollowed-out logs; six of them packed three in each. Their weapons looked old, dated, but deadly.

“Must be poachers,” Michael assumed, after explaining to Paddy what he'd seen.

“Not armed like that, they ain't.”

“What then?”

“Let's break camp.”

“We're leaving?” Michael raised.

“Moving. Men you spotted are likely kidnappers. We move on, unless you got eyes on killing them, mate.”

“They were headed down the path that leads to the camp of those archaeologists.”

“Bad day for those diggers, then. Bad day for that bitch you got yourself a hard-on for.”

“We've got to do something.”

“Then by all means,” Paddy told him, sitting down on a rock, “gear up and go do it, mate.”

“You're not coming?”

“Rules are rules, mate. You do what I say when I say, and right now I say to take your arse where I tell you. You don't want to do that, you're welcome to all the knives you can carry.”

“Where will you be?”

“Fucking gone,” Paddy told him.

“Maybe you should practice what you preach.”

*   *   *

Michael felt his heart thudding in his chest as he dropped into a facedown body crawl through ground brush the last stretch of the way into the camp. It was hot and steamy, and the moist dirt used his sweat like glue to stick to his clothes and face.

Michael had just reached the rim of the camp and outermost tents when he heard the crackle of gunfire. Training was one thing; putting that training into practice was something else entirely. The truth was he desperately wished Paddy was here, or Alexander, but the greater truth was they weren't and this was up to him alone.

He eased himself along the camp's outskirts, careful to belly crawl through its darkest reaches and prepared to use his knives just the way Paddy had taught him. The gunmen were rousing the twenty-five or so archaeological students and professionals from their tents, ordering them about in a language neither the students nor Michael understood, as he studied their movements, their faces. He recognized the two camp guards and realized they were actually part of the kidnappers, had likely been behind alerting these men to the presence of so many potential victims, each representing a sizeable bounty.

That's when he heard a rustling in the brush behind him and turned to see Scarlett Swan returning from a makeshift bath in a nearby stream, wearing only a towel. Emerging into the clearing twenty feet before him with no idea of what she was walking into.

“Scarlett!” Michael called in a hushed voice too soft for her to hear.

Her sandaled steps froze too late, one of the kidnappers on her before she could retreat. Dragging her all the way into the clearing and stopping only when her towel fell, leaving her naked. The kidnapper gawked at her, eyes bulging at the perfect shape of her body.

Scarlett slapped him across the face, drawing laughter from the other kidnappers standing over their now kneeling hostages. The kidnapper laughed too, was still laughing when he slapped Scarlett back.

And she slapped him.

And he slapped her, each blow harder than the one preceding it, the laughter growing louder as the two of them stood face-to-face exchanging slap after slap and blood started dribbling from Scarlett's mouth.

Another kidnapper, meanwhile, was dragging one of the college-age women by the hair across the rough ground toward a tent. And a third kidnapper stood over a kneeling man, spinning the cylinder of an ancient revolver after filling only a single chamber with a bullet.

By then Michael had started to rise. None of the kidnappers noticed, too busy slapping their knees in rhythm with their laughter. They were nearing hysterics when Michael got to his feet behind the thin cover of the brush, not a single eye turned toward him when he burst into motion, twin knives in either hand.

Michael clung to the shadows, obscuring any view of him for the longest time possible. The first kidnapper to spot him was the one holding the revolver against the kneeling man's head. He jerked the pistol upward in the same moment Michael unleashed his first knife.

The hammer clicked on an empty chamber as Michael's blade thwacked into the man's chest. The man regarded it briefly, looking puzzled, and then keeled over to the jungle floor dead.

Michael's second blade was already in motion by then, taking the kidnapper dragging the girl off toward the tent in the throat and unleashing a fountain of blood that showered her.

Six left
, Michael had the sense to register in his mind.

The kidnapper exchanging slaps with Scarlett was twisting to free a submachine gun from his shoulder when Michael twirled toward him and cut his throat. Felt the warm spray of blood as he kept in motion, machete unsheathed now and cutting one way, then the other. It didn't feel real, it didn't feel like
anything
and seemed to unfold in the gap between single breaths.

Michael thought he heard cries of anguish and panic but couldn't be sure. Another gunman opened up with a wild spray that found nothing but brush, before Michael plunged the same hunting knife he'd used on the wild boar in as far as it would go and left it there. Some primal instinct made him duck, and a barrage fired by another kidnapper found the man he'd just stabbed instead.

The dead man's submachine gun hit the ground ahead of him and Michael dove after it, spinning as he took its warm steel in his grasp. He clacked off a barrage that was wild at first, before quickly honing in on the motion of targets darting about the clearing that had turned to utter chaos.

Michael recorded high-pitched screams, the hostages he thought, as he recorded three more kidnappers downed before the weapon clicked empty. He glimpsed Scarlett slamming into the final man just as he was about to fire a clear shot Michael's way. That shot went skyward instead and, enraged, the man cracked the weapon's butt into Scarlett's skull. Should've swung back toward Michael at that point, but moved to finish her instead.

Michael grazed the man's shoulder with his next toss, leaving him only a single knife left. His mind calculated distance and angle, enough to tell him he didn't dare risk his last knife on another errant throw, and surged toward the final gunman instead.

The kidnapper had just started the butt of his rifle down toward Scarlett again, his expression twisted in fury, when Michael jammed the blade into his thorax all the way to the hilt. Feeling it dig through muscle and sinew felt like slicing through thick burlap. The man lashed his rifle around in a slicing motion that caught Michael in the side of the head, turning him wobbly on his feet with his senses gone fuzzy. Saw two of the man, a double image, looming over him when the man re-steadied his submachine gun, just as Michael's hand closed on a rock beneath him on the ground.

But which of the images to aim it at?

He wasn't sure why he chose the one on the right, only that the thud of impact was followed by both of them tumbling over. Michael pounced upon the only one that landed, the same rock pounding the man's face again and again until there was nothing recognizable left and he tossed it aside, his clothes and skin covered in blood.

He might have stayed there forever if he hadn't heard a rhythmic beating he first took to be his own heartbeat until he turned and spotted Paddy standing at the edge of the clearing, applauding him.

“You're ready, mate,” he said, grinning.

“I thought you'd be fucking gone.”

“Changed my mind,” Paddy said.

Michael swung toward Scarlett, who was shaking her head, flabbergasted, unable to believe what she'd just seen him do.

“Who'd you say you were again?” she asked, stepping behind some thick brush to cover her naked form.

“Just a friend,” Michael told her.

*   *   *

Paddy sent Michael and Scarlett, dressed in fresh clothes, for help, offering to stay with the others until at least she returned. Their trek through the woods would take them to an international way station from which they could summon the proper authorities. The jungle trails were too narrow to accommodate vehicles and the canopy too thick to allow for helicopters. Supply runs were normally made on the back of donkeys or horses, and they clung to the same path along which those runs were made. Cellular service was nonexistent down here and the kidnappers had destroyed the archaeological team's satellite phone. It would take nearly a day to reach the way station on foot, nothing to do but talk through the long duration of the walk.

“My turn,” Michael told her. “What are
you
doing in a place like this?”

“I'm an archaeologist, remember? I go where the dig takes me. In this case, supervising undergraduates as a requirement of my masters degree.”

“In pursuit of pots and pans?”

“The native tribes had pots, no pans.”

“Why don't you tell me what you're really looking for, Scarlett?”

“Not until you do.”

“I asked you first,” Michael said, with a smile and a wink.

She looked away, then back again. “There are some well-regarded accounts of the Mayans venturing this far south in search of something.”

“What?”

“If it was the Mayans, something powerful or priceless, or both.”

“So you came down here, even though you have no idea what that might be?”

“I'll know when I find it,” Scarlett told him. “It's what every archaeologist wants more than anything, to make a discovery that changes the way we see the world, something about history no one's ever known before.” Her gaze tightened on him. “It's my turn now. What are
you
looking for?”

“The same thing you are, actually,” Michael told her.

*   *   *

“Answers. And I think you can help me,” he continued, thinking of the mysterious relic medallion he'd left with Alexander for safekeeping, the only thing he had left of his family. “In fact, I think we can help each other.”

Scarlett regarded his clothes, his disheveled appearance.
“You?
And how much more can you do than save my life?”

“Plenty,” Michael winked. “Trust me. And I only ask one thing in return.”

“What's that?”

“You give me your phone number. And we keep what just happened quiet.”

“That's two things.”

“File any reports you need to but leave me out of it.”

“What am I supposed to do, say it was Tarzan and Cheetah who saved me and my team?”

“With a little help from Jane,” Michael said, grinning.

*   *   *

Scarlett hugged Michael tight at the way station, her embrace lingering out of something more than just gratitude.

“Give me that number where I can reach you,” Michael said, when they finally eased apart. “So we can talk about that next dig.”

“All of a sudden you find ancient pots and pans interesting.”

“Actually, it's something else I'm after.”

“Like what?”

“You'll have to answer my call to find out.”

Michael left Scarlett reluctantly, staring at her until she drifted out of sight through the rear window of the SUV that would take him to Felix Eboue Airport in the city of Cayenne. He'd called ahead to make sure the Boeing 737 was waiting for him and, sure enough, it stood prepped and ready on the tarmac.

The door opened as he neared the stairs, a grinning Alexander stepping into the sun.

“Welcome back, Michael.”

Michael climbed the steps, suddenly realizing how taxed and worn every muscle in his body was from the exertion of the past six weeks, or maybe it was more; he wasn't sure anymore. All he was thinking about was taking a shower as soon as he was on board.

“Paddy sends his best.”

“Who's Paddy?” Alexander smiled.

 

FIFTY-NINE

L
AS
V
EGAS,
N
EVADA, FIVE YEARS AGO

After French Guiana, the next time Michael saw Scarlett was three months later when he invited her to meet him in Las Vegas to discuss his offer to fund future digs.

“You're serious.”

“I'm going to e-mail you a ticket.”

“What about a hotel room?”

“I have a connection at the city's best resort,” Michael told her.

He picked her up personally at the airport in his Ferrari Testarossa.

“I googled you,” she told him, as she climbed in.

“Happy with what you found?”

“Surprised.”

“Why?”

“Because I couldn't figure out for the life of me what someone like you would be doing playing Navy SEAL in French Guiana.”

“Can you keep a secret?”

“Like what?”

“Me. No one can ever know of how we met or what happened in that jungle. No one can ever know of my involvement or interest in your activities. Consider me a secret partner, and a friend,” Michael said, and pulled into traffic.

“I never expected you to call.”

“I have my reasons.”

“
Archaeological
reasons?”

“An archaeological and historical mystery. The origins of a relic handed down to me by my family,” Michael elaborated, leaving things at that.

“You flew me to Las Vegas and want to fund digs because of a
family heirloom
?”

“Let me explain.”

B
UN
Ă
Z
IUA,
R
OMANIA, NOW

The initial digs that followed had yielded little, nothing really until the dig in Transylvania that had gotten Scarlett's entire team murdered and landed her in the custody of the
Securitate
.

“I've seen what I needed to see,” Alexander informed Michael. “I count between six and eight men inside, no more. We stick to the plan and get the woman out.”