Clive Cussler - Lost Empire

Remi complied.

“Drop your pack.”

Remi did so.

“Now you come forward, Mr. Fargo. Hands up.”

Sam walked down the trail and stepped onto the beach. To the right, Rivera stepped from the trees. To the left, another man, armed with an assault rifle, did the same. Rivera lifted a portable radio to his mouth and said something. Ten seconds later a speedboat glided around the peninsula and into the cove. Six feet from the beach, it stopped. On board were two more men, also armed with assault rifles.“Did you find her?” Rivera asked.

Sam saw no point in lying. “Yes.”

“Was Blaylock aboard?”

“Yes.”

Sam and Remi’s eyes locked. Each one was expecting the same question to come next.

Rivera said, “Did you find anything interesting?”

“Three letters.” In Spanish, Rivera barked, “Search them,” to the man behind Sam and Remi. He came forward, snagged each of their packs, and dragged them ten feet away. He searched each pack and found their iPhones and their satellite phone. He crushed each one under the butt of his rifle, then kicked the pieces into the water. Finally, he frisked Sam and Remi.“Nothing,” the man reported to Rivera. “Just the letters.”

“You can have them,” Rivera said. “In trade, I’m going to take your wife.”

“The hell you are.” Sam took a step toward Rivera.

“Sam, don’t!” Remi shouted.

The man behind Sam rushed forward and slammed the butt of his rifle into Sam’s lower back just above the kidneys. Sam stumbled forward, dropped to his knees, then climbed back to his feet.Sam took a calming breath. “Rivera, you can-”

“Take you instead? No thank you.” He reached into his pocket, pulled out a cell phone, and tossed it to Sam. “It’s prepaid and untraceable, with three minutes of talk time left. You’ve got twenty-four hours to determine the location of Chicomoztoc.”“That’s not enough time.”

“That’s your problem to solve. When you’ve got the location, dial star six-nine on that phone. I’ll answer. At twenty-four hours and one minute, I’ll kill your wife.”

Sam turned around to face Remi.

He said, “Everything’s going to be okay, Remi.”

She forced a smile. “I know.”

Rivera ordered, “Take her.”

At gunpoint, Remi was marched into the water to the boat. The two men aboard lifted her over the gunwale and shoved her down into one of the rear seats.

Sam turned back to Rivera, who said, “Do I have to tell you not to involve the police or any of that nonsense?”

“No.”

“Your boat is anchored on the other side of the peninsula.”

“I’ll hunt you down.”

“What’s that?”

“If you hurt her, I’ll spend the rest of my life and every penny to hunt you down.”

Rivera smiled thinly. “I believe you’d try.”

TWENTY-TWO HOURS LATER, SOUTHERN SULAWESI

SAM’S EYES SCANNED THE GAUGES, CHECKING AIRSPEED, ALTITUDE, oil pressure, fuel . . . As was everything else aboard the airplane, the few dashboard labels that hadn’t worn off completely were in Serbian.

The Ikarus Kurir seaplane, painted an ugly shade of gray-blue, was sixty years old, a castoff from the Yugoslavian air force. The windows leaked, the engine knocked, the wheeled pontoons were badly dented, and the controls were so soft there was a two-second delay between the time he pushed the pedals and the plane responded.He’d never been happier with a plane in his life.

A thousand miles east of Jakarta, the Ikarus had been the only seaplane available for rent, purchase, or theft-and, provided he didn’t crash in the next hour, it would take him to Remi. Whether they stayed alive over the next few hours or days would depend largely on the credibility of the Hail Mary pass he and Selma had assembled.

AS SOON AS Rivera’s speedboat had disappeared from view, Sam had retrieved the maleo statuette, grabbed his pack, and sorted through their belongings, taking only the essentials. Blaylock’s letters went into a Ziploc baggie. The swim back to the pinisi took just under seven minutes; the boat ride to the nearest civilization on the eastern coast of Lampung Bay, an excruciating ninety minutes. Once ashore and off the beach, he jogged a mile down a dirt road to a collection of Quonset huts on the outskirts of an industrial farm. He talked his way into the plant office and to a phone and called Selma, who listened, then said, “It’s not enough time.”

“I know that. It’s all we have.”“Should we call Rube?”

“No. There’s nothing he can do in time. Have Pete and Wendy get me back to Jakarta.”

“On it.”

“Now, tell me where things stand. What do we know?”

“Virtually nothing.”

FIVE HOURS AFTER he left Pulau Legundi, Sam touched down in Jakarta. He checked into the closest hotel with a Wi-Fi connection and a laptop to rent, then resumed his call with Selma.“I don’t care if we’re right about the location,” Sam said. “I just need to be able to sell it to Rivera and convince him we have to meet.”

“I could create evidence. Wendy could Photoshop something-”

“As a last resort.” Sam checked his watch. “We’re going to take six hours and work every angle we have. If we don’t get anywhere, we’ll go with your plan. Let’s run through it: Orizaga wandered off, presumably looking for Chicomoztoc. Did he stay on Sumatra?”“We don’t know.”

“Both he and Blaylock were focused on the maleo. Orizaga said he’d know Chicomoztoc when he found a ‘hatchery of great birds.’ He had to have meant the maleo, agreed?”

“It seems likely.”

“Where are they found?”

“They’re on the endangered species list. They’re limited to Sulawesi and Buton islands.”

“How about five hundred years ago?”

“I don’t know.”

“Have Pete and Wendy put together a list of maleo experts.” “We don’t even know if there is such a thing.”

“There are experts for everything. Ask about hatcheries, concentrations, migration . . . Okay, back to Sulawesi: It’s where the Malagasy lived prior to migrating to Madagascar, and we found Blaylock’s outrigger on Madagascar. That’s two votes for Sulawesi. What do we know about Sulawesi prior to the sixth century?”

Sam heard the rustling of paper. Selma said, “Human settlements as far back as thirty thousand years B.C. Believed to have been part of a land bridge between Australia and New Guinea-”“More recent,” Sam said.

“As deep as I’ve been able to dig in the past few days, I’ve found very little until the sixteenth century, when the Portuguese arrived.”

“What about the language or the art? Any similarities to either the Aztecs or Blaylock’s Proto-Aztecs?”

“Wendy’s working on a search, but we’re up against the same problem: Except for a few cities, Sulawesi is thousands of square miles of rain forest, dead volcanoes, and not much else. There are places on that island that have never been explored. There’s very little Internet and even fewer online art collections. If we had a few weeks-”“We don’t. Just do your best. If you find something that looks or sounds even remotely Aztec, flag it.”

“Sam, you have to take a breath.”

“When I’ve got Remi back. Let’s go back to the outrigger. You have the lab report. Remind me: What do we know about the materials used?”

“The wood used was durian. We know where it exists today. I’m working on where it might have grown before the sixth century. Same with the rest of it-the rubber tree, the pandan leaf, the gebang palm . . .”“Let me guess: There aren’t many experts on those either.”

“Not that I’ve been able to find.”