Chase Baker and the God Boy: (A Chase Baker Thriller Series Book No. 3) (22 page)

A pair of guards are about to pounce on Rudy when I line them
up in my sights, shoot them dead. The Thuggee might appear terrifying and
indestructible as all hell in their black robes, hoods, masked faces, revealing
only black eyes filled with hate, but their skin and flesh are just as fragile
as anyone else’s. And when they drop dead, they look very dead and the frightening
exterior they once possessed only a few moments before now appear comic as
their bodies and limbs contort spastically under their own weight.

But they keep coming at us, which
is what I want as Tony and I cut them down one by one. Anjali acts as a kind of
Gunga Din, stealing weapons and ammo from the dead and feeding them to us as
fast as we can shoot them. It takes me a moment to relocate him, but when I do,
I see Rudy doing something that defies all logic. Still dressed in nothing but
his boxer shorts, he is wheeling a wheel barrel full of gravel and diamonds up
the ramp, the bullets whizzing past his head as if they were nothing more than
harmless mosquitoes.

“Rudy!” I scream. “Get down! Go
back!”

But all he sees are dollar signs
dancing around his head. Nothing is going to prevent him from becoming a man
rich beyond his wildest dreams. But when a Kalashnikov-armed Thuggee, who’s
making his way down the ramp, spots the bartender trying to make off with the
loot, he triggers a long burst that nearly splits Rudy in two at the waist.
Despite the wounds, Rudy somehow manages to take a couple of more steps while
pushing the wheel barrel, as if his brain has not yet registered the fact that
not only is wealth beyond his wildest dreams going to elude him, so is living.
His body, along with the contents of the wheel barrel, falls over the side of
the ramp onto the pit floor below.

Glancing at Tony, I can see his
face go tight as a tick, his eyes wide. Rudy was his friend. Sure, Rudy wasn’t
much of a team player, but you don’t shoot one of Tony’s friends and not pay
for it. He grabs hold of a second AK47 and begins shooting two-fisted into the
sea of Thuggees, firing from the hip, Rambo-style, screaming at the top of his
lungs. It’s a massacre as the Thuggees drop dead, one after the other, some of
them falling on top of one other.

The slaves are quick to notice that
their captures are losing not only the battle but the war. Slowly, they emerge
from whatever cover they can find and begin to toss rocks at the Thuggees. Some
of the slaves attack the bandits with their pickaxes and others use their
shovels, letting loose with a rage and vengeance that’s been pent up for weeks
and months. When the slaves are able to steal some weapons, they begin to shoot
the Thuggees down with all the efficiency of mining diamonds from the diamond
mine. The spontaneous slave revolt is so successful that Tony and I are able to
cease fire.

“Let’s go get the boy,” I say to Anjali,
shouldering my weapon.

Spotting one of the slaves who is
firing upon the now retreating Thuggee, I pull him aside.

“Speak English?” I say.

He bears the sweat and dirt-covered
concave-cheeked face of a man who is starving, but his eyes are filled with
happiness and revenge. I ask him where they keep the God Boy…the boy with six
arms. Surely he knows of the boy.

He raises his right hand, points to
a place at the top of the pit, not far from where the ramp meets the exit
corridor.

He says, “At the top of the ramp you
will see a steel door embedded in the wall. They keep the child in there. But
you will not be able to get inside without a key.” He pauses. Then, “But I know
something that might help you.”

He makes his way back down into the
pit and, slipping both his hands under the robe of a dead Thuggee, comes back
with three sticks of dynamite.

“Use these,” he says.

“Old school,” I say.

But he just shakes his head like he
doesn’t understand my meaning.

“Anjali, let’s go,” I say. Then,
looking around for Tony, I finally locate him. He’s kneeling over Rudy, where
the bartender landed beside the ramp.

“Tony,” I say, “we’ve got to move.”

But he raises his hand, waves me off,
like he needs to make peace with his friend first. After a moment that seems
like an hour, he sets the same hand onto Rudy’s eyes and closes them. Standing,
he walks away from Rudy for the final time and without a word, begins the climb
up the ramp.

At the top of the ramp, we come to the long corridor that leads
out through the still open steel doors. To our left is a small alcove. Planted
in the center of the far wall is a solid metal door that’s been padlocked.
There’s no window embedded in the door so it’s impossible to make a visual on
the God Boy.

“Anjali,” I say, “we have to blow
the door and do it now.”

“What if he is injured in the
blast?” she says, ever the concerned mother.

“Chance we gotta take,” I say. “But
maybe you can speak to him through the door, warn him of what’s coming.”

Anjali approaches the door, presses
her ear to it, as if listening for a sign of life. The look on her face is both
desperation and joy. The emotions fight one another. On one hand, she is
convinced her son is being held against his will on the opposite side of this
steel door, and on the other, there’s the chance of him either being hurt or
ill or both. Perhaps he is even dead. The only way to know what to expect is to
get him out of there as quickly and safely as possible.

“Rajesh,” she says sternly. “This
is your mother. I have come for you. If you can hear me, I need you to get away
from the door. There is going to be a loud explosion and then the door is going
to fall off. Do you understand me?” She then repeats the same words in her
native tongue, as though speaking to her child in two different languages will
make him understand without question, the importance of his being nowhere near
the door when it blows.

Pulling one of the sticks of
dynamite from my waistband, I fit it into the U-shaped clasp on the padlock. Then,
reaching into the left chest pocket on my bush jacket, I retrieve my Bic
lighter.

“Stand back,” I say, lighting the
fuse.

The three of us exit the alcove out
into the hall, where we step away from the opening, pressing our backs against
the stone wall. The explosion is loud, fiery, and powerful. It seems as if the
entire diamond quarry is shaken loose.

Spinning around, we head back
through the opening and see that the door has been blown open to reveal a
simple room not much bigger than a jail cell. I get my first look at the boy
then. The God Boy. He is seated on the stone floor of the windowless room,
lotus style. His many arms are open wide, his hands positioned palms upward. He
is bare-chested and bare-legged, with only a loin cloth for clothing, and he is
sickly thin. His hair is richly black, parted in the center, and so long it
drapes his smooth, round face like a silk veil.

Despite the force and suddenness of
the explosion, he seems to be caught up in a kind of trance. He might be only five
years old and in terrible health, but the energy that he gives off is something
I’ve never before experienced. It is as physical as it is emotional. Maybe
there really is something to his being considered a God. Perhaps his physical
condition is not just a birth defect, but, in fact, something more. Nepal and
India are the lands of reincarnation. Places where death is not an end, but the
natural beginning to a new life. Is it possible Rajesh is the reincarnation of
one of these Gods? Or am I letting my imagination run away with itself?

…You didn’t imagine that stone
Kali peeling itself away from the wall, or the giant face of Kali appearing in
the quaking earth, or the vaporous image of Kali being summoned when
Elizabeth’s heart was cut out… You didn’t imagine any of it… This isn’t fiction
like one of your books, Chase…

Anjali goes to her son, drops to
her knees before the boy, embraces him by kissing both his cheeks. Tears run
down her face as she takes the small boy in her arms, cradles him like he’s a
newborn. Fact is, he can’t weigh more than twenty-five or thirty pounds. Maybe
less. She lifts him up off the floor and he smiles at his mother, wrapping his
hands around her neck.

“You are safe, Rajesh,” she says.
“Nothing can happen to you now.”

“These men,” Rajesh whispers. “These
bad men stick needles in me. They make me very, very sleepy, mother.”

Tony and I lock eyes.

“They’ve been drugging him,” he
says. “Sedating him. Bastards.”

“Let’s just get the hell out of
here while we have the chance,” I insist.

Pulling the Kalashnikov off my
shoulder, I grip it with both hands at the ready. Tony does the same. I step
out into the hall to the intermittent sounds of gunfire coming from down in the
pit combined with screaming, dying men—most of them Thuggees—I proceed towards
the open steel doors.

“Double-time everyone,” I say,
picking up the pace.

We’re not fifty feet from freedom
when the doors slam closed, and the electric light in the corridor goes black.

I pull out my mini-Maglite, shine it on the opposite end of the
corridor near the alcove and the entrance to the main diamond pit ramp. The
pair of steel doors protecting that end of the corridor have also been
automatically closed. I shine the light up one end of the corridor and down the
other.

“What shall we do, Chase?” Anjali
pleads.

“Just stay still,” Tony says. “For
certain, Kashmiri is listening in. Aren’t you Kashmiri, you terrorist bastard?”

Tony’s words echo inside the stone
and concrete corridor like the Mayday warning on a crashing jetliner.

“I don’t like this,” he adds, pointing
the barrel of his rifle at one set of doors, then pointing it at the other and
back again, as if at any second they might open up and release an army of Thuggees
to descend upon us. Maybe that’s exactly what’s about to happen.

But the doors don’t open and no
bandits pour into the long, narrow space. Instead, something begins to float
down from the ceiling like a heavy cloud. Raising the MagLite I can see that a
gas is being sprayed into the corridor via a series of spouts mounted to the
concrete ceiling.

“They’re gassing us,” I say while recalling
the two additional dynamite sticks shoved into my pant waist. “Head for the
doors. We’ll blast our way out.”

We run as the floor splits down the
center and opens up onto a deep, dark, bottomless, black hole.

Opening my eyes, I pull myself back up onto my feet. I see
that I have entered into a second concrete corridor that is dimly illuminated
not from electric light, but from something that’s positioned at the very end
of the corridor. I’m alone. I have no idea where the others have gone. If they
are alive or dead. I only know that I’m standing in this long corridor and that
I am not afraid.