The Bone Hunters (25 page)

30 May

Casa Grande Brugg

Dunmore Town

North Eleuthera

Bahamas

Juwan returned to his compound with a feeling of new respect for the old Chinese after visiting Zhou's newly arrived ship in the harbor. Cleverly disguised as a fishing trawler, it was a lethal military platform, with a bank of cruise missile launchers, antiship missiles, and modern Gatling guns. It was also a deep-sea recovery vessel, with an internal diving platform and a submersible that could explore the ocean bottom and retrieve whatever it was they were searching for.

Zhou introduced Juwan to the Chinese military team that had also arrived aboard the vessel. Juwan was favorably impressed. There were only twenty of them, but they reminded him of his own men, the type who would enjoy cutting a man's heart out, removing his tongue, or crushing his groin with a well-placed kick. These men would have to be reckoned with, he decided, after they located the treasure.

He also noticed that everybody on the ship called the old Chinese lord, as in Yes, my lord. No, my lord. They were almost bowing and scraping to him at every turn.
Juwan thought he could get to like having a similar title. Lord Juwan. It sounded good.

“Where is my mother?” he asked Alvarez upon returning home.

“I don't know,” said Alvarez.

“Find her,” demanded Juwan.

When he reached the fourth floor and walked into the bedroom, he saw Varna disappearing into the bathroom, and then the sound of the lock being turned from inside. Juwan had already decided to give him more time to get over his recent disappointments. He would make it up to him, he decided, as he listened to Varna's choked sobs through the door.

Deciding to take a nap while they waited for the search for the archaeologists to produce results, he lay down on the bed. Feeling a chill from the raging downpour outside, he reached down for the duvet that Varna always left neatly folded at the foot of the bed. It wasn't there. He lay back and thought about all the weird things that had happened over the previous two days, finally falling asleep as the rain slashed at the windows of the French doors.

•   •   •

The wipers on McGandy's Land Rover were losing the battle to keep its windshield clear as he drove them across the commercial wharf at the foot of Dunmore Town toward the finger pier where his dive boat was tied up. Aside from an elderly man who was boarding up the downstairs windows of his store, the wharf area was deserted.

McGandy parked his Land Rover next to his boat slip. Wearing yellow rain slickers and hats, Barnaby and Lexy stepped aboard while Macaulay removed the large canvas
duffel bag from the trunk of the vehicle and carried it behind them.

McGandy unlocked the steel cabin door to the wheelhouse and they stowed the gear against the side bulkhead of the almost-new Munson custom dive boat. It was thirty-four feet long with a ten-foot beam.

“Catamaran hull,” said Macaulay admiringly.

“It'll give us additional stability in seas like the ones we're heading into,” said McGandy, turning a switch on the steering console and firing up the two Yamaha outboard 250s. “In a calm sea, she'll do forty-five.”

Lexy untied the bow and stern lines and McGandy nosed the boat away from the slip and along the pier toward the open sea. As they came out into the channel, Barnaby heard the sudden whine of a loud siren.

“Get down,” ordered McGandy.

Across the harbor, the local police patrol boat was bearing down on one of the superyachts that had just slipped its mooring and was preparing to head out to sea. A Dunmore Town policeman with a loud hailer stood in the bow of the police boat.

“Return to your mooring,” he demanded. “No one leaves the harbor.”

“They're making sure you're not aboard one of the big yachts,” said McGandy. “Just in case.”

The Munson dive boat was painted dark gray and it blended into the dark curtain of driving rain as they motored along the far side of the channel leading out to the Devil's Backbone.

“Even if they see us, there is no way they can catch us,” said McGandy.

Within a minute, they were cloaked from view in the harbor by heavy mist and rain. McGandy swung the wheel to starboard toward the Devil's Backbone and gunned both engines. The bow rose and surged forward. Behind them a rooster tail of white foam arced high over the roiling green sea.

Once they were out on the open water, the waves quickly grew to ten feet, each one separated by a long roller. The bow of the Munson would breast one of the waves and then surge down into the following trough before rising back to meet the next one. Each time it smacked down on a cresting wave, two wings of sea spray would erupt from under the hull. McGandy stood braced at the wheel, his eyes trying to take in every shift in the direction of the sea.

Conflicting patterns of waves began hitting them broadside, driving the boat over at an alarming angle before regaining its stability. Hit by both at once, the boat would skid sideways before McGandy could bring it back on course.

The seas grew even more intimidating after they passed through the cut in the Devil's Backbone and were out into the true ocean. They began climbing mountainous slopes of water before careening down the following trough like an elevator in free fall.

Lexy felt her stomach churning as she sat wedged in the corner of the cushioned bench along the bulkhead. Sea spray and rain lashed the windows with a loud drumming sound and the wind rose from a moaning whine to a full-throated howl.

“There is always a chance for a rogue wave,” McGandy called out, searching the sea ahead of them.

Through the windshield, the clouds above them were almost pure black. McGandy could see occasional flashes of lightning deep inside them. The smell in the air was raw and primeval as if churned from great depths.

Macaulay had unzipped the canvas duffel bag and had begun cleaning the first of the two Steyr AUG machine guns he and McGandy had taken from the guards during the rescue of Carlos.

“Brugg chose his armory well,” said Macaulay, soaking a clean cloth with solvent before cleaning the barrel.

“It's really light,” said Lexy, picking up the second one.

“They're called bull pups,” said Macaulay. “By placing the magazine back here in the stock behind the trigger group, they were able to shorten it to thirty inches. It weighs less than ten pounds.”

He showed her how to operate the bolt action before fitting one of the thirty-round polymer box magazines into the chamber.

“Pulling the trigger all the way back gives you fully automatic fire,” he said. “This button on the left exposes the red dot, which means it's ready to fire.”

“I hope Alexandra does not need to play with any of your toys,” said Barnaby, looking on from the bench. “We can assume that Jensen doesn't know we are coming, certainly not in this mess.”

“He was armed the last time we were out there,” said Lexy. “It only makes sense to take precautions.”

The continued battering from the conflicting wave action had turned Barnaby's face almost lime green.

“Keep your eyes on the horizon, Dr. Finchem,” said McGandy, taking in his condition.

“Where exactly is that?” said Barnaby tartly, and McGandy grinned.

Macaulay was looking toward the stern when he saw the fifteen-foot-high green wall of a rogue wave slam over the port side and fill the rear deck to the gunwales with seawater. It surged forward toward the wheelhouse and hammered against the sealed cabin door before the immensity of the weight drove the stern under.

With the outboard engines completely covered by the boiling sea, McGandy swung the wheel toward the next broadside wave. As the water drained out through the scuppers, the transom of the boat and its two smoking engines slowly emerged from the sea. Barnaby stared back at them and wondered what their fate would be if one or both failed in the face of the hammering they were taking.

McGandy seemed to divine his thoughts.

“Don't worry about the boat,” he said. “I keep her at the top of the line.”

“That is very reassuring, Mr. McGandy,” he said as he leaned over an empty five-gallon cleaning bucket and heaved up the contents of his stomach. The sour odor immediately filled the cabin and almost induced Lexy to follow his example.

“We'll be there soon,” said McGandy after checking the color ten-inch LED on his Furuno navigation system. “Visibility is down to about two hundred feet. I'll be taking us in on instruments.”

Fifteen minutes later Lexy saw the tall mangrove
swamp at the end of Dieter's Island emerge from the curtain of rain and mist.

“The best place to land you is a footpath I saw the only time I came out here to bring him medical supplies when he got sick and radioed for help,” said McGandy. “He wouldn't allow me to set foot on the island even though he could barely walk. I had to toss him the kit from the water. The path is off to the right of this mangrove swamp.”

“Can you land the boat?” asked Macaulay.

McGandy shook his head. “It's too shallow for me to do more than get close and I don't want to anchor here in case the wind shifts direction.”

Reaching under the steering console, he picked up a handheld electronic device. Turning it on, he handed it to Macaulay. It was a two-way radio.

“A Motorola weatherproof with a range of ten miles,” said McGandy. “I'll be monitoring you on channel twelve if there is an emergency. You'll be in the clear, so just say the word
Keira
and I'll meet you back here at the head of the path.”

“Why Keira?” asked Lexy.

“That'll be the name of our daughter.”

“Just in case there are visitors, do you have any firepower aboard?” asked Macaulay.

“Yeah,” said McGandy, “a souvenir from my days on the joint drug interdiction task force down here.”

“Let's get going,” said Lexy.

“Dr. Finchem,” said McGandy, “I think it would be a good idea for you to wait here with me until they find out if it is even there.”

“Thank you for your kind assessment,” said Barnaby, “but if you think I'm going to wait here on this rocking horse after surviving that trip from hell, you're mistaken. Believe it or not, I am only seventy. That's the new forty. Besides, General Macaulay here is loaded with enough weapons to hold off the Cossacks.”

Standing in her oilskins under the driving rain, Lexy couldn't help smiling as Macaulay lifted the canvas duffel bag and said to McGandy, “How do we get the intrepid Dr. Finchem over the side so he can unleash his investigative skills?”

McGandy walked to a locker built into the exterior bulkhead of the wheelhouse and unstrapped a small cylindrical container that was mounted above it. The container was constructed of molded white plastic and had a red handle connected to one end. He laid it on the deck. When he pulled the red handle, the container split open and the four-man rubber life raft that was inside quickly inflated itself with a loud hissing sound.

“Voilà,” said McGandy.

30 May

Dieter's Island

Off Devil's Backbone

North Eleuthera

Bahamas

Macaulay dragged the raft up along the path from the edge of the brackish water in the lagoon and secured it to the trunk of a mangrove tree. Unzipping the canvas duffel bag, he handed Lexy one of the light machine guns.

After sliding a .45-caliber pistol into the hollow of his back inside his jeans, he picked up the second machine gun along with the backpack holding the spare ammunition magazines. He could hear McGandy reversing the engines on his dive boat and retreating across the lagoon to calmer waters. Macaulay motioned to Barnaby and Lexy to follow him up the narrow path that led through the swamp.

To Lexy, it looked like the mangrove trees were growing on stilts, with the aerial roots holding the trunks and branches above the water line and the root structures buried in the mud and briny water. Farther in, she stepped on what she thought was a rain-slick branch lying across the trail. The six-foot-long snake slithered across the mud and disappeared into the dense tangle of vegetation covering it.

A canopy of red and green leaves formed by the intertangled branches from both sides of the trail was thick enough to blot out most of the daylight and divert the rain from their heads. The wind was reduced to almost a whisper.

The smell inside the mangrove swamp was overpowering, a mixture of decay and rot and living and dead marine creatures. Someone, presumably Dieter Jensen, had spread a narrow bed of crab, oyster, clam, and snail shells along the path to provide better foot traction above its muddy surface.

Fifty yards farther along the path, the dense mangrove vines thinned out and gave way to a field of three-foot-tall saw grass. The boggy field bordered both sides of the path. Now that they were in the open, they were buffeted again by the rain and wind.

Off to their right, Lexy saw a stand of fan palms and Caribbean pines, the branches being whipped into a frenzy. Beneath the trees, she saw what looked like a clump of vertical poles sticking out of the ground. Wiping the rain from her eyes, she saw the poles had cross members too. They were crosses. A crudely made fence boxed them in.

Macaulay came to a secondary footpath that led off toward the pines.

“Mike told me he thought the old man's hut was on the only piece of high ground near the middle of the islet,” said Lexy.

“That's where this path is headed . . . toward the center,” said Macaulay.

He held his machine gun at the ready as he led them forward again. Lexy carried the second one over her right
shoulder. The trail took them through a grove of twenty-foot-high
Chrysophyllum
trees that screened the path ahead of them. On the other side of the grove, they came to successive rows of fruit trees and citrus plantings.

“He's cultivated a tropical fruit farm out here,” said Barnaby admiringly as they passed ripening banana and orange trees, followed by crude wooden arbors as tall as a man that were choked with grapes. Barnaby plucked a handful and began to munch them as he walked behind the others.

His eyes were drawn upward to the top of the grape arbor. A gigantic frigate bird was perched on the upper frame. Barnaby recognized the familiar red pouch on the throat skin below the lower mandible of his beak. It silently gazed down at him as he went by.

“I think I can see his place,” said Macaulay, peering ahead through the curtain of rain.

The hermit's home was no more than four or five feet high and appeared to be entirely constructed from cut coquina rock. Aside from a door, there was a small narrow window slit on one wall of the structure that Macaulay could make out. The slit was dark.

“Maybe only one of us should approach the house,” said Lexy. “That might be less threatening.”

“Put down your weapons,” ordered a loud voice behind them.

She turned with the others. A man emerged from behind the grape arbor. Lexy saw it was the same one who had driven them off before. Drenched by rain, he now looked like the scarecrow from
The Wizard of Oz
.

Owl-like eyes bulged out of his face under a broad-brimmed, leaking straw hat. He was barefoot, his tattered
white shirt and trousers plastered to his skin. His ancient Lee-Enfield .303 was pointed directly at Barnaby's chest. Barnaby slowly turned his head toward Macaulay.

“Please put down your toys, General, before he blows a hole the size of an armadillo in me,” said Barnaby in an even tone.

Macaulay placed the gun down on the path. Lexy removed the one strapped behind her shoulder and placed it next to Macaulay's. Macaulay let his arms fall to his sides, his right hand inches from the .45 hidden in the hollow of his back.

“I've seen you before,” said Dieter Jensen. “I told you what would happen if you came back and you did anyway . . . with guns.”

“How did you know we were here?” asked Barnaby, trying to buy time.

“I heard your boat engine, mon,” said Jensen in the Bahamian patois he had developed after living there for more than seventy years. “Is that McGandy's boat?”

“Yes, and he is waiting offshore for us now,” said Lexy. “We are not here to harm you. We only want to talk.”

“Nothin' to talk about,” he said.

“We know you are Dieter Jensen and that you have lived out here since you fell from the U-boat 113 in 1942,” said Lexy.

Jensen's owlish eyes suddenly looked crazed. A moment later, he swung the weapon toward Lexy. Macaulay was sure he was about to fire and was reaching for his .45 when Barnaby stepped between Lexy and the gun barrel and started walking toward Jensen.

Barnaby watched as the old man's index finger found the trigger. Reaching out with his right hand, he grabbed
the barrel and shoved it upward. The explosion in his ear was deafening as he felt the shot sear the skin on top of his shoulder.

Still holding on to the barrel, Barnaby pulled the rifle out of the old man's hands. Jensen didn't appear to realize he had even fired the gun. His confused eyes went back to Lexy and he started to cry.

“How could you know that about me?” he said, his voice quavering.

“We don't want to hurt you, Mr. Jensen,” said Lexy. “We came to ask you a few important questions. If you will answer them honestly, we will leave and not come back. You can return to your life.”

“Let's get out of this rain first,” said Macaulay.

He picked up the two guns as Lexy took the old man's hand and began leading him toward the coquina rock structure. Barnaby held out the Lee-Enfield rifle he was still holding by the barrel.

“What about this one?” he asked Macaulay.

Grinning, Macaulay said, “I think you're supposed to hold it from the other end. But you did just fine with it, old man. You saved her life. Maybe mine too.”

“All in a day's work,” said Barnaby, carrying it along. The frigate bird leaped down from his perch and followed behind him.

As they approached the rock house, Lexy saw that the stone roof cleverly concealed a cistern that caught and contained rainwater. There was only one window and it was a narrow slit like the kind in a fortified medieval castle keep. The walls were four inches thick.

The stout plank door into the structure was set at the bottom of three steps cut into the rock foundation.
Although the walls of the house were only five feet above ground level, the excavated room below was high enough for her to stand.

Jensen's home consisted of a large room with a single window slit facing the path. The window opening had no glass. The thick wooden door was secured with a plank of wood fitted into two iron braces.

Inside, Jensen had constructed a crude table from raw lumber planks set on two stumps. A handmade chair with a soft cushion was tucked underneath it. An unlit kerosene lantern stood on the table.

After helping the old man into his chair, Lexy found matches next to the lamp and lit it. Macaulay and Barnaby came into the room and shut the driftwood door behind them. Neither could stand erect in the room. A narrow wooden bed platform supported a straw mattress along the far wall. Barnaby went over and sat down.

While Barnaby checked his grazed shoulder, Macaulay stood bent over and briefly explored the room. The old man might not have had much, but what he did have was organized efficiently and well.

A plastic water line was connected to the cistern on the roof, and a petcock at the end of it fed fresh water into a tin basin. A stone fire pit vented with a tin pipe provided warmth and a flat iron cooking surface. Dented pots and pans hung from racks above it. A homemade chemical toilet occupied a corner. It was also the perch of the frigate bird, Macaulay realized, as it hopped up on the seat and settled on it.

Two of the walls had floor-to-ceiling shelves that contained a variety of supplies. They reminded Macaulay of the fruit cellar in his grandmother's farmhouse. Neatly
labeled glass jars of canned fruit and vegetables filled the spaces. An old CB radio powered by a hand-cranked generator provided him with communication to the outside world.

“We know you saved the life of a wounded man from the ship that your U-boat sank in 1942,” said Lexy, looking into the old man's still-confused blue eyes. “Somehow you were able to get him to a place where he was picked up by a rescue ship that took him to Florida. You gave him the chance to live a long life. It was a very brave thing to do.”

“Is he still alive?” asked Dieter Jensen.

As Lexy considered her response, the terrifying vision of what had been done to Sean Morrissey in the basement of his home burned through her mind.

“He died less than two weeks ago,” she said. “He is the reason we're here to see you today.”

The room was suddenly lit by a bolt of bluish white lightning. Through the window, Barnaby saw its jagged arc of crackling fire across the blackened sky followed by the loud slam of thunder.

“How did you reach this island from the sunken ship?” asked Lexy, her face only inches away from the old man's.

“We . . . floated on a piece of wreckage,” said Dieter Jensen, his eyes starting to focus clearly on her for the first time.

“Alexandra,” said Barnaby from Jensen's bed frame.

Her eyes followed Barnaby's to the wooden shelves holding the glass jars of fruits and vegetables. The vertical section of the built-in shelf facing her had once been painted red. Parts of it were still bright and glossy. What looked like a symbol of some kind was painted over the red section in black. She realized it was Chinese.