Donald Westlake - High Adventure

The line of Indians, single file, had crested the hill and started down the other side. Kirby flew east, then came back low, right down on the deck as he crossed the dry plain, leathery snakes ducking their heads, the hill looming up ahead. He ran up the hill, Cynthia’s wheels just yards above the scrub, and burst with a roar over the top, suddenly visible and extremely audible to the people on the other side.

The Indians loved it. They fell around laughing, holding their sides, pointing at Cynthia as she circled, waggling her wings. Even the plane seemed to grin.

Kirby rolled over them once more, then headed down and around for South Abilene to give the shut-ins a treat. The cluster of huts came into view and a figure ducked into one of them, out of sight, as Kirby flew over. He gave them some throttle, stood Cynthia on her tail over the village, and heard some of the cargo shift around. Deciding to quit endangering the merchandise, he leveled out and turned north-northeast, toward the Cruzes and home.

Nice day. Nice lot of artifacts aboard to sell to Bobbi and to Witcher and Feldspan. Nice to be in motion again.

A memory tugged at him as he flew along, the many dark greens below, the pale blue high above. The memory of that figure who had run away into one of the huts as he’d come over town. In his memory that figure was awfully pale. And had his eyes deceived him, or had the figure been female?

Sheena?

Queen of the Jungle?

Valerie stuck her head out the hut door and watched the nasty little plane buzz away at last. “ Him again!” she said.

The tribespeople were coming back into the village, all laughing and talking and slapping one another’s shoulders. They’d loved being endangered by that airplane, Valerie could tell. Only Rosita looked less than delighted by it all. Could it be...

Valerie went over to Rosita, and pointed toward the now-gone plane. “Him?” she asked. “Is he the man you told me about?”

“You bet,” Rosita said grimly. “And I just give it to him straight, what you said to me, and he got pretty shifty. I bet you right all along.”

“I know I’m right! That man?”

Rosita looked alert. “You know Kirby?”

“Kirby Galway, that’s right, that’s his name!”

“You know him, Sheena?”

Valerie had long since given up trying to get the tribespeople to quit calling her Sheena and call her Valerie. Even though her hair wasn’t blonde, and even though her remaining rags of clothing bore no resemblance at all to a tiger skin, and even though she had never swung from vines in her entire life, nevertheless when she had stumbled into this village a week ago the man called Tommy Watson had at once dubbed her Sheena, Queen of the Jungle. And so had everyone else, deeply amused, once he’d explained that comic book character to them. In fact, it was during his description of the comic book Sheena, in Valerie’s presence, with some of the comparative details becoming rather personal, that Valerie had let them all know she understood Kekchi and wished they wouldn’t talk about her in quite that manner.

“She speaks our language!” Tommy had cried, in delight and wonder. “She is Sheena!”

In fact, the variant of Kekchi spoken in this village was not at all the same as the pure language she had so doggedly learned, but at least it was similar enough so she could understand most of what was said to her, unless the person spoke very fast.

And as to their calling her Sheena, after three days and nights of wandering through forest and jungle and swamp and desert Valerie would have agreed to any condition in return for a full meal and a safe bed. That the only condition imposed was that she answer to the name of Sheena was odd, but not difficult. Sheena she became, Sheena she had been for a week, and Sheena she would go on being for...

... who knew how long?

She didn’t dare go back to civilization, at least not yet. Who knew how many more of them were in that rotten racket together? Kirby Galway; the driver who had locked Valerie in that filthy hut; the man Vernon who had come to give the driver his orders. And of course Innocent St. Michael must be the ringleader, the brains behind the whole scheme.

She had been foolish to let Vernon know she recognized him, because that was what had tipped the balance at last and made them decide they had to commit murder. Even though that nasty dark room had been very hot and humid, a chill had gone through her when she’d heard the driver say, “Say it out, Vernon. Say what you want,” and Vernon answer, “She has to die.”

After Vernon left, Valerie stood quaking in the darkness of the inner room, wondering if she had the strength to fight off the driver, knowing she did not. It was so dark in here she couldn’t see if there might be a stick or something lying around that might help.

Was there anything in the structure itself that might become a weapon? Valerie made her way to the rear wall and, partly by sight, partly by touch, made out that the slabs were nailed to vertical two- by Tours, a foot and a half apart, with here and there a horizontal two- by-four for extra support. Perhaps one of those horizontal pieces could be worked loose? She tried one, just at eye level, pried it a bit, pushed on it, and the two-by-four with the whole slab behind it, six feet long, simply fell off the building, with a clatter that made Valerie go rigid. Her head turned to stare at the closed door, but nothing happened, so the driver hadn’t heard or was possibly out somewhere.

Digging a grave.

It was then just a matter of moments for Valerie to force an opening large enough to eel through, ripping her left sleeve on a nail stuck out of the boards. The sky ahead was completely black, with visible stars. Above, it modulated through bruised-looking blues and sullen reds to become orange on the far side of the shack. So east must be straight ahead, which meant that north — and Belize City — were to her left. Miles and miles and miles away to her left.

Valerie struck off northward, moving as quickly as possible in the uncertain light over the uncertain ground. A half moon shone with increasing brilliance off to her right — giving her a guide to move north by — but its light wasn’t really much use.

Half an hour from the shack, Valerie all at once came upon the Land Rover. Her feet, seeking out the path of least resistance, had all unknowing found and stuck with the trail she and the driver had taken up from where the little dirt road had ended. And here she was back again, the Land Rover looking more nautical than ever in the watery moonlight.

Had he left the keys? Certainly not. Frustrated, unhappy, wishing she hadn’t had a useless brother like Robert Edward Greene V but a real brother who would have taught her how to jump ignitions, Valerie sat in the driver’s seat, resting from her exertions and trying to think what she could possibly do next. All at once she heard a racket headed this way, a crashing and muttering as of some ogre in a fairy tale, lumbering through the woods and telling himself about the children he would eat.

The driver!

Valerie hopped out and hurried away into the darkness, tripping over roots and rocks, falling once, skinning her knee, and deciding at last to wait right here and not injure herself any more out of panic.

She lay in deep darkness, amid shrubbery and low twisted trees. The Land Rover sat in a moonlit open space. Valerie was close enough to hear what the driver said as he too entered that moonlit space and paused to search himself with quick anger for the keys, and what he said was:

“Oh, no, not me, not Fred C! You don’t put Fred C. in one of those jails, oh, no, no you don’t. She’s gone, she’s gone, she gonna raise the alarm, everybody can go to jail but not Fred C., no, sir. Fred C. is gone ! Down to Punta Gorda, sell this damn vehicle, go on down to Colombia, down where they got no law at all. Fred C. is out of this story! Where’s the damn keys ? Here they are.”