Warren Murphy - Coin of the Realm

Chapter 37

Shane Billiken felt positively transformational. He really did.

Under cover of darkness, they had heaved to outside the lagoon. Dirk "Ed the Eradicator" Edwards and his men donned their jungle fatigues and greased their faces with green and black camouflage paint. They slid survival knives into ankle sheaths and taped magazine clips together to make reloading easier. Then they went over the side in rubber rafts, which they scuttled in shallow water. From there, they waded.

Shane Billiken carried an M-16 assault rifle over his head and clutched a marlin spike between his teeth. His shirt pockets were stuffed with spare clips and extra rounds and Gouda cheese. He hadn't any camouflage clothes, so he settled for rubbing his white ducks with borrowed jungle paint, not forgetting to anoint the triangle of hairy chest exposed by his buttonless shirt. At the last moment, he kept his mood amulet because, happily, the bull had turned green. It blended in perfectly.

He felt truly in touch with his animal side. There was just one nagging doubt to be resolved.

"Does it get easier?" Shane wanted to know as they waded onto the crushed-shell beach. "The killing stuff. I mean. "

Dirk shot him a wolfish grin. "Sure it does. Hardly anybody ever throws up the second time."

"That's good," said Shane. "I hate throwing up. It's so, you know, primal."

"Nothing's more primal than killing," Dirk snorted. "Right, boys?"

They scaled the island's steep western slope. The face was riddled with square openings shored up with bamboo beams.

"Are these tunnels?" Gus demanded. "I was in Nam. I don't dig tunnel action. Gives me the creeps."

Dirk Edwards waved them into a crouch. He eased forward to one of the dark openings. He sniffed. No animal smells. He pulled a flashlight from his belt and shone the light in.

"Looks to me like a mine," he whispered.

"Maybe the treasure's in there," Shane said eagerly.

"Yeah," Dirk said slowly. He detected faint stirrings inside the mine. "Maybe it is. What say we check it out?"

"Suits me," Shane said, slipping the safety off his rifle. "Glad to hear it. You go first."

"Me?" Shane was shoved forward by several of the others. His eyes were sick. Dirk grinned at him. Shane decided the tunnel was less threatening than Dirk's grin. He crept in.

A murmur of laughter rippled up from the others. They waited, listening. The sound of Shane Billiken's stumblings echoed from the mine.

"The fool don't have sense enough to take off his sunglasses," Dirk guffawed.

His laughter died suddenly when sounds of firing came from the tunnel. Shane burst out, his face a twisted warp of panic.

Dirk pulled him down. "What was it?" he spat. "What'd you find?"

"Eyes. I saw eyes. Human eyes. I shot at them. I think they're all dead."

"Natives," a man hissed. "They'll be all over us."

"Don't panic," Dirk barked. "Tunnel probably muffled the sound so it didn't carry."

Shane Billiken started to gag. Everybody saw it coming. They piled on him; stuffing headbands and belts into his mouth to stifle the vomiting sounds. When Shane's convulsions stopped, they let him go. He spent fifteen minutes quietly spitting chunky yellowish fluid out of his mouth. He rinsed his mouth out with dirt.

"I thought you said it never happened that way twice," Shane gasped. His breath smelled like sour cheese.

"Some people have to get used to blood," Dirk replied. "'Okay, we press on. Stay away from the tunnels. There's a big building on the high ground. I'm betting that's the treasure house."

"No," Shane said. "I dreamed on it again."

"You gonna start that bilge all over?"

"No, the building is the sacred temple. I saw it in the dream. The treasure house will be near it, though."

"Yeah, and did you dream its location?" Dirk asked sarcastically.

"No, but I brought along an attuned way of finding it."

"What's that?"

"This," Shane said, pulling a Y-shaped branch from under his silk shirt. "It's a dowsing rod," he explained when confronted with a circle of blank camouflage-painted looks.

"Ain't those used for finding ground water?" someone asked.

"This is a willow branch. It will find anything I want. Including treasure. Watch."

Shane Billiken put down his rifle and stood up. He held the dowsing rod by its forked ends, with the tail of the Y pointing outward. The branch quivered in his hands. His hands quivered too. It was impossible to tell which was affecting the other.

"I can feel the magnetic pull already!" he declared. "Come on!" Shane went up the hill. The others hung back uncertainly.

"Wood ain't magnetic," Gus pointed out.

"No," Dirk growled, "but we ain't got any more clue where that treasure's at than he does. We got nothing to lose. Saddle up."

They trailed after Shane Billiken in a ragged line, dropping into defensive crouches every time Billiken tripped over a rock or ground root, their eyes sharp and their weapons pointed out in all directions.

After the third time, Dirk Edwards snatched the Ray-Bans off Shane's face and threw them away.

"Hey!" Shane protested. "Those are my trademark."

"They'll mark your gravestone if you fuck up one more time." Shane received an ungentle shove. "Now, get going!" Shane pressed on. He seemed to do better now that he could see. He tripped only once more, and that was because his Adidas sneakers were coming off his feet like bad tires.

"Damn!" he said as he pulled himself to his feet. The others had dropped into a defensive circle, their hearts in their mouths and blood in their eyes.

"Lemme shoot him, Dirk," Gus moaned. "Please." They were on level ground, near a hidden path they had discovered.

"What's wrong now?" Dirk called out. "Besides your usual clumsiness?"

"I fell and broke the rod."

"What a tragedy."

"You don't understand. I was close. I could feel the odyllic vibrations." Shane reached down to recover the willow pieces, which had fallen under a lightning-scorched tree. He leaned into the tree to steady himself and it cracked like a burnt twig. He fell across a wide flat and was surprised to feel his right foot sink down into something clammy and wet.

"Oh, God," he moaned. "I'm wounded. My foot's all wet."

"Maybe he pissed himself," someone said dryly.

Dirk Edwards came to his side. He examined Shane's foot. It disappeared into the top of a wide stump. He pulled it free.

"Is there much blood?" Shane moaned, looking away.

"None," said Dirk. He wasn't even looking at Shane's foot anymore. He was looking into the stump, where silver glints rippled under disturbed water. He turned to his men. "I want you all to get a grip on yourselves, understand? No shouting. No hooting. No bullshit. I don't know how, but this idiot found the treasure for us."

"I did?" Shane asked blankly.

He climbed to his feet and joined the group clustering around the stump to drink in the sight of stack upon stack of round silvery coins. The moonlight made them shimmer.

"I did!" Shane exulted. Everyone piled on him. They wrestled him to the ground, a dozen hands clamping on his mouth and throat.

When they finally let go, Shane Billiken's eyes were feverish. "I did. I did. I did," he whispered over and over again. "Didn't I? I made a positive affirmation and it worked. Finally."

"Everybody grab as much as they can carry," Dirk ordered. "We'll take this stuff back to the boat in rotating groups of threes. The first group stays with the ship to guard that end. The main force will remain here with the treasure. If we hustle our butts, we can have all this stuff on the boat before dawn."

"Then we sail home, right?" Shane said.

"No. There's natives on this island. I've been at sea without a woman for more than a week. I feel like having me some island girls. When we're done loading, we'll see what we can rustle up in the way of enforced R-and-R. Everybody with me on that?"