The Bone Hunters (27 page)

30 May

Dieter's Island

Off Devil's Backbone

North Eleuthera

Bahamas

“I'm taking automatic fire from across the lagoon,” said Juwan Brugg calmly and evenly into his radio. “Can you take it out?”

“Yes, we have it,” came back the voice of Colonel Mu from the bridge of the recovery vessel.

Mu could see the position of the boat on the bridge repeater scan. It looked to be about thirty-five feet long and was stopped in the water on the opposite side of the lagoon from the planned landing spot.

“Arm a Dragonfly,” ordered Mu into the bridge communicator as Zhou sat in the captain's elevated bridge chair and observed the progress of the mission.

The ship was violently pitching and rolling in the open sea, which made the Dragonfly a perfect choice. It was a cannon-launched guided projectile system, Chinese-designed, and the latest development in close-in weapon systems.

“Ready to fire,” came the voice of the gunnery officer in the ship's fire control center.

“Lock on the target and fire when ready,” ordered Mu.

Zhou felt the ship shudder momentarily as it yawed wildly in the heavy sea. Looking out the bridge window, he saw the fiery trail of what looked like a fireworks rocket disappearing into the gloom.

Ten seconds later, Colonel Mu looked up from the radar screen.

“The target has disappeared,” he said.

Juwan stared in awe as the boat across the lagoon exploded before his eyes in a fiery ball of flame. There would be no more trouble from that quarter.

“Take us in,” he ordered the helmsman.

A minute earlier, they had been about to run the assault boat up onto the path leading into the mangrove swamp when someone had cut loose at them with what sounded like a Browning Automatic Rifle.

It had raked the stern of the assault boat, nearly cutting in half one of the men deployed there and badly wounding a second one. When Lieutenant Alvarez said the wounded man would probably not survive, Juwan ordered them both jettisoned over the side.

He had already lost two of his seven men and they weren't even on the island yet. Maybe he should have had Lee Wee take this landing spot after all, he thought, as the assault boat came up out of the roiling water and lodged firmly on the path.

He had them over the side and forming up a few moments later. The point man in the guard unit called out to Juwan to join him farther up the path. When he got there, the guard pointed to an inflated four-man life raft
tied bow and stern to the mangrove roots. Juwan gave it a three-second burst with his machine gun.

“Let them float on that,” he said.

•   •   •

Li Shen Wui's assault boat raced out of control through the mountainous waves, the low turbulent pitch of the engines becoming an angry roar as they burst out of the sea and clawed through the air before dropping back down again and gaining purchase.

Through the curtain of rain ahead of them, he saw the landing beach suddenly materialize out of the gloom. It was a miracle that his helmsman had found the narrow section of beach they were aiming for instead of the coral outcroppings that bordered it in both directions.

He felt the assault boat surging up to take the next wave. It lifted them higher and higher until he saw that it would carry them straight across the beach and into the line of palm trees beyond it.

At the speed they were going, the boat would disintegrate if it collided with one of the trees. The wave descended toward the beach with a savage fury and the boat somehow slipped safely between two of the trees before coming to rest in a patch of ground vegetation.

He was out of the boat and ordering the men to form up alongside him a few seconds later. On the gentle upslope ahead of them, there were no other trees or vegetation. It looked more like marshland. To the left at the top of the slope were a few boulders, slick with rain.

Li ordered the men to keep at least five feet apart and to begin moving forward. The powerful wind kept pulling at him, peppering his face with sand and stinging his
eyes. He should have remembered to bring goggles, he thought, as they pressed forward toward the marsh.

Li heard the stutter of machine-gun fire, a short burst. The man on the far left of the line dropped in his tracks and didn't move again. Two single shots rang out and the second man in line went down.

Li braced himself against the wind and fired back at the muzzle flashes near the boulders. When he looked up again, the rest of his men were running to the right away from the line of fire.

Li was following them when he heard another commando scream out in terror. He was only twenty feet ahead of him and appeared to be unwounded. As Li ran toward him, he saw that the man was standing in what looked like mud up to his thighs.

As Li watched, the mud rose quickly to his waist and then up to his chest, all in a few seconds. The man was extending his gun stock as far as he could, pleading with the man closest to him to pull him out.

“Don't go any closer,” Li ordered as one of the others responded by stepping toward him.

A few seconds later the man's head disappeared.

“Keep moving to the right,” yelled Li to the other three survivors.

More shots rang out from the top of the slope. They were no longer coming from the boulders. Either the man was moving with them or there was more than one. In a flash of lightning, Li saw the man outlined in the momentary glare of light. Li fired a long burst at him from his QBZ-95 assault rifle. He couldn't be sure, but it looked as though the man fell.

The remaining four men were strung out ahead of him as they attempted to get around the marsh. Li watched as one ran headlong into a tree. When Li came up on him, the man was lying on his back and gagging from the blood flowing into his mouth from his broken nose.

“Get moving,” he demanded, kicking the man in the ribs, “or I'll kill you myself.”

The man rolled over onto his knees, stood up, and saluted before following Li up the slope.

•   •   •

Barnaby stared across the field of saw grass that bordered the narrow path leading from the mangrove swamp. It had only been a minute since he had heard the explosion in the lagoon and seen the cone of fire erupt over the mangrove trees.

As he watched, a man stepped out of the cloaking murk of the dense trees. He was wearing a commando uniform with a Kevlar helmet and moving ahead slowly and cautiously, training his assault rifle first left and then right across the field ahead of him.

Barnaby sighted him through the aperture peep sight on top of the Lee-Enfield as another man emerged from the tree line, ten feet behind him. Like the man walking point, he swung the weapon to the left and right, looking for a potential ambush in the saw grass.

Barnaby waited until the first man was thirty feet out into the field. Aiming low at his legs, he gently squeezed the trigger. The harsh kick from the .303 cartridge slammed the stock backward into his right shoulder. He slid the bolt open and rammed it back home, inserting another round in the chamber.

The point man staggered forward several yards clutching his stomach before dropping facedown on the path.
A third man had emerged from the trees, but he turned and ran back into the tree line.

The second one was caught in the open. Barnaby was about to fire again when the commando leaped off the trail into the saw grass. He had gone no more than five yards when he suddenly disappeared. A few moments later, Barnaby could hear his bellowing cries of pain.

He remembered the old man saying that there was something else waiting for them along the path. By the time the man stopped shouting, Barnaby could only assume it was a pit of some kind with sharpened stakes, the kind he had seen in the New Guinea jungles as a young archaeologist on his first expedition.

He could see no more movement inside the mangrove trees, and wondered how many commandos had landed on his side of the island. He knew there was at least one still across the field and probably more. He needed to be patient and conserve his ammunition. He still had nine rounds left.

•   •   •

Macaulay dragged himself away from the slope and back toward the stone hut. The last round fired by the Chinese commando had torn a hole through the fleshy part of his thigh. He knew it had grazed the bone because the pain was excruciating. A steady gout of blood was pouring from the exit hole and he knew he couldn't walk.

He quickly removed the arm strap from his machine gun. After tightening it around his upper thigh and slowing the blood flow to a seeping ooze, he began crawling back to Jensen's hut. In the distance, he heard the sound of heavy rifle fire. It was the Lee-Enfield.

It was all going badly. While waiting for the Chinese
to land on the beach, he had heard the boom of an explosion and looked back to the south to see an eruption of flames shooting high above the mangroves. It could only have been Mike McGandy's dive boat. He had stayed behind too long. Macaulay tried not to think of his unborn daughter, Keira, or how he would explain it to Mike's wife, Cora. If he survived to see her again.

The last Macaulay had seen of the Chinese, they were moving off to the right. It was only a matter of time before they stopped and turned back toward the high ground and Dieter's hut. He hoped he could get there first.

•   •   •

Juwan knelt on the path inside the mangroves and considered his next step. He had seen the last muzzle flash from the trees on the other side of the field. Whoever was out there had been smart enough to recognize the natural ambush point and had staked out the path. He had to deal with it before he could get to the hermit.

“Crazy Dieter booby-trapped the field,” he said to his last three men.

He took two of them aside. Both were equipped with machetes.

“I want you to cut your way through the vines for at least twenty meters,” said Juwan, pointing at the jungly growth on both sides of the path inside the tree line. “That should take you beyond his field of fire. The saw grass in the field is three feet high. Stay low once you get into it and get around behind him. Look out for more booby traps.”

As the two commandos began hacking their way through the trees, Juwan crept forward and rested the
barrel of his assault rifle in the crook of a tree where the trunk met a low branch. Setting it on single fire, he sighted it into the clump of trees where he had seen the last muzzle flash. He waited ten seconds and fired. And then again. And again.

•   •   •

Barnaby lay flat on his stomach in his muddy hole and waited. Whoever was firing at him from inside the mangroves knew where he was. The second round had slammed into the trunk of the tree right behind him. He thought about moving to a different position, but the declivity where he was lying was the only one in either direction. Getting up would only expose him to their fire.

Through the pelting rain, his eyes were drawn to something that appeared to move for a moment in the mangroves to the left of the path. Another brief movement followed it. After watching for several more seconds, he realized it was vines and branches dropping away to the ground. It had to be a man cutting his way through.

He raised the big Lee-Enfield to his shoulder and searched for the movement through the aperture peep sight. Finding it again, he tried to take into account the man's approximate height and position behind the cutting tool. He squeezed off a round. Nothing else moved. Return fire drove him back into the hole.

•   •   •

Li came out of the marsh area to find himself on a large path near a wooden grape arbor. One direction led up to higher ground off to the left. From that direction, he could hear only the shrieking wind. He heard gunfire from the direction leading to the south side of the island. Along with the reverberation of the light machine guns Brugg's men were carrying, he heard two shots close by from a heavier-caliber rifle.

Assembling the four remaining Chinese, he said, “Reconnoiter the trail heading up to the high ground. There should be a shack or a house up there. Kill anyone you find along the way unless it's an old man. Do not kill the old man.”

“How will we know?” asked one of them.

“By getting close enough to see before you shoot,” said Li. “I need the old man alive.”

The four commandos saluted him before splitting up into pairs, spreading out, and moving slowly up along both sides of the path past the grape arbor. Li headed toward the sound of the firing.

30 May

Dieter's Island

Off Devil's Backbone

North Eleuthera

Bahamas

Juwan Brugg knelt behind the tree inside the perimeter of the mangrove trees and waited for the commando he had sent off to the left to get across the booby-trapped field behind the shooter.

After hearing the last two shots, he had ordered the only commando still with him to follow the trail of the one who had been hacking his way through the mangroves to the right. He had come back to report that the man was dead. Juwan ordered him to go back and finish cutting the path and circle around behind the ambusher from the right.

Juwan's fury was mounting uncontrollably. He had no more men on the recovery vessel and no way to bring more over from Dunmore Town in the middle of the storm. By now the little Chinaman Lee Wee was probably at the hermit's hut and torturing the secret out of Crazy Dieter. Meanwhile he was still pinned down in the mangroves with only two commandos left.

It was getting darker as the storm approached its full fury. Juwan was looking intently across the field in the
direction of the ambusher when something emerged from the clump of trees. Through the rain and mist, he saw it was a man, a man almost as tall as himself.

Juwan raised the machine gun to his shoulder and was about to fire when he saw that the tall man was unarmed. Someone behind him was shoving him forward. The commando he had sent off to the left must have gotten around behind him and captured him, he decided.

He should have killed him, thought Juwan. Now he would enjoy the pleasure of doing it himself before moving on to the hermit. He stood up and headed out along the path across the field. He saw the ambusher stumble and almost fall as the commando behind him shoved his gun hard in the man's back.

Juwan heard a roaring sound. It seemed to come from a long way off. A brutal gust of wind nearly drove him sideways off the trail and a solid wall of rain swept over him like a silver impenetrable curtain.

Juwan couldn't see more than ten feet in any direction as he kept walking forward along the path. The figure of the tall man finally materialized out of the rain coming slowly toward him. He was old and his face was gaunt. Blood was running down his forehead from a wound on his scalp. His eyes seemed unfocused.

“Why didn't you kill him?” Juwan yelled to the obscured figure behind him as the tall man fell to his knees.

Li Shen Wui stepped from behind Barnaby. His eyes went straight to the breast pocket in Juwan's combat fatigues. The envelope was no longer visible. He could see the rage in Brugg's face.

“You read the note,” shouted Li over the wind,
glancing in both directions to make sure none of Brugg's men were in sight.

Juwan didn't hear what the little Chinaman said. He was intent on killing the ambusher and moving on to the hermit's hut. As Brugg raised his machine gun, Li brought his own assault rifle to bear.

“I killed your mother,” he screamed, firing three rounds at point-blank range.

Li watched the three holes appear in a straight, even pattern across his massive chest. Confusion replaced rage in Juwan's face as he dropped his gun and stared down wonderingly at the wounds in his chest. Blackness began to boil up behind his eyes.

“I killed your mother,” Li screamed again as Juwan fell backward onto the shell-covered path.

Barnaby remained on his knees gazing at the huge man lying next to him on the ground. His head was still ringing from the first blow he had received while lying inside the tree line. With the noise of the rain and wind, he had no idea someone was even behind him when he felt his head explode. He had been on his knees and getting up when the man slammed him again with the gun barrel.

When Barnaby looked up into the Chinese man's eyes, he saw there would be no clemency. There would be no
way to reason with this one or to bargain for his life. He looked as merciless and primitive as an ax blade.

The driving rain slowly rinsed the blood from his face. As he waited for his execution, two more commandos appeared through the curtain of rain and slowly approached the big man's body.

“Your leader has been killed,” said Li. “He died a noble death.”

“What about him?” asked one of them, looking down at Barnaby.

“Bring him,” said Li. “He may have value as a temporary hostage.”