Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull Read online

  They were heavily armed . . . too heavily. These men were no ordinary thieves, nor even rogue mercenaries. They were a military force.

  Noting his attention, his fellow prisoner stepped closer and lifted an eyebrow toward their captors. George McHale was a former operative with British intelligence whom Indy had known for nearly two decades. His friend had plainly made the same assessment as Indy about the armed men. He felt a twinge of guilt. Mac had been visiting Indy at the Mayan ruins and had been caught up in the crossfire. The Russian commandos had murdered all the indigenous workers at the camp with a callous brutality. But to what end? What did they want? He still didn’t know.

  Mac rubbed at his neck. So he’d been drugged, too.

  “How you holding up, Mac?” Indy muttered.

  His friend shrugged. “I’ve had better days.” As they were marched at gunpoint, Mac lowered his voice and tilted his head toward one of the soldiers. “They’re Russian. From the look of them, I’d say Soviet special forces.”

  “Spetsnaz?”

  Mac nodded. “This won’t be easy.”

  “Not as easy as it used to be.”

  Indy had a hard time hiding his limp. It felt like someone had poured sand into his hip joint. The long trek in the trunk of a car hadn’t helped matters. He bit through the agony and forced his back straighter. All he needed was a hot bath, a fistful of aspirin, and he’d be at full steam.

  Each painful step sought to convince him otherwise.

  “We’ve been through worse, Indy,” Mac said with his usual British aplomb.

  “Yeah? When?”

  “C’mon, Indy. Don’t you remember Flensburg? There were twice as many then. We made it through. There’s always a way out.”

  “We were younger then, Mac.”

  “I’m still young.”

  Indy stared at his old friend. Mac looked like someone had washed him and put him away wet. And it wasn’t only the fists that had battered him into this present sorry state. Passing years had been just as cruel. Of course, Indy didn’t imagine he looked any better. Still, a spark of Mac’s former vigor shone in his old friend’s eyes. Plainly fire remained in that old warhorse.

  The same couldn’t be said for Indy.

  It had been a hard couple of years.

  Motion drew his attention to the left. Over one of the guards’ shoulders hung a familiar bit of property. His leather bullwhip. Scarred and frayed, it had also seen better days. Indy felt naked without it. Without any weapons, he had no choice but to cooperate with the Russians for now. Grinding through the pain in his hip, he continued to the hangar.

  Indy muttered to Mac as they marched. “And remember, back in Flensburg we had guns.”

  “Details,” Mac said with a dismissive wave. “Five hundred bucks says we get out of this just fine.”

  Before the wager could be struck, a giant stepped across their path, blocking them. He wore army greens, decorated with the silver eagles of a colonel. Indy recognized him from the assault among the Mayan ruins.

  The leader of the Russian stormtroopers.

  “Uh, better drop it to one hundred on that wager,” Mac said.

  Off to the side, a second staff car moved down the airstrip toward them. No one seemed surprised or concerned at its approach. Whoever was coming was late to the party.

  The colonel moved closer to Indy He gestured at the massive hangar ahead. A Russian accent weighted down the man’s tongue, along with a dark threat. “You recognize this building, da?”

  “Go to hell,” Indy answered, but there was little heat behind his words.

  Still, he studied the hangar. In fact, the building did look strangely familiar. Indy picked through his memories.

  Distracted, he failed to see the Russian’s other arm swing at his face. The fist smashed into his chin, cracking his head back. Indy tasted blood as his legs went out from under him. He crumpled to his knees.

  Supported on one arm, Indy wiped his split lip while glaring up at the Russian. Fire lit his words now. “Sorry . . . I meant to say go to hell, comrade.”

  The giant snatched Indy by the shirt collar and hauled him higher, his other arm cocked back, fingers curling into a fist.

  A sharp voice cracked out like a pistol shot. “Prasteete!”

  The arriving staff car braked off to the side. The back door popped open and a slender figure stepped out, rolling smoothly to her feet. Indy was surprised to see it was a woman. Like the others, she was dressed as a US Army soldier, only her uniform fit tighter at the hips, and her boots rose to her knees. Her jet-black hair was bobbed at her shoulders, with bangs cut straight across her forehead. She approached with a leonine grace, all sleek muscle, predatory.

  The sword and scabbard belted at her waist accented her threat.

  The Russian giant pulled Indy to his feet and straightened to meet her. The colonel saluted the newcomer with no condescension. In fact, Indy noted a flicker of fear in his pale eyes.

  That can’t be good.

  She spoke in English to the tall colonel, as if wanting to be understood by all. “You did it, Colonel Dovchenko. Very good.”

  So the man was a colonel—a Russian colonel.

  “Where did you find Professor Jones?” the woman asked.

  “In Mexico, digging in the dirt. For this junk.”

  From over his shoulder, Dovchenko shrugged a satchel into view. Indy recognized his own bag. Dovchenko upended it. Indy lunged forward, but another guard forced him back. From out of the bag, ancient pre-Columbian potsherds shattered on the tarmac, along with a Mayan fertility idol and a chunk of stone carved with rare glyphs. They were all—or had been—priceless pieces of history.

  Indy winced. Seven weeks of meticulous work.

  He shook his head at the loss and faced the woman. Despite the desert sun, her complexion was snowy and without a drop of sweat. “Let me guess,” he said. “You’re not from around here.”

  “And where is it you would imagine I’m from, Dr. Jones?”

  He eyed her up and down. “The way you sink your teeth into those w’s, I’d say eastern Ukraine.”

  Her eyes sparkled. “Highest marks to you, Dr. Jones.” She held out her hand. “Colonel Doctor Irina Spalko.”

  Indy refused to shake her hand.

  Her face registered no offense. Her wrist turned, and she motioned to the large Russian brute. “You’ve already met Colonel Antonin Dovchenko.”

  “Charming fellow. We’ll all have to share some borscht. So why don’t you tell me what this is all about?”

  She cocked her head. “Patience, Dr. Jones. Three times I have received the Order of Lenin, also medal as Hero of Socialist Labor, and why? Because I am assigned to know things. To know them before anyone else, and what I need to know now—” She reached over to Indy and tapped a slender finger to his forehead. “—is in here.”

  “Lady, I don’t know—”

  She leaned closer, catching his gaze with hers. Her eyes were an arctic blue, almost white, with flecks of silvery ice. She stared deeply back at him, intense, disquieting. He did not flinch from her hypnotic attention, which seemed to both disappoint and intrigue her. She stared for a long moment into his eyes, then pulled back. A shadow of a smile haunted her lips as she straightened.

  “You are a hard man to read, Dr. Jones. Very interesting. So it seems we must do this the old-fashioned way. You will simply have to tell us. Help us find what we seek.”

  A loud snap of electricity interrupted, drawing everyone’s attention. Off by the hangar, smoke billowed from the power box, and a grind of huge gears sounded. Cheers rose from the men gathered there. To the side, the hangar doors started to rumble open on their tracks, splitting down the middle, straight through the 5 and the 1.

  “Now we shall see,” Spalko whispered with a hint of hunger.

  The party was led toward the yawning entrance. The doors continued to pull back wider and wider. Indy no longer needed the guns at his back to keep moving forward. Curiosity drew him
to the hangar. Inside an immense open space beckoned. Lady Liberty herself could have strolled there without lowering her torch.

  High above, hanging among the immense steel rafters, ceiling lamps flickered to life—starting with those closest to the door, then spreading down the breadth of the hangar, stretching to an impossible distance. The light revealed an endless expanse of crates stacked to the rafters.

  Indy craned his neck and allowed himself to be prodded inside.

  Stepping over the door track, he felt a chill of recognition. Even the smell—old wood and diesel oil—took him back. He gaped at the row after row of warehouse shelving, stretching deep into the hangar and to either side. Though he’d never seen the outside of the hangar before, he had been inside it. A decade earlier, he’d been driven in a bus with blacked-out windows to this location, brought here under high security and secrecy.

  Now here he was again.

  Indy searched around. Stacks of crates of all sizes, each stamped TOP SECRET, each coded in cryptic government ciphers. This is where Indy’s adventures usually ended—not started.

  What mess had he gotten himself into now?

  FOUR

  SPALKO WALKED at the Americans side. The army personnel carrier and two jeeps trailed their party into the hangar with a rumble of heavy engines, spewing diesel exhaust.

  Spalko used the moment to study her captive. He looked older than she had imagined, even from the photographs taken recently. Yet she noted his concentration as he scanned the shelves, the crates, even his sidelong glances at her storm troopers. He was always thinking, always calculating. Despite his age, there remained a sharpness to the man, along with something hard as steel. She was not daunted. She had broken harder men. She would learn how to temper that steel, to bend it to serve her mission. She had never failed before. She didn’t intend to now.

  She gestured toward the heart of the hangar and led the way forward. “This warehouse, Dr. Jones, is where you and your government have hidden all of your secrets, yes?”

  He shook his head. “I’ve never been here before in my life.”

  A lie.

  They both knew it.

  She did not even bother arguing. She counted off what she knew on her fingers. “The object we seek is a rectangular storage container. Its dimensions are two meters by one meter by two hundred centimeters. The contents of the box are of particular interest—mummified remains.

  The American stumbled a step next to her, then caught himself. She did not fail to note the flash of recognition in his eyes, nor the flare of worry across his face. After just a few minutes, she was already learning to read him.

  Raising an arm, she stopped him and faced him. “What I described. This is no doubt familiar to you?”

  “What makes you think I have any idea what box you’re talking about?”

  She let her voice ice over with her deadly intent. “Because, Dr. Jones, ten years ago you were part of the team that examined it.”

  “Listen, sister, even if I knew what you—”

  With the swiftness of a striking snake, she whipped the rapier from her scabbard. Silver flashed in the darkness, and the tip of her sword came to rest over his carotid. She held it steady. Studying the pulse of that artery, she noted his heart rate spike. But her adversary kept his face hard, unimpressed. Still, a trickle of sweat on his brow betrayed him. What the face hid, the body revealed.

  Spalko smiled coldly inside, satisfied. It wouldn’t be long until she could read the man as easily as Tolstoy’s War and Peace. All it took was attention to detail . . . and patience.

  She punctuated her next words with incremental increases of pressure. “You will. Help us. Find it!”

  A single drop of blood welled around her sword point. It rolled to the hollow of his throat.

  His expression remained icy to match her own.

  “Killing me’s not gonna solve your problem.”

  She did not lower her sword. “Perhaps you are correct.”

  She already knew where the prisoner was most tender, where he could best be harmed. For Dr. Jones, threats would not work—at least not threats against himself. She barked an order.

  One of the soldiers swung around and slammed a fist into the ample belly of Dr. Jones’s companion. George McHale doubled over with a cough of pain and dropped to his knees. Another two soldiers grabbed him under the arms and dragged him toward the idling army truck. The soldiers forced McHale to the floor and jammed his head behind the rear tire.

  Spalko nodded to the driver. With a crank of gears, he slipped the truck into reverse. Before he could hit the gas, the American held up both arms.

  “Okay, okay!”

  She lowered her sword. “The box, Dr. Jones? Where is it?”

  He stared into the enormity of the space. “Lady, I don’t have a clue. It could be anywhere in here.”

  Spalko turned back to the driver and lifted her arm.

  “Wait!” Dr. Jones barked at her. “Give a guy a chance to think already! There must be a way of finding that box.”

  He searched around, turning in a slow circle. She noted that his eyes held a spark of panic—but also deep concentration.

  Dovchenko stepped toward him threateningly, but she waved the colonel back. She was dancing a delicate game of force and manipulation with this American. She would not have Dovchenko interfere. At least not yet.

  Spalko continued her study of the man. She watched his breathing, the set of his shoulders, the rub of a finger under his chin. She picked out telltale facial tics—including a slight widening of his eyes.

  Dr. Jones suddenly snapped his fingers. “I need a compass,” he ordered and thrust an arm out, his palm up.

  No one moved closer. A few soldiers glanced at one another in confusion.

  “A compass!” he demanded. “You know, north, south, east?”

  “And west!” his friend added with a shudder as he was pulled from beneath the truck.

  “What kind of soldiers are you?” Dr. Jones pressed. “Nobody’s got a compass?”

  The American searched the blank faces. His gaze settled upon Dovchenko’s gun.

  “Give me your bullets,” he ordered, holding out his hand.

  Dovchenko laughed with a curl of his lip, but Spalko had recognized the dawning realization in the widening of the American’s eyes, in the dilation of his pupils. It was no ruse.

  Dr. Jones continued, “Listen to me. Do you want my help or not?” He waved an arm out toward the warehouse’s depths. “The contents of the box out there are highly magnetized.”

  She nodded to Dovchenko. “Do what he says.”

  Moments later Indy knelt beside an open toolbox provided by one of the Russians. He grabbed a pair of pliers and twisted off the top of one of the bullets. He hoped this would work, because he had no other ideas.

  Mac leaned over him and rubbed his neck with worry. “Do you know what you’re doing, Indiana?”

  “What I’m doing? I’m keeping that pretty little head of yours on your shoulders.”

  Indy shook the bullet casing and dumped the gunpowder into his palm. He repeated the process with several more bullets.

  “Well, if nothing else, you’re at least slowly disarming them,” Mac said with a tired smile. “One bullet at a time.”

  Finished, Indy stood up. He felt the woman’s eyes upon him, watching his every move. Her gaze itched across his skin as he crossed to an intersection of warehouse aisles.

  She came up beside him.

  “If the contents of the crate are still magnetized,” he explained, “the metal in the gunpowder should point the way.”

  He lifted his hand and blew into his open palm. A plume of fine gunpowder wafted up into a diffuse cloud. Hanging in midair, it began to coalesce, drawn together by unseen forces, like iron shavings in the presence of a magnet. As everyone watched, the powder settled to the cement floor. It formed a perfect line, aiming down one of the aisles.

  He turned for acknowledgment of his ingenuity
, only to find Spalko hurrying down the aisle ahead of him. So much for appreciation. With a grumble, Indy followed after her. She eventually slowed, searching both sides. Wooden crates and boxes climbed toward the rafters.

  “But which one?” she cried out in frustration. “There are still thousands in this direction.”

  Indy pointed to a soldier with a shotgun. “Pellets. I need one of the shells.”

  Spalko stared at him, her eyes narrowed. Then she turned and shouted crisp orders. The soldier frowned at the strangeness but obeyed. He ejected a shotgun shell and handed it carefully to Indy.

  Stepping to the side, Indy promptly bit through the shell’s cardboard casing. He grimaced at the taste of black powder, then dumped the shell’s contents on the floor. The number eight iron birdshot bounced like tiny ball bearings across the concrete floor—then one pellet rolled to the left, drawing others with it. A trickle became a rush, picking up speed down the aisle and following the lines of magnetic force.

  Or so he hoped.

  Indy and Spalko chased after the birdshot.

  The stream of metallic pellets raced through the warehouse. Even running at full speed, Indy and Spalko were hard-pressed to follow them. The jeeps trailed behind, filling the space with their exhaust. It was the strangest chase of Indy’s life.

  At last, the pellets reached the base of a stack of crates ahead.

  By now Indy was breathless, limping hard. “That must be—”

  The birdshot wasn’t done. The pellets climbed the side of the stack and began disappearing through the space between two crates.

  “Hurry!” Indy called out. “Give me a hand!”

  Dovchenko came to his aid. Together they hauled the outermost crate off the shelf and heaved it to the floor. It cracked open, spilling dossiers marked EYES ONLY. Indy ignored them and stared into the hole created by the now broken crate. More wooden boxes—all identical—still blocked the way. The pellets were nowhere in sight.

  “Clear out more!” Indy shouted, pointing.

  Other soldiers tugged and heaved, stacking boxes in the aisle. The shelf space cleared and widened. Spalko shone a flashlight into the depths. Near the back, the face of a crate quivered—covered with metallic birdshot.