Chase Baker and the God Boy: (A Chase Baker Thriller Series Book No. 3) (24 page)

“Jesus H, does everything have to
be so freakin’ hard?” he says. “But I will say this, Baker. I forgot how much
fun it was hanging out with you.”

I hold the stick of dynamite
steady, careful to keep it hidden by my bush jacket. In the wind and the rain,
Tony requires both hands to light it up. One to work the lighter and the other
cupped hand to shield the flame. The fuse ignites. I take back the lighter and,
at the same time, immediately stuff the stick into the U-clasp on the padlock.

“Cover!” I bark.

We jump to the opposite side of the
cage, crouch down where the side bars meet the metal floor of the truck bed,
shielding our faces with our hands. Even with the fuse spitting out shards of
flame, the Thuggees who surround us are so caught up in the trance-inducing ceremony
and the appearance of their devil God, they don’t take notice of the dynamite.
Or, if they notice it, they don’t seem to care.

The dynamite blows. The cage
shudders and the door bursts open.

“You hit, Tony?” I shout.

“If I am, I don’t feel it,” he
says. “I still got all my limbs?”

“You mean, is your junk still
attached?”

He bobs his head, his wide eyes
screaming,
I don’t believe what just happened.

“Go,” I say. “Go, go.”

We jump out and pounce on the two
bandits closest to us, relieving them of their Kalashnikovs. We don’t give them
a chance to warn the others. We shoot them dead on the spot. That gets the
attention of a dozen more bandits who turn, aim their weapons. Tony and I hit
the dirt and fire into their legs, dropping them where they stand.

In the near distance, Kashmiri is still
reciting his chants, preparing to plunge that knife into Anjali’s heart. The
rain and hail pour down. Lightning strikes all around us, thunder concussions
like incoming mortar rounds. The projected face of Kali screams bloody murder directly
at me.

Firing from the hip, we make our
way to the edge of the diamond deposit.

“Tony, cover me,” I order. Then, “Kashmiri!”

The red-robed and black-bearded man
turns, his knife still in hand.

I don’t waste any time with the
terrorist. I plant a bead and shoot. But the rifle is out of rounds. The Chief
Thuggee’s face lights up with pleasure as he returns the dagger to his sash,
and hurls himself across the diamond deposit, wrapping both his hands around my
throat.

Behind me, it’s all Tony can do to
keep the bandits back. Shooting until his rifle is empty, then picking up
another one and shooting it until that, too, is empty.

I fall onto my back, Kashmiri
landing hard on my chest. I punch him in the mouth with all the force I can
muster. But it’s like punching a brick wall. He raises his entire body up
effortlessly so that he’s straddling me on his knees. He pulls the crescent
dagger back out of his sash, presses the blade against my neck with one hand,
and grabs hold of the Kali Key with the other, yanking on the thick leather necklace
in effort to break it as if it were a worn shoelace.

“Kali claims your soul!” he chants,
his smile beaming. “Kali claims your soul!”

Knowing that strength alone won’t
break the leather necklace, Kashmiri pulls the blade away from my neck and
starts to cut.

“Chase, I can’t hold them,” Tony
barks from behind me. “There’s too many.”

I hear a scream. Peering over my
shoulder, I see that Tony has taken a bullet to the chest. He drops hard, like
a sack of rocks. That’s when I feel for the last stick of dynamite stuffed in
my waistband. I pull it out, along with my lighter and, cupping my hand around
it so that Kashmiri can’t see it, fire up the fuse. I wait the few seconds it
takes for the fuse to burn down to the explosive. Raising the business end of
the lighter up to Kashmiri’s neck, I flick the flame under his chin. His mouth
opens wide while he screams in agony. He releases the necklace and the dagger.

“Eat this!” I say, stuffing the
stick of dynamite into his mouth and down his throat.

I roll my body out from under him.

The stick detonates.

When I turn to look, I see that Kashmiri’s
head has evaporated along with most of his chest cavity. His big body absorbed
almost the entire blast. The exploded dynamite has had another more profound effect.
It’s caused the army of Thuggees to back-step away from the diamond deposit,
some of the black-clad men even throwing down their weapons and running away
towards the forest that surrounds the grassy plain. Now that their invincible
leader has been so easily destroyed, they know that they too are next in line for
a one-way ticket to the underworld.

But the devil has already been
summoned, even without the sacrificial offering of Anjali’s beating heart. Before
me, floating above the still unconscious body of the God Boy’s mother is the
face of Kali. The gaunt, hollow-eyed skull screams in anger. The earth shakes
once more. Lightning strikes all around me.

…“You must find a way to unlock
the Golden Kali Statue. Only when you unlock it and open its doors will Kali
return to where she belongs. In the belly of the statue.”

I feel for the key around my neck.
I cross over the trembling diamond, the heat that’s radiating up from it
shooting up through the soles of my boots all the way up my legs and into my
spine. I pass by the concrete pillars supporting the chains that bind Anjali
until I come to the ancient Kali statue. Pulling the diamond embedded bronze
key from my neck, I eyeball the back of the solid gold statue. There’s a
rectangle embossed into the statue’s back. Some sort of writing or inscription
is inlaid inside the box, along with a small, narrow slit that’s intended to
facilitate a key. I slip the key inside.

The gold statue shakes and comes
alive, its legs straightening out, its eight arms moving up and down, its eyes
blinking, mouth opening and closing. The hearts gripped in six of its hands are
now real, alive, pumping and bleeding. The blade of the sword gripped in the
seventh hand is waving, the rain and hail spattering against it. The severed
head being held by its hair in the eighth hand is suddenly alive, its eyes
blinking, its mouth moving, as if trying to say something.

The skull on the Kali statue splits
open, like a rose coming into full bloom. That’s when the giant, radiating
ghost of Kali begins to distort and change shape, like the bulbs on a stadium
light show suddenly losing their power. The translucent ghost image grows
thinner and thinner, then smaller and smaller, like a black hole collapsing into
itself until finally it is sucked into the statue head, the skull panels slamming
closed with a resounding bang that echoes throughout the valley.

The radiation from the blue diamond
quickly disappears along with its heat while the rain and hail stop, the black
cloud-covered sky opening up to reveal a heavenly blue. My eyes locked on the
Golden Kali Statue, I see its once glowing skin now burst into flames while the
entire eight-armed body disintegrates into a pile of charred ash. The wind
blows the ash around so that it covers the blue diamond deposit like fallen
leaves on a glass blue pond.

Anjali raises her head then, says,
“Am I alive?”

“Yes, you are alive,” I say. Peering
over my left shoulder. “Tony,” I whisper, staring at the pool of blood that
surrounds his body.

The Thuggees are running away from
the diamond mine. Running for their evil lives. I cross over the diamond, grab
hold of Tony’s Kalishnikov, carry it with me back across the diamond deposit to
Anjali.

“Let’s just get you away from here
first,” I say. “Then we’ll find a key that will remove the shackles.”

I press the barrel of the Kalashnikov
against the chain that holds Anjali’s left arm to the first concrete pillar. I
shoot and the chain breaks free. I do the same with the second arm and the
second pillar. When Anjali is released, she runs to the cage where her boy is
lying on his back, unconscious.

“Rajesh!” she wails, “Rajesh. Are
you alive?”

I cross over the blue diamond, but
stop when I come to Kashmiri. Digging under his sash, I find his key ring. I
carry them to Anjali and unlock her wrist shackles. She hardly notices when
they drop to the ground. It takes me several tries, but within a few seconds I
find the key that opens Rajesh’s cage. As soon as the steel barred door is
open, Anjali reaches in and pulls him out, cradling him to her.

His big, brown eyes open then, and
he works up a smile. But that smile quickly vanishes when he spots Tony lying
on his back on the ground.

“Please put me down,” the six-armed
God Boy says as Anjali lowers him to the ground. He slowly makes the few steps to
where Tony is laid out. Dropping to his knees, the boy lays all of his hands on
my now dead friend. For a moment, I interpret Rajesh’s gesture as one of
respect and thanks for a man who helped save his life and in return, gave his
own life. But nothing short of miraculous happens then. A dull glow emanates
from all of Rajesh’s hands, his body transforming from sickly boy to a holy
spirit-filled entity. A being filled with the goodness and the glory of a
benevolent god. In turn, Tony’s body trembles, the blood that surrounds him
disappears, and slowly, he sits up. The man, not reincarnated, but resurrected.

“Holy cow,” he says. “Anybody get
the license plate on the truck that just plowed me over?”

Holy cow…pun entirely intended,
right Tony?

My eyes fill with tears. Dr. Singh did
not lie about the power in Rajesh. His power of good over evil. His gift for
raising up the dead with just a single touch. If only he’d been able to touch
Elizabeth, she might be here with us now. But the kid was locked in a cage. How
awful it must have been for the God Boy to know he could have saved her life…so
many lives that were sacrificed here…and not be able to do a damn thing about
it.

Rajesh is Brahma…Brahma is
Rajesh…

Rajesh turns and goes to his
mother. Once again, she receives him in her arms like she is never going to let
him go.

“Mother,” he says. “I had such a
terrible dream. I dreamt that the evil Kali returned to earth along with an
army of evil men dressed all in black…the terrible Thuggee.”

“It was all a dream, Rajesh,” Anjali
says, pulling away his turban and running her hand through his thick black
hair. “It’s all right now. It was only a dream.”

Tony approaches me, his eyes wide.
There’s blood on his shirt, but no longer is there an entry or exit wound.
Together, we take a step or two backward, to get a better look at the diamond
deposit.

“You sure what happened here was
just a dream?” Tony says. “Because I swear I took a bullet not five minutes
ago. Although, I could be wrong about that. Maybe somebody just hit me in the
chest with a rock.” He pauses for a moment as if needing time for the reality
of what just happened to him to sink in. Then, “But if somebody told me they’d
witnessed a giant evil see-through skull projecting itself from out of the
earth by means of a gigantic blue diamond, a golden statue, and an evil high priest
who levitates, I’d say, take another sip why don’t ya.”

“I didn’t see anything like that
happening,” I say. “Did you?”

“Save that stuff for your novels.”

“I’m already writing it in my
head.”

Then, coming from above, an armada
of Blackhawk choppers. Slowing to a hover, they open up with their nose-mounted
Gatling guns on the escaping Thuggees. In the end, it’s a turkey shoot while the
evil terrorist cult is stopped dead in its tracks out in the open field.

“Hell’s gonna be busy today,” Tony
says.

“Hell for bad people,” I say.
“Heaven for good.”

Another chopper appears on the scene. This one a Huey that,
like the Blackhawks, bears the signature red Star of David and trident crest of
the Nepalese army. It sets down only a few feet away from the big blue diamond.
Emerging from it is Dr. Singh, neatly attired in a white Nehru jacket and
matching pants. First he goes to Anjali and Rajesh, hugging both of them
tightly, clearly relieved to see that not only have they survived, but they
appear to be in relative good health. He then releases the two and approaches
Tony and me, a broad smile planted on his face.

“Why is it the good guys always
show up after the battle?” Tony whispers.

“Shush,” I say. “This good guy has
a thick wallet, and he owes us big time. You’ve got an office and a bar to
rebuild, remember?”

“You’ve done a splendid job, Mr.
Baker,” Singh says, holding out his hand. “However will I reward you?”

“You’ll get a bill,” I say. “Don’t
you worry.” I take his hand in mine, shake it.

“Don’t forget that little bit about
Rudy being dead and my bar burning down,” Tony says. The old excavator tosses
me a wink and a sly smile. He then places some fresh chew in his cheek, excuses
himself, heads back toward Anjali and the God Boy.