Hunt at World's End (10 page)

Gabriel whirled around and saw Noboru, ten yards back, starting the jeep’s engine. Noboru pulled out, spun the jeep to face him and sped toward him. Arrows zipped over the jeep, banged off the hood. Gabriel ran toward it as it approached. He grabbed the side of the jeep as it skidded to a halt, pulled himself up onto the side bar and jumped over the door into the passenger seat.

Behind him and off to one side, a white-robed man emerged from the jungle and ran toward them, a long, curved sword swinging overhead in both hands. The mud didn’t seem to be slowing him down at all.

Noboru cranked the gearshift and stepped on the gas. “Hold on to something!” he shouted. Gabriel dropped back into his seat as the jeep picked up speed. The man darted into their path, running toward them as they accelerated. At the instant they ought to have hit him, he leapt lightly onto their front bumper, then from there onto the jeep’s hood, swinging the sword at Noboru’s head. Gabriel pulled the trigger on his Colt. The man flew backward from the impact. He landed in the mud several feet away and didn’t get up again.

Noboru spun the wheel, turning them back toward the path that led to the main road. Gunfire crackled around them as they sped past a last cluster of Gris
som’s men shooting at the cultists in the trees. “What are they doing here?”

“They must have followed us,” Gabriel said. “But they can’t just be after us for taking Joyce away from them. It’s got to be the Star they want. Everybody’s after that damn thing.”

Noboru raced along the jungle path, leaving the camp behind, and turned onto the main road. It ran for at least a mile straight ahead, and in the distance they saw the other jeep barreling along it in the direction of Balikpapan. Noboru increased his speed, the two of them bouncing and jostling in their seats as the jeep raced over the unpaved road.

“Get right up next to them,” Gabriel shouted over the engine’s roar as they closed on the other jeep. He aimed his Colt again, then thought better of it. He didn’t want to risk hitting the driver. If they went off the road, Joyce could be killed in the crash.

Noboru narrowed the gap between the two vehicles, the jeep shuddering under the strain like it was about to fall apart.

As they drew closer, Gabriel saw Joyce and one of Grissom’s men, a big man with a close-cropped beard, struggling in the back. The man was trying to get the Star away from her, but she was clinging to it, spitting curses and kicking at him. The man swung at her with his free hand, clocking her in the side of the head and she cried out, but didn’t lose her grip on the Star.

Noboru pulled up beside the other jeep, matching its speed. Gabriel stood, the wind whipping his hair. He balanced himself against the roll bar and kept an eye on the space between the vehicles, knowing a single misstep would send him hurtling to the road below.

The bearded man punched Joyce again. This time she
fell onto the backseat, finally releasing her grip on the Star; this sent the man reeling back too.

“Joyce!” Gabriel shouted. Her head popped up over the side of the jeep. He held out his arms. “Jump!”

“Not without the Star,” she shouted back.

The man in the passenger seat, a short, evil-looking fellow with a long scar down his cheek, reached for her, but she knocked his hands aside.

“You have to jump,” Gabriel shouted. Then, to Noboru, “Get us closer!”

Noboru brought them as close as he could without contacting the other car’s chassis. The other driver glared at him and stepped on the accelerator. Noboru fell behind for a moment, then pulled up alongside again. Joyce stood in the back of the jeep, staring with a look of terror at the road ripping by between them. Behind her, the bearded man got back on his feet, holding the Star. Tucking it under one arm, he reached for her with the other.

“Now,” Gabriel yelled.

Glancing back—could she really leave the Star in their hands?—Joyce took a deep breath, put one foot on the backseat and launched herself into the air. Noboru cursed, trying to keep the vehicle steady. Joyce cried out as she hurtled toward them and slammed into Gabriel, nearly knocking him over. With one arm around the roll bar for support, he wrapped the other around her to hold her steady. She breathed hard in his ear.

“The Star,” she said. “We can’t leave it with them.”

“We won’t,” Gabriel said. He let go of her. She dropped into the seatwell. In the other jeep, Grissom’s men were shouting at each other. Their vehicle turned suddenly, moving farther away, toward the edge of the road. The man in the front passenger seat leveled a
handgun at them and fired. Bullets punched craters in the door and ricocheted off the roll bar inches from Gabriel’s head.

“Stay on them!” he shouted to Noboru.

They swung closer again, and when the two jeeps were side by side once more Gabriel jumped across the divide. He landed on top of the bearded man in back, tackling him to the floor. The Star dropped from the man’s hand and rolled under the driver’s seat. Gabriel and the bearded man stood up at the same time, the bumps in the road as they raced along it threatening to knock them off their feet again.

The other man punched first, but Gabriel caught his fist in his hand and brought his knee up into the man’s gut. He doubled over, and Gabriel haymakered him on the back of the neck, driving him to the floor. The scar-faced man in the passenger seat stood up and climbed over his seat into the back of the jeep, brandishing his gun. Gabriel backhanded it out of his grip before he could fire. It clattered to the floor, landing between the front seats. The man punched Gabriel, stunning him for a moment and sending him reeling back. The scarred man swung at him again, but Gabriel jerked his head back, the man’s fist just missing his jaw. Gabriel’s own fist connected, though, knocking his opponent backwards. He collided with the driver’s back and the jeep swerved dangerously.

The bearded man rose from the floor. He’d retrieved the Star from under the driver’s seat.

Gabriel elbowed him in the face and grabbed the Star out of his hands.

Looking over, he saw that Noboru had kept pace, their jeep jouncing alongside the one he was in. Joyce had her hands cupped around her mouth and was shouting something at him, but he couldn’t make it out.

Gabriel stepped up on the side of the jeep and was about to jump back when the bearded man grabbed him from behind, his thick arm snaking around Gabriel’s neck. Now he knew what it had felt like for Julian: his windpipe was compressing, the oxygen flow to his brain cutting off. The man reached forward to snatch the Star back. Gabriel couldn’t let that happen.

He threw the Star. Tossed it flat and spinning like a metal frisbee and watched it sail toward Noboru’s jeep. Joyce stretched for it, snagging it out of the air.

Gabriel elbowed the bearded man in the ribs and felt the hold around his throat slacken. He spun and punched the man in the jaw, knocking him back.

The scarred man rose from the passenger seat, meanwhile, climbed over the driver’s back, and leaped across to Noboru’s jeep, landing right next to Joyce. He grabbed her neck in one calloused hand and tried to seize the Star with the other. Noboru swerved the vehicle from side to side, trying to knock the intruder off balance, but the man kept his footing.

Her face turning red, Joyce hurled the Star just as Gabriel had. It flew back across the divide and into Gabriel’s hands.

“What are you doing?” Gabriel shouted, just before the bearded man threw a punch at him again. Jamming the Star under his arm, Gabriel sidestepped the punch and drove his fist into the man’s nose. He felt bone and cartilage snap and the bearded man fell back, blood spilling down his face.

In Noboru’s jeep, the scarred man let go of Joyce’s neck and turned to jump back across. Joyce grabbed at him, snagging a fistful of his uniform shirt and tugging fiercely. The man went off balance for a second and she tried to push him out of the jeep, but he regained his footing and stepped up onto the backseat.

He jumped across—and at the same moment exactly, Gabriel leapt back the other way. They passed each other in the air, so close that Gabriel could read the anger in the man’s face as he realized his mistake. Gabriel landed in Noboru’s jeep, grabbing the roll bar with one hand and holding onto the Star with the other.

The scarred man landed in the other jeep and whirled around. His face a mask of fury, the man reached down between the front seats and came back up with his gun.

Joyce ducked to the floor and Gabriel dropped into the passenger seat. Noboru spun the steering wheel, trying to put distance between them. A spray of bullets pounded the metal chassis of the jeep. Gabriel put the Star down and pulled his revolver. He fired off two shots, but they both went wide, missing their targets. He pulled the trigger again, but the Colt only clicked emptily.

The driver of the other jeep shouted, “He’s done! Finish him!” The scarred man lined up another shot.

Reaching behind him, Gabriel pulled the flare gun out of Noboru’s belt, swung it around in the direction of the other jeep, and pulled the trigger.

The scarred man ducked but Gabriel hadn’t been aiming at him. The sparking red magnesium projectile flew directly at the driver, slamming into his shirt. The man panicked as his clothing erupted in flames. He let go of the steering wheel and slapped at the burning flare. The jeep careened away, skidded off the road and slammed into a tree with an enormous impact. Seconds later, the site of the crash exploded into flame.

Noboru kept his foot on the gas. Gabriel turned around and watched the smoking wreckage disappear into the distance.

He handed the Star to Joyce in the backseat. “I believe this is yours.”

She took it from him and inspected it for damage. “I thought it was gone for sure.”

Gabriel leaned back in his seat, letting the wind cool the sweat off his body. “It nearly was. You nearly were, too.”

She gave him a look he found it hard to interpret. There was gratitude in it, but also indignation, as though she half resented him for saving her life.

Ahead of them, the skyline of Balikpapan rose up at the horizon.

As they drove into Balikpapan, the city folded its arms around them in the form of skyscrapers and high-rise hotels, office towers and apartment buildings. Covered in bruises and blood, their clothes torn and filthy, their jeep battered and pocked with bullet holes, they attracted more than a few glances every time they stopped at a red light. Gabriel didn’t much care. He was glad to have a moment to breathe, away at last from both Grissom and the Cult of Ulikummis.

Neon advertisements on the sides of the buildings threw bright colors across the windshield and onto Noboru’s face as he grimaced and took one hand off the steering wheel to rub his chest.

“Are you okay?” Gabriel asked.

“It’s nothing, I’m fine,” Noboru said. “Just thinking about what my wife’s going to say when she sees our jeep.”

“I’m sure she’ll just be happy you’re alive,” Joyce said.

“You haven’t met Michiko. She’ll kill me herself.”

Noboru drove through the city center and over the hills until they reached the shore, where Balikpapan’s rampant, glossy urban expansion slowed and signs of its centuries-long history as a fishing village returned. The houses were smaller, more modest, and along the harbor dozens of fishermen were gathered, standing
by their poles and chatting while they waited for something to tug at their lines. Noboru turned onto a lane that rose up the gentle slope of a hill lined with houses painted bright shades of red, yellow and green, their walls fashioned of thick cement to withstand the gale-force winds of storm season. He pulled the jeep over in front of a pale blue house with a white roof and killed the engine.

“Home,” he said, his voice unsteady.

They climbed out of the jeep, and Noboru fished his keys from his pocket. He tried to fit the key into the lock in the front door, but his hand was shaking and the blade kept sliding against the lock plate, missing the keyway.

“Is something wrong?” Gabriel asked.

“Michiko—” Noboru said, and his face twisted in pain. The door suddenly opened from the inside, and Noboru collapsed into the arms of a Japanese woman about his age. She cried out as she caught him, and glanced with confusion at Gabriel and Joyce. Gabriel rushed forward to help her carry Noboru into the house. They brought him through a polished wooden moon gate standing at the entrance to the living room and laid him gently on the couch.

The woman dabbed Noboru’s forehead with a tissue. “Who are you?” she asked Gabriel in Japanese.

“Your husband works with my brother,” he replied in the same language. “I’m Gabriel Hunt, this is Joyce Wingard. He was helping us.”

Michiko looked down at her husband resting on the couch, his face coated with a sheen of sweat. He was breathing shallowly. “It’s his heart. I told him this would happen.”

“Will he be all right?” Joyce asked.

Michiko pointed to a doorway off the living room.

“Bring me a glass of water from the kitchen,” she said, in English. “And a wet towel.” Joyce hurried off. Michiko knelt beside the couch. She reached into Noboru’s pocket and pulled out the small pillbox Gabriel had seen before. She opened it and took out two pills, small white tablets that Gabriel suddenly realized weren’t sleep aids but nitroglycerine pills. “His heart is poor,” Michiko said. “He had a heart attack when he was only forty-nine. It’s why he had to retire early.”

Gabriel frowned. “He didn’t tell me.”

“Why would he? He likes his job.”

Joyce rushed back into the room with a glass of water and a wet cloth and put them down on the table. Michiko gently opened Noboru’s mouth and slipped the pills onto his tongue. She tipped the water glass against his lips and made him swallow. “After we left Japan, I begged him to take it easy, just enjoy his retirement, not work for your Foundation. His heart can’t take the exertion. And it’s not as though we need the money—I make plenty, enough for both of us. But he insisted. He said if he didn’t do anything he’d feel like he was already dead.”

“Should we bring him to the hospital?” Joyce asked.

Michiko shook her head. “It wasn’t a heart attack, only an arrhythmia. The pills are enough. He’ll be fine, we just have to give it some time.”

“Are you sure?” Gabriel asked.

“Of course,” Michiko said, dabbing Noboru’s forehead with the wet cloth. “I’m a doctor.”

It didn’t take long for Noboru to come around, but when Gabriel asked if he was feeling better, he was too embarrassed to talk about it. Michiko cleaned Noboru’s wounds while he lay on the couch, rebandaging the slash on his arm and dabbing ointment on the
bruises and cuts on his face. By the time she was finished, he had slipped back into a deep sleep, untroubled even by the snores Gabriel remembered from their night in the hallway of Merpati’s house.

Michiko tended to Joyce’s bruises next, while Joyce sat in a chair and chewed her thumbnail anxiously. Something was going on behind her eyes, but Gabriel still couldn’t quite figure it out. When Michiko finished, Joyce asked if she could use her phone. Michiko sent her back to the kitchen, where a cordless unit was sitting on the counter. Then she turned to Gabriel. “You’re next.”

“You don’t have to worry about me,” Gabriel said. “I’m fine.”

Michiko gave him a stare that said she was not in a mood to argue. “You look like you got it the worst of everyone. Sit.” Gabriel sighed and sat in the chair. She examined the cuts on his face, chest and abdomen, and shook her head. “My god, what did they do to you?” Gabriel winced as she dabbed alcohol on the wounds to sterilize them. Michiko nodded. “Someone cuts you to ribbons, but it’s the alcohol that hurts. I’ll never, ever understand men. At least you’re lucky: the cuts aren’t deep. You won’t need more stitches.”

“The man who did it was going for pain, not lasting damage,” Gabriel said.

As she cleaned his wounds, he turned to watch Joyce in the kitchen. She was leaning against the refrigerator with her back to them. She spoke into the phone so quietly he couldn’t hear what she was saying.

“I don’t know what I would do without her,” Noboru said. Gabriel turned to the couch and saw Noboru’s eyes were open again. “Michiko, I mean.” His voice was weak and raspy, but he looked less pale than he
had before, less clammy. He seemed to be regaining a bit of his strength.

Michiko glared at her husband. “I don’t know what I’d do without you either, you stupid old man. You’re not a boy anymore. You have a daughter, you have a family. I can’t have you running around, fighting, not when your heart keeps warning you not to. One of these days it’ll be a heart attack again, and then what? It’s bad enough you still smoke when you think I’m not looking.” She shook her head. “You have to think about your health—and if that’s not a good enough reason, think about me. In the morning, I want you to call Michael Hunt and tell him you’re resigning. I don’t want you doing any more work for the Hunt Foundation unless it’s stuffing envelopes.”

Noboru laced his fingers behind his head. “I’ll think about it.”

Annoyed, Michiko turned back to Gabriel and jabbed the alcohol-soaked cotton ball against one of his cuts so hard that he winced again. “He’ll
think
about it, he says.” She practically punched him with the bandage she applied over the cut. “This is all your fault. You and your brother. Don’t you care what happens to other people?”

“Stop it,” Noboru said. “If it weren’t for Gabriel, I wouldn’t be here right now.”

“If it weren’t for Gabriel, you wouldn’t have been in danger in the first place.” She glared at Gabriel and he looked away. He couldn’t say she was wrong.

She picked up a double handful of used cotton balls and leftover bits of gauze, got up and carried it into the kitchen to throw away.

Noboru groaned and rubbed his chest as he watched her go. “Michiko has saved my life more times and in
more ways than I can count. She’s a good woman. The best. You need to find a woman like that, Gabriel. Someone who’ll take care of you. Or have you found one already?”

Gabriel shook his head. “I’m not the type to…” He trailed off, unsure how to finish that sentence. He wasn’t the type to what? Let someone take care of him? Stick around long enough to find out? Both were true, he supposed. He’d lost more than a few good women over the years, women he’d cared about and cared for, who claimed they couldn’t compete with what ever it was that kept pulling him back to the forests and jungles, mountains and deserts half a world away. On top of that was an uneasy feeling that came over him whenever he got too close to someone, a fear that she’d be in danger because of him—or, maybe worse, that he’d be forced to give up being in danger for her. The way Michiko wanted Noboru to give it up.

“That’s too bad,” Noboru said. “You’ve saved so many people, Gabriel. When will you let someone save you?”

Gabriel leaned on the wooden banister that ran around the deck behind Noboru’s house, sipping warm tea out of a ceramic cup. A small backyard sloped gently downward away from the house until the lawn ended and the land dropped off in a steep incline. Beyond it he could see the waters of the Makassar Strait glistening in the twilight, and the lights of the oil refineries on the far shore twinkling like stars.

He took the Death’s Head Key from around his neck and looked at it. When Edgar Grissom surprised them in the jungle, he’d already known about it—he’d recognized Gabriel and known that Julian had taken the key from him. That was understandable. Gabriel was a
public figure; a lot of people knew what he looked like from his appearances on television and the articles written about him. And of course Julian would have told his father what had happened at the Discoverers League. But—Grissom had recognized Joyce, too. And that was troubling. Why would Grissom know the name of a random graduate student on a research trip to Borneo?

That wasn’t the end of what was nagging at Gabriel. There was also the matter of how Julian had known Gabriel had come back from the Amazon with the Death’s Head Key, and where to find him. There was only one possible answer. Grissom was being fed information. Someone must have told him about Gabriel finding the Death’s Head Key, someone must have told him that Joyce was in possession of the Star of Arnuwanda.

Someone had sold them out. The only question was who.

“You’ve got that look on your face again,” Noboru said. He was stretched out on a lounge chair by the sliding glass door of the house, a cup of tea resting on the small table by his hand. “That ‘something’s not right’ look.”

“You’ve known me for how long? A few days?”

“I’ve seen it plenty. I’m guessing you wear it a lot.”

Gabriel smiled. “It’s nothing.” He didn’t want to worry Noboru.

Noboru raised a doubtful eyebrow and sipped his tea.

Gabriel looked through the glass door as Joyce finally came out of the kitchen. She’d been on the phone for nearly an hour. Michiko, sitting at a small breakfast table reading hospital reports, pointed toward the tea kettle on the range and Joyce poured herself a cup. Gabriel watched her walk toward them, holding the
cup between her palms, blowing on the tea and taking a tentative sip. The bruise around her eye had grown darker, but Michiko’s treatment had kept it from swelling too badly. Joyce slid the door open, stepped out onto the deck and slid it closed again behind her.

She joined Gabriel by the banister and put her cup down next to his.

“Who were you talking to?” he asked.

She stared out at the water. The sky grew darker, the first stars appearing in the sky. “That was Uncle Daniel. He’s still working at the dig site in Turkey and wants me to come there. I think it’s a good idea. I can’t stay in Borneo—it’s too dangerous now. And besides, we don’t know how much Grissom was able to work out before we got the Star back. For all we know, he’s already on his way to finding the second gemstone. I can’t let that happen.”

“You want to go after Grissom again?” Gabriel said. “You barely survived this time. And he’ll be ready for you next time.”

She shook her head. “I know I can’t take him on. No, my plan is to get to the second gemstone before he does. Uncle Daniel can help with that. He’s got the resources and expertise. If anyone can help me find it, it’s him. He found the Star itself, after all.”

Gabriel reached for his tea and took a sip, taking the time to think. Daniel Wingard was certainly an accomplished archaeologist; he knew what he was doing when it came to locating lost artifacts. But Daniel Wingard didn’t know his way around a gun and wouldn’t stand a chance if he were facing one. He could probably help her beat Grissom to the second Eye of Teshub, and if this were a simple case of professional rivalry among colleagues, that would be enough. But Edgar
Grissom wasn’t just another academic looking to notch up a publication for his CV. He had an army at his command and no compunction about leaving a trail of corpses in his wake. Even if they succeeded in finding the other gemstones before Grissom did, there wasn’t a chance in hell Joyce and Daniel would come back alive.

He tossed back the rest of his tea and put the cup back on the railing. “I can’t let you do this. Grissom is too dangerous.”

Her eyes narrowed. “You can’t
let
me? Didn’t we have this conversation already?”

“Let me clarify,” he said. “I can’t let you do this alone. I’m coming with you.”

She looked surprised. She started to say something, but Gabriel cut her off.

“You’re right,” he said. “Grissom can’t be allowed to find the other gemstones. If it exists, he can’t be allowed to get his hands on the Spearhead. It would be catastrophic, Sargonia all over again, only on a global scale. And, no disrespect to your uncle, but Daniel’s not prepared to face a man like Grissom.”

She studied his face for a moment. “You’re willing to put yourself back in Grissom’s crosshairs just for me?”

“And for your uncle,” he said. “And the rest of the human race.”

“And,” she said. “And.” She rose up on her toes, took his face gently between her hands and kissed him. Her lips felt tender against his.

“Joyce,” he said, “you don’t have to—”

“Oh, I didn’t do it for you,” she said, her voice all innocence. “I did it for humanity.”