Serpent (17 page)

"How bad is it?" he said finally.

"You won't like sitting for a while, and you might have to explain that you weren't running for the hills when you got hit. Otherwise, you'll be okay. I don't think they knew where we were. Just shooting wild."

Zavala looked at Austin's sling and then at the prone figure of the captain. "I'd hate to be around when they were really aiming."

Austin examined the captain's head. The close-cropped salt-and-pepper hair was matted with blood, but the wound looked to be a graze. The captain groaned as Austin applied antiseptic to the bloodied scalp.

"How do you feel?" Austin asked.

"I've got a hell of a headache, and I'm having a hard time seeing."

"Think of it as a hangover without the taste of booze in your mouth," Austin advised.

His ministrations finished, Austin looked at his bloodstained comrades and shook his head. "So much for guerrilla warfare."

"Sorry I lost the shotgun," the captain said.

Zavala said, "You should be. I could be using it for a crutch." He looked around. "See anything in here we can use to make an atomic bomb with?"

Austin squinted at the rows of chemicals and finally picked up an empty flask. "Maybe we can use these for Molotov cocktails." He glanced at the door they had just come through. "We can't stay here. They're going to figure out what happened to us when they see the blood trail."

Austin helped his partner into the next section, the high-ceiling garage that was home to the submersible when it wasn't plumbing the depths.

"What about those Molotov cocktails?" Zavala said.

Austin's mouth clamped into a tight and not very pleasant smile, and a hard gleam of anger flickered in eyes that had shifted in shade from coral blue to ice water. For all their wisecracks he and Zavala knew that if they failed, Nina and the others on board were as good as dead. The people crowded into the bow would be found, and these black-suited killers would dispatch them with the same coldbloodedness with which they wiped the archaeological expedition off the face of the earth. Austin vowed that was not going to happen as long as he was able to draw a breath.

"Forget the cocktails," he said with a quiet ferocity.. "I've got a better idea."

10 AUSTIN LEANED AGAINST THE METAL skin of the submersible, and under the unblinking gaze of the vehicle's porthole eyes he outlined his plan. Zavala, who was sitting at the edge of a sea sled to give his wounded haunch a rest, nodded appreciatively.

A classic Kurt Austin strategy, depending on splitsecond timing, unsupported assumptions, and lots of luck. Given the fact that we've got our backs against the sea, I say we go for it."

The captain shook his head in unison with Zavala's grin. The man would fall over with a good push, yet he acted as if he had a Fifth Cavalry division behind him. With the butt of the dueling pistol sticking out of his bloodsoaked sling, the silverhaired Austin could have passed for a Hollywood buccaneer in an Errol Flynn movie. Phelan decided that if he had to fight for his ship against such lousy odds, he was glad these two lunatics were on his side.

Their strategy session done, they crept through a rear door that led from the submersible garage onto the stern deck Just behind the towering science storage structure, two portable container vans had been lashed ,to the deck for use as extra lab space. The three men made their way around the vans and across the deck until they were at the very stern of the ship under the massive beams of the aft A-frame that was used to lift the submersible in and out of the ocean.

The deck appeared to be deserted, but Austin knew they wouldn't remain alone for very long, and in fact he was counting on having company.

"What do you want me to do?" the captain asked Austin.

Austin regretted that he ever had any doubts about the doughty old sea dog.

"You're the only one with two whole arms and legs. Since brainpower doesn't count with this phase of the operation, you get to do the grunt work."

Under Austin's one-armed direction, the captain transported four of the gasoline tanks used by the workboats from a.storage area and strung them evenly spaced in a line across the deck about halfway between the Aframe and the van labs. Each molded red polyethylene tank held nine gallons.

The captain felt dizzy after the work and had to rest. .Austin, who was lightheaded from the blood he'd lost, couldn't blame him. Zavala had located a short wooden paddle to use as a cane and was thumping about the deck like Long John Silver. He said he was fine, but he clenched his teeth as. he eased himself onto a cable drum of a deck winch.

"Guess we won't be giving to a blood bank anytime soon," Austin said. "We'd better get this show moving before we all keel over. It's vital that we make them come to us."

"1 can try greeting them in Spanish again. That worked the last time."

Remembering the violent reaction Zavala's taunts provoked on the upper deck, Austin said, "Let 'em have it."

Zavala drew a deep breath and in the loudest voice he could muster let fly a string of insults that called the character of the listeners' families into question in every way imaginable. Fathers, brothers, and sisters, assigning to each an imaginative array of perversions. Austin had no idea what he was saying, but the sarcastic needling tone left no mistake about the meaning of the scornful barbs.

While Zavala threw out the bait, Austin got a tight grip on one of the deck hoses and signaled the captain to turn on the water. The hose jerked as if it were alive. Austin walked across the deck, sweeping the spray back and forth.

The water hit the deck with a spattering hiss that was drowned out by Zavala's insults. Barely visible in the moonlight, a whitefoamed ripple began to advance. Austin kept the miniature wave moving until it almost reached the gas tanks.

Zavala's taunts failed to work their scatalogical
 
magic this time. The enemy had become wary after the last episode. Austin grew impatient. He drew the dueling pistol from his sling, pointed it in the air, and fired. If his scheme failed, a single bullet wasn't going to help much anyhow. The rise worked. Before long, dusky ghosts that were more spectral than real in the faint light of the moon materialized from the shadows around the cargo containers and began to advance slowly toward them.

Austin again had a scary thought that they might have night-vision goggles, but he quickly put it out of his mind. The intruders were moving more cautiously than they did in the earlier attacks, but they showed no sign of being deterred from their task. Austin estimated that it would be only seconds before powerful flashlights clicked on and lethal gunfire sprayed the deck.

The ripple was nearly at the containers.

Red lights glowed in the darkness. Laser sights that would give the gunmen unerring aim.

Austin gave the signal to Zavala.

"Now. "

Zavala was sitting in the center of the deck, favoring his good side, his eyes glued on the barely visible line of foam that marked the edge of the advancing water He lifted the Bowen revolver in both hands, sighted on the tank farthest to his right, and pulled the trigger.

The revolver roared like a miniature howitzer. The tank disintegrated as a fountain of gasoline showered the deck. Zavala quickly moved the leveled pistol to the left. Three more times he fired. Three more tanks were blown to pieces. The thirty-six gallons of gasoline spread out in an expanding puddle.

Austin ordered the captain to turn up the pressure. Floating on the surface of the moving water, the gasoline surged forward and eddied around the prone forms of the attackers who lay bellydown on the deck where they had flattened out at the first roar of Austin's oversized pistol. They got up, and if they thought about the precariousness of wearing gas-soaked clothes as a puddle of waterborne fuel lapped at their shoes, it was too late to do anything about it. All that was needed to turn the deck into an inferno was a spark, and Zavala was glad to provide one.

Zavala put the empty Bowen aside and picked up the flare gun. Austin had been watching the figures get to their feet.

"Now!" he yelled again.

Zavala pulled the trigger. The glowing projectile streaked down at an angle and skipped across the fleck in a phosphorescent explosion of streamers. The deck erupted in flames, and Zavala threw his arm up for protection against the hot blast.

A moving wall of yellow flame swept toward the blackclad figures who were thrown into relief as the volatile liquid they were standing in ignited like a napalm bomb. The fire quickly enveloped them as it fed on the gas-soaked clothes and transformed the figures into blazing torches. The intense heat sucked the air out of their lungs. Before they could take a step they crumpled to the deck. Bullets from the useless guns flew in all directions through the cloud of billowing black smoke.

Austin hadn't foreseen this dangerous byproduct of his plan. He yelled out to the captain to grab cover, then helped Zavala. They huddled behind the winch drum until the gunfire ceased.

The blaze used up the fuel and blew itself out almost as quickly as it started. Austin told Zavala and the captain to stay put and walked forward. Five steaming corpses lay in fetal position on the deck.

"Everything okay?" Zavala called.

"Yeah, but it's the last time they'll come to one of our barbecues."

Zavala's voice rang out. "Watch it, Kurt, there's another one."

Austin automatically reached for his sling only to realize he had left the useless dueling pistol behind. He froze as a shadow detached itself from behind the base of a crane off to one side. He was out in the open. The Bowen was empty. He was dead. He waited for a fusillade of hot lead to cut him down. He'd be a perfect target against the flames flickering on the water's surface. Zavala and the captain would be next.

Nothing happened. The figure was running away toward the starboard side where Austin had first discovered the grappling hooks.

Austin took a step to follow, then stopped. Unarmed, wounded, and just plain worn out, he could only stand there helplessly as an outboard motor coughed into life. He waited until the motor's buzz faded into the distance, then walked back to Zavala and the captain.

"Guess our head count was off," Zavala said.

"Guess so." Austin let out the breath he'd been holding. He wanted to lie down and take a nap, but there was one more thing he had to do. Mike was still on the roof of the bridge, and the crew and researchers were barricaded in the bow section.

"You wait here. I'll tell the others they can come up for air."

He picked his way around the charred bodies and made his way toward the bow section where the crew and scientists were hiding. Austin was not a coldblooded man, but he reserved his compassion for those who deserved it. Moments ago the flesh-and-blood entities that had inhabited these smoking charcoal shells were intent on killing him and his friends and colleagues. Something he could not let happen under any circumstances Particularly to Nina, for whom he was forming a growing attachment. It was as simple as that.

This was obviously the same team that wiped out the archaeological expedition. They had come to finish the job. Austin and the others had just been in the way The assassins had been stopped, but Austin knew that as long as Nina Kirov was alive, this wasn't going to be the end of it.

India

11 THE MONSOONS THAT SWEEP ACROSS India from the Arabian Sea drop most of their rain on the mountain range known as the Western Ghats. By the time the moist air currents reach the Deccan in southeast India the downpour has diminished to a mere twenty-five inches. As Professor Arthur Irwin stood in the mouth of the cave looking out at the sheets of water pouring down from the slate-colored sky, he found it hard to believe this was supposedly the same amount of rainfall London gets. The afternoon shower that was just ending would by itself have been enough to float the Houses of Parliament.