Chase Baker and the God Boy: (A Chase Baker Thriller Series Book No. 3) (15 page)

Elizabeth…

I want to respond to Tony. But my
throat has closed up on itself, my pulse speeding so rapidly I feel like I
might pass out. But I can’t pass out. Won’t pass out. Part of me wants to run.
To save Elizabeth and the boy. But that’s crazy. They’re a dozen miles away
inside a remote portion of jungle. It would take me ten or more hours to get to
her. Like I said, no choice but to stand there helplessly, hopelessly…impotently.

Elizabeth…

The lightning disappears as the
blade of the dagger takes on the same glow as the diamond deposit. Then, as
kneeling worshippers raise up their torsos and their hands, Kashmiri thrusts
the blade into Elizabeth’s chest.

“No!” Anjali screams.

“Look away!” I insist. “Do not look
at the screen anymore. You hear me?”

“Do it, Anjali,” Tony insists.
“Listen to Chase. Look away now.”

Kashmiri twists the knife in a
circular motion until he has cut a perfect circle in her chest. Returning the knife
to its scabbard, he reaches inside with the now free hand, pulls out her heart.

Elizabeth…Do you believe in love
at first sight?

The drone’s audio manages to pick
up a scream.

But the scream is not coming from
Elizabeth. It’s the kind of scream that can only come from a little boy in
distress. In pain.

Elizabeth, I love
you…I…love…you…

The earth beneath me feels as if it
has dropped away. My head spins while an orchestra of screams and shrieks fills
my brain. Kashmiri turns, holds the heart up for his worshipers who now raise
up their bodies and their arms, praising the presence of Elizabeth’s still beating
heart. Looking at her face, I can tell she’s not quite dead, but instead moving
her mouth as if trying to shout, but unable to. The glow from the diamond
deposit increases to an almost blood red, as the heart goes still in Kashmiri’s
hand and Elizabeth’s mouth stops moving, her soul departing her body. At the
same time, the vaporous smoke rising from the deposit begins to take the shape
of a giant skull, its eyes glowing yellow/orange, a pair of sharp horns
protruding from the top of its cranium.

Anjali, her eyes closed, is
reciting the Our Father prayer aloud.

“Kali is summoned,” I mumble, the
words barely making it out of my mouth.

Kashmiri raises the heart, then
brings it to his mouth, taking a large bite out of it. Once more raising his
staff up to the heavens, he is then transported across the surface of the
diamond deposit as it erupts into bright red flame. As a final sacrifice to
Kali, he tosses what’s left of Elizabeth’s heart into the fire as the rest of
her body is incinerated.

“They’ve done it,” I say, tears of rage
and sadness filling my eyes. “Resurrected the Thuggee god. They’ve reincarnated
Kali.”

Maybe a half minute passes before
the flames disappear and, along with them, any sign of Elizabeth Flynn’s body.
Kashmiri takes his place before Rajesh, bows his head in reverence while the
boy’s body begins convulsing, as though acting as the catalyst for summoning
Kali has sucked the life right out of him. The ceremony over, the worshippers
stand, shoulder their AK47s and begin to shoot indiscriminate rounds into the
air. It’s as if they are ready to go to war with the world, kill anyone who
doesn’t prescribe to their black magic. Their evil.

That’s when I notice a couple of
the black-robed guards who are taking up the rear of the procession. They
appear to be communicating. When one of them looks up at the night sky, points
directly at the camera, I know we’ve been made.

“Bring her in, Tony,” I say, wiping
my eyes with the backs of my hand. “We’ve been spotted.”

Just then, both guards take aim with
their weapons, plant their separate beads. We see the muzzle flashes and just
like that, the image on Anjali’s smartphone goes dead.

“So much for one slightly used
drone,” Tony says, tossing the remote control into the bush.

“Anjali, do we still have the GPS coordinates?”

She finishes the prayer, peers up
at the night sky, makes another sign of the cross over her chest. Then,
breathing in deeply, she runs her hands through her hair which has become thick
with perspiration.

“Got them,” she assures, having
gathered her composure. Her voice, however, still trembling from the Thuggee
ceremony. “Saved.”

“Let’s get back to camp and consult
a map,” I say, my voice cracking. Grabbing my walkie-talkie from my pocket, I
radio Rudy. “Rudy, come in. Rudy. You there?” Releasing my thumb, I wait and
listen. But all I get is static. “Rudy man, come on, you there?” Nothing. Then,
to Tony and Anjali, “Rudy’s probably into his second pint by now. Let’s just
go.”

But first, Tony reaches out, grabs
my arm.

“Chase,” he says, his eyes wide,
not blinking. “You okay?”

I nod. “I’m not sure what I feel.”

“She didn’t suffer. You hear me?
She didn’t suffer.”

“The fucker cut her heart out, Tone.
He cut her heart out. Don’t tell me she didn’t suffer.”

He releases my arm.

“Let’s just go,” he says.

We hump the three hundred feet through
the darkness to the camp. Although the distance is short, it takes a while to
break through the tall grass with the machetes in the night. But it’s then, for
the first time since Dr. Singh approached me in Piazza Santa Maria Novella in
Florence, that this thing is beginning to make sense. What was once a
three-part mystery has now merged into one single, well-connected plot of insidiousness.

This is no longer simply about
rescuing a little boy born with a congenital deformity that a handful of
religious zealots interpreted as a God-like attribute. It’s no longer the
search for a legendary diamond deposit that might provide an entire army with
the cash it needs to wage a war of evil and terrorism. It’s no longer about
confirming the truth about Elizabeth.

This is about Satan himself being
summoned from the depths of Hell by a known terrorist turned Thuggee. An animal
capable of ripping the heart out of an innocent woman’s chest while it’s still
beating.

This is no longer just a job. It’s now
become personal.

What does personal mean, exactly?

It means that no matter what
happens with the God Boy, I will find Kashmiri, and I will find a way to eradicate
him from the earth … as slowly and painfully as possible.

The light of the fire in our camp
is a welcome sight.

But what’s far from welcome is the first
thing I see when breaking through the brush.

I see Rudy, his hands tied behind
his back, a noose wrapped around his neck.

They must have followed us here the entire way. But it wasn’t
until we left camp to put up the drone, that they made their move.

Aussie Tavis and Aussie Bruce…The angry
gamblers…The poachers.

They’re positioned four-square on
either side of Rudy, who is standing…no, scratch that…who is precariously
balancing
himself on one of the small collapsible tables the Sherpas packed for the trek,
the rope wrapped around his neck tied off to a thick branch belonging to a
nearby iron tree. Situated not far behind him, the Sherpas themselves, tied together
at the wrists, seated on the ground, facing away from one another, their mouths
covered with strips of duct tape, as if there’s anyone to hear their screams
out here in this heavily forested nowhere.

A fire is burning in a shallow pit
in the center of camp and the tents have been set up a dozen or so feet away
from it. The elephants are not visible since they’re hidden by the brush, but I
can hear them rustling uncomfortably about, yanking on the thick ropes and
chains that secure them to the tree trunks.

The New York Yankees baseball cap-wearing
Tavis is once more holding his revolver while the cowboy-hatted Bruce has a scope-mounted
30.06 bolt-action Springfield gripped in both his hands, port arms position. Apparently,
the bullet that grazed his shoulder just a few hours ago isn’t bothering him all
that much. But then, maybe he’s too drunk to notice. Or too drugged up. Or just
too much of an asshole.

Rudy is trembling, the table
beneath him looking like it’s about to tip or even crumble under his weight,
simple physics the only thing keeping him from entering into the kingdom of
heaven before his allotted time.

“Rudy,” I say. “Be still. I’m gonna
get you out of this.”

Tony reaches for his gun, takes a
threatening step forward. But Tavis aims quick, fires off a round that hits the
dirt only a few inches from the excavator’s feet. Anjali screams, presses
herself up against me.

“Down on your knees, digger man,”
Tavis says. “Hands over your head. Do it now.”

Tony drops to his knees, locks his
fingers together at the knuckles, rests them on his cranial cap.

“They know you, Tone?” I say out
the corner of my mouth.

“Nepal is a small town, believe you
me,” he says. “Kathmandu is even smaller. These two kangaroos have gotten
themselves kicked out of every bar in the city, including mine. I almost said
something about it earlier, but I never imagined this happening.”

“Shut your mouth, digger,” Tavis says.
But then, his face lights up like he just remembered it’s his birthday.

“What have we here?” he says, his wet-eyed
smile reminiscent of a bad guy in a Clint Eastwood spaghetti western…
The
Good, the Bad, and the Totally Fucked
. “A lady, all the way out here in the
middle of nowhere. And I thought that hanging your pal, Rudy, was going to be
for male eyes only.”

I can feel Anjali’s body trembling
against me.

“What do you want, Tavis?” I say.
“I thought we settled this in town.”

He smiles. “The only thing we
settled was the fate of your mate, Rudy, here … and all the rest of you. And
you thought I was being reasonable.”

“They’re gonna kill us, Chase,”
Tony whispers over his shoulder. “No one will find our bodies out here.”

Tavis starts walking towards me,
the black barrel of his revolver staring me down like the Grim Reaper while my
.45 sits idle inside my shoulder holster. When he’s within a couple of feet, he
reaches out, snatches Anjali by the arm, pulls her away from me. Instinct kicks
in, and I reach out for her, but he cold cocks me across the side of my head with
his piece. I go down on my side, my head spinning, the pain coming and going
with every rapid beat of my pulse. I feel a hand rummaging around inside my jacket
and my .45 being snatched out.

“You bastard,” Tony says. “You
don’t know who you’re dealing with, poacher boy.”

From the ground, I see Tavis pulling
Anjali by her hair. He’s trying to kiss her neck while she pushes him away. The
ear to ear smile he wears proves how much he’s enjoying himself.

“Let me show you what you’re
dealing with,” he says. Then, shooting his partner a look. “Do it, Brucey.”

Shouldering his rifle, Bruce takes
aim at the rickety table, fires.

The stool beneath Rudy
disintegrates.

The bartender drops, the noose
catching his neck as the rope goes taught. But it hasn’t killed him instantly,
and he begins to kick and flail while the noose slowly chokes him to death.

The entire world seems to be
spinning out of control, the pain in my head is suddenly accompanied by nausea
in my stomach. Anjali is screaming, trying to claw her way out of Tavis’s grip
while Rudy is only moments away from asphyxiating to death. It’s then that I
hear another kind of choking coming from Tony. Peering at him from where I’m
kneeling on the jungle floor, I seem him grasping at his throat, foamy spittle
spewing forth from his mouth.

“Snake bite,” he barks, his voice
panicked and constricted like no air is passing through his throat into his
lungs. “Snake…bite!”

Tavis’s eyes go wide. He releases Anjali.

“Snake?” he says, jumping in place,
his eyes peeled to the jungle floor. “What snake? Where?”

“Ha ha ha,” Bruce says, his 30.06
still gripped in both hands. “Tavis don’t like snakes.”

Inhaling deeply, I stare into
Tony’s pain-filled face. He issues me the slightest of smiles and a wink of his
eye. And then, he lunges for Tavis.

Tony catches the poacher around the
ankles, takes him down like a defensive end sacking a quarterback. Tavis falls
hard, his revolver dropping out of his hand. He reaches for it, so desperate to
regain control of the weapon he is clawing at the ground. Tony is able to reach
it first, turning the revolver on its owner. Tavis raises himself up onto his
knees, lifts up his hands in surrender, works up a smile.

“Don’t….shoot,” he says with a
swallow, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down in his throat. Then, smiling. “We
can work this out, mate.”

Raising his 30.06, Brucey shoulders
the weapon. Tony catches the cowboy-hatted poacher out the corner of his eye,
plants a bead, fires. Brucey drops on the spot. Dead. Then, pointing the barrel
at the rope from which Rudy dangles, he fires again. The ropes snaps in two and
the Brit falls to the jungle floor, his hands wrap around the noose as he
manages to pull it loose. It’s a magnificent shot.