The Legend of the Phantom (25 page)

Chapter
36

Les seemed irate. There he was strung up in chains in a small cinderblock and plaster cellar, waiting for “who knows what for way too long”. Across from him, similarly bound, hung Kit, also known as the Phantom.

Between rants about his forlorn condition
Les seemed determined to plague Kit with questions. “Is there really treasure? What is the Eyrie? Where is it? What did the Black Widow mean by the Peter Pan reference?”

Yet while Les ranted and struggled, the Phantom observed
his surroundings. He didn’t pay any more attention to Les than he would to a chained collie as Les seemed to be fine overall. He wasn’t bleeding anymore and in fact seemed quite intact despite the earlier ordeal.

Instead the Phantom strained to hear the faint conversation between the girl and Stripes outside, and waited for the
sound of the van doors when they would finally open and close. Finally it came and by the sound at least three individuals aside from the driver had departed. The doors were followed by the sound of the vehicle starting up and pulling away; which was evidence enough of their abandonment.

Les caught the sound of the van’s departure as well, and
stopped his monologue of questions and wailed, “They’ve left us to die!”

“I don’t think so,” replied the Phantom
; a bit too calmly in Les’ opinion. 

“Why?!” demanded Les.

“Because there would be nothing for them to gain from it. Stripes wants to work me over, and if the Black Widow can’t figure out the rings, she will want me to solve it for her.”

“So they’ll be back?” asked Les, incredulous.

“They may not have even really left,” replied the Phantom.

Outside, in the shadow of the night, dark eyes watched the vehicle leave. Those eyes had been watching the building for quite some time. As the vehicle drove off the eyes watched to see if it would return. Further and further the vehicle moved from where he sat, watching. When the taillights became pinpoints in the dark, Emmanuel moved.

Meanwhile, inside the building the Phantom flexed his massive arms and legs and tried to work his chains free. Balling up his fists he strained to pull the anchor above him free; and though the plaster from the walls cracked around the edges of the anchors and shook loose, the anchors themselves stayed intact. The chains withstood his efforts.

Again the Phantom tried to free himself, this time using his legs. Outside the room, footsteps sounded as a guard peered into the room. Seeing the prisoner struggle, he let out a good laugh and called over the other guard that he had been playing cards with.

“Well I guess that answers one question,” stated the Phantom drily. “It looks like we are accompanied by at least two guards.”

Peering in through the door slot the eyes of the second guard surveyed the hanging pair.
Aloud he grunted, “They’re obviously going nowhere. Come on,” he said addressing the other outside the door. “I got a winning hand to play.”

“Sez youse.”

The two retreated to leave the Phantom to his useless endeavors.

As they returned to their post the Phantom heard a young voice call out from the small barred windo
w above the Phantom’s head. As the Phantom craned his neck to see the young man he caught his dark eyes as the boy repeated himself. “Are you the good guys or the bad guys?”

Smiling at the pointed question, the Phantom immediately replied, “I’m the good guy.”

“
Then wait just a minute.”

A few minutes later the small voice returned, along with the sound of some heavy item.

“Maybe this will help,” called out the voice from above. Slowly the boy hefted a heavy crowbar into the windowsill. “Watch out!” he hoarsely whispered as he dropped it through the open window into the cell.

The
Phantom moved just enough to check its fall as it hit the ground.

The boy stayed only long enough to make certain it got in there
; and then disappearing into the night, the window was free of his silhouette to the open air once again.

The crowbar bounced as it hit the ground and the Phantom knew that the guards would come running soon.

Landing by the Phantom’s feet, he quickly stepped onto the curved part of the bar and worked it into the chains that anchored his feet to the wall.

As Kit suspected, t
he guards must have heard the noise or seen the monitor, because even as the phantom stepped onto the bar, he heard the sound of pounding footsteps as the guards raced to the cell that held Les and himself.

Quicker than it could be told, the Phantom forced the crow bar through the chains, and stepping heavily into it used the crowbar to separate the chains and free his legs.

As the chains came away from his legs, the guards burst into the door, hand guns at the ready. One of them, a bit nimbler than the other, and obviously less intelligent, ran up to the Phantom in an attempt to hit him with the gun.

Instead the man found himself
pulled in hard against the big man as the Phantom wrapped him up between his hard thighs. The poor man’s breath was instantly crushed out of him along with a few broken ribs. As the asphyxiated guard fell to the ground the Phantom used his slumping body as a kicking bag that he hurled with the strength of his legs into the second guard.

The second
guard fell under the dead weight of his companion and in doing so, broke his wrist and sprained his arm, dropping his gun to the floor.

The
Phantom had wasted no time. While the body of the first was flying into the second man, the Phantom used the kinetic energy from the kick to twist his body and pull up his legs into a firm position against the wall, near waist height. Using the position of his legs as leverage he pushed hard against the wall. Being stronger than arms the legs gave him the additional strength needed to jettison himself off of the wall. The strain of such great strength, was finally enough to break the concrete that held the anchor, and with a final explosion of concrete, plaster and metal, the Phantom broke free, falling and rolling, drawing in the chains to him as he did so; positioning himself at the ready as he stood up again.

The
still-conscious second guard saw it all and as the Phantom approached him the hapless man let out a scream of pure terror. Never before had he seen such an apparition as this man. He had seen the mark on Stripes face. He knew what the stories were, but had never before believed them. Now, however, his fears seemed to have come alive. Having seen the incredible strength this phantom that stood in front of him possessed, he succumbed to his fears. Coupled with the pain from his broken wrist, the man’s eyes rolled up and he fainted.

The man woke to the sound of Les’ chains being broken with the crowbar. His glazed eyes came into focus and a sharp pain in his wrist and arm woke him even more.

He moaned as he tried to sit up, and as his eyes came into focus he found that the giant of a man that was across the room only seconds ago was now s
tanding over him. No, not a man, but an apparition… a ghost… even a ghost who walks… a phantom.

His eyes widened as the
Phantom loomed over him.

“Who are you?”

The question demanded an answer. It compelled him to speak. “Gary… Gary Brown.”

The Phantom smiled at the man’s obvious fear. He half expected Gary to pee himself. “What is the
real name of the girl?”

“I don’t know!”

“How big is the organization?”

“I don’t know!”

The Phantom paused for a second as he pondered the man. Was he saying ‘I don’t know’ because he really didn’t or because he was trying to not give anything away? The Phantom decided to increase the fear factor. “Give me one reason why I shouldn’t kill you and take your soul?” The Phantom drew back his massive rippled arm.

“I don’t know!” The man sobbed as he flinched away.
“Wait! Wait! I may not know those things, but I know they have a plane… Maybe you can catch up with them,” he sobbed.

“Where
are they going?” commanded the Phantom.

“New Mexico…
Albuquerque! Please don’t kill me!”

“I won’t kill you, but this is going to hurt.”

The fist landed squarely on the man’s jaw. His head snapped back and his eyes rolled up as he crumpled once again upon the ground. “I only wish I had my rings to give you a more permanent reminder that you could reminisce with Stripes about later,” said the Phantom to the unconscious guard as he scooped up his revolvers that they had dropped. “Les, let’s move,” he said as he turned again to where he had left his fellow captive. Only Les wasn’t there.

‘Well then,
I’m off to the Eyrie alone. There are Pirates to catch,’ thought the Phantom as he moved. As he exited the building the young dark eyes of Emmanuel watched him go.

Chapter 3
7

Shortly after the plane landed in Albuquerque, New Mexico, the trench-coated persona of Kit Walker collected his weapons from the captain. As his identification named him an International Air-Marshal he was allowed to carry weapons onboard wherever he went.

He quickly belted his weapons and having thanked the captain, headed down the gangplank to join the crowd that surged toward the exit. 
He was bound for the Eyrie, one of the legendary homes of the Phantom.

As he made his way through the crowd,
a man dressed as an airport mechanic broke away from a small kiosk where he was looking over the magazines and seemingly without arousing the Phantom’s suspicions stealthily followed him.

Quickly the Phantom hurried to the smaller airport where he collected his Cessna. There, he jumped through the pre-flight checklist and hurriedly took off for the place in the four-corners desert where he kept his jeep.

Back on the tarmac, the mechanic who had followed him called the assigned number. “He is in the air… Yes… A small
blue Cessna… Yes… Northwest… Ok.” As the man finished the call, he looked up one last time at the retreating plane before turning on his heel and moving away.

While the Phantom flew, his thoughts centered on Diana. He remembered the first time he had ever shown her the Eyrie. She was awestruck by the sheer height of it all, and even more so by the ‘elevator’ system inside. He recalled how she begged to hear the story of how the Eyrie was found. He explained it faithfully as the story was one familiar to him.

It started long ago with the
Father of the First… While a youth and acting as cabin-boy to Christopher Columbus, the Father of the first Phantom left the admiral’s ship to explore the New World.

In search of a golden city,
the cabin boy Kit and his Indian friend named Caribo roamed around the New World that would later become known as Central and North America; and eventually found a flat-topped peak in the desert, called a mesa. On top of this, they made a home they called the Eyrie, after an eagle’s nest that they spotted on the side of the rocky face. That was in 1497.

Lost to
the Father of the First’s son, it wasn’t until his grandson, the second Phantom, was born that the Eyrie was ‘discovered’ anew. The Second plagued his father with details of the Eyrie that existed in the New World, but having never been there, his father’s details were sketchy at best and were used as a bedtime story more than as a history lesson.

But to young Kit, i
t was one of his favorite bedtime stories and as a man it became an obsession with him.

So it was that
with the untimely death of his first love, the grieving Second set out to forget his immediate past and instead search out his heritage. He ended up searching out the Eyrie as part of his endeavors to understand his own place in the world.

The trail was an elusive one that began from the old world and ended with him following a twisted
road that nearly cost him his life.

But find it he did, and
among what he found was not just a simple rock tower but a working stone edifice complete with a defendable well and a secured getaway in the midst of a formidable desert people that considered the man and his home sacred.

In his later writings, in hopes that one day his son or
possibly some grandson may wish to follow in his footsteps, he wrote the directions to get to the elusive place.

The Phantom chuckled as he remembered the longhand script that the Second had writ
ten
:
“For the trail to the Eyrie is a formidable one, cursed with raging rapids that cross desert land filled with all manner of vicious flora and fauna that poke, bite, sting and try to strip the very flesh from your bones. If you succeed to make it to the land of the Navajo, show your belt and rings and then they will direct you via the North Star past the three sisters, second to the right. From there continue on straight till morning to where the sun rises above the desert floor. There the mesa stands as a monument of right in this world of evil...
”

It was dusk as Kit Walker approached the mesa that bore his name: Walker’s Table. Rarely did he arrive during the daylight hours. Mostly he arrived at dusk or in the night to keep the location as secret as possible, but partly in reverence to his ancestors directions of following the North Star.

But this time h
e knew he was being watched and made certain that those that watched him believed him to be unaware of them. He grinned to himself upon entering the naturally hollowed column of rock, and as he climbed into the hanging platform the Phantom marveled once again at the engineering feat that his ancestors accomplished in building the elevator within the well that allowed him to be hoisted effortlessly to the top of the mesa. 

There
, he checked the dome, moving from area to area within it, analyzing each segment to determine if anything was missing. Within moments Kit had found nothing moved and nothing changed. The pirates hadn’t arrived yet.

Relaxing he made himself a good meal of the rations that he kept there, and taking a short nap, waited for night to fall.

When he woke, he found that it was finally night.

Killing the lights he opened the sealed outside door.
The crisp air of the cool night engulfed him. The heat of the desert day had dissipated, through the replacement of sun to moon. With only a small sliver of the moon showing, the night stars popped out of the velvet black background of the night. Kit marveled in the night sky. Very few other places in the world allowed such a clear and crisp celestial vision. He drank it in and then got down to work.

Kit had long since shed his
trench coat and stood in his dark jungle attire, a shadow among the night. Slowly he walked the perimeter of the mesa top, as he searched the landscape around him for the tell-tale sign of human activity. He was positive now that he was followed and only searched for the confirmation of conviction. He recognized that the only way to catch the whole pirate gang was to let them find whatever they were after.

Having moved
back to the door, he opened it and closed it again, using its shadow to dive down into the darker shadow of a nearby rock outcropping. There he waited, having realized that if the pirates were watching the top of the mesa, they would be watching the doorway side of the mesa rather than anywhere else. There in the shadows he settled in with a patience that could only be taught in the jungle.

It was not less than a fe
w minutes later that he caught the first glimpse of light reflecting off of something in the distance. He watched the spot for another hour during which time he caught the glimpse twice more. With confirmation enough that he had been followed and spied on, he stealthily made his way back into the mesa where he rested from his labors. He had a busy day coming up and wanted all of his strength for what awaited.

In the morning the Phantom woke well rested and ready for the day. He donned his Walker attire and arriving at the base of the mesa, made his way to where he hid his jeep. Then driving off he returned to his small Cessna. Taking off from the hidden runway, he flew back to Albuquerque, New Mexico and returned to the International airport. There he purchased his ticket for Paris International CDG airport, in route to Bangalla. He knew the flight plans well, and arrived with just enough time to easily make the boarding call.

Once again he entered the gates and then the jet as the Air-Marshal persona that he used, and having checked in with the captain, waited until all the passengers were on the flight.

As the last of the luggage was loaded
and the Cater Air International food service lift pulled away, the jet was finally cleared to leave and slowly taxied away from the terminal.

A
s the great jet took to the air the same mechanic from before whipped out his phone and reported the departure of the Phantom.

As
the mechanic closed his phone, he pulled out the SIM card and snapped it in half. Then he dropped the phone to the ground and stomped on it as he walked away. The Phantom saw it all and chuckled to himself as he left the air food service lift.

That night the Phantom once again returned to the Eyrie. As he arrived at the door at the base of the Eyrie he found it slightly ajar and instantly knew he was too late to stop them from taking whatever it was that they had wanted. Climbing up into the mesa he quickly looked around.

His photographic memory supplied him with a print of where each item was located and whether or not it had been touched, moved or removed. Though a few items had been picked up and replaced, t
he only thing missing from the Eyrie was a replica of a painting of the Father of the First.

The original painting had been removed by the Third when he followed his father’s instructions and found the Eyrie. The
Third then brought it back to Bangalla to be placed in the main hall in a prominent placement. There it served him as a reminder of the legacy that was his.

The painting itself is one of the
Father of the First as he would have appeared as a mighty merchant man.

It was so well done, that Kit had only recently had a color copy of the painting made to replace that which was originally taken from the Eyrie.

Now the replica was gone. In its place was a note that was tacked to the wall.

Written in lipstick it simply said, “
Sorry you missed me.”