The Bone Hunters (5 page)

He churned through the water with long, powerful strokes until he reached the end of the pool and did a racing turn to make his return, his arms reaching forward and the muscles of his shoulders sliding and meshing in flawless harmony.

Wo hèn ta . . . I hate him
, his brain silently screamed in perfect cadence to each stroke.
Wǒ hèn tā, Wǒ hèn tā, Wǒ hèn tā.

Twenty minutes later the train came to a stop along the length of a broad steel passenger platform. It was an hour before dawn. Although a factory city was planned in the future, nothing had been built yet in the countryside surrounding it. They were only ten miles from their objective.

The aerodynamically designed titanium metal doors of
the last four railroad cars slid open simultaneously. Li's tactical assault force emerged from each car in columns of four, marching in lockstep as they formed up in ranks on the platform for inspection.

Li had inserted his contact lenses and looked every inch the commander in his starched mission uniform. Aside from the gold stars on the collars, it was identical to the uniforms worn by the men standing before him.

Dark khaki, the uniforms were formfitted to each man and employed a powered exoskeleton to carry weapons, ammunition, equipment, liquid body armor, and built-in helmet computers with night vision.

“At least the men look ready,” said Li to his deputy commander, Colonel Wong.

“They are—to perfection, General,” he responded. “They have been briefed on every aspect of the mission.”

Behind them, a hydraulic platform slowly slid free from the side of the last railroad car. It held Li's command helicopter, a jet-powered gunship with stepped tandem cockpits protected by armor plate, one 30 mm cannon, air-to-air missiles, and a new antitank rocket.

“Prepare to move out,” ordered Colonel Wong to the closest unit on the platform.

It was the first time their new “cavalry” unit would be used on a mission. Zhou's engineers had developed a hybrid “stealth” motorcycle that used jet fuel to reach a speed of one hundred twenty miles an hour but could also operate in an electric mode with no sound at all. It allowed for both speed and stealth, and two men were assigned to each machine, one to drive, the second to dismount and fight when confronting the enemy. The motorcycles could handle virtually any type of terrain.

“Are the men prepared to employ their swords?” asked Li.

It was the only part of the unit's equipment that had been originally conceived by Li. A childhood fan of the actor John Wayne, Li had seen the famous “bowie knife” employed by Richard Widmark against the Mexicans in the film
The Alamo
. He had designed his own version, which was more like a short broadsword, with both edges razor sharp. The wooden grips were engraved with his initials.

“The men are very fond of your gift to each of them,” said Colonel Wong. “They will be put to good use.”

Li watched as his cavalry unit mounted their machines.

“How many believers are there in the village?” he asked.

“Including the children?”

“All of them,” said Liu.

“Approximately two hundred,” said Colonel Wong. “However, my intelligence officer does not believe we will encounter serious resistance. Most of them will just be waking up.”

“There is always resistance,” said Li.

“I meant organized resistance,” said Wong.

Li turned slowly and stared at him for several seconds. When he wore the contact lenses, Li discovered that he rarely blinked. The phenomenon had led to his nickname within the ranks of his men.

Ta¯ bù zhaˇyaˇn. He does not blink.

“You are a good leader of men, Wong. Leave the thinking to me.”

“Yes, sir,” said Wong, a bead of sweat rolling down his cheek.

“Commence the operation immediately,” declared Li.

•   •   •

Arising from her bed, Wei began heating her tea water while she gazed through the kitchen window across the lake to the distant mountains. It had rained during the night, and the chrysanthemums and plum blossoms in her garden glistened cleanly in the sun.

After performing her ablutions, she began her preparations for the ceremonial service in honor of the Ancient One that would be held that evening at the meeting hall. Every family in the village was bringing something for the feast.

She was kneeling in front of the dried herbs shelf in the stone-lined root cellar under the cottage when she heard a shout followed by the ringing of the alarm bell in the square. Her first thought was that there might be a fire in one of the thatch-roofed buildings.

Climbing out of the root cellar through the opening in the kitchen floor, she looked out the window to see a phalanx of machines coming swiftly toward the village. They were closing fast, the machines about twenty feet apart from one another. The line stretched in both directions as far as she could see.

As the machines drew closer, she saw that they were actually large motorcycles with two figures dressed like spacemen riding on each one. One of the motorcycles came straight through the alfalfa field on the outskirts of
the village and headed toward her neighbor Chen Wa, who was standing in the field watering his plants.

He stopped to look up at the men riding toward him and lifted his hand in a formal greeting. The figure on the back of the motorcycle extended his arm as the motorcycle flashed past. A moment later Chen Wa's head bounced to the ground, his body crumpling next to it a second later.

Watching the machines racing toward the village, Wei ran to the front room windows that faced out toward the square, reaching them in time to hear the agonized scream of a woman standing in front of the health clinic next to the body of her husband.

More motorcycles arrived in the square, most of them driving people ahead of them who had been on the streets. It all seemed so unearthly. None of the motorcycles was making the slightest sound. For a moment she wondered if she might have gone deaf. Then more screaming broke out on the other side of the village followed by the staccato rhythm of a machine gun.

As if in a choreographed ballet, the men on the back of the motorcycles dismounted and began running to surround the village square, herding the people they met into the village meeting hall.

Other men armed with machine guns began storming into every building, cottage, and hut, quickly reemerging with the occupants. Small groups of sobbing women and children followed the first wave of people into the meeting hall.

One of the invaders turned from the crowd and began running toward the front door of her cottage. Racing back into the kitchen, Wei dropped through the hole in
the floor and covered the opening with the removable wooden floor panel.

Moments later, she heard the soldier storming through the cottage, slamming doors and searching each room. She heard glass smashing in the kitchen above her and then silence.

Crawling to the end of the root cellar, she looked through the small opening at the edge of the crawl space beneath the house. It gave her a view of the center of the square, the village school, health clinic, and meeting hall. She could see more villagers being beaten and shoved toward the meeting hall.

One of the invaders shouted out that the search was complete. As a cordon of them stood silently guarding the square, four of the men wearing the space suits walked slowly toward the meeting hall. Each appeared to have a short metallic hose in his hand connected to a gleaming silver canister on his back.

The first one remained at the front entrance and the others disappeared around the sides of the building. As Wei watched in horror, the man aimed his hose at the front wall of the building and it was suddenly engulfed in fire.

She could hear the people inside the hall beginning to shriek in terror. The man with the metallic hose continued to spread raging fire everywhere he pointed it. Within seconds the whole wall of the building was aflame. The agonized screams grew even louder.

As she watched, a window was smashed open from inside the hall and something dropped through the opening to the ground. Wei saw that it was a child wearing a white cotton dress. She stood still for a moment as the
flames consumed the wall behind her. Then she started running away from the fire toward the line of men.

It was Me Lei, the little girl Wei had entrusted to mend the leg of the injured mallard. As she drew closer to the ranks of the invaders, she stopped and began to cry. One of them smiled and beckoned her forward. Timidly, she walked toward him. Laughing, he waved his sword and lopped off her head. He stared down at it for a moment and then kicked it like a football across the square.

The continuing screams from the meeting hall were drowned out by the rumbling of a powerful engine. The noise became a deafening roar. Through the opening in the crawl space, Lei watched four earthmovers rolling toward the square on their massive treads, leveling every house and building in their path and driving the smashed debris into a huge pile.

When one of them swerved to flatten the village health clinic, she recognized the blue crest on its yellow driver's cab. It was the emblem of the Dong Hao Chemical Corporation.

Beyond the bulldozers nothing was left standing. It was as if the thousand-year-old village had never been. Now she could hear other machines grinding loudly from the area behind her own cottage. As she watched the men with the hoses set fire to the huge mounds of debris, she called out, “God save me, Ancient One. Please spare me to bear witness.”

Her voice was lost in the din of the machines. Moments later, she heard a crashing roar as the walls of her cottage disintegrated above her. Lying next to the
ancient stone walls of the root cellar, she felt a searing pain in her back and legs and then total darkness.

“I wish they would fight back just once,” said Colonel Wong as he and General Li boarded the command helicopter.

“Why do you say that?” demanded Li.

“It would seem more honorable . . . less like . . .”

“Less like what?” shouted Li. “Like butchering a herd of pigs?”

“Forgive me, General . . . I just meant—”

“You are not cut out for this task,” interrupted Li. “I will so inform my father.”

14 May

Caribbean Coast

Dangriga, Belize

Steven Macaulay came up out of the dream to the moaning wail of a rising wind. It rattled the shutters and drove fine particles of sand through the open bedroom window to gently prickle his face and upper body. The air was hot and humid.

Without opening his eyes, he contemplated his latest hangover. It was a thing of beauty. His head felt like a bowling bowl rolling down a wooden staircase. But it hadn't blotted out the dream. Rum only went so far.

It was always the same one. The Lexy dream. Alexandra Vaughan. Her face invaded his hangover with astonishing clarity, moving right past his defenses, the only woman who mattered, the woman who had left him. After nearly a year, it was still too close, too raw. It was the finality of it all.

Opening his eyes, he sat up slowly in the bed and
glanced through the window. The fronds on the royal palms along the beach were thrashing wildly back and forth in the wind. Macaulay figured the gusts to be about twenty miles an hour, and that was in the sheltered part of the harbor.

He remembered it was his day off and that he wouldn't be flying today. Frank Jessup had the duty. Macaulay was on standby. It didn't matter anyway. With a wind like this one, the old Grumman Goose couldn't be trusted to get passengers in the air, much less land safely on the water. The wealthy tourists who had flown into Dangriga that morning would have to wait for their rides out to the resorts on the emerald belt of offshore islands.

Trudging into the bathroom, he stood under the shower a full ten minutes, letting the cold water massage his scalp and body. Toweling off, he put on his khaki cargo shorts and faded tennis sneakers. It was his regular uniform in the tropical heat along the Belize coast.

Knowing what would cure the hangover, he headed straight over to Lana's Retreat. Set back from the beach and protected by a dense stand of Caribbean pines, it was a thatch-covered chikee hut built on a foundation of coquina rock.

Lana's was a favorite drinking spot of locals and tourists, many of whom just came to ogle her. Under the cascade of naturally blond hair, she had the face of a Texas angel and her skin was a rich golden brown. Barefoot, she was wearing a cream-colored shift that came down to her thighs and accentuated her breasts, thin waist, and dancer's hips.

“Morning special,” said Macaulay with a pained grin.

It was her signature hangover cure, a sixteen-ounce
tumbler filled with vodka and juice she blended from root vegetables, spinach, fresh parsley, horseradish, and tomatoes. The good earth.

“You sure you don't want coffee?” she said in her slow drawl.

Lana had arrived in Dangriga on a vacation visit ten years earlier and fallen in love with the coastal scene. She had paid cash for the chikee bar and never gone back to the States. Frank Jessup had once told Macaulay that she had been one of the highest-priced call girls in Manhattan and was now frigid when it came to men. Of course, she might just have been frigid toward Frank, who portrayed himself as a dedicated family man while continuing to sample the local talent.

While she put together his drink, Lana glanced at the network of pencil-thin scars on Macaulay's forehead and neck that remained livid against his deeply tanned body. There were deep weather wrinkles around his sad blue eyes. She wondered when he had last eaten.

“I'm taking a break in a little while, Steve,” she said. “Want to join me for lunch?”

“Can't,” he said. “Have a lot to do today.”

His plan was to drink himself back into a semistupor and sleep the rest of the day. She looked at him wistfully and walked down the bar to serve the other customers. In truth, she didn't understand why she was so drawn to him. New York had nearly cured her of men.

There was something different about him. The fact that he had the same tall, rugged good looks of a young Gregory Peck was only part of it. There was an air of nobility about him, as if he had once been somebody or done something important. He had those sad blue eyes.
And there was the dangerous side. One night at the bar, a hulking Russian tourist tried to force one of the local girls to go with him. Macaulay had put him in the hospital.

A week after he took over the job as backup pilot for the Hurdnut Air Charter Services, she made her play. He had gotten so drunk that night that he needed help getting back to his tiny beach cottage. After removing his clothes and putting him to bed, she had taken off her dress and joined him under the covers.

It hadn't worked out as she had planned. When she felt him stirring in the morning, she slid in close and kissed him, at the same time gently exploring his lower body with her skillful fingers. Giving physical pleasure had been her greatest talent and she felt him immediately rise to the occasion.

“Wake up, Sleeping Beauty,” she whispered.

Opening his eyes, he grinned up at her.

“Thanks,” he said almost shyly, “but this probably isn't a good idea.”

When she kissed him again, he slowly pulled away from her and sat up.

“It would be better if you pitched in,” she said.

“I'm sorry,” he said, his back to her.

“About what?”

“I'm just not looking for this right now,” he said.

It might have been awkward except for the fact that she had slept with hundreds of men and had seen it all. He certainly wasn't gay. It was more probable he hadn't gotten over something. Or someone.

“See you later, amigo,” she had said.

From then on they were just good friends.

Macaulay was on his third hangover cure before the pain began to recede from behind his eyes. By then, the wind was clocking a solid thirty miles an hour and all flights had been canceled at Dangriga Airport. The bar began to fill up.

He was feeling the warmth of the alcohol in his stomach when the image of Lexy's face came roaring back into his mind. He could even hear the cadence of her voice. He wondered how she might have changed in the last year, if she was with another man. The bleak emptiness of his own life stretched into the future. He closed his eyes and pounded his fist down on the bar. When he opened them again, Carlos was standing there.

“Why you be mad, Steef?” he said.

“I'm not mad.”

Carlos was their airplane mechanic on the Grumman Goose. He was illiterate when it came to words, but when it came to engines, he was a modern Shakespeare. Sparrow-chested with a gaunt, handsome face, Carlos was probably in his early forties, although he didn't know for sure.

“You sure be look mad,” said Carlos. “You not be happy, that's for sure, Steef.”

“Happiness is overrated,” said Macaulay before ordering a glass of straight rum.

Carlos had grown up in the interior to a mother who was descended from the ancient Mayans. His father had been a Puerto Rican named Carlos who had arrived in Belize with a hotel construction crew. By the time the resort was finished, the girl was pregnant and Carlos was gone. She had named the boy after him.

Carlos took in the new barmaid. She was deeply endowed.

“He be something, no, Steef?” he said, his voice raspy from his constant smoking.

In addition to his fractured English, Carlos always got his pronouns wrong.

“You be right about that,” answered Macaulay, “he be something all right.”

Two hours later, Macaulay was stumbling back along the lane to his cottage, his face peppered by the wind-driven beach sand. Before passing out on his bed, he had one final thought. Sooner or later a man hit bottom, he realized. He might have finally made it.

•   •   •

“Wake up, Boss. You gotta wake up.”

The voice finally penetrated. He opened his eyes to see Carlos hovering over the bed and shaking his shoulder. It was dark outside and he could smell rain coming.

“Tom she be need to see you at the office, Boss,” said Carlos. “It be important.”

Tom Hurdnut was the owner of the air charter service.

“What time is it?” asked Macaulay.

“Jess pass four.”

So the sky was only storm dark. He had slept most of the day.

Macaulay climbed off the bed, ran water in the basin, and quickly washed his face. He glanced in the mirror long enough to see that he was a mess, his thick salt-and-pepper hair matted on one side, his dull eyes completely bloodshot. He smelled of stale rum.

Together they walked over to the corporate
headquarters of Hurdnut Air Charter Services, which consisted of two second-story rooms over a large wooden boathouse at the edge of the harbor.

The rain began coming as they arrived. Climbing the stairs, Macaulay looked across at the mooring of their Grumman Goose seaplane. Even in the most sheltered part of the harbor, the plane was bobbing back and forth like a hobby horse.

Tom Hurdnut was on the phone at his desk when they stepped into the office. Across the room, Frank Jessup stood nervously in his starched white pilot's uniform in front of the windows facing the beach. Macaulay could hear voices on the radio transceiver in the other room. There was a stammer of scrambled static noise and someone at sea began sending a mayday signal.

Hurdnut shook his head and hung up the phone.

“So here it is,” he said, running his hand through his thinning gray hair. “Two tourists . . . a young American couple . . . went camping last week on one of the uninhabited islands out past Columbus Cay. Frank flew them out there. Two days ago, the wife was bitten by a yellow-jaw tommygoff.”

“A what?” asked Macaulay as he poured himself coffee from the chipped enamel pot.

“Crazy name,” said Hurdnut. “It's the most dangerous snake down here . . . also called the fer-de-lance . . . and unlike most snakes, it's aggressive and its venom is deadly. The husband couldn't get his handheld radio to work until about an hour ago. He said his wife has gone into a coma. I just got off with the doctor at the clinic. He said she needs a dose of antidote soon or she won't make it.”

“What about the Belize Coast Guard and their vaunted search-and-rescue boats?” said Jessup, his tone angry. “We can't fly the Goose in this.”

“I called their forward operating base at Calabash Cay. They're clocking fifteen-foot seas in the Atlantic, and the island is twenty miles out,” said Hurdnut. “All they have available is one of their Boston Whalers. It wouldn't make it in time.”

Macaulay listened to the growing intensity of the rain drumming on the roof. Through the rear window, he watched a huge palm frond separate itself from one of the trees along the beach and sail across the lagoon.

“Well, Frank, you're right,” said Macaulay. “It's fair to say that the flight would be a bit hairy.”

“Hairy?” shouted Jessup. “You can't make me fly in this . . . it's a suicide run . . . the Goose can't even take off in these seas. I have a family. I won't do it.”

Apart from the sound of the rain and wind, there was silence.

“Hell, I'll go,” said Macaulay.

Jessup took in his physical condition.

“Look at him, Tom,” he said. “He's drunk.”

“Just hungover, Frank,” said Macaulay. “You ought to try rum more often. Maybe it would give you some guts.”

“Are you all right to fly, Steve?” asked Hurdnut.

Macaulay thought about it. Yes, he could fly. Whether he was hungover or sober, it was the one thing he could still do well. The Goose might not have been his old F-16, but those days were gone long ago along with the intoxicating thrill of leading his men in battle.

“You'll never get her in the air,” said Jessup.

“You be shut the fuck up,” said Carlos with a menacing glare.

Jessup turned and walked slowly to the door. Shoving it open, he went out without another word. The wind slammed the door shut behind him

“You won't have to land out there,” said Hurdnut. “We're in radio contact with the husband. We have his GPS coordinates. It'll be dark by the time you get there and he'll signal you his exact position with a Maglite. All you have to do is drop the package.”

“Yeah,” said Macaulay as the lights in the office fluttered for a few seconds and went out.

The outer door swung open and a heavyset, dark-skinned man wearing a white lab jacket came into the room. He was carrying what looked like a plastic DVD case.

“Is that it, Doctor?” asked Tom Hurdnut.

The man nodded and handed him the case.

“There are two doses in there in case there is a problem with the first injection,” said the doctor.

Hurdnut weighed it in his hand.

“Needs to be heavier,” he said. “We'll insulate it with plastic and strap it to a brick with orange reflective tape. Steve, you'll just need to come in low and drop it as close as you can to the base of the Maglite beam.”

“Yeah,” repeated Macaulay, looking out at the billowing wind sock on the pole outside the boathouse.

“It's bad luck about the wheel strut,” said Hurdnut, and Macaulay nodded.

A week earlier, the strut on the Goose's right wheel well had been compromised after a rough landing. They were still waiting for parts. Otherwise, Macaulay could
simply have run the bird up the launching ramp and then taxi over to the dirt landing strip for his takeoff and the landing when he came back. Now they were confined to the sea.

“Where you planning to lift off?” asked Hurdnut with a forced smile.

“The only place is the sheltered side of the inner lagoon.”

“That would be awful tight, Steve. You sure you have enough room?”

“It's the only choice,” said Macaulay. “There are already six-foot seas in the harbor.”

Ten minutes later, Carlos was rowing him out to the mooring in the big company skiff. Looking up at the darkening sky, Macaulay watched as a swarm of brown pelicans and cormorants headed inland. Smart move, he thought as the wind-whipped rain stung his eyes.