Fortune Favors (6 page)

Elisabeth led him unhesitatingly through the compound. “You seem to know this place awfully well for a hostage.”

“I got the nickel tour when we arrived.” She diverted him back into the compound, to the door of a large building that adjoined to the east wall of the fortress. The rusted iron latch parted with a tortured shriek, causing Kismet to wince, but evidently raised no alarm. “In here.”

The expansive barn-style doors opened into an enormous room that might have passed for a medieval mead hall. The space was dimly lit with oil lamps hanging from wrought iron hooks in each corner, but otherwise unfurnished. A balcony extended out at the second story level, encircling the hall like a mezzanine. Though the floor was littered with straw, and the air reeked of animal odors, the building did not seem to be a barn in the strictest sense. Kismet saw several of the ATVs lined up against one wall, still shackled to utility carts.

“Wait here,” directed Elisabeth, hastening through the interior.

“I’m coming with you.”

She shook her head confidently. “It's better if I go alone.” She blew him a kiss over her shoulder then disappeared into the dimness. “Wait here. I won't be a minute.”

Kismet sighed, leaning against the wall. The sudden inaction frustrated him. He had been constantly moving, constantly doing; now he was just waiting. He paced out a small circle, making three orbits, before he could take it no more.

Elisabeth had surely been caught. He had to help her.

Leaving the relative shelter near the entrance, he ventured out into the open. The four corner lamps threw out semicircles of light through their streaked glass panes, light that fell impotently on the hay-strewn floor without offering any real illumination. Kismet strode the length of the hall, peering into the shadows at the far end for some indication of another exit.

As he stepped past the all-terrain vehicles, he noticed that the wagons they towed were still fully loaded with glass display cases taken from the cruise ship. The pirates had evidently been schooled in the importance of preserving the quality of the delicate artifacts they had seized, taking on the added labor of carrying the large and cumbersome cases, rather than simply smashing out the glass and heaping up the booty.

His curiosity got the better of him momentarily and he made a cursory inspection of the containers. He saw no glint of gold, nor any sparkling gemstones; doubtless the pirate leader knew better than to leave those items lying around in a barn. Nevertheless, what he saw verified all the rumors he had heard about the Sultan’s collection. The raiders had grabbed Mayan idols, carved masks, Inca mummy cases and dozens of other art treasures from cultures long since extinct. Many of the less recognizable pieces appeared to share a unique style, leading Kismet to wonder if the Sultan had perhaps scooped the archaeological institutions by purchasing the entire catalogue of a dig uncovering an unknown civilization.

There was one relic that caught his eye in spite of its apparent ordinariness. He leaned close to the display case peering inside at the artifact, which rested on a bed of red velvet. It was a hexagonal piece of stone, carved extensively with rows of wedge shaped markings. Kismet recognized it as cuneiform writing from ancient Mesopotamia, thought to be the earliest form of written language.

The relic seemed out of place among the collection of art treasures. He did not doubt that it was an artifact of great value, but he had difficulty understanding why the opportunistic pirates would have bothered with it. Why go to the trouble of hauling what looked, at least to the untrained eye, like a big rock?

It was a riddle for another time. Elisabeth had not yet returned. Kismet turned way from the cache of relics and moved toward the far end of the room.

There was something there, something glinting in the darkness.

His hand found the pistol grip of the Kalashnikov rifle he had liberated from the pirate on the junk. He stuffed the wooden stock into the pit of his shoulder and pulled the bolt back an inch in order to verify that a round was already chambered.

The night suddenly seemed less quiet; he could almost hear the timbers of the structure creaking in the wind. Once the Sultana’s escape was noticed, things were going to get a lot noisier, and he didn't want to be in the fortress when that happened. He had to find Elisabeth and get out.

His search for the far end of the hall ended abruptly at a grillwork of iron bars. Like everything else, they had lost any metallic sheen they might once have possessed to the corrosion of humid, salty air. Nevertheless, they remained firm and impassable. He gripped a vertical bar in each hand and attempted in vain to move the barrier. Daunted, he took a step back and tried to discern what lay beyond the bars.

With an ear-splitting squeal, a section of the bars began to rise like a portcullis. Kismet’s gaze riveted on the slowly ascending gate, and he suddenly felt very uneasy. Floating in the darkness beyond were two glowing embers that looked exactly like...

“Eyes. Uh, oh.” He began slowly backing away from the cage.

Gentle laughter abruptly echoed in the great hall. Kismet glanced up quickly, instinctively, then forced his gaze back to the eyes of whatever it was that watched him from the now opened cell. “I should have known better, when you said to trust you.”

“Yes,” replied Elisabeth from somewhere above and to his left. “Are you always such a sucker for a pretty girl, Nick?”

“More often than you'd believe,” he muttered, more to the mocking voice of his conscience, than to the actress. “So let me guess. This pirate, Jin, made you a better offer than the Sultan?”

“Oh, I certainly did,” replied a different voice. Though masculine, the speaker's tone was high, almost flute-like, and his speech was deeply accented. “Lights!”

The hall was suddenly bathed in the glow from more than a dozen electric bulbs, all shining down from the balcony. Kismet did not look away from the eyes, which still seemed to be hiding in shadow, but in the periphery of his view, he saw at least a score of men moving above him. He knew without looking that Elisabeth and Jin, the leader of the pirate gang, were among that number.

“You seem to have trouble with the ladies,” chuckled Jin. “Maybe you will have better luck with my other princess.”

The hovering embers blinked then moved forward out of the darkness. Kismet was not surprised at all when the features surrounding the glowing points coalesced into a feline face, the largest member of the cat family, a tiger. Kismet locked his own eyes with the stare of the stalking cat, backing up slowly.

“Or perhaps not,” concluded Jin.

Without looking away, Kismet fixed the place where Jin's voice seemed to be coming from. He vaguely remembered reading that Bengal tigers liked to attack their human victims from behind, that they would not approach if their prey seemed to be watching. This had prompted the men working in the Indian jungles to wear masks on the back of their heads, so that their “eyes” were always watching out from behind. Kismet had no idea if this was merely jungle lore, or if the tigers on the Malay isles were as gullible as their cousins to the west, but it seemed like a good idea. As the cat padded forward however, he could plainly see that the animal had been starved and abused; doubtless, it would not wait long to attack anyone trapped with it in the pit. With slow, deliberate moves so as not to provoke the tiger, he let go of the AK-47 and slung it across his back, and then removed the coil of rope from his shoulder, hefting the grappling hook.

“Ah,” sighed Jin. “Perhaps this will be more entertaining than I first believed.”

Kismet tight expression cracked in a wide grin. “You don't know how right you are.”

His arm moved in a barely visible arc, the rope uncoiling like a striking serpent as his arm stretched upward. His gaze never faulted. The hook sailed up and struck something just out of view. He immediately pulled with both hands setting the hook and taking in the slack. An instant later, someone pitched over the balcony railing and crashed onto the floor in front of him.

“Nice of you to join us, Jin.”

The pirate winced as he pushed himself to his elbows, dazed by the fall. Kismet gave the rope a shake, loosening the hook from Jin’s clothing where it had snagged. Blood seeped from a ragged wound on the pirate’s back and dripped onto the floor of the hall. Jin stared blearily at Kismet then his eyes opened wide as he whirled around to face his pet. The tiger had already sprung, and at that moment, all hell broke loose.

The entire promontory shuddered as a peal of what sounded like thunder rolled though the structure. The balcony was suddenly filled with chaotic shouting, mostly in Chinese, but Elisabeth's strident shrieking wove in an out of the din. A second tremor followed quickly on the heels of the first, and this time, the electric lights winked out as somewhere in the compound, the generator was knocked out. The fortress was under attack.

Kismet jumped back as the tiger pounced on its fallen master. Loud concussions echoed in the hall as at least one of the pirates on the balcony tried to distract the tiger by shooting at it. Kismet instinctively raised a hand to ward off flying splinters of wood as he rushed through the hall.

The pirates on the balcony were attempting to flee, but in their panic, they were tripping over each other. Elisabeth seemed to be struggling to stay on her feet as the human current changed unpredictably. With a grim smile, Kismet decided to rescue her for the second time that night.

Another mortar round crashed into the compound, causing the ground to heave. One of the doors into the building was blasted open. At least three of the pirates were knocked from the balcony, crashing stunned on the floor below, while others clung to the railing to avoid a similar fate. Kismet felt the debris from the nearby explosion harmlessly pelting him.

The tiger ignored the external attack altogether, gripping Jin's throat in its mouth and throwing the pirate across the floor. It was on him again in a second, swiping its claws across his face.

Scrambling away, Kismet utilized the grappling hook once more, hurling it onto the balcony high above. The line wrapped around a railing, the hook setting securely when he drew in the slack, and he quickly set about scrambling up the wall.

His arms screamed in agony. All of the exertions of the night seemed to return in a single burst of pain. Gritting his teeth, he planted his feet against one of the support pillars and tried again. Somehow, with his biceps quivering on the verge of total fatigue, he reached the level of the balcony floor. Swinging his body like a pendulum, he got one of his legs up, then the other, and managed to roll his torso onto the edge. Frantic pirates stumbled blindly over him as they fought with each other in order to escape. Only when he stood up in their midst did they identify him as a foe and turn their destructive attention toward him.

Kismet dodged the thrust of an old-fashioned cutlass, hearing the unmistakable sound of the blade piercing flesh behind him and the groan as a wounded pirate went down. His fist, still clenching the rope, hammered into the sword's wielder, and as the man staggered against the railing, Kismet guided him over. He plucked the heavy blade from the man's grasp as he went, and wrenched it free of the body of the unfortunate soul who had inadvertently been on the receiving end of the misguided thrust. Discarding the rope, he took the sword in his right hand and charged the pirate ranks, scattering them.

Elisabeth stood a head taller than most of the men on the balcony, and Kismet saw her hair flashing only a few feet away. With wild slashes, he mowed a path toward her. When she saw him, a tortured look crossed her beautiful face. “Damn you!”

“Did you get the sapphire, princess?”

Her eyes blazed as she raised her hand toward him, a small pistol locked in her grip.

Kismet lashed out with the cutlass. The tip struck the barrel of the gun and knocked her arm upward as the firing pin struck the shell. The muzzle flashed in his face, but the round impotently struck the ceiling. He quickly moved in closer, snatching the gun away with his left hand.

The wayward Sultana raised a fist, as if to strike him, but he was faster. Stabbing the cutlass into the floorboards, he delivered a roundhouse to her jaw that spun her around. Before she could fall, he snatched her up and threw her over his shoulder. He shoved the gun into the waistband of his tuxedo trousers and then worked the cutlass loose.

“Well this has been fun, Your Highness. But it's time to take you back to your husband.”

If Elisabeth heard him, she did not reply.

Kismet fought his way through several more pirates, and found a staircase leading back down to the ground floor. He crossed the rubble strewn area, mindful of the tiger which continued to feast on its former master, and headed for the ATV quads. It took him only a moment to loosen the tow bar attachment and free one of the small motorized vehicles from its treasure wagon. He started it up and climbed aboard. Elisabeth still had not stirred.

The sounds of the shelling now filled the night. Much of the fortress was in flames, and the wall on the ocean side was breached in three places. On the threshold of the barn-like storehouse, Kismet had an unobstructed view of the assault.

Three helicopters—judging by their silhouettes, Kismet reckoned they were reliable old UH-1 “Hueys,” repurposed after the Vietnam war—beat the air high above the pirate compound. Several thick lines dropped from the hovering aircraft like spider-silk, and human figures began abseiling into the midst of the compound, protected by covering fire from their comrades still aboard. In a matter of seconds, a dozen camouflaged warriors had fast-roped down and were spreading out to engage the confused pirates. Kismet surmised that the commando squad was there in response to his own summons, but the fortress was presently a free-fire zone; the only salvation lay in physically removing himself from the battlefield. He revved the throttle on the ATV and charged into the midst of the skirmish.

The pirates were attempting to muster a response to the overwhelming attack, but their numbers were already severely diminished and their arsenal of poorly maintained rifles and handguns was no match for the concussion grenades and assault rifles wielded by the attacking force. Most of the pirates simply threw down their weapons and fled into the jungle. Reasoning that the refugees would know the best way out of the fortress, Kismet swerved the quad in their direction, plunging into the darkness beyond.