Unrestricted Access: New and Classic Short Fiction Page 19

  His gaze fixed to Tucker as he pocketed the transmitter. “And for now, I believe, it shall serve as extra insurance in case you decide to try something foolish. With the press of a button, Aliza and Jakob will make this cemetery their final resting place.”

  Tucker was shoved toward the door and out into the night. After the brightness inside, the shrouded cemetery seemed infinitely darker. He searched around for Kane.

  Had he made it under the sedan with the gun? There was no way of knowing without looking.

  He tripped himself and went sprawling flat on his belly, raising a guffaw from Domonkos. On the ground, Tucker searched beneath the sedan’s undercarriage. It was dark, but he saw nothing there.

  No sign of Kane.

  A meaty hand grabbed him and hauled him up. “There are hidden grave markers and stones littered across these fifteen acres,” Csorba warned. “It would be easy to crack your head open. So you should best watch your step.”

  Tucker heard the veiled threat.

  Csorba headed out, taking the lead, holding a flashlight in one hand and a handheld GPS in the other.

  Tucker followed, trailed by the other men, across the overgrown cemetery. Ivy scrabbled over every surface. Corkscrewed tendrils snagged at his jacket. Broken branches snapped like brittle bones underfoot.

  All around, the flashlights danced over shadows and revealed greater threats than old markers on the ground. Yawning black pits began to open around them, half hidden by foliage or stripped over by vines, revealing collapsed or ransacked old tombs.

  Threat or not, Tucker decided to take Csorba’s words to heart and watched where he placed each foot.

  The men chattered excitedly behind him in their native tongue, likely planning how to spend their share of $92 million. The professor moved silently, contemplatively.

  Tucker used the distraction to touch his throat mike and try radioing Kane.

  Can you hear me, buddy?

  Kane crouches amid the shadowy pack.

  He bleeds, pants, and stares the others down.

  None come forward to challenge. The one who first did slinks forward on his belly with a low whine of submission. His throat still bears the mark of Kane’s fangs, but he lives, having known to submit to an opponent who outmatched him. He still reeks of urine and defeat.

  Kane allows him to come forward now. They lick muzzles, and Kane permits him to stand, to take his place in the pack.

  Afterward, Kane turns. The battle has carried him far from the car, from the gun. As he stares, pondering what to do, a new command fills his ear.

  “TRACK ME. BRING GUN. STAY HIDDEN.”

  With this wild land now his, Kane heads back to where the fight began. He rushes silently through the woods, whispering through bushes, leaping darkness, dodging stone.

  But it is not only the land that is his now. Shadows ghost behind him.

  He is not alone.

  Csorba called out in Hungarian, holding out his GPS.

  He had stopped near a flat-topped crypt raised a foot above the ground. Its surface was mostly obscured under a thick mat of leaf detritus and mulch, as if the earth were trying to swallow the tomb up.

  Tucker was handed a hammer and a crowbar. He considered how best to use them to his advantage, but now the professor had a pistol in hand, pointed his way, plainly not planning on getting his own hands dirty. Plus the man still had the wireless transmitter in his pocket. Tucker remembered the frightened look on Aliza’s face, the grief shining from her father’s.

  He could not fail them.

  With no choice but to cooperate, Tucker worked with the others. Using hammers, they managed to loosen the lid. Once done, they all jammed crowbars into one side and cranked together on the slab of thick marble, as if trying to pry open a stubborn manhole cover. It seemed an impossible task—then, with a grating pop of stone, the lid suddenly lifted. An exhalation of sulfurous air escaped, like the brimstone breath of the devil.

  One of the trio made a sign of the cross on his forehead, in some superstitious warding against evil. The others made fun of this action, but only halfheartedly.

  Afterward, with some effort, they pushed and shoved and worked the lid off the base of the crypt. Csorba came forward with his flashlight and pointed the beam down. He swore happily in Hungarian. Cheers rose from the others.

  Stone stairs led from the lip of the tomb and vanished into darkness below.

  They’d found the right tomb. Orders were quickly made.

  Tucker was forced to sit on the edge of another crypt, guarded at gunpoint by two of the men. Domonkos and Csorba, both with flashlights in hand, climbed down together to see what lay below, vanishing away, leaving only the glow of their lights shining eerily out of the open tomb.

  With nothing to lose, Tucker sat with his arms behind his back, feigning full cooperation. As if mumbling to himself or praying, he subvocalized into the throat mike. “Kane. Keep hidden. Bring gun.”

  He held his palms open behind him and waited.

  He breathed deeply to keep himself calm. He let his eyes drift closed.

  C’mon, Kane . . .

  One of the men yelped. He saw the man twirl pointing his pistol toward the woods. A low growl flowed from the forest, a shadow shifted to the left, twigs cracked. Other throats rumbled in the darkness, noise rising from all sides. More shadows shifted.

  The two men spoke rapidly in Hungarian, their eyes huge.

  It was the cemetery’s pack of wild dogs.

  Then Tucker felt something cold and wet touch the fingers behind his back. He jumped, startled. He hadn’t heard a thing. He reached back there and found fur. Then something heavy was dropped into his palms.

  The pistol.

  “Good boy,” he whispered under his breath. “Stay.”

  It seemed Kane had won over some friends.

  Tucker gently placed the pistol on the tomb behind him. Using the ongoing distraction, he reached blindly back to Kane to investigate the audio glitch. He didn’t want to be cut off from his partner any longer.

  Especially not now.

  He needed this link more than ever.

  He toggled the camera off, then on again, rebooting it, praying that was enough.

  A moment later, a satisfying squelch of static in his left ear meant all was right with the world.

  “All done, Kane. Go back and hide with your friends.”

  All he heard as Kane retreated was the softest scrape of nail on marble. Within another minute, the forest went quiet again, the pack vanishing into the night.

  The two guards shook off their fear, laughing brusquely now that the threat seemed to have backed off, sure they had intimidated the pack away. As Tucker listened to the soft pant of Kane in his ear, he slipped the pistol into his belt and hid it under the fall of his jacket.

  And not a moment too soon.

  A shout rose from the open crypt. The light grew brighter. Then Domonkos’s pocked face appeared and barked new orders, smiling broadly. Tucker could almost see the sheen of gold in his eyes.

  Had they actually found the stolen treasure? Tucker was forced to his feet and made to follow Domonkos down into the crypt. He guessed they needed as many able-bodied men as possible to haul up the treasure from below. Tucker mounted the steps, trailed by the other two men.

  The narrow stairs descended from walls made of brick to a tunnel chiseled out of natural stone. He lost count at a hundred steps. Conversation had died down as they descended, stifled by the weight of stone above and the dreams of riches below. Soon all Tucker heard was the men breathing around him, their echoing footfalls, and somewhere far below the drip of water.

  Good.

  At last, the end of the staircase appeared, lit by the glow from Csorba’s flashlight.

  Reaching the cavern, Domonkos entered ahead of them, sweeping his arm to encompass the space as if welcoming them to his home. He found his voice again and chattered happily to his comrades.

  Tucker took a few steps into the spac
e, awed by the natural vault, dripping with water, feathered with thick capes of flowstone and spiked above by stalactites. Tucker wondered how many Jewish slaves Oberführer Erhard Bock had worked to death to tunnel into this secret cavern, how many others had died to keep its secret—and as he stared over at Csorba, he wondered how this Jewish scholar could so blithely discount his own heritage and prepare to steal gold soaked in his ancestors’ own blood.

  Csorba stood next to a stack of crates, each a cubic foot in size and emblazoned with a swastika burned into the wood. He had broken one open, pulled down from the top of the pile. Hundreds of gold ingots, each the size of a stick of butter, spilled across the floor.

  Csorba turned, wide-eyed.

  He spoke to the others, who all cheered. He even shared the news with Tucker.

  “Erhard Bock lied,” he said, awe filling his voice. “There are not thirty-six crates here. There are over eighty!”

  Tucker calculated in his head. That equaled over $200 million.

  Not a bad haul if you don’t mind murdering some innocent cemetery caretakers, a kindly university professor, his daughter—not to mention yours truly. And who knows how many more.

  He’d heard and seen enough.

  He slipped out his pistol, raised it, and shot three times.

  Three head shots.

  Three bodies fell. The last was Domonkos, who sank with the most bewildered expression on his face.

  He couldn’t bring all four back to the surface by himself.

  Too risky.

  But he could bring one, the man behind all this.

  Csorba stumbled into the crate and yanked his wireless detonator out of his pocket. “Another step and I’ll press it.”

  To see if he’d actually do it, Tucker took that step and another. He saw the man’s thumb tremble on the button.

  Then, with a wince, Csorba finally pressed it. “I . . . I warned you.”

  “I didn’t hear any explosion,” Tucker said. “Did you?”

  Csorba pressed it several more times.

  Tucker closed the distance, plucked the useless detonator out of his grip, turned it off, and pocketed it. He waved his pistol toward the steps.

  “I don’t understand . . .” the professor mumbled as he obeyed.

  Tucker didn’t bother to explain. Once he got hold of the pistol from Kane, he could have shot Domonkos and his two cronies up top, but he feared that if Csorba heard gunfire he might panic and do what he just did—press the transmitter.

  So Tucker had to come down here to be certain.

  A quarter of the way along the steps, he had lost his wireless connection to Kane. That panting in his ear had died away again. So he was confident Csorba’s transmitter, buried four times deeper, would be equally useless—only after knowing that for sure by coming down here did he feel it safe enough to act.

  They finally reached the top of the crypt. Csorba tried to bolt for the forest. “Kane, stop him.”

  Folding out of the woods, a shadow blocked the professor’s path, growling, eyes shining in the dark. Others materialized, closing in from all sides, filling the night with a low rumble, like thunder beyond the horizon.

  Csorba backpedaled in fright, tripped over a stone, and fell headlong into one of the open graves. A loud thud followed, accompanied by a worrisome snap.

  Tucker hurried forward and stared into the hole. The professor lay six feet down, his neck twisted askew, unmoving. Tucker shook his head. It seemed the ghosts of this place weren’t going to let this man escape so easily.

  Around him, the dark shadows faded back into the forest, vanishing upon some unspoken signal, until only the whisper of leaves in the wind remained.

  Kane came slinking up, fearful he had done wrong.

  Tucker knelt and brought his friend’s face close to his. “Who’s a good boy?”

  Kane reached and touched a cold nose against his.

  “That’s right. You are.”

  Half an hour later, Tucker sat in the sedan with the broken headlamp, the engine idling. He had freed Aliza and her father and told them all that had happened. He was going to leave it to them to explain as best they could to the authorities, leaving his name out.

  Aliza leaned her face through the open window. “Thank you.” She kissed him lightly on the cheek. “Are you sure you don’t want to stay? If only for another night.”

  He heard the offer behind her words, but he knew how complicated things would become if he did stay. He had two hundred million reasons why it was time for him to go.

  “What about a reward?” she asked.

  He pictured Csorba falling into his own grave, snapping his neck.

  “There’s too much blood on that gold,” he said. “But if there’s any spare change, I know of some hungry dogs that share this forest. They could use food, a warm place to lay their head at night, a family to love them.”

  “I’ll make it happen,” she promised. “But aren’t those things what we all want?”

  Tucker looked at the stretch of open road beyond the brick archway.

  Maybe some day, but not today.

  “Good-bye, Aliza.” He revved the engine.

  Kane’s tail thumped heavily on the seat next to him, his head stuck full out the window. As Tucker gunned the engine, a howl burst from his partner, an earsplitting call, singing to his own blood.

  The sedan shot forward and barreled out the archway.

  Behind them, the forest erupted with a chorus of yowls and wails, echoing up into the night and chasing them out into the world.

  As they raced away, the wind blew brochures around the car’s interior. It seemed the prior owner had been dreaming of faraway trips, too, ways to spend that gold.

  One landed against the windshield and became plastered there crookedly.

  The photo depicted palm trees and sandy white beaches.

  Its exotic name conjured up another time, a land of mystery and mythology.

  Zanzibar.

  Tucker grinned, and Kane wagged his tail. Yeah, that’ll do.

  No Good Deed Goes Unpunished

  I gave the New York Times bestseller Steve Berry one of his first blurbs. He came to me with hat in hand and extolled how much he liked my first novel, Subterranean, and asked if I’d read his debut novel for a potential blurb. Now I had been in his same position myself at the start of my career and discovered that authors are a generous lot. Clive Cussler, Doug Preston, and many others had written nice reviews for my early books, so, of course, I happily read Mr. Berry’s first novel, The Amber Room, and wrote a few glowing words about it.

  Unbeknownst to me, Steve had already sought a review from another author, someone few people had heard about at the time, a guy named Dan Brown, who was about to come out with a book called The Da Vinci Code. Well, you can guess what happened next. By the time The Amber Room was published, Dan Brown’s quote was emblazoned across the cover of Steve’s book. My blurb was relegated to small print on the back cover, something along the lines of “I like it, too!”

  Since then we’ve been the best of friends.

  Steve and I have even featured each other’s characters in our respective novels. So much so, in fact, that for a while people thought we were the same person writing under two different pen names. We eventually had to go on a book tour together to disprove this myth. Since then, at every book-signing event, we’ve both been asked, “When are you two going to write a story together?”

  So, to (somewhat) quiet this clamor, we eventually did just that. For the first time ever, we cowrote a story together, pairing up the main character from Steve’s book—Cotton Malone—with the team leader of Sigma, Commander Gray Pierce.

  That became “The Devil’s Bones.”

  And yes, even after this pairing, we’re still friends.

  The Devil’s Bones

  James Rollins and Steve Berry

  Commander Gray Pierce stood on the balcony of his suite aboard the luxury riverboat and took stock of his surroundings.


  Time to get this show on the road.

  He was two days upriver from Belém, the bustling Brazilian port city that served as the gateway to the Amazon—one hour from the boat’s last stop at a busy river village. The ship was headed for Manaus, a township deep in the rain forest, where his target was supposed to meet his buyers.

  Which Gray couldn’t allow to happen.

  The long riverboat, the MV Fawcett, glided along the black waterway, its surface mirroring the surrounding jungle. From the forest howler monkeys screamed at its passage. Scarlet and gold flashes fluttering through shadowy branches marked the flight of parrots and macaws. Twilight in the jungle was approaching, and fishing bats were already hunting under the overhanging bowers, diving and darting among a tangle of black roots, forcing frogs from their roosts, the soft plops of their bodies into the water announcing a strategic retreat.

  He wondered what Seichan was doing. He’d left her in Rio de Janeiro, his last sight of her as she donned a pair of khaki shorts and a black T-shirt, not bothering with a bra. Fine by him. Less the better on her. He’d watched as she tugged on her boots, the cascade of dark hair, how it brushed against her cheeks and shrouded her emerald eyes. He found himself of late thinking about her more and more.

  Which was both good and bad.

  A ringing echoed throughout the boat.

  Dinner bell.

  He checked his watch. The meal would begin in ten minutes and usually lasted an hour. He’d have to be in and out of the room before his target finished eating. He checked the knot on the rope he’d tied to the rail and tossed the line over the side. He’d cut just enough length to reach the balcony directly below, which led into the suite belonging to his target.

  Edward Trask. An ethnobotanist from Oxford University.

  Gray had been provided a full dossier. The thirty-two-year-old researcher disappeared into the Brazilian jungle three years ago, only to return five months back—sunburnt and gaunt, with a tale of adventures, deprivation, lost tribes, and enlightenment. He became an instant celebrity, his rugged face gracing the pages of Time and Rolling Stone. His British accent and charming self-deprecation seemed crafted for television and he’d appeared on a slew of national programs, from Good Morning America to the Daily Show. He quickly sold his story to a New York publisher for seven figures. But one aspect of Trask’s story would never see print, a detail uncovered a week ago.