Dark Resurrection (7 page)

In front of Ryan was a floodlit stone bridge, wider and more ornate than the first he’d crossed, and twice as long. This one was painted pale yellow and decorated with stout pairs of pillars at both ends. It led to a separate island, which was completely covered by a ravelin half as large as the courtyard they’d just left. The three-story structure was shaped like a triangle, or an arrowhead, pointing away from the bridge. Above the arched entryway were more crenelated battlements. There were only two windows that Ryan could see. The rest was smooth, featureless stone.

There was no doubt in Ryan’s mind that what lay at the far end of the bridge was the epicenter of the bad juju he’d sensed earlier.

A death camp for the ages.

As they mounted the bridge, Ryan considered and rejected his options. Even though it was way easier for one man to slip through a crack than six, the pirates had him cold—at least for the moment. Without a diversion, he’d never get the jump on them, never get his hands on a blaster, never get righteous payback. And trying to swim away chained hand and foot, assuming he could dive over the bridge wall before they caught him, was suicide.

The pirates marched him through the prison entrance and into a stone-walled anteroom. A half dozen red-sashed guards awaited his arrival. Two of them immediately took up long wooden poles, which had metal hoops attached to one end.

While the Matachìn pinioned his arms and two red sashes aimed double barrels at his chest, the poles were extended, front and rear, and the hoops slipped over his head and down past his chin. The red sashes then pulled on straps at the ends of the poles, drawing the steel bands so tight around his throat that he could hardly breathe.

When the Matachìn released his arms, the men holding the poles were in total control of him. The rods were so long, he couldn’t reach them with fists or feet. The leverage they offered made it easy for his captors to drive him to his knees, if they wished. And if that didn’t tame him, they could tighten the nooses even more and choke him into unconsciousness.

With a pole-bearing red sash in front and one behind, Ryan was simultaneously pushed and pulled forward, through a floor-to-ceiling iron gate. He entered a labyrinth of stone, and stifling heat and humidity. The walls and floors were warped and worn. There were standing puddles of unidentifiable fluid everywhere.

To his left were rows of passages, presumably the cell
blocks, stretching off into the dark. From that direction he heard moaning.

When they passed by one of the cramped cells, Ryan saw it had no bed. It had no water. No toilet. No window to let in air or natural light. It reeked of urine and rotting flesh. A human form lay huddled and hidden under a pile of rags on the damp stone floor. There were rats inside the cell. They were merrily burrowing under the rags, feeding on the dead or the nearly dead prisoner. When Ryan looked farther down the passage, in the faint light he saw rats scurrying in bands of a dozen or more, darting back and forth across the corridor, between the cells.

At that moment he knew that few if any had ever returned from this awful place.

It wasn’t just a prison.

It was a tomb.

They continued on until they reached the very heart of the darkness, the place that was the hottest, the rankest, the most oppressive, the core of the man-made hellhole. With double barrels pointed at his head, Ryan was uncollared and booted into an already occupied cell. The iron-barred gate clanged shut behind him. Their work done, the red sashes turned away and left him to get acquainted with his cell mate.

The other prisoner squatted with his back pressed into a corner, his head lowered, his long black hair hanging down over his face. He appeared to be naked except for his chains. The weak light from the single overhead bulb threw him in deep shadow. As Ryan took in the bleak cell, he noticed the stalagmites on the floor, white beestings of calcite that had dripped from the ceiling. When he stepped closer, his fellow prisoner stirred and slowly raised his face to the light.

For the second time in as many hours Ryan exclaimed, “What the fuck!”

His words echoed in the gloom.

Then a disembodied voice whispered in his ear, “Haven’t I seen you somewhere before?”

The words seemed to have come from behind him. Ryan whirled, but there was no one there, only the sweating limestone wall.

When he turned back, the deadpan expression of his mirror image had transformed into a wide grin.

Doc Tanner wept as he was force-marched across the stone dock toward the waiting black schooner. He cried without making a sound, tears streaming freely down the seams in his weathered face. Even if he lived forever, he knew he would never see the likes of Ryan Cawdor again. He cried for his brave and noble friend, and for his own accursed helplessness under the circumstances. The unstoppable flow of tears also came from sheer exhaustion, from three weeks chained to an oar and from the all-out brawl they’d just lost in Veracruz.

“We’ve got to do something,” Krysty declared to the others as the iron-hulled ship’s gangway was swung out and lowered to the dock. “We can’t let these evil bastards chill him.”

“Not leave Ryan here,” Jak growled in assent.

“And what, pray tell, are our other options at present?” Doc asked, wiping his eyes with the backs of fight-bruised, manacled hands. “We cannot rescue him if we cannot rescue ourselves.”

“We need a window of opportunity to turn things in our favor,” Mildred said.

“A lowering of the rad-blasted odds would be an excellent start,” J.B. added.

“We still have time,” Mildred assured them earnestly. “We could—”

“¡Silencio!”
one of the pirates growled.

High Pile mounted the gangway first and strode onto the aft deck of the black schooner.

There to greet him was a tall, thin man and two short, round women. All of them wore clean, starched white coats. All were as brown as coffee berries. They smiled hopefully as the Matachìn stepped up to them.

High Pile dismissed the trio with an impatient snort. He brushed past the whitecoats without a word, stepped down into the cockpit and disappeared belowdecks.

Doc realized at that moment that whatever the captain’s new mission was, he did not particularly relish it.

The whitecoat man waved the prisoners and their pirate escort aboard.

The black ship was much bigger than
Tempest,
easily twice as long, and half again as wide across the beam. The hull was riveted metal plate; the masts and superstructure were made of wood. It was a type of vessel Doc was very familiar with. During his first life in Victorian times, similar oceangoing, commercial sailing ships, barks and schooners, were still plying the world’s seas.

When the companions were assembled along the starboard rail, the male whitecoat spoke in soothing tones. He said,
“Soy médico. Mi chiamo Montejo.”
He had slicked-back black hair, and a profile dominated by a long, hawkish nose.

Doc translated for the others. “He says he’s a physician. Dr. Montejo.”

The hatchet-faced man prattled on in Spanish, actually wringing his hands in eagerness, this while the pair of chubby-cheeked whitecoat women beamed up at him with pride.

“The other two are his medical assistants,” Doc said, resuming the translation. “He says they understand the terrible
ordeal we’ve all been through, and that their job is to restore us to full health and vigor.”

“Do you believe this nukeshit!” J.B. said. “For almost a month they do their damnedest to chill us, now they want to take care of us?”

“The question is why?” Krysty said.

“Whatever the reason for the change of attitude,” Mildred said, “we’ve got to play along with it, at least temporarily.”

“I concur wholeheartedly,” Doc said. “This presents a golden opportunity to take our own back.”

The whitecoats led them down the companionway’s steel steps. The Matachìn escort followed behind, their weapons ready. Overhead, generator-powered light bulbs in metal cages faded in and out, from intensely bright to dim. Aft of the stairs, across the width of the stern, was the captain’s cabin; in front of them, under a low, sheet-metal ceiling was the ship’s mess. A long, metal-topped table was bracketed by bench seats. The floor was worn linoleum. Immediately they were enveloped by cooking smells from the galley—meat, beans, onions, garlic and savory spices.

The aromas made Doc’s mouth water and his head swim.

“Good grub,” Jak murmured.

“Mebbe the whitecoat wasn’t lying about the food, after all,” J.B. said.

“See if we get of it any this time,” Krysty said.

Beyond the mess, a bulkhead door opened onto a narrow corridor lined with riveted steel doors. Each door had a peephole on the outside so anyone in the corridor could look into the rooms.

At Dr. Montejo’s command, the pirates began to separate Krysty and Mildred from the others.

“¿Que pasa?”
Mildred asked him.

The whitecoat responded to her through a big smile. The expression in his hooded eyes was romantic. An alarming bedside manner, to be sure.

“What did he say?” J.B. asked, glowering at the oblivious man.

“He said,” Mildred replied, “you two lovely ladies have been assigned a separate cabin for your comfort and privacy. Each stateroom has its own toilet and sink.”

Doc bristled at the idea of their being split up. It grievously complicated what they had to do, which was take command of the ship by force, and quickly. As they were still in chains and controlled at blasterpoint by the pirates, whether he liked it or not there was nothing to be done about it.

While Doc, Jak and J.B. waited in the corridor, Mildred and Krysty were ushered into a room on the right by the female whitecoats and three of the pirate guard. As the doorway was blocked by the male bodies, Doc couldn’t see what was going on inside. After a few moments, the whitecoats and pirate guard came out. Dr. Montejo pulled the door shut behind him and shot the slide bolts, top and bottom.

As if there was ever any doubt, Doc thought, this, too, was a prison ship.

Then Dr. Montejo opened a door on the left and waved for them to enter.

Doc stared into a low-ceilinged, windowless steel box, roughly ten by eight, illuminated by a pair of caged light bulbs. There were three built-in bunks along the left-hand wall, and a sink and a low, lidless toilet on the opposite side.

“Beats the rowing bench all to hell,” J.B. said.

The pirates roughly pushed them into the small room.

Dr. Montejo ordered the connecting chain removed, but left their ankle and hand manacles in place.

Jak shook his wrist chains in the man’s face. “These?” he said. “Like to wipe own butt.”

The whitecoat addressed them with open palms, in solicitous, dulcet tones.

Doc translated for his Spanish-challenged comrades. “The good doctor deeply apologizes for the continuing security measures, and assures us from the bottom of his heart they are only temporary. As soon as everything is secure, the ship will be leaving Veracruz, then we will have much more freedom. He says he knows we must be hungry and we will be fed shortly. After that, we will receive a complete physical examination and our wounds will be properly dressed.”

The smiling Montejo and the scowling pirates backed out of the cramped room. The door slammed and the locking bolts clacked shut.

“Trust no whitecoat,” Jak said. “All lying fuckers.”

“You’ll get no argument from me on that, dear boy,” Doc said. “I’d just as soon see them food for crows, dangling by their overstretched necks from every incandescent light pole…”

“Shh,” J.B. said. “Listen…”

They could hear heavy boots moving around on the deck above. Then the sound of the gangway being winched in.

“Count ten, mebbe more, not sure,” Jak said.

“If the rest of the bastards got off the ship, our odds are looking better,” J.B. said. “How many bodies does it take to crew a tub like this? When the time comes, how many are we going to be up against?”

“If memory serves,” Doc said, “even a skeleton crew to run a ship this size would be seven or eight sailors, not including
the captain. That would be the minimum, and it would entail hard duty for all around the clock.”

The ship’s auxiliary diesel engine started up with a rumble. There was a burst of shouted orders from the dock. After a moment, the heavy mooring lines thudded onto the deck above the companions’ cell, and then the vessel slowly backed away from the dock.

“Where they take us?” Jak asked.

“Where do they
think
they’re taking us, you mean?” J.B. corrected him.

“South,” Doc said. “My guess is it has to be south, deeper into Matachìn territory. I can’t think of a reason for them to want to ferry us back north.”

The time-traveler took a seat on the edge of the bottom bunk and stared at his own blurred reflection in the polished metal wall. Looking closer, he noted that its surface was covered with crude graffiti. Proper names. Obscene phrases in Spanish. Obscene cartoons. All apparently scratched into the soft steel with the edges of handcuffs.

Wherever they were being taken in chains, they were not the first.

Doc saw their situation as nothing short of desperate. They were in unknown territory, they were captives of a culture they didn’t understand, and worst of all, they were leaderless. On top of that, Ryan was living on borrowed time, already condemned to death. Who could step up to fill the void left by his absence? Were any of them really capable of honchoing his rescue operation?

Doc knew that as a warrior and a scout Jak Lauren was without peer, but because of his rudimentary communication skills he could never function as their leader. Mildred Wyeth
was a trained scientific thinker, but military strategy was an entirely different kettle of fish. Her brand of science was not chess, nor was it game theory. Though Krysty Wroth was a formidable fighter with special powers, she lacked the emotional detachment necessary to take the group into combat. J.B. was good at all things mechanical, but had trouble seeing beyond the parts laid out in front of him.

And then there was Doc, himself.

A dedicated student of American history, he remembered in detail the grand engagements of the Civil War—Bull Run, Shiloh, Appomattox—but he lacked Ryan’s facility for thinking on the run, for guerrilla-style warfare, for immediately seeing the opposition’s weak point and knowing instinctively how to exploit it.

Doc also knew he was at times stricken by fits of irrationality. They were the consequence of damage inflicted by a double time trawl against his will. Sometimes he raved; sometimes he cried; sometimes he walked around in a daze. The attacks were unpredictable and when they hit, completely debilitating. He knew he couldn’t be counted on because of them.

The companions’ present limitations, and the consequences of same were all too clear to Doc, even if he couldn’t see a way around them. Their short time aboard
Tempest
had in no way prepared them to sail a ship twice its size. They could of course run this huge vessel on engine power, assuming there were no glitches in auxiliary propulsion. Under the circumstances there was no time for mistakes, which meant that somehow they would have to not only overcome their captors, but keep a few of them alive and convince them to follow orders.

From years of observation, Doc knew that Ryan always
advanced his strategies one step at a time. He ignored the array of uncontrollable factors set in motion by the initial action, and concentrated entirely on successfully completing the opening move.

Get free, that was the immediate objective.

The ship picked up speed as it set course for the harbor entrance. From the hiss of the water against the hull, Doc guessed they were making six or seven knots.

“Do you hear someone talking?” J.B. asked. Then he put his ear against the bulkhead wall opposite the bunks. When he pulled his head back he said, “Someone’s in the cell next door.”

“I hear.” Jak nodded. “Not understand.”

“This may help in that regard,” Doc said. He stood and reached for the narrow air vent set in the wall near the ceiling. He slid back the metal cover on its tracks.

The voices immediately became louder and much more distinct, although they were still distorted and muffled by the steel wall and the engine noise.

At first it sounded like at least three people, perhaps four. One of the voices was familiar, although Doc couldn’t immediately place it.

“Why can’t you get it through your thick heads,” the familiar voice said, “I’m trying to explore the limits of moral responsibility and personal faith in an epical context. Every time you three pop up in the mix, that exploration comes to a screeching halt.”

“Stalk this, you unmitigated hack!” said a squeaky voice, possibly male. “You’re telling us we’re not good enough to flesh out your philosophical digressions, but we were damn good enough to put food on your kitchen table for years.”

“Yeah, Alpo and bubblebread.”

“Perhaps the fault isn’t with us, but rather with you?” The third voice sounded female; it was sultry, with an odd, lilting accent. “After all, we’re just stock fictional characters with half-a-page bios. You’ve always been in control of what we do and say. Empty canvasses. We are what you make of us. Perhaps you, the author, lack the skill, the depth of introspection, and the native intelligence to animate us in any other way?”

“Uff da!” a deep, gruff, manly voice protested. “Once again the gorgeous princess is talking through her shapely, buckskin-clad backside! I, Ragnar, am no mere puppet! I am a Warlord of Norseland!”