The Day After Never - Covenant (Post-Apocalyptic Dystopian Thriller - Book 3) (33 page)

Two men in dark robes stepped from a doorway halfway down the narrow block, and Carson’s stomach tightened. He told himself that he was too close to the main boulevard for there to be any danger, but his breath caught in his throat when he got a better look at the approaching figures, their onyx eyes glinting in the faint light from a passing car and their body language radiating menace. Adrenaline flooded his senses at the urgent determination in their stride, and he realized belatedly that he was anything but safe on the empty sidewalk.

Carson made a snap decision and darted between two cars. A loud honk blared from his right as he stepped into the street and narrowly dodged the front fender of a sedan barreling down on him. He cursed and skirted an overloaded truck lumbering along in the opposite direction, laborers on the running boards gripping the roof rack for support, and then continued across once the vehicle passed.

He hopped across a wide puddle and almost slipped when he landed hard, wrenching his ankle. He winced but kept moving, and when he reached the far curb, glanced over his shoulder.

The men were nowhere to be seen.

Carson shook his head to clear it and exhaled as he gingerly stepped onto the uneven concrete rise. A stream of noxious fluid, the surge the last of the runoff from a late afternoon cloudburst, burbled in the gutter around a clot of trash. A figure stepped into his path from the gloom and Carson stiffened. The man’s hand was outstretched, blocking Carson’s way.

“A few rupees, mister?” a sandpaper voice pleaded in heavily accented English.

Carson’s nose wrinkled at the stench drifting from the beggar, a rancid combination of filth, sour sweat, and decay. The vagrant eyed him hopefully through milky eyes, his jaundiced skin the texture of old leather, his trembling arm little more than bones and sinew. Carson pushed past, leaving the beggar leaning on a makeshift crutch fashioned from a broom handle, the soiled bandages that enveloped his stump of a left leg dotted with flies.

Carson’s pulse thudded in his ears as he willed himself calm, chastising himself for allowing his imagination to get the better of him. The main avenue was only two more blocks, and he’d be there in no time. He could easily do this.

Running footfalls thudded in his wake as he turned the corner, and his relief dissolved into fear – the city had a deserved reputation as treacherous for the unwary. He looked around for a taxi, but there were no cars on this street, and he swore under his breath at his carelessness. He’d dropped his guard for only a moment, but that had been enough in a town that offered no quarter. His pale complexion announced him as easy prey, a visitor in a country where he didn’t belong, and now his pursuers were closing in, no doubt planning to mug him.

Carson hurried along the narrow strip of sidewalk toward the far intersection. The long block seeming to stretch endlessly before him, leaving him to navigate around muddy gaps in the concrete where the pavement had washed away. He dared a look behind him but didn’t see anything other than iron barred windows and shadowy doorways, and he slowed as he quelled the panic he’d succumbed to.

What was wrong with him?

It wasn’t like he was helpless – he’d spent his life in the military, where he’d seen enough combat to fuel decades of sleepless nights with the phantoms of his squad mates and those he’d gunned down. Even now he cut an imposing figure for a man of his years, his silver hair cropped close to his skull, his shoulders square, frown lines scoring a seasoned face beneath hard cobalt eyes. Any thieves foolhardy enough to tackle him would be in for an unpleasant surprise, he assured himself, although the coil of anxiety in his gut twisted tighter as he strode past crumbling, graffiti-marred façades.

Carson swerved abruptly, narrowly avoiding a pile of cow dung in his path, a regular consequence of the sacred beasts that roamed unfettered even in the cosmopolitan areas. He skirted the lump and stopped in his tracks when another figure appeared from the shadows ahead of him, moving with a cautious precision that he instantly recognized as professional.

He looked around for anything he could use as a weapon, but saw nothing. Carson quickly calculated the distance to the next street and his odds of dodging the newcomer, but dismissed it. Soles pounding on the street behind him decided his course, and he ran to a dark opening between two buildings – a pedestrian walkway between deteriorating tenements. He sprinted down the muddy track, and then skidded to a stop when he came face-to-face with a massive head, its baleful eyes staring at him with bovine indifference.

Carson glared at the cow in the faint light and edged past it, ignoring the pink dust that rubbed on his clothes from where its hide had been festively colored by the faithful. He was just past the enormous beast when he heard his pursuers trail him into the passage. He slapped the cow’s haunch to goad it into charging them and sprinted as fast as he could for the far end, not waiting to see the effect of his effort.

At the next street he spotted a taxi creeping his way and flagged it down, hoping he didn’t look so frantic he would scare the driver off. The car slowed to a stop, and he was reaching for the rear door handle when the pair emerged from the passageway behind him. The driver blanched at the sight and stomped on the gas, leaving Carson standing alone, fully exposed.

He tore toward the glowing doorway of a curry restaurant, where a dim yellow sign over the storefront promised the best food in all India, and edged by a startled hostess in a golden sari before shouldering his way through the packed dining room, past the cash register in the rear, and through a pair of scarred double doors.

A half dozen cooks labored over pots of steaming gruel beside two dishwashers in a corner scrubbing wooden bowls. Across from them, a wiry man chopped vegetables on a length of plywood with an oversized blade, his expression blank, head bobbing slightly with the music from a boom box on a shelf over the prep area. All looked up at Carson in surprise as he burst into the cramped cooking area and made for the rear door. A cry of protest went up from the two closest women, one of whom shook a stew-slathered ladle at him. Ignoring the commotion, he ran to the exit, hoping his pursuers had decided their easy target was now too visible to attack.

He gagged at the stench rising from the garbage cans in the hot storage area, and swung the shabby wooden door wide. Outside he skirted a dumpster and shuddered at the sight of rats scurrying away down glistening pavement. His eyes adjusted to the darkness, and he inched along the brick wall, straining his ears for any hint of pursuit.

Satisfied that he was in the clear, he strode toward the street at the end of the access-way, his footsteps the only sound other than the distant hum of traffic and the constant percussive horn toots echoing off the high walls. As he neared the alley mouth, he gasped when a figure draped in the robes of a tantric priest stepped from the darkness to block his way. Carson recoiled at the man’s filthy, matted beard and hair, and then locked on his face – a demonic vision smeared with gray ash, his mangled mouth stretched into a permanent sneer by mottled scar tissue, revealing blackened teeth filed to sharp points. The man’s eyes bored into Carson, and then a hoarse rasp issued from his ruined lips and he leaned forward. His breath stank like an open grave. Moonlight glinted off the curved blade of a knife in his hand, and he hissed at Carson like a cobra as he feinted low and lunged.

Carson tensed, prepared to parry the thrust, and then abruptly jerked backward as razor-sharp wire looped over his head in a flash and bit into his larynx. His last breath gurgled from his ruined throat as powerful arms pulled the wire through sinew, tissue, and bone with a single heave. Carson’s body twitched spasmodically and collapsed in a heap, blood pulsing from his stub of neck. His head slammed against the pavement and bounced into the alley before settling five feet from his torso, where his sightless eyes stared in surprise at the unlikely spectacle of his headless corpse spasming in a crimson pool.

The robed man nodded once to his companion, who removed a cheap plastic raincoat that had shielded his garments from the shower of blood, and pocketed the garrote. The assassin rolled the slick covering into a neat bundle while the robed man knelt and quickly went through Carson’s pockets. Finding nothing but a wallet and a room key, he straightened and shook his head.

The pair soundlessly vanished into the gloom, leaving Carson’s remains to the rats making their way from the dumpster, the prospect of an easy meal having overpowered the animals’ natural caution. The restaurant’s service door opened with a creak and an outraged cook with a meat cleaver stepped outside, but his anger turned to panic at the grisly spectacle of ravenous vermin overwhelming the body near the alley mouth.

Chapter 2

“Kindly return your seat backs to their upright positions in preparation for landing.”

The public address system crackled with an announcement warning the passengers that their flight was on final approach to Indira Gandhi International Airport. Trim flight attendants in starched uniforms strolled along the first class aisle with professional courtesy smiles in spite of the turbulence that buffeted the big jet as it shed altitude.

Drake Ramsey offered the nearest attendant his empty glass and returned to looking through the window at the distant glow of the Indian capital’s lights. He shifted in the seat and rubbed tired fingers through his longish brown hair, wondering for the thousandth time what he was doing flying to India only ten days after returning from Myanmar. That episode had resulted in him swearing to himself that he would stay put for a while, but when Spencer had called the prior morning, everything had gone sideways.

Drake replayed the conversation as the drone of the big motors changed, the plane slowing as it descended through scattered clouds.

“What do you mean, ‘the game’s afoot’?” Drake had demanded after his partner in crime had announced he was in New Delhi. “And what are you doing in India? We just got home.”

Spencer had sounded excited. “One of my friends, an instructor from my misspent military years, called me, out of the blue. He’d seen the coverage on our Paititi discovery, and he had a proposition for me.”

“So you flew halfway across the world?”

“This guy’s serious as a heart attack, Drake. If he says he needs to see me in person, he means it. So, yeah, I got on a plane. It’s not like I had much else to do in California, so why not?”

“Um, because it’s nuts, for starters?”

“Dude, just listen, will you? I met with him and he told me that since he retired, he’s been on the hunt for a treasure that disappeared in India a few hundred years ago. Could be bigger than Paititi, if the legends are true,” Spencer said, referring to their discovery of the lost Inca city of gold.

“That’s nice. But how are you involved?”

“He needs money.”

“Of course. Did he mention that he’s also the former Nigerian petroleum minister, and all he needs is to pay a few small fees so he can transfer a hundred million to you?”

“Drake, you’re not hearing me. The guy’s a straight arrow, and he’s on to something. But he’s not rich, so when he ran into a situation where money could take him to the next level, he reached out to me.”

“But your cash is all tied up,” Drake said, resisting the urge to remind Spencer that he was effectively broke until the hedge fund to which he’d entrusted his fortune disgorged whatever remained of it.

“Don’t remind me. But that’s where you come in. I told him about our little team, and he was willing to discuss cutting us in if we help him across the finish line.”

Drake had begun to protest, but Spencer cut him off. “Dude, this is huge, and he’s really close to finding the treasure. This might be a slam dunk. And we’re talking mega treasure. More than you can imagine.”

“Can you be more specific? No offense, but you’re asking me to fly to India, and the surf’s perfect here right now. And Allie’s supposed to arrive at the end of the week…”

“Think with your brain for a minute, bro. You ever hear of a guy named Nadir Shah?”

“Plays for the Lakers, doesn’t he? From Serbia or something?”

Spencer had ignored his barb. “He was the ruler of Persia back in the early eighteenth century. Meaner than a striped snake, liked to build towers out of his enemies’ bones, an old school badass in the Genghis Khan mold.”

“Probably wasn’t breastfed as a child.”

“He invaded India, and after he did his conquest thing, he looted the country, which was seriously prosperous at the time.”

“That’s the treasure?”

“Sort of. The legends tell of a caravan over a hundred and fifty miles long of treasure bearers. Elephants, cattle, horses, carts, you name it, toting massive amounts of gold and jewels.”

“Wait. I did read something about that. Wasn’t the Iranian throne part of the take?”

Spencer had cleared his throat. “That’s right. The Peacock Throne. But that’s a replica. The original vanished without a trace, although some of the jewels reappeared and are now part of the British crown jewels.”

“It disappeared? What happened to it?”

“Nobody’s sure. But the likeliest is that the Brits confiscated it and melted it down.”

“Bummer. But where does that leave your bud?”

“He’s not after that. Apparently, part of the convoy got waylaid as it passed from India to Pakistan or Afghanistan. It’s unclear exactly where, but the stories have it that a big chunk vanished when the final group got separated from the main column in a monsoon, and the treasure’s never been found.”

Drake paused to absorb Spencer’s account. “And your guy thinks he knows where it is?”

“That’s right. He’s located a relic that he believes has the clue he needs to locate it precisely. He’s got a general idea of the area, but this apparently is like a treasure map.”

“X marks the spot?”

“Nothing’s ever that easy, but you get the gist.”

Drake sighed in resignation. “How much does he need, Spencer? What are we talking?”

“It’s not just the money. He could use some help. He’s not a young guy.”