The Phantom (13 page)

Then Zak smelled food and noticed the tunnel was getting brighter. A few feet later, he came to a metal grating and could see down into a kitchen where three men were working. He sniffed again.

“Chicken soup,” he said softly. His stomach growled in response.

He just hoped that Devil hadn’t been lured here by the smell of food. But the wolf had only paused for a few seconds and was on the move again, through the tunnel.

They soon came to another grating and then another. Both looked down into a mess hall. More food smells. How could the wolf find his father’s scent with all the distracting odors? Then Devil stopped. His tail swished and swatted Zak in the face.

“What is it?” he whispered.

The wolf didn’t move. He was staring intently down through another grating and growling softly. Zak could hear a voice and it sounded vaguely familiar. But it wasn’t his father’s voice.

He tapped Devil lightly on the back, hoping he’d move forward. “Good dog . . . I mean, good wolf,” he whispered. Devil crawled forward, inching along on his stomach.

“I’ll ask you one more time,” the man said. “Will you do it?”

This time Zak recognized the voice. It was the man named Quill, the one with the skull tattooed on his face. The man who had nearly killed him. Quill moved to the side, and Zak saw that he was talking to someone tied to a chair.

“Papa!” he whispered.

Zak was relieved that he was still alive, but his sense of relief was immediately replaced with concern. How was he going to free him and get him off this freighter?

“I’m sorry, I can’t lead you to his cave if I don’t know where it is,” his father said. His voice sounded hoarse. His head hung to one side. He looked even thinner than Zak remembered.

Quill’s response was to kick the chair over and slam his fist against a table. Then he grabbed Zak’s father by the hair and pulled him back up to a sitting position. “You’re going to die if you don’t talk. Is Ghost Who Walks worth more than your own life?”

No answer.

“You’re a fool.”

Quill pulled out a knife, then grabbed the native man by the hair again and jerked his head back. He pressed the knife to his throat and Zak screamed, “Noooo!”

Devil emitted a long, mournful howl.

But Quill never heard Zak or the wolf. Nor did he complete the act. An alarm blasted through the ship, blotting out all sounds. He stepped back, put his knife away, and pointed at Zak’s father. “I’ll get back to you. You’re going to give me answers or you’re dead.”

As soon as Quill was out of the room, Zak pulled up the grating and shoved it aside. He hung by his hands from the ceiling and dropped to the floor. Then he rushed over to his father. “Papa, Papa!”

He hugged his father, who was so stunned by his sudden appearance that he didn’t even react when a wolf dropped through the ceiling after him.

FIFTEEN

A
s Quill hurried down the corridor, several crew members scurried past him. Now what was it? Why couldn’t he have any fun? Just as he was about to kill the native and then go enjoy himself with the rich girl, everything went haywire.

He wished now that he had snuffed Diana right away. It was what Xander Drax wanted, and Quill hadn’t done it. Now if she got away, he was dead. He had been warned. Drax had no patience for anyone who didn’t follow his orders.

He grabbed a crew member by the collar. “What the hell’s going on?”

“There’s a wild man in a purple suit and mask on the loose!”

“No! It can’t be!” How could the Phantom have found him? Did he know about the girl? “Stop him! Scramble the pilots! Don’t let him off this ship!”

“God, she hasn’t changed a bit,” the Phantom said to himself as he hurried after Diana.

He raced down a corridor, caught up to Diana, pulled her into a shadowy corner.

“Hey!” she snapped, trying to jerk free.

“Shhh.”

He slapped his hand over her mouth as three crew members turned a corner and ran past them. “I think we should stick together.”

“Okay,” Diana conceded.

She started off again, but the Phantom pulled her back again. “I guess what I really meant was, we should stick together, but I should go first.”

“Fine. After you. It’s your rescue.”

They headed off in the opposite direction of the three crew members and hurried down a corridor. The sound of boots against the metal floor brought them to a quick halt.

“In here!” the Phantom hissed, and opened a door. It was the crew quarters with the goggles and flight suits. “Hm, I’ve been here before.”

Sure enough, the door to the adjoining locker room exploded open and the women pilots ran from the showers in their underwear. They stopped dead when they saw the Phantom and Diana.

The Phantom aimed his pistol at the women. “Ladies, where is your fashion sense? Flight suits are so déclassé. Don’t you agree, Diana?”

“I certainly do,” she said, and quickly gathered up the flight suits. Then, without a moment’s hesitation, she pitched them out an open porthole.

“Good job,” the Phantom said. “Shall we go?”

They slipped out of the crew quarters, raced down the corridor, then closed the big bulkhead door behind them. The Phantom turned the locking wheel and they scrambled up a ladder to the open deck.

“This way!” the Phantom hissed. “Fast!”

But as he ran around a corner, a man swung an iron bar at him. It struck his chest and he staggered backward, as several crew members pounced on him and Diana.

“I meant the other way,” he muttered.

“Hold him!”

Quill, the man with the skull tattoo, the same one who had stolen the silver skull: The Phantom recognized him. But now he had matching skulls on his cheeks. The sight of the Sengh Brotherhood thug sent a surge of energy through the Phantom, and it took three crew members to keep him from charging right for Quill.

“Small world, huh? How’s that knife wound healing?” Quill grinned. “Where was it again . . . right about here?” And he slammed the iron bar against the Phantom’s side. Two more blows followed, each one hitting the spot where the knife had torn into him. “And I thought you’d fallen into the gorge. You’re going to wish you had.”

The Phantom doubled over in pain. Diana looked away.

Quill was about to strike him again when Devil flew out of his hiding place and leaped onto his back. Quill dropped to the deck, shrieking in surprise and pain as the snarling wolf mauled him.

“Good boy, Devil!” the Phantom yelled.

Despite the agony in his side, the Phantom threw off his two distracted attackers, and Devil turned on several others. His bloody muzzle and huge teeth were evidence enough that retreat was the wisest course. The thugs scattered like ants at a picnic, Devil snapping at their ankles.

The Phantom grabbed Diana. “Time to go.”

“Your dog’s a wolf.” She said it with a mixture of awe and confusion.

“I know. Come on.”

They dashed off across the deck. Behind them, Devil kept the other crew members occupied. Suddenly a man and a kid ran out and nearly collided with them.

“Zak! . . . and your father?”

“Ghost Who Walks,” the man said in awe. “I am Yak, father of Zak.”

“Good. No time to talk.” The Phantom urged them forward and the four of them raced down the gangplank and along the dock.

The Phantom rushed over to one of the seaplanes. “Hurry! Get in!”

“Zak and I stay on the ground,” Yak said, and loped off with his son.

The Phantom quickly untied the plane from its mooring. “Only room for two, anyhow.”

Diana looked dubious. “You can fly a plane?” Then to herself, she added: “Of course you can. Why ask?”

They scrambled into the cockpit. The Phantom took the front seat and Diana the rear one. “Too bad I threw those flight suits away,” she shouted to him as he revved the engine.

“We’ll manage.”

As the plane taxied away from the dock, the Phantom saw Quill limping down the gangplank, followed by a phalanx of his crew. “Stop them! Stop them! They’re getting away!”

Several crew members raised pistols and fired. Bullets pinged against the fuselage, but the plane accelerated quickly, trailing two plumes of water. The Phantom pulled back on the yoke, pushed the throttle in, and the plane lifted smoothly from the waves.

He circled once above the cove and saw Quill and his men running to the foot of the dock where a truck was parked and a pair of saddled horses were hitched. In a matter of moments, the truck roared away in a cloud of dust with several men clinging to the running boards. Two men followed close behind on horseback.

Devil raced down the gangplank and ran down the dock, away from the ship. “Go!” the Phantom said as if Devil could hear him.

The wolf darted into the jungle to the spot where Hero patiently waited for the Phantom. Devil jumped up and down as if attempting to communicate with the stallion. Hero reared up on his hind legs, then galloped after Devil, who was already racing after the truck.

The fighter plane sped over the surf just a few hundred feet above the water. It felt good to be flying again, and in spite of their circumstances, the Phantom reveled in the sensation. He turned the plane toward the jungle, and pointed out Hero and Devil racing below the plane.

“They’re fast!” Diana shouted over the din of the engine.

The Phantom glanced from the jungle floor to the instrument panel. To the fuel gauge. The arrow pointed to empty. “Oh, oh!”

“What is it?” Diana asked, leaning forward so he could hear her.

He craned his head and saw fuel spilling out from a bullet hole. “We’re losing fuel. We’ve got to go down. No choice.”

The Phantom feathered the engine; a plan started to form in his mind. The plane slowed and began to descend. It fell lower and lower until it clipped the top of several tall trees.

“What are you doing?” Diana yelled. “There’s no place to land down there! This is a seaplane!”

Was this a rescue or just a different way to die? Diana almost wished she was back on the freighter.

“Climb down onto the pontoons.”

“What?” He didn’t say that.

“Climb down onto the pontoons.”

“Why?”

“Like you said . . . there’s no place to land down there,” the Phantom answered.

“Then what?”

“Trust me.”

Trust him. Sure. “One of us is crazy,” she muttered.

She climbed from the cockpit onto the wing. Using the struts and support wire to keep her balance, she slid down onto the pontoon. Good thing she did well in gymnastics. Somebody less nimble wouldn’t have made it. She clutched the pontoon, the wind biting her eyes until they teared.

A clearing opened like an eye in the jungle, a pale slit in all the green.

The Phantom brought the plane in even lower. They were only ten or twelve feet from the ground when he swung down from the wing and joined Diana on the pontoon.

“Who, uh, is flying the plane?”

“I jammed the throttle.”

“You jammed . . . oh great, that’s just great.”

“We don’t have much time. This clearing isn’t very long.”

“Count me out.”

“Too late for that.”

“I think—”

“Get ready!” the Phantom snapped.

“Get ready?” For what? Her unspoken question was answered when a white stallion appeared beneath the plane, galloping in perfect rhythm, keeping pace with the descending plane.

“No way,” she said, shaking her head, trying to laugh. “You can’t be—”

“We have to. Meet Hero; he’s a good horse.”

With that, the Phantom lowered himself from the pontoon and dangled several feet off the ground until the stallion was directly below him.

Then he let go and landed in the saddle. The Phantom dropped his head back, looking up at her, and extended his arms. “Jump! Now!”

And she did.

She landed in the Phantom’s arms.

Hero never even broke stride. The jungle now loomed in front of them, a wall of green. Surely they’d be clobbered by a limb or shredded by branches. But the Phantom grabbed the reins and veered off.

She looked up to see the plane continue on, moving in a collision course with a stand of gumbo limbo trees. A moment later, the plane vanished into the trees and exploded. A huge orange fireball leaped into the sky.

The impact from the blast rolled over them in hot, rippling waves. Then they thundered through it, past it, following the edge of the clearing.

Diana squeezed her eyes shut and surrendered herself to sensation: the hard reality of the saddle beneath her; the strength of the Phantom’s arm encircling her waist; the speed with which Hero moved; the wind against her face.

These things were real.

She opened her eyes, the green rushed toward her, Devil raced along beside them, loping with the grace of the stallion, keeping pace with them.

“Did we really do that? I can’t believe we just did that!”

“Neither can I,” the Phantom said.

“Where are we going?”

“Away from trouble.”

But it wasn’t quite that simple. Trouble was just ahead, lying in wait like some ravenous predator.

SIXTEEN

T
he truck raced off the road and slammed through the underbrush. With every rut, every pothole, the bites Quill had sustained from the Phantom’s bloody wolf burned and ached. Suppose the damn animal was rabid? Suppose the bites got infected? That bastard the Phantom would pay for this, he thought.

They bounced over a hill and into a clearing. Quill knew the gas tank on the plane had been hit at least once and wouldn’t fly far. It had to be in here somewhere. There had to be some sign of it. “Where’d it go? I just saw it,” he muttered.

The answer came with a booming explosion that set the jungle on fire. Quill let out a triumphant whoop. “Well, I guess that takes care of that little problem. Time to go home, boys. Mission complete. Two dead and one silver skull for the boss.”

“Look!” the driver shouted, and pointed across the grassy opening.

Quill did a quick double-take. He could hardly believe what he saw. The purple bastard and the woman should be dead in the crash, but instead they were riding in tandem on the big white stallion like circus performers. And that unearthly wolf-dog, whatever it was, was chasing along behind them.