David Golemon - Ancients

"Who in the hell is running an aircraft engine on the river?"

Lieutenant Jason Ryan moved his head again and felt the explosion of pain as he attempted to open his eyes.

"Boat," he managed to say through a mouth that felt as if a herd of wildebeests had crapped in it.

"What?" another man asked from his prone position.

"It looked like a boat full of Bloods or Crips, or both. Some kind of nasty-looking gang anyway," answered Ryan.

At the stern, Colonel Jack Collins attempted to raise his aching head and look around. He saw the stern of the offending boat as it was now about fifty yards past their anchored position.

"I don't think Ethiopia has a gang problem, at least not yet," he said as he lay back down. "All I want is for that noise to stop."

Another irritating sound entered the air as another boat shoved off from shore and headed their way.

"What in the hell is all that noise? Is the Ethiopian navy conducting drills out here or what?" asked a large blond man in the front of the boat. He sat up and immediately regretted it. He pushed his way out from under ten beer cans and looked around.

Jack Collins looked from Jason Ryan to Captain Carl Everett and then nudged the black man passed out at his feet with dirty bilge water lapping at his face.

"Hey, Lieutenant, this was your party, so get up and get to the bottom of this, will you?"

"This was not my idea, Colonel. I was bushwhacked," the newly commissioned officer said, not even attempting to rise from the filthy bottom of the boat. "I don't feel so good," Will Mendenhall said as a follow-up.

"That new second lieutenant drunk and disorderly already, Jack?" Everett asked as he leaned over the side and splashed water onto his face and over his short hair.

"I think it was the combination of sun, rotgut whiskey, beer, and those old CDs the colonel brought," Ryan said as he leaned over the side of the boat, wondering if he was going to keep his dinner down or feed it to the fishes.

Collins squinted into the setting sun and shaded his eyes to spy the boat from camp as it moved toward them at a good clip. "Leave my music out of it, Lieutenant; you junior officers just can't handle your liquor," he said as he gently shook his head, trying to clear it of the effects of the alcohol they had consumed early that morning.

A man and a woman slowed and brought their rubber Zodiac next to the larger boat. The woman, who knew Colonel Collins only from hearsay, was shocked to see the state of the man and his security team. Vacation or not, this was not what she expected from the man who had become a legend in his two short years at the Event Group.

"Colonel, did you see those men just pass you?"

Collins looked into the young face of Lance Corporal Sanchez, who had taken over for Mendenhall so that he could join them to celebrate the former staff sergeant's commissioning as a new officer in the U.S. Army.

"Ryan did; he said they looked kind of salty."

"Well, we just received orders to take the dig team out of here. Seems something is going on farther north of here. Major earthquakes, the Group said. There's something else: the Ethiopian government issued a warning about groups of raiders plying the river. Those salty-looking guys just may be some of them," Doctor of Archaeology Sandra Leekie said as she tied the Zodiac to the larger boat. "And it's a shame, too, Colonel; we're starting to find some very strange stuff in these sands, things that really have no right to be here."

"Well, officially, Mr. Everett, Lieutenant Ryan and I aren't even supposed to be in this country. Will here"--he nudged Mendenhall with his shoe again--"is officially the security leader on this dig."

"The director radioed and warned us that there have been several raids on Ethiopian and Sudanese national and private dig sites all along the Blue Nile. He ordered us out," Leekie said as she spied the liquor bottles and beer cans strewn about the boat.

Collins looked downriver, where the first boat had disappeared. "Do you know who's down that way?" he asked.

"As far as we know, there's a minor dig site managed by some students and professors from Addis Abba, about a thousand yards upriver."

"Well, Doctor, get your ground team ready to move and--"

A distant gunshot sounded and echoed along the river. A scream was heard, followed by another crack of weapon fire. Mendenhall sat bolt upright at the sound and Everett and Ryan did the same.

"Sanchez, you and the good doctor get back and get our team to start packing up. I assume we have helicopters coming in to remove the dig team?"

"Yes, sir," the lance corporal answered.

"Okay, move. We'll check out what evil deeds our guests upriver are doing."

"Colonel Collins, may I remind you of what you just told me? You guys aren't even supposed to be here. Corporal Sanchez said you told Niles you were going fishing in Canada, so why don't you just come with us?" Leekie asked nervously.

Collins just looked at her and started pulling up the anchor. "I'm not responsible for my junior officer Mr. Ryan not knowing the difference between east and west when he flies. Besides, what Director Compton doesn't know won't hurt him."

When silence greeted his remark about the director of the Event Group, Collins, in between pulls to get the anchor aboard, looked at the pony-tailed Leekie.

"I kinda let it slip that you guys were here to celebrate Will's commissioning. I'm sorry," she said, biting her lower lip.

Everett stumbled back toward the stern. "Well, that cat's out of the bag. I guess we're in trouble again, Colonel," he joked, but then he turned seriously to the Zodiac. "Sanchez, you still have an Ingram in camp?"

"Yes, sir," the lance corporal answered the question about the rapid-fire automatic machine gun hidden in a box of tools.

"Good, toss me that 9-millimeter, we may need it. Will, are you still armed?"

Mendenhall, not looking hung over at all, reached under a seat and brought out his own Beretta.

"Good. It's not much against what sounded like an AK-47, but it'll have to do."

"You guys are nuts. Director Compton's going to hang us all," the professor said as she untied the Zodiac just as Collins fired up the boat's motor.

"Hang on, Will; don't want to lose my new officer overboard. And grab that boom box and my CDs before they fall in the river."

"If these oldies went into the water it would be no great loss," Mendenhall mumbled as the boat shot forward.

"What was that?"

"I said I wouldn't want to lose this great music."

"That's what I thought you said."

Jack cut the large motor and let the boat's momentum carry them to the far riverbank, where it slid onto the soft brown sand with a hiss.

"Ryan, you and Will wait here while Everett and I check this thing out first."

"Oh, come on, Colonel, you always leave us be--"

Ryan's complaint about always being left behind was cut short when another scream erupted from somewhere in the bush ahead of them. It was definitely from a young woman.

Jack and Carl jumped from the boat and quickly and silently made their way into the scrub that lined the river.

Ryan watched them disappear and had to remind himself that those two men were probably the most formidable and deadly military officers he had ever met. Colonel Collins was a former Special Ops genius and Captain Everett a highly decorated SEAL, but still, heading into an unknown situation blindly with only one 9-millimeter handgun was madness.

The African leader held a small young black woman by the back of the neck. He shook her and threatened her with a machete. Her professor lay dead at her feet. His blood had already disappeared into the hot sand of the riverbank. Another woman was dead; her body lay across a large equipment trunk, and her head was five feet away. Nearby, boy was having his wounds tended to by two Ethiopian students in one of the ten tents that had been placed around the center of their dig. Six of the mercenaries were tearing through marked and tagged objects, reading the tags hastily and then throwing them away. They were obviously looking for something in particular.