Chase Baker and the God Boy: (A Chase Baker Thriller Series Book No. 3) (20 page)

“Anjali,” he says, “you should
never have come here. I forbade it.” Setting his hands on her shoulder. “But
oh, how I’ve missed you so.”

“Kashmiri,” she says. “I thought
I’d never see you again.”

I’m not sure why I’m so surprised that Kashmiri and Anjali have
a past. Or should I say, surprised they share a past, present, and future. What
should also come as no surprise is that she used me to lead her here. Maybe she
should have simply texted Kashmiri and he could have flown her out here on his
own. Or perhaps that would have been the wrong approach. Judging by what
Kashmiri said, Anjali was forbidden to come here. Makes sense if he’s kidnaped
her son. But then, maybe Kashmiri is the real father. Maybe that’s what this
little kidnaping of the God Boy is all about. Maybe using him as a conduit to
summon up Kali is simply the family biz. Or maybe my imagination is going
whacky.

“Give me a good reason why I shouldn’t
send you away, Anjali,” Kashmiri says as he leads us to the far end of the
large room where he keeps a desk, “and kill all of your friends while I’m at it.”

“Mr. Kashmiri,” Rudy says, taking a
step forward. “Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Rudy Valenty, and I am
at your service. From the looks of it, you have quite the diamond drilling
operation going on here, and I just happen to be an expert diamond sales
executive from—”

Black Beard reaches out, backhands
Rudy across the face. The slap is so powerful it nearly knocks him on his back.

“Get back,” Black Beard insists.
“No talking.”

“No talking,” a dazed Rudy whispers
under his breath. “No talking…No…Talking…”

“He’s got the key,” Anjali says, as
her wrists are unbound and she takes her place beside Kashmiri where he’s now seated
behind a great desk carved out of mahogany. “The one who thinks he’s Indiana
Jones. He’s got the key that will unlock the Kali statue and reveal her
secrets.”

Anjali knows the key will not
reveal secrets so much as kill Kali once the statue is unlocked. Maybe she’s
not so in love with Kashmiri after all. Maybe she’s not double-crossing us but
only playing the situation like she’s double-crossing us…No choice but to calm
down and wait to see how it all plays out…

I can’t help but notice that only
one item occupies the desktop. It’s an old half-moon shaped dagger with worn
leather surrounding the grip. No guns for Kashmiri the Thuggee terrorist. The
man is strictly old school.

“Indiana Jones…now that hurts,” I
say. “I always thought of myself as Ernest Hemingway meets Antoine de
Saint-Exupéry.”

I’m fighting the duct tape that
binds my wrists together. It’s a tight fit, but I’ve been in enough
hands-tied-behind-my-back situations to know that stitching a pen knife blade
to the interior of one’s belt, the razor sharp edge facing outwards, is the
prudent thing to do. I’ve also practiced the technique of sawing away at
whatever means the bad guys choose to bind me with, be it rope or duct tape,
without their having the slightest clue. Like the two armed bandits standing behind
me by the door of this dimly lit room, for example. It’s a matter of standing
at an angle where they simply don’t notice what I’m doing with my fingers.

“What key?” Rudy says. Then,
catching himself. “Oh, yes, of course.
That
key.”

Kashmiri turns, focuses in on Rudy.

“Who did this man say he was again?”
he says.

“He’s the mastermind behind this
whole thing,” Tony says. “It’s him you wanna torture.”

“Are you kidding me?” Rudy screams.
“Until an hour ago, I’d never seen these people in my life. I’m a citizen of
Her Majesty’s Great Britannia and I demand to be released at once.” He smiles.
“Then perhaps we’ll discuss the key and its location. For a price of course.”

“Gag this man,” Kashmiri says to
Black Beard. The big, black-turbaned man nods to one of the armed Thuggee bandits
who immediately approaches Rudy, rips a considerable piece of duct tape from
its roll, and attaches it to his chubby face, from ear lobe to ear lobe.

Kashmiri’s sunglasses-shielded eyes
back on me.

“Harbans,” he says. “I want you to
extract the truth from Mr. Baker regarding the true whereabouts of the key.”

Black Beard/Harbans removes his
sash, twirls it around in his two hands so that it forms a thick rope with a
solid metal pendant at the end. He approaches me, cocks the sash back as if it
were a whip, and readies to strike me with it. But that’s when I hear, “Stop!”

It’s Anjali.

She comes around Kashmiri’s desk.

“Allow me, Kashmiri,” she says,
removing the half-moon-shaped dagger off of the desk. “I believe I know
precisely how to get Mr. Baker to reveal the location of the key. Then, once I
produce it, you may tend to him as you wish.” She laughs. “What’s left of him,
that is.”

“Be quick, Anjali,” he says. “We
must start our ceremony soon. Maybe you have come here against my wishes. But now
that you are here, I would very much like you to be a part of it.” He scans the
rest of us with his sunglass shielded eyes. “In fact, I shall very much enjoy
having you all as my guests at the ceremony.”

…Another Thuggee
ceremony…another sacrifice to Kali…no doubt all three of us fit the bill as
sacrificial lambs…

Anjali comes to me, blade gripped
in her hand. She looks me in the eye.

“Now, Mr. Baker,” she says,
pressing the tip of the knife against the underside of my chin. So hard the
pain shoots up into my face, behind my eyeballs. “Where is the key?”

“Don’t do it, Chase,” Tony says
over my right shoulder. “They’re gonna kill us anyway. Don’t give the broad the
satisfaction.”

Coming from the left, Rudy is
screaming something into his gag.

She starts touching me all over
like she’s patting me down. And she is. When she comes to my right side leg
pocket on my jungle green cargo pants, she unbuttons it, reaches inside like
she’s convinced the key is located there. But she knows full well the key is
strung around my neck and hidden behind the T-shirt beneath my work-shirt. She
removes her hand from my pocket, holds it up with fingers spread as if to
demonstrate just how empty it is. Looking up at me, she issues me a wink of her
left eye. Not much of wink. Nothing anyone in the know would think twice about.
But a wink all the same. She’s playing both sides and doing so with great
effectiveness. Maybe even buying us precious time.

She makes a complete search of all
my pockets and finishing up by peering down inside my black T-shirt.

“Did you wanna see up my ass too?”
I say, finally feeling the sweet release of my duct taped wrists.

She smiles. “I’m sure that won’t be
necessary, Mr. Baker.” Turning to Kashmiri. “The key is not on him.”

“Then we will have Harbons take
care of him,” the Islamist terrorist turned Thuggee chieftain insists. “Perhaps
he hid it somewhere inside the jungle and now it is just waiting there to be
found.”

Harbons grabs my arm with his iron
grip. But that’s when Anjali steps forward, drives the dagger into the monster’s
side.

“Chase run!” she screams.

Harbons falls.

Pulling my hands apart, I turn
quick and swift kick the guard on the right in the balls. Tony makes like a
bull and rams the other guard with his head, driving him back against the stone
wall. Meanwhile, Rudy steps forward, kicks the first guard’s AK-47 out of his
hands, so that it lands on the stone floor, slides towards the door.

“Anjali, get Tony’s wrists,” I bark
while going for the automatic rifle. Picking it up, I turn and see that
Kashmiri has jumped over his desk and taken cover behind it. I trigger a short
burst of rounds into it. But that’s when the second guard raises his rifle. Anjali
is quicker and runs the blade across his neck, sending a spout of arterial
blood against the wall.

“And yet another surprise for the
Catholic girl,” I say. “You’re a little too good with a knife.”

“By the grace of God, I go,” she
barks.

Kashmiri stands then, an automatic
gripped in his shooting hand. He fires, the round ricocheting against the stone
wall. I spray his desk once more and he catches a round in the upper left
thigh, dropping him on the spot.

Anjali cuts Tony’s wrists free. He
picks up a second AK, and we make for the open door. But that’s when Rudy jumps
ahead of us. He’s wide-eyed and panicked.

“Oh Christ,” I say. “Cut him loose
and get out.”

“You can’t run!” Kashmiri shouts.
He quickly changes clips and shoots at will, the rounds whizzing past my head,
ricocheting against the stone wall. “You are surrounded on all sides. We will
torture you, rip out your hearts, and feed them to Kali. Do you hear me!?!”

I return fire, but he’s once more
taking cover behind the desk. I turn back towards the door.

“Just give me one clean shot,
asshole,” I say. But no one can hear me above the noise of the gunfire.

I search for Anjali. She’s cutting
Rudy’s tape. When he’s free, I shout, “Let’s just go while we have the chance!”

Kashmiri fires again.

This time, I don’t bother with
returning fire. Instead, the four of us head back out into the open space,
closing the wood doors behind us. Pulling one of the torches off the wall, I
stuff it into the openers, securing both doors and locking Kashmiri inside.

For how long, only Kali knows.

We stand in silence outside the great wood temple doors until I
make out the sound of movement. The unmistakable sound of stone splitting.
Something only a digger will recognize immediately.

“You hear that, Chase?” Tony says.
“Something’s giving way down here.”

“Yeah,” I say. “But where’s it
coming from?”

I look all around me. But the
louder the harsh noise gets, the more my internal radar begs me to look up.
That’s when I see her. The life-sized stone carving of Kali, coming alive,
tearing herself from the wall. The stone Kali drops down from the wall, lands
on her two feet with an earth-pounding thud. In one of her many hands, she
grips a crescent-shaped sword.

“That isn’t real,” Rudy screams.
Out the corner of my eye, I see him close his eyes. “It’s not real,” he chants.
“It’s not real…It’s not real…Wake up, Rudy. Wake up, Rudy. Wake up…”

She waves her arms with great agility
like they are made of flesh and bone and not stone. The big blade slices
through the air, barely missing my head. I stumble backward while she swings the
blade again, knocking the AK-47 from my hands.

I regain my balance while Kali repositions
herself, attempting to separate me from the rest of the gang by standing
between us.

“Tony,” I say, “plant a bead on her
while I distract her.”

The old excavator shoulders the AK
while I back-step slowly, the stone monster following, as planned. That’s when
her eyes go wide, her mouth opening and a scream emerging from it that’s so
loud it feels as if it’s piercing my eardrums.

She swings the blade at my head,
but I’m able to duck in time, dropping to my knees.

“Now, Tony!” I shout. “Send her
back to hell!”

Tony opens up with his Kalishnikov,
the rounds shattering the stone figure into a dozen pieces which quickly
scatter away on their own into the recesses of the underground chamber.

“Let’s get the hell out of here
before that Kali freak pulls a Humpty Dumpty and puts herself back together
again,” Tony says.

Rudy slowly opens his eyes. “Is she
gone?”

“She’s gone,” I say, standing,
gathering up the firearm Kali knocked out of my hands. “Thanks for the help.
Now let’s get the hell out of here.”

“But what about my son?” Anjali
begs. “Where can he possibly be?”

“That’s the question, isn’t it?” I
say, pivoting on the balls of my feet, giving the wide open chamber the once
over. But what I really want to do right now is ask Anjali how she so
innocently happens to know Kashmiri. But there’s no time for that. On second
thought. “So how did you and that terrorist get so chummy? Guess you forgot to
mention that little tidbit of information.”