The Patch of the Odin Soldier, page 17
He sat up quickly. “Why? Is that little bastard still around? Oh no, he’s long gone, thank heavens. I mean that,” and she pointed at the ocean with its rhythmic low swells. “And that,” and she pointed to a sun that was a flaring white in a pale blue sky. “And this,” she added for good measure, thumping the breakaway deck with a fist, indicating that while it was certainly seaworthy, it was a pity Norkuro hadn’t the foresight to add a small compartment to it to hold such things as food and fresh water and signal flares.
“We are,” she concluded gloomily, “up the largest creek in the world.”
He tended to agree, though he wouldn’t admit it. What he needed from her now was a clear head, a dollop of optimism, and a minor though effective traveling spell that would get them the hell out of here.
“I guess,” he said with a wry smile, “we’re going to have to come up with a plan.”
“All right, you gather the wood and I’ll build the signal fire.”
“Can’t you do any better than that?”
She smiled without humor. “I’m taking lessons from an expert in his field.”
“For god’s sake, Molly, I’m not perfect, y’know.”
“I noticed.”
“Just give me time to think. I’ll come up with something.”
“Good,” she said. “I’ll count the seconds.”
A two-foot wooden post protruded from the center of the deck; what it had been before he didn’t know, but he used it now to anchor himself while he stood, as if the added height would show him something miraculous he hadn’t seen while he had been lounging on his back.
It didn’t.
All he had was a clearer view of the water which, under other circumstances, might have been awe-inspiring, breathtaking, and something far beyond the reach of ordinary mortals.
As it was, it was terrifying.
He sat again, one foot hooked around the post, Molly’s left foot hooked over his.
The heat despite the wind that leapt from the tops of the waves, bent their backs and lowered their heads.
Molly wept for almost fifteen minutes.
Lincoln wondered if he could take off his shirt and hers and rig themselves some sort of sail; unfortunately, a two-foot mast wouldn’t do them much good unless the wind picked up. Maybe, he thought, he could pry up some planking and somehow fasten it to the post with his trousers and socks. That would only leave them with three or four feet of sitting space, but it was better than nothing.
On the other hand, that might, somehow, do damage to the deck portion’s floating ability.
He decided that in the long and short runs it wasn’t worth the risk, especially after he examined it more closely and realized that short of a crowbar or another sneak assault from the unreliable Pigmeo, they weren’t even going to raise a splinter on their behalf.
The raft shook then, and Molly whimpered as she lunged across the post and grabbed him around the waist. He looked down at her back, looked around the immediate vicinity and saw nothing they could have collided with. What he did see, however, was that the wind had changed and they were, as far as he could tell, being pushed farther away from the islands.
So much, he thought, for washing up on shore.
Then Molly smiled sheepishly and straightened. “I’m sorry,” she said, wiping her face and eyes with the backs of her hands. “I should be brave, I suppose.”
“No need. You’re right. We’re in trouble.”
“Do you think we’re going to die?”
The raft shook again, and he had the distinct impression it was about to break apart.
“Maybe.”
She shaded her eyes with both hands and looked around them, dropped her arms, and sighed. “We’re going west, aren’t we.”
He nodded.
“There isn’t anything out there.”
“Unfortunately, there is.”
She slumped again, then glared when the raft trembled a third time. “Goddamnit, what the hell’s going on?”
“Well,” he said calmly after examining the empty ocean, “it’s either a remarkable device Sol’s hidden in this thing that’s trying to give us power, or it’s sharks.”
“Sharks?”
“I vote for the device. Norkuro, as you’ve already noted, is a very clever man.”
“You lose,” she said flatly, and pointed to the dozen or more dark fins that suddenly broke the surface twenty yards away and headed straight for them.
Feeling a bit giddy, he said, “Maybe they’re dolphins who are going to push us to the nearest beach.”
“Are you kidding? Do you know where the nearest beach is?”
“Unfortunately, yes.”
She stared at him, at the fins that were gathering at the rear of the raft, then followed his gaze west, to a narrow dark cloud that rose abruptly out of the water.
“Oh lord, rain?”
“Don’t I wish.”
The raft trembled slightly yet again, and they eventually felt themselves moving much faster than the wind and currents could account for.
“Lincoln, they’re not sharks.” She giggled. “My god, you were right.”
He shrugged. He’d heard of more outlandish things in his life. Such as being propelled by a school of well-meaning dolphins toward an island where he knew he would probably die.
TWENTY-TWO
Kampollea had a voice—a deep-throated, continuous numbing thunder as the surf smashed ceaselessly against the base of its sheer, inhospitable cliffs, against the high jagged rocks that rose out of the sea around its shore, against the rocky beaches that seemed to begin and end nowhere.
It was a spectacular if somewhat dismaying display of sound and millennial destruction, but Lincoln refused to permit himself appreciation of it, however existential. The moment he touched reasonably dry land and knew he wasn’t going to drown, he headed for a crack in the water-slick wall, Molly following reluctantly and lightly touched with doubt. The dolphins were long gone, deserting their stations just outside a coral reef when the breakaway deck finally fell apart under their friendly battering. The subsequent swimming wasn’t as bad as the arriving with the knowledge that unless they found a way inland soon the tide was going to sweep them under.
The crack he had seen just before he hit the water was less than four feet wide, and ended ten feet in. Molly followed closely as he edged sideways through the gap and, words useless over the roar of the waves and the cry of the startled seabirds wheeling about the cliff-face, pointed at small indentations in the rock, then pointed upward, toward the darkening sky a thousand feet up. She shook her head. He grinned, nodded encouragement, and started climbing. He hoped she would follow because once he was more than his own height above the ground he had no intention of looking down.
Which he didn’t.
Not until he reached a dry, dusty ledge thirty feet up and had scrambled onto it. He panted. He grinned foolishly. He thanked a few gods that he had neither the breath nor the brains to scream, then grabbed Molly’s wrists as she appeared over the edge. A single pull had her sitting beside him, and a pointing finger showed her the cave.
She put her lips to his ear: “It’s ugly. Does it go all the way through?”
He nodded.
“You’ve been here before.”
He nodded a second time, and moved on before she had a chance to ask about the circumstances. As it was, he could not shake off the chill that walked his spine and settled in his bowels, could not stop himself from thinking about the smoking lake he knew he was going to see in less than an hour.
The cave was not completely dark; from behind it was lit from the funnel of light drifting down from the island’s top, and in front there was a large opening filled with a soft white glow. The walls were smooth, the floor littered with broken shells and the scattered bones of birds and small animals, picked clean and sucked free of their marrow. They couldn’t see the top; it was buried in a blackness not even the light could penetrate.
When they were halfway in, the surf became muffled and they couldn’t hear the birds; the glow dimmed as the moon sank below the level of the peaks.
Fifteen minutes later they stepped into a forest that nearly buried the entrance.
It was too dark to see anything clearly, and after a quick look around to be sure they weren’t being waited for, he returned to the cave mouth and sat with his back against the cool rock.
“Now what?” Molly said, settling beside him.
“Now we sleep, wait until morning, and go get your brother.”
“When do we kill Cull?”
Only in your dreams, my love, he thought.
“First your brother, then the Soldier, then we try to get out of here.”
“What about Cull?”
He closed his eyes, intending only to keep her quiet, but the brunt of exhaustion finally overwhelmed him and he fell asleep, not feeling Molly put her head on his shoulder and do the same.
The dreams were vivid.
He nearly woke twice, groaning and straining, but each time he approached the brink, he drifted off again, back into the nightmares, back into the smoking lake where he struggled futilely on a platform anchored to the lake bed, chained and attempting to escape from something that surged and whirled and moaned just below the roiling surface.
He never saw it.
And it never reached him.
But it was too close, and too big, and too powerful not to have him whimpering for another way, a simpler way to die.
The plane woke him just after dawn.
“The first thing we have to do,” he said as they hurried through the forest of ferns, palms, and trees whose boles were a bright and smooth green, “is find out where he’s keeping Monty. Then we’ll figure out what to do about it.”
Molly grunted absently, but she kept looking up through the interlaced foliage. The seaplane’s arrival had startled her until he told her about the lake in the island’s center, and when it circled several times she had decided they knew she was here and were looking for her.
That he argued with, assuming quite logically that Pigmeo had more than likely radioed his naval success back to Kampollea. With the Hari Kiri XIII sunk and all vital hands lost, there was no possible way Montague Partridge could be rescued short of an ambitious amphibious assault by a battalion of crack marines who didn’t have anything better to do than climb precipitous cliffs covered with guano.
Unless, of course, someone had spotted the wreckage of the raft, which may well have been driven to the shore by the currents and the waves. Not to mention the dolphins, who may have figured Lincoln would need the debris for firewood.
He sniffed, rubbed the back of his neck, and wished it were at least twenty degrees cooler, down to about one hundred. As it was, the air was stifling, only the tops of the trees and ferns receiving the benefits of the wind that slipped down the steep slopes.
An hour later Molly asked him if they were lost.
“Not likely. All we have to do is go downhill and we’ll hit the lake.”
“Good.” She wiped her face with a sleeve. “I could use a drink about now.”
“I wouldn’t drink it if I were you.”
“Why?”
He didn’t have to explain. They thrashed through a thicket and found themselves on the shore.
“Oh,” she said.
“Yeah.”
The lake was as circular as the island, and took up all the land not covered by the forest. The wind blew across it to raise small waves, there were tiny clumps of reedlike plants floating about its surface, and here and there, close to shore and in the center, tendrils of pale smoke rose from bubbles that rose to the top and broke slowly, without a sound. Molly knelt and stuck a finger in it.
“It’s almost hot,” she said in amazement. She put the finger to her tongue and spat quickly. “God, it tastes like my cooking.”
“Sulphur,” he said, “and a few other things.”
Her nose wrinkled. “It smells like … like—”
“Kilauea,” he provided quickly, lest she was tempted to wax scatological. “You’re right. Somewhere under all this is what they call a dead volcano. The trouble with dead volcanos is, they don’t know it.”
She rose, puffed her cheeks and blew out a slow breath. A hand shaded her eyes as she examined the breadth of the lake and the height of the slopes surrounding it.
“So now I guess we follow the shoreline to Cull’s encampment, get my brother, and get out again.”
“That’s the plan.”
“What if it doesn’t work?”
“Then we’ll find out what Cull had in store for the Soldier.”
“He wants to create his own country,” a husky voice said behind them.
Molly whirled, hands into fists and ready to fight.
Lincoln turned slowly, resigned, and wondering how Cull had found them. He was also getting a little tired of people creeping up on his blind side.
“Well, I’ll be,” he said with a slow-growing smile.
Molly only squealed in delighted relief and threw her arms around Angel Lymington, hugging him until his face turned red. The aging pilot, now wearing a sharply creased khaki bush jacket, pith helmet, and a sidearm, gently disengaged her and brought them back into the protection of the forest. There they found a log lying athwart a half-hidden path and sat while Lymington explained that he had left the motel as abruptly as he had because he had a duty to his employer, Montague, and he didn’t think his two new companions were really up to the arduous task. He had tried to reach Hawaii first, but he couldn’t get any of Cull’s private aircraft to work. Then he accidentally came across a hunting Takana, who didn’t forgive and forget, and had spent the rest of the day hiding in Waikiki, pretending he was an Australian surfer who had lost his way.
“But how did you get here?” Molly asked.
“Cull has two seaplanes. It’s how he flies in and out of here with his supplies and his diversions. He took one. I took the other.”
It was hidden only a few hundred yards from where they sat, and he figured on breaking Montague out, reaching the plane, and taking off for the safety of the islands.
Lincoln asked if there was much air traffic around here.
Lymington said no.
Lincoln asked if Cull was already on the island.
Lymington, after hesitating, said yes.
Lincoln said nothing.
Lymington smoothed a palm down over his bush jacket, took off his pith helmet and scratched his head ruefully. “I do believe, Mr. Blackthorne, you are trying to tell me that they have unquestionably heard my stealthy approach and are, even now, wondering what I am doing here since I have been, in the recent past, somewhat of a traitor to their cause.”
“You could say that.”
“Oh, Angel,” Molly said.
Lymington replaced the pith helmet, touched the revolver holstered at his side and said, “Then I suppose we had best carry on before we are interfered with.”
Lincoln put a hand to his mouth, stared at the ground, and thought furiously for several minutes. When he was finished, he rose, brushed himself off and asked Lymington to lead the way to the encampment. A disturbing memory told him they were only a mile or so away, an hour’s cautious trip to the middle of the lake’s northern shore.
The pilot agreed and headed off into the brush, following the meandering path with Molly behind and Lincoln trailing, half expecting Cheetah to drop a coconut on his head. They made little attempt to conceal the considerable noise of their passage, believing that Cull would have kept his men close to home and close to Partridge; there was too much forest here to get lost in, too many ways for someone to outflank even the most determined search party and move in from behind.
It wasn’t yet noon, but the temperature continued to rise steadily and the activity in the lake increased accordingly.
An hour or so passed before Lymington led them upward in a wide arc that brought them to the middle of the slope and an outcropping of volcanic rock. They lay on it and peered through the tops of the trees below.
“It’s ugly,” Molly said.
“It serves,” Lymington told her.
Lincoln made a sound a cross between a grunt and a groan.
There were four buildings below them in a wide clearing, each at least thirty feet on a side. All were raised on thick wooden pilings ten feet high, all had stout log walls and were thatched with palm fronds and wide, dark green leaves, and all had fixed ladders at the corners which led from the ground to a narrow porch encircling each structure.
The first was situated directly over the lake itself, its front supports partially submerged and a seaplane tied to a dock that slanted downward and to the left from the porch. The other three ranged in a row behind it; the one on the left had ho visible windows.
“I suggest,” Lymington whispered behind a hand, “that we wait until nightfall before we begin our assault.”
“Great,” Molly said eagerly, scrubbing her hands dryly.
“Assault?” Lincoln said. “Who said anything about an assault? This is a rescue mission, not an invasion.”
“Do you intend instead to use stealth?”
“How else? You want to swing down like Tarzan and yodel them to death?”
“It is not done that way, Mr. Blackthorne. Full speed ahead, and blacken the whites of their eyes.”
“Do you have guns for us?”
Lymington gaped at him, astonished. “You mean you’ve reached this place without bringing arms with you?”
“Sure.”
“Incredible. Incredible!”
“Well,” Molly said, “it’s really not all that incredible when you look at it. First we had to get away from the boat, then we had to get away from the lava, then we had—”
Lincoln stared her into silence, then shifted to look down at Cull’s hideaway again. He supposed they were keeping Montague in the windowless cabin, and if he was right they would have to get in and out from the front. Which meant exposing themselves to whatever guards were on duty. Which meant there might be a ruckus that would alert Cull and whoever else was there. Which meant the pilot’s unuttered but obvious forecast of doom was going to be rather close to the mark.
