Legend of the Gypsy Queen Skull: The Devil's Triangle - Book 1 (3 page)

He then pointed out the faded Library of
Congress seal stamped on each document.

“Every page has this official seal.”

Even so, Paul was still apprehensive.

“Sure you weren’t followed here?” he asked
narrowing his eyes on him. “I can’t have the Feds raiding my house.
I don’t want any trouble.”

Deep Throat exhaled and sighed.

“Look, nobody’s gonna miss a few
300-year-old pieces of paper. It took me weeks to find all this
shit... Trust me. I know what I’m doing. Nobody even knows these
documents exist.”

“Well, I’m going to return them when I’m
done,” Paul said sanctimoniously. “I’m not a thief.”

Smirking the clerk replied, “Whatever. We
got a deal or what?”

Tapping the edge of the file on his hand a
few times, Paul then pointed it directly at him.

“Sir, we have a deal.”

“Money?”

“Oh yeah. Sun visor on the passenger side,”
Paul said, pointing over to it.

Walking around to the far side of the Vega,
Deep Throat opened the door and flipped down the visor, catching
the envelope in his other hand.

“You wanna count it?”

“Nope,” Deep Throat simply replied, stuffing
it into his pocket and then made his way over to the nearby
stairwell.

“Nice doing business with you,” Paul called
out to him.

Never looking around, the clerk flipped his
hand up over his shoulder and then disappeared into the darkened
doorway.

~*~

Moving around to the front of his car, Paul
laid the folder on the hood and opened it up. Licking his thumb, he
flipped through the stack of delicate, antiquated pages and stopped
when he came across one in particular. It was a ship’s manifest for
the San Esteban, a 17th century Spanish treasure ship. Drawing his
finger down the page, he stopped it on an entry for 500 gold
doubloons.

Laying the document aside, he continued to
thumb through the other documents until he paused at the sight of a
folded note with a broken wax seal. Opening it up, he read it to
himself.

~*~

January 19th, 1688

Lord Stumpp,

Once again, another scheduled shipment has
failed to arrive. This makes four hijacked deposits, and I am
outraged at these blatant violations of our agreement.

I demand you immediately summon the English
Crown to hunt down these Raven pirates and their scoundrel captain,
William Darcy.

Adalbert Jonckers,

Bank of Amsterdam

~*~

Paul nodded his head and smiled as he put
the file back together and closed up the dossier. Standing silently
for a moment, he clenched his fist and thought to himself.

Finally. This is it
.

Winter, 1689 ~ Royal Navy Constable Warship ~
Mediterranean Sea ~ Strait of Gibraltar

Captain Mcbain slowly looked over to his
left as yet another Barbary pirate ship sailed into position,
immediately off the Constable’s port side. A bead of cold sweat
trickled down the side of his flushed face.

“S-s-sir, open fire?” the coxswain asked him
in a shuddering voice.

When the captain didn’t reply, he tapped
Mcbain on his elbow.

“Open fire?”

“No… All stop.”

“But sir–”

“All stop. That’s an order.”

Turning to the sailor, the captain locked
eyes with him.

“We open fire, we’re dead,” he said
coldly.

“Aye captain, but I think we’re goners
anyway.”

In a matter of minutes, a dozen corsair
swift boats had surrounded the Constable and the three merchant
ships it was escorting through the Mediterranean Sea.

Nearby on the command pirate ship, her
towering captain, Hussein Gliv, pulled his long dreadlocked hair
back behind his head, and bound it together using a length of cat
gut. Around his neck, Mcbain saw Gliv was wearing a gruesome
necklace adorned with human ears. No doubt they were trophies from
his many previous conquests. The nearly seven-foot tall giant
dwarfed his two fellow pirates, who were busy lighting the many
weaves of hemp in his long scraggly beard. He and the rest of his
North African cutthroats believed
the herb
, as they called
it, would appease the gods of war and bring them good fortune in
battle.

As his last hemp strand was lit, Gliv closed
his eyes and inhaled the streaming smoke trails up into his flared
nostrils.

“Ahhhh,” he said each time he did so, with
ever increasing volume. His broad chest would outwardly expand and
then relax again with each breath.

A few feet away, three young boys began
pounding their mallets on a large war drum to the beat of a
hauntingly tribal rhythm.

Over on the Constable, Mcbain’s eyes grew
ever wider as he kept them trained on Gliv and white-knuckled his
sword’s handle.

As the measures of beats droned on, Captain
Gliv popped his eyes open, tilted his head back, and screamed out
loud.

“Ahhhh!”

And the drum beat stopped.

Looking up to their captain, the rest of his
pirate hoard stood frozen, awaiting his order, when Gliv thrust his
long finger over at the Constable and screamed out.

“Fire!”

“Oh no…” Mcbain said in a sinking voice as
the first Barbary cannonball swooshed over his deck.

“Incoming!” he screamed out.

In a split second a hail of fiery
cannonballs mercilessly blasted into the Constable at point blank
range. Her decks and masts spontaneously burst apart, sending
exploding timber shreds and splinters everywhere. Some of the more
fortunate sailors were killed instantly by flying debris, while
others were torn apart by shrapnel.

One royal sailor, climbing down from his
lookout post, was practically cut in half by a length of chain
fired into their sails. He was dead before his lacerated body
slammed down onto the main deck.

Once the other Barbary Coast pirate ships
opened fire, the few who weren’t killed in the first barrage didn’t
last much longer.

From seemingly every direction, cannonballs
tore into the Constable’s hull, turning it into what looked like a
sinking block of Swiss cheese.

Staggering to his feet, a bloodied Captain
Mcbain tried to yell out.

“Abandon–” but was cut short when a musket
ball slammed into his forehead and blew out the back of his
skull.

Lowering his Blunderbuss rifle, Gliv grinned
wide and then yelled out to his men.

“No prisoners!”

~*~

Minutes later the Constable’s bow ebbed high
into the air and then plunged beneath the waves.

Over on one of the merchant ships, the
captain swallowed hard and turned to his yeoman.

“Tell the crew to prepare to be
boarded.”

The crewman nodded and quickly ran below
deck.

“God help us…” the captain mumbled.

Summer, 1689 ~ Mediterranean Sea ~ 15 Miles
North of Algeria

Six months after the Constable’s sinking,
the Barbary Coast sun bore down on the Lexington as a robust
tailwind filled her bulging sails. The royal flagship’s massive
hull easily broke through the oncoming rolls of white-capping
waves, as her captain, William Darcy, took a long draw from his
cigar.

Sailing behind the Lexington was a convoy of
English battleships under his command. They were patrolling inside
the dangerous, pirate-infested waters off of the North African
coast, near the port of Algiers. Darcy knew it was only a matter of
time before he and his men would make contact with some of these
cutthroats.

The captain had every bit of confidence in
his sailors, as they had proven themselves in combat time and
again. But it was the rest of the convoy that concerned him. The
other commanders and their crews had never experienced the kind of
combat they were likely to engage in. Mostly they were accustomed
to lighter duties, such as transporting dignitaries or blockading
foreign harbors. They were untested, and the buccaneers who roamed
these waters were formidable foes.

~*~

Given the recent upsurge in attacks on
English merchant ships, King William III had no choice but to send
in the naval convoy.

These brazen acts were clearly in violation
of England’s peace treaty with the Sultan of Algeria and something
had to be done about it.

Since its inception in 1671, there had been
a few infractions, but nothing troubling enough to spend the War
Department’s precious budget on. That is, until now.

These attacks were not only a major drain on
royal import tariffs but they were an embarrassment to his crown as
well. The constant ridicule from parliament alone was enough to
force His Majesty’s hand into action.

The king, wishing to send a strong message
to the pirates, had a delicate situation to deal with. He didn’t
want to strain relations with the Sultan. After all, His Excellency
controlled the highly sought-after African ivory imports that were
all the rage among the British aristocracy. As such, King William
ordered the Sultan’s capital city of Algiers to be strictly off
limits, but any pirates caught out on the open sea would fall under
English jurisdiction.

Adding to His Majesty’s headaches were the
meddlesome bureaucrats in parliament. Gone were the days when the
king had unfettered power to rid the empire of such scourges as
these Barbary pirates. Modern-day English kings now had to deal
with the parliamentary machine and its many cogs. It was a large
and corrupt institution that often got in the way of his decisive
action.

The legislative mechanism muddling his
authority the most were parliament’s military appointees. Although
he commanded the armed forces, parliament was entitled to
commission half of their officers, mainly within the upper ranks.
This shared power structure was only agreed upon because it helped
to bring an expedient end to
the Commonwealth Civil War
years earlier. It was a poor decision at the time, and it remained
one today.

The parliamentary commissioning system was
ripe with corruption and was used to further the cause of the
privileged few. Leadership, intelligence, and sound tactical skills
were no longer qualifying factors for military commands. Now they
went to cronies, aristocrats with the right pedigree, or to those
to whom a debt was owed.

Once commissioned, these officers were owned
by the bureaucrats in the Palace of Westminster, whose only
loyalties lie in the interests of powerful merchant families.
Sadly, the crown’s priorities were often an afterthought for these
political elitists.

It wasn’t uncommon, for example, for one of
these parliamentary captains to take a detour on an official voyage
to tend to the private business of their benefactor. Furthermore,
many naval officers went out of their way to avoid battles
altogether unless, of course, it meant launching an attack on a
competitor’s merchant vessel.

One such captain, while dining with his lord
benefactor, summed up this mindset well. Raising his glass of wine
for a toast, he said quite pompously, “No sense bloodying oneself
over something as foolhardy as a national crisis. A cannon should
only be fired when a profit is to be gained.”

~*~

This severely flawed system was one the king
was coerced into honoring, and it made assigning the right man to
this mission even more imperative.

Although parliamentary-commissioned officers
couldn’t be avoided altogether, His Majesty could at least ensure
the convoy would be led by a seasoned commander. A man like Captain
William Darcy was his obvious choice. He was shrewdly competent,
fearless, and unquestionably loyal to His Majesty. Although only 30
years old, Darcy was a 17-year seafaring veteran whose mettle had
been tested in battle time and again.

Though the captain ran a tight ship and
demanded much from his crew, he had a reputation for treating his
sailors fairly. In his mind, a disciplined crew with high morale
was a deadly efficient one when it came time to do battle. Darcy’s
style of command had earned him tremendous respect from his
sailors, who’d boldly follow him into battle anytime, or
anywhere.

The man who William Darcy was today had been
forged through a tough and tragic childhood.

At the age of 11, he lost his parents when
their buggy flipped over and crashed into a ditch. Soon thereafter,
the young boy was sent to live with his only kin, an abusive,
alcoholic uncle who owned a seedy tavern in the port city of
Plymouth, in the southeastern part of England. There, a young Billy
toiled long hours cleaning steins and serving ale to drunken
sailors who patronized the rundown pub.

Soon though, his brutish uncle’s corporal
ways wore on the boy, and he ran away to the nearby docks where he
found steady work unloading cargo ships.

For months, he listened to sailors retell
their captivating stories of their many sea adventures. Before long
he too answered his own calling to the sea, and joined a ship’s
crew as a greenhorn deckhand.

After several voyages, and having learned
his way around a ship, his higher calling for a new challenge was
answered when he enlisted into the king’s navy.

A quick study, Darcy rapidly worked his way
up the ranks and eventually became a captain, thanks in part to his
older mentor, Joshua Burnham.

Within a few years though, his career hit
the glass ceiling that often plagued non-parliamentary officers
like him. Gone were the days of merit promotion beyond the ranks of
captain. While many of his fellow officers felt insulted by this
injustice and resigned their commissions, William held steadfast.
To him, commanding a warship and her crew was his true calling in
life.

Once, he even jokingly said, “Anymore,
standing on dry land makes me seasick.”

If this was true for any man, it was true
for him. The sea was where he found his balance.