Lost Empire (31 page)

He cocked his arm and heaved the sputtering flare down the tunnel. His aim was true. The flare landed on the nearest crocodile’s back, then bounced into their midst. The hissing and thrashing became frenzied. En masse, the crocodiles began scrabbling away from the flare and moving toward the ramp.

Sam doused his headlamp, turned, and ran. As he reached the creek he saw Remi’s headlamp flash once near the far wall. He ran that way and found her hunched between a crescent of boulders. Just as he skidded to a stop and dropped to his knees he heard the echo of voices at the cavern entrance.

“Are the natives restless?” Remi whispered into Sam’s ear.

“More like enraged. If that flare stays lit, our visitors should head straight for it.”

“And into an ugly surprise.”

“Let’s just hope their surprise doesn’t turn on us.”

 

 

IT TOOK LESS THAN A MINUTE for their visitors to make their presence known. Having grown accustomed to the steady if muffled rush of the waterfall, Sam and Remi heard its pattern change as bodies moved through the cascade. This was followed by the sound of boots in the grotto, then whispered voices through the entrance and in the main cavern. The whispering stopped, followed by the barely perceptible scuffing of feet on stone.

Sam whispered in Remi’s ear, “One man. A scout.”

This was a watershed moment for their plan. If the scout decided to investigate the flare on his own, the crocodile reception would probably send him and his compatriots running. If, however, they came en masse, the reception and its resulting pandemonium could easily engulf Sam and Remi as well.

Sam and Remi sat still, listening. The sound of the footfalls went quiet. A single voice called out something. More silence. Then more footfalls, overlapping, moving through the entrance tunnel. Now the crunch of footfalls moving across the loose rock and sediment. The group was moving deeper into the cavern. With their eyes already well adjusted, Sam and Remi could plainly see the faint red flickering of the flare down the right-hand tunnel. How soon this group would see the light was the question.

Sam and Remi turned their heads this way and that, trying to triangulate the location of the party. Remi whispered, “They’re near the far wall.”

The crunch of footfalls stopped. A single voice called something in what Sam assumed was Malagasy, and while the word made no sense the inflection was one of surprised announcement, as in, Sam imagined: Look, a flare!

Whatever was said, it had the desired effect. The group continued, but their pace seemed more cautious. Soon, Sam and Remi saw the first figure move into the sputtering glow of the flare. Then a second. And so on. Until all five men had moved into view. One by one, the men started down the ramp. Boots splashed in water.

Sam whispered, “Any second—”

A guttural scream echoed through the cavern.

“—now,” Sam finished.

The first scream was joined by a second, then shouting. Remi managed to catch one of the words, a curse. “Someone’s developed a bladder control problem,” she whispered.

Sam drew the Webley and propped the barrel on the rock before him.

Across the cavern came the sounds of splashes in the water, then boots pounding up the stone ramp. Then the first gunshots, tentative at first, then in full automatic, the pop-pop-pop bouncing off the cavern walls. The mouth to the right-hand tunnel blinked orange with overlapping muzzle flashes; caught in the strobe light, men backing up, stumbling, scrambling back to their feet.

“I count five of them,” Sam whispered.

“Me too.”

Once back on level ground, the rebels turned and sprinted, most of them heading straight for the entrance. One, however, clearly panicked, rushed headlong across the cavern toward Sam and Remi’s hiding spot. The man stumbled into the creek, fell, then crawled across to the other side. The man got to his feet, took a few steps toward Sam and Remi, then stopped and looked around.

Silhouetted by the flare, the man was a mere outline. Sam placed the Webley’s front sight on the center point between the man’s shoulders.

“Turn, damn you . . .” While both he and Remi had taken lives before, neither enjoyed the feeling. Necessary or not, it was an ugly thing. “Turn . . .” Sam murmured.

From the main entrance a voice called,
“Rakotomalala!”

The man spun around, paused a moment, then sprinted toward the entrance. Sam lowered the Webley and let out a deep breath.

He and Remi waited until they heard the interruption of the waterfall again, then Sam got up and picked his way to the entrance and through to the grotto. He crawled back between the boulders and inched his head through the cascade until he could see the lagoon. So panicked was the group that none of its members had bothered with the boulders, had rather chosen to swim back. They were just now reaching the beach. Gesticulating wildly and shouting, they related the crocodile story to the head honcho, who glared at them for a few moments, then barked an order. The men gathered Sam and Remi’s packs, and the group marched away in single file, heading downriver.

Sam watched until they disappeared around the bend, then waited another five minutes for good measure. He returned to Remi. “They’ve moved on.”

“How can we be sure?”

“We can’t, but we either move on now or wait for nightfall, and I’m not keen on staying. We’ve pushed our luck far enough with our reptilian hosts.”

Remi glanced toward the right-hand tunnel. The crocodiles had settled slightly, but the hissing and the overlapping thwap of tails told Sam and Remi the group was far from calm.

“Might be better to make a break now,” Remi conceded.

Something moved on the ramp, and slowly the elongated snout moved from the shadows. The mouth opened slowly, then closed, and the snout retreated back into darkness.

“Definitely better to make a break now,” Remi said.

 

 

THEY TOOK THEIR TIME ON THE WAY OUT, PAUSING FIRST IN THE grotto, then repeating Sam’s peek through the cascade before sliding on their bellies through the boulders and into the lagoon. They stroked across to the beach and climbed from the water. While Remi wrung the water from her hair, Sam took off his boots and drained them.

Leaning forward, her head tilted to one side, Remi murmured to Sam, “There’s someone waving at us.”

“Where?”

Remi pointed with her eyes toward what looked like a pile of undergrowth from which was jutting a hand and forearm. The hand was holding a Webley Model Mark VI. It gesticulated wildly as though trying to warn them away.

Sam put his hand on the butt of the Webley in his waistband.

Crack!

A bullet thumped into the sand between his legs.

Sam froze, as did Remi, her hands still tangled in her hair. At the pile of undergrowth, the Kid’s arm slowly withdrew into cover.

“Guess they doubled back,” Remi observed.

“Seems so. Did you happen to read the manners and etiquette section of the Madagascar guide?”

“I thought you did that.”

“Skimmed it.”

Slowly Sam raised his hands above his head and turned around. Remi did the same. Predictably, standing above the waterfall atop the lion’s head were the six rebels. Standing near the ledge, arms akimbo, the leader called down, “No move! Understand, no move!”

Sam nodded, called back, “No move.”

 

 

UNDER THE WATCHFUL EYE of the lone sniper atop the lion’s head, the other five rebels made their way down via some unseen trail in the rocks. Soon they were standing in a semicircle around Sam and Remi. The leader stepped forward, scrutinized Sam’s eyes, then glanced over and gave Remi a foot-to-head once-over. The leader reached out, plucked the Webley from Sam’s waistband, then lifted it up for examination.

“Good gun,” he proclaimed in his broken English.

“Good gun,” Sam agreed.

“You are who?”

“Sam.”

“Tolotra. Who is woman?”

A bit of Madagascar etiquette popped into Sam’s head. Carefully he lowered his right hand and pointed to Remi, careful to keep the tip of his index finger curled back toward himself. “My wife. Remi.”

Sam’s gesture was not lost on Tolotra. He looked at Remi, then back to Sam, then nodded thoughtfully. Tolotra’s next statement told Sam that his recognition of a Madagascar custom wasn’t going to be a get-out-of-jail-free card.

“Sam . . . Remi. Hostages now.”

ONE OF THE REBELS drew two lengths of rope from his belt and stepped forward as if to bind Sam and Remi’s hands. Tolotra waved the man off and said to Sam, “You run, we shoot. No run. You promise?”

Evidently, Sam’s bent index finger had done some good.

In response, Sam raised his right hand up, ceremoniously crossed his index and middle fingers, then nodded solemnly. “Not on your life,” he said.

Beside him, Remi rolled her eyes. “Oh, God.”

Tolotra studied Sam’s gesture for a moment, then smiled and mimicked him. “Not on your life.” Tolotra turned and showed the gesture to his men. “Not on your life!”

“Not on your life!” the men cheered back.

Remi whispered, “If any one of them has an English phrase book, we’re dead. You know that, don’t you?”

 

 

THEY WERE PLACED in the middle of a well-staggered, single-file group and marched away from the lagoon, passing within five feet of the Kid’s hiding place, before turning onto a trail that paralleled the river. Whatever language advantage Sam and Remi might have had was offset by the bandits’ hostage-wrangling skills. They were never under the guns of fewer than two men who always maintained a minimum ten-foot gap. Moreover, the group’s navigation skills were on par with those of the Kid’s, and soon Sam and Remi had lost whatever landmarks to which they’d been clinging.

After walking for forty minutes, the jungle thinned, and the trail broke into sunlight. They were back on the savanna, Sam realized, but how far from the one he, Remi, and the Kid had used earlier that day he had no clue. The ocean was on their left, the forested escarpment on their right. They were heading south.

After another twenty minutes they were back in the jungle, this time following a fairly straight trail, so Sam was able to maintain his bearings.

“I think we’re near the road,” he whispered to Remi.

“That’s probably how they found us—they found the Rover. Have you seen you know who?”

“No, but he’s out there.”

Walking at the head of the line, Tolotra turned around and barked, “No talking!” He held up his crossed fingers as if to lend gravity to the order. Sam returned the gesture.

Remi murmured, “How nice. You made a friend.”

“Hope I don’t have to shoot him.”

“With what? An invisible rubber-band gun?”

“No, my Webley,” Sam grumbled, his eyes fixed on Tolotra. “After I take it away from him.”

“No talking!”

 

 

SAM’S GUESS ABOUT their location was right. A few minutes later Tolotra reached an intersection of trails and turned right. The grade increased until they were pulling themselves up using exposed roots and low-hanging branches. The terrain had no effect on the bandits’ discipline, however; whenever Sam and Remi looked around, they found themselves staring down at least two rifle muzzles.

The trail leveled out and reached a set of natural root steps in the hillside. Sam and Remi reached the top and found themselves standing on a gravel road. A quarter mile to the south, a rusted white Chevy pickup truck sat on the shoulder; ahead of it, Sam and Remi’s Range Rover. And looming above both, the Three Wise Men.

“Where now?” Sam asked Tolotra.

He and Remi were under no illusions. While their hands being unbound was an advantage, this was not a Hollywood movie. Without a major distraction, any attempt to get the jump on any of these rebels would not only fail but likely end with them dying. Their chances would only worsen once they were put in vehicles.

“Secret place,” Tolotra replied.

“You want ransom, yes?”

“Yes.”

“How do you know we’re worth anything?”

Tolotra considered this for a moment as though sorting through his grasp of English. “Packs, clothes, camera—all expensive. Car expensive.”

“It’s a rental,” Remi said.

“Eh?”

“Nothing.”

Sam, still trusting his hunch that the Kid hadn’t abandoned them, had been surreptitiously scanning their surroundings. Now, out of the corner of his eye, he glimpsed movement on the slope above the road. He saw a flash of silvery hair appear between a pair of boulders.

Sam said, “We have gold.”

This had the desired effect. Those in the group that hadn’t been paying attention to the conversation turned to face Sam. Tolotra took a step closer.