The Bone Hunters (28 page)

30 May

Dieter's Island

Off Devil's Backbone

North Eleuthera

Bahamas

A stabbing pain brought Macaulay out of his daze. He realized he had been unconscious. He didn't know for how long. He lay on the path leading to the hut.

Behind his eyes, something floated like an amoeba. The pain from the thigh wound was a blinding agony, shooting upward from the shattered bone in his leg to the nerve endings in his head and back again. He felt a rising nausea as he began dragging himself again on his belly toward the hut.

The storm must be close to reaching its peak, he thought. The wind was now a constant thunderous roar. He tasted salt on his lips, a combination of rain and sea spray. The feeble daylight was nothing more than shades of charcoal, from light to dark gray. He edged forward on the path, not daring to look around behind him.

A moment later, he felt two hands gently lifting his face. He looked up to see the frightened eyes of Lexy. Beyond her stood the old man. Together, they raised him by the shoulders and began dragging him toward the hut. Macaulay passed out again.

•   •   •

The Chinese commando closest to the hut watched as they dragged him toward the open door. He was still too far away to know for sure which one might be the old man. He was not about to kill the wrong one. He had once seen Li Shen Wui skin a man alive.

The commando turned around to see Li coming up the path together with the other three remaining Chinese. Behind them, two of the local black commandos were hustling along a tall prisoner. The man was bleeding from a head wound and looked worn-out.

“What do you have to report?” demanded Li.

“There are at least three people in the hut,” said the commando, saluting.

“How do you know that?”

“One of them was wounded,” he answered. “The other two dragged him into the hut.”

“Why didn't you shoot the wounded man?” demanded Li.

“I was following your orders about not killing the old man.”

“Why would the old man be wounded?” screamed Li.

The commando had no answer.

“I will deal with you later,” said Li.

•   •   •

Macaulay regained consciousness to find himself lying on the old man's bunk. Lexy had lowered his trousers far enough to bandage his thigh wound with a gauze compress and tape from Jensen's medical kit.

“The bullet went through your leg, Steve,” she said. “You've lost a lot of blood.”

A shot rang out. A split second later the edge of the
open window slit near the hut door exploded in a hail of stone splinters. A second shot found the same narrow opening. Lying on the bed, Macaulay heard the slug slam into the coquina rock wall behind him followed by the loud twang of the ricochet as it buried itself in the shelf across the hut, smashing two jars of fruit.

Lexy sat with her back to the wall facing the path. The old man stood near her dumbfounded, staring at the dripping juice. The next shot through the window slit ricocheted off the back wall and struck the rock ledge inches from Lexy, peppering her face with rock fragments.

“Someone is coming,” said Dieter Jensen, looking through a crack in the stout door.

Lexy picked up the machine gun from the table and went to the edge of the window slit. Peering out, she saw Barnaby standing in the middle of the path fifty feet away from the hut. A black man in a commando uniform stood behind him pointing an assault rifle at his back.

Five more commandos were positioned behind trees and rocks farther away along the path. A Chinese man with gold stars on the collar of his uniform was approaching the hut carrying a sodden white towel. Unarmed, he stopped a few feet short of the door.

“I hope you appreciated my warning,” shouted Li to make his voice heard over the wind. “Now please bring out the man Jensen or I will be forced to kill Dr. Finchem.”

“He'll kill him anyway,” said Macaulay from the bed, “and then us.”

The old man shuffled toward the secured door.

“I cannot allow the man outside to die over the bones of a man long dead,” he said.

“Once you show him where the bones are buried, he'll kill you too,” said Macaulay.

“Why are the bones so important?” asked Dieter Jensen.

“They are much older than we led you to believe,” said Lexy. “He may be one of the earliest of our human ancestors. Some people revere him as a god.”

“If you come out now,” shouted Li, “I give you my word of honor that you will not be harmed. I am only interested in Peking Man. After I have him, you will be free to go.”

“He's lying,” said Macaulay.

“Yes,” agreed Lexy, “but what choice do we have?”

“Then let it be on your conscience,” shouted Li as he turned around and slowly headed back up the path.

“I will not allow your friend to be murdered for the sake of a man's bones, no matter how valuable they might be,” said Dieter.

Removing the timber beam securing the door, he swung it open and stepped outside into the rain.

“If you do not harm these people, I will show you the place where the bones are buried,” Jensen called out to Li.

“It is agreed,” yelled Li. “I am a man of my word.”

Lexy helped Macaulay to his feet and put her arm under his shoulder to assist him to the open door.

“He needs help,” called out Lexy.

Li ordered Brugg's two commandos to carry Macaulay. Stepping forward, they locked their wrists under his rump and carried him down the path through the driving
rain. He lost consciousness again. Lexy joined Barnaby as they reached the side path that led toward Dieter's cemetery. She saw the open wound on Barnaby's head and put her arm around him.

“I deeply regret that my foolhardiness has led us to this end,” he said.

“I'm an independent woman above all else,” said Lexy. “I'm here because I wanted to be.”

Closely followed by the armed men, Dieter Jensen didn't say a word as he led Li and the others into the crudely fenced graveyard. Lexy saw a familiar fluttering of wings above her head and watched as Dieter's frigate bird landed on top of one of the crosses marking a grave site.

As the bird sat adjusting its plumage, Lexy heard another shot and watched the bird drop to the ground in a bloody mess of feathers and bone. Jensen looked down at his friend's remains as Li holstered his semiautomatic pistol.

“No flying witnesses allowed,” said Li, grinning at the other commandos.

The pistol shot brought Macaulay up out of his stupor again. The men carrying him had set him back down on the ground near the fenced graveyard with his back to the base of the huge fan palm tree. Barnaby and Lexy were standing alongside him. Two Chinese commandos stood guard with cocked weapons trained on them.

Fifty feet away, Dieter Jensen walked to a battered old wooden cross on the far edge of the cemetery.

“Here is where to dig,” he said.

30 May

Dieter's Island

Off Devil's Backbone

North Eleuthera

Bahamas

Dieter picked up a short stick and marked off a five-foot-square section of ground beside the cross.

“The crate is quite large,” shouted Jensen over the wind as he stepped back from the plot.

Hearing his words, Barnaby and Macaulay exchanged puzzled glances. They had both seen what remained of the red crate with Chinese lettering on it in the old man's hut. What crate was he talking about?

The two shovels that Macaulay had brought along earlier from the stone hut were still lying on the ground where he had left them. Li ordered Brugg's two surviving commandos to begin digging out the plot.

The soil was soft and easily dug. A mound of it grew higher as the hole went deeper. Li stood ten feet away with two of his commandos, a triumphant smile on his face. At one point, he looked over at his three captives at the base of the huge fan palm.

Macaulay caught the momentary unveiled expression in his eyes, the way a feral and hungry fox might look at
the captive chickens in the henhouse. He knew Li would have them killed as soon as the Peking Man was safely aboveground.

The two diggers were down to a depth of three feet when Li heard a loud crunch as one of the shovels struck something hard.

“Be careful,” he shouted as the men used the edges of the spades to clear the surface of what soon emerged from the loamy soil as the top section of a wooden crate.

“Come out of there,” ordered Li.

As the two diggers were climbing out of the hole, Macaulay saw Li motion to the two Chinese standing nearby him. Brugg's men were walking toward them with satisfied smiles when the two Chinese raised their assault rifles and cut them down with two short bursts. Both were still moving. Li stepped close and shot each of them in the head with his pistol.

One of the Chinese commandos guarding Macaulay and the others looked down at him and said, “You kill my brother. You next.”

“Let us see what we have,” said Li, approaching the burial pit. “You had better have been telling the truth, old man.”

Dieter Jensen was hunched over, leaning awkwardly for support against the nearest cross member. He had seemed to visibly weaken as the two men were digging the hole. Drenched by the pitiless rain, the old man was now shivering almost uncontrollably.

“You must be careful,” said Jensen. “The glass containers are very fragile.”

“Remove the top section,” ordered Li.

The two closest commandos put their assault rifles
down and dropped into the large hole. Carefully inserting the edges of the shovels under the cross-hatched wooden cover, they slowly pried it up. The men guarding the prisoners couldn't contain their curiosity and kept turning to look back at the discovery.

Macaulay suddenly remembered Dieter Jensen telling them about the things he had found on the barge carrying outdated military supplies. To make obstacles he had said.

As if in silent communion, Dieter Jensen stared over at Macaulay while continuing to lean on the wooden cross. Without attracting the attention of the commandos in the hole, he slowly waved his index finger in a circle, as if signaling it was time to go.

Barnaby was already screened from the burial hole by the broad stem of the palm. Macaulay was not. He waited for the guards to look back at the pit again and slid his legs farther around the base. Lexy was still standing fully exposed to the excavated plot, her eyes drawn in sympathy to the old man teetering on the cross at the edge of the hole.

The two commandos in the pit gently removed the crosshatched crate cover and laid it down next to the hole. Li saw that there were several inches of straw covering the next layer. He ordered the commandos to scoop it away.

Beneath the straw was a layer of heavy fiberboard. The commandos removed the sheath knives from their belts and inserted them into the outer edges. After cutting around the entire length, they removed the fiberboard layer and tossed it over the wooden crate cover.

The contents of the crate lay exposed for the first time.
Under the sheeting rain, it looked at first to Li like a bed of large orange mushrooms packed in individual wooden compartments. The painted metal crowns of the mushrooms were three inches in diameter. He wondered if the bones were individually packaged under the crowns.

Behind him, Dieter Jensen picked up one of the shovels and stepped to the edge of the pit. Jumping down on top of the open crate, he lifted the shovel in the air and then rammed the point of it down on one of the orange crowns. Li suddenly realized what they were, that the mushrooms were actually contact fuses on the nose tips of old artillery shells.

“Kill him,” screamed Li as he pivoted away from the pit and began running.

One of the commandos in the pit raised the pistol from his belt and shot the old man in the head as he was bringing the shovel down on the contact fuse for a second time.

Macaulay grabbed Lexy by the knees and heaved her behind the massive base of the palm, enveloping her body under his. His guard turned back to see the movement and aimed his rifle at Macaulay's back.

Before he could pull the trigger, a man-made clap of thunder erupted from the burial pit, disintegrating the two commandos inside it along with the already dead Jensen. Seconds later, the shock wave of the blast
obliterated everything in the surrounding graveyard as flames from the exploding ordnance erupted a hundred feet into the sky.

Barnaby watched as the two commandos guarding them were ripped off their feet and driven twenty feet in the air into the stand of pines that fringed the grove. Their bodies came to rest like broken rag dolls, one with his head missing and the other with his arms and legs flung out at impossible angles.

An unexploded shell landed with a loud thud a few feet away from Macaulay. Still protecting Lexy with his body, he saw the label on the side of the green cylinder. It read 4”
NAVAL ILLUMINATING PROJ
ECTILE
.

A British naval star shell, thought Macaulay mechanically, probably military stores from the British naval base shut down at the end of the war. How many of them had detonated? he wondered. It couldn't have been the whole crate or they would have all been reduced to the bloody pulp that was all that was left of the men in the pit.

Barnaby gently pulled Macaulay off Lexy and helped her to her feet.

“We have to get Steve back to the stone hut,” said Lexy, looking down at him.

Macaulay could barely hear her. He felt something warm running down his cheeks. A steady trickle of blood was streaming from both ears. The still-pounding rain quickly rinsed it away as Lexy and Barnaby began rigging a sling to carry him.

Barnaby looked for any sign that Li Shen Wui had survived the blast on the other side of the pit. There was nothing recognizable to be seen anymore. All traces of the cemetery and the vegetation beyond it were erased.

Macaulay passed out again when they were lifting him into the sling.