Matt Drake 11 - The Ghost Ships of Arizona (19 page)

Hayden swept the desk clear of junk, aiming it straight toward the mercs with a powerful sweep as she drew her own gun. The facility workers froze in place, eyes wide. Hopefully Kinimaka, behind them, would bring the cops running.

She fired instantly, her shot going wide. A merc lunged at her face, grabbing for the gun. Dahl swept another weapon aside, grabbed its owner, and slammed him against the wall. The man battered both his ears with fists the size of soccer balls. A sixth sense warned him of a blade zinging in toward his spine but he knew the stab-vest would deflect it, waited, and used the ricochet to gauge where his cowardly attacker would end up. Dahl’s arm was ready, wrapping around the neck and squeezing. With the other hand he jabbed his first opponent, keeping him against the wall.

Hayden struggled as her merc caught her in a bear hug, their faces pressed together. The gun was trapped between them. His strength crushed the breath from her body. They were too close to enable her to maneuver, but she drew her head back and used her skull. The merc was clever, having dipped his head so she couldn’t reach his nose. The blow still smashed against his temple though, a wallop that he felt all the way down to his knees.

Hayden pivoted and smashed him into the bank of TV screens, then bore down on his spine. With a little room now she brought a hand up, stiffened the fingers, and dug them into his windpipe—harder and harder, each second applying more force until the choking drowned out all else. He was a stubborn son-of-a-bitch, but nobody could resist such pressure forever. At last he pushed her away, staggering. Hayden vented much more than frustration with a sharp kick to the head.

She whirled. Dahl was dealing with two mercs, and that left just one unattended. Yes, they had been outplayed but the odds were certainly changing. The merc waved a gun in her face.

“Step back,
ma’am.
Sit your pretty little ass down on that chair and put your hands behind your back so I can tie ‘em together.”

Hayden backed away meekly, holding her hands slightly apart. “All right. Just calm down. No one needs to get shot here today.”

“Well that depends how good you are at keeping us happy, ma’am. Now sit the fuck down.”

Hayden bowed her head, still meek and subservient. The man stepped forward menacingly and it all fell into place. Or rather his testicles fell into place. Now at the perfect range she made good on her earlier promise and drop-kicked them from his groin to his throat. The man collapsed with a high-pitched squeak, scrambling about the floor. Hayden collected his gun.

She turned again. Dahl had already choked one merc into unconsciousness. The other batted futilely at him, already knowing he was going to lose. Quickly, Hayden spun toward Kinimaka and the cops.

The day is ours! Even now we’ve thwarted the Pythians . . .

Kinimaka didn’t look happy, being prodded in the back by four handguns and surrounded by thirty grinning mercenaries dressed as cops. More than twenty weapons were leveled at her and Dahl.

“Now,” grated a swarthy man with a face and arms as dark and wrinkled and hard as a tree-trunk. “Get your ass down on that floor. And you too, big guy. One wrong move an’ you’ll get to see yer fucking brains across them TV screens.”

CHAPTER THIRTY

Matt Drake would never admit to it, but as he ventured closer and closer to the eerie ghost town the hairs on the back of his neck bristled more and more. It wasn’t any Scooby-Doo mentality, nor even a boyhood fear, it was the unnerving fact that everything looked like it had been deserted just yesterday. As they approached the main street he saw a children’s swing set moving gently in a garden, creaking and swaying as if a child had run inside just moments earlier. A timber-built store sat dead ahead at the street corner, its colors as bright as any new store shouting “Motherlode Mercantile” and “Tomahawk Tours”. Tree stumps, dusty and gray, sat all around, old signs tacked to them. An overgrown yard lay behind. The main street was nothing but a gravelly dirt track, but smooth and tidy as if had been raked over just this week.

Jenny appeared between the buildings. Having been gone for over an hour she finally returned with a frown. “Nobody living here as I thought. But there
has
been activity over the last few weeks. Footprints, shuffle-marks and used condoms aplenty out back there. Handprints—female—against the door. Somebody had themselves alotta perpendicular fun.”

“Kids?” Drake wondered.

The redhead grimaced. “Doubtful. Kids woulda left McDonald’s wrappers and more. This was someone trying to be reasonably careful. Probably slipping away from a large camp.”

“Mercs,” Lauren said. “Maybe Alicia got here early.”

Drake grinned. “Nice. But I gotta say—it doesn’t mean it’s our lot.”

“If that means it might not be the people we’re searching for then I agree. But it is someone, and I can follow their trail.” Jenny nodded at the jagged wall of mountains set dark against the blue sky. “That way.”

Drake pursed his lips. “Well, it’s as good a direction as any, I guess. And within the grid we’re searching. Let’s do it.”

“I was going to.”

Jenny hitched her jeans tighter and strode off toward her Jeep. Smyth stared for a moment before Lauren put an arm around his shoulders. “Ready?”

“Oh yeah. Umm, I mean, sure.”

Drake blinked rapidly. “Well, I guess we’re going to have to follow her.”

Yorgi smiled. “Not a problem. I now see what is meant by your phrase—second skin.”

“Quit it.” Drake tried to remain objective about the new arrival, unsure what her motives were beyond getting paid for a good job. The redhead was short-tempered, tetchy and easily able to incite annoyance among other team members to be sure, but she was also proving to be highly capable and surprisingly knowledgeable. The world out here was a land of expiry and sand, a drifting monument to mortality. Jenny knew it well, and guided them without acknowledging their shortcomings. Her ability to track was beyond any that Drake had ever known, to his own great surprise. He wondered how she might handle herself in a crisis.

He took another look around the silent town, still unable to shake a sense of creepiness, of being watched through unwashed windows. If he stood there long enough he might see a curtain twitch, might even see it slide open . . . and a skeletal head peering out at him with a grinning death-mask smile.

Drake shivered. Karin, at his side, shuffled her feet. “Do you truly believe in ghosts, Matt? That our loved ones are, even now, at our side?”

“I can’t answer that. It’s a bloody loaded question. No more promises, Karin. You were the last. All I know is these ghost towns are very well named.”

“A village of the damned,” she said.

Drake studied a huge, three-pronged cactus that rose up like a unique signpost at a four-way junction ahead. Lush and green, it contradicted all that stood around it. The ramshackle, haphazard clutter of buildings should be occupied, and not only by the undead. A lady should twirl here, a gentleman tip his hat there. An old timer should be lying back in a chair, watching the world go by, not creeping through the netherworld, reaching for all that he had lost with cracking, emaciated fingers of dead bone.

Drake shook himself out of it. Jenny started up the lead Jeep and rolled out, keeping the revs low. Yorgi waited for Drake and Karin, and then followed. Silence hung like an oppressive curtain. Drake wondered how many more of these ghost towns sat out there, soundless grieving tombstones gazing out at the world through hollow eye-sockets, as unnatural as black rain and more peculiar than moonstone. Someone had painted an old brown sign at the edge of town.

Up here ends the sidewalk

And the Old West begins

Drake focused on the job at hand, keeping his eyes peeled especially now that Jenny had found real signs of a human presence.
Human?
He thought.
Fuck, I hope so.

They came at length to the enormous inland Salton Sea, a shallow rift lake located directly on the San Andreas fault line. Created by accident, its salinity was higher than that of the Pacific Ocean and was once much larger and called Lake Cahuilla. As the vehicles found the marina, Drake saw an abandoned boat stuck in the ground.

“I hope we haven’t gone through all this for that speedboat, guys.”

Jenny didn’t even chuckle. “We’ll be beyond here in just a few minutes, heading west again.”

Drake stared at the pure white earth, bright under the blazing sun. Buildings dotted the marina sparsely and it felt like another ghost town. He was happy to spot a young man leaning out of a window, watching them.

“Another weird area,” he said.

“Dude, this is America. Get used to it.”

“Well, passing an abandoned-looking auto shop painted with the words 24 hour repair doesn’t give me much hope.”

Beyond the Salton Sea, the barren landscape encompassed their horizons once again, dotted and dappled here and there by twisted tangles of green. The marina and its odd lake were left far behind as the day wore on. Jenny forged her own path, staying stealthy and hugging the dunes. How she found her way in such a featureless landscape, Drake never knew but he was glad she was along for the ride. Her progress was sometimes slow, sometimes even stealthy, but always considered and careful. Of course, even his soldier’s patience was beginning to wear thin. They had been out in this wilderness for far too long. Before they crested any hill of significance she always halted the convoy and inspected ahead. It was about thirty minutes later when her standard reaction suddenly changed.

Drake saw her hit the dirt and stay there. At first he was horrified, thinking she had been shot, but then she rolled over, giving them a small signal.

Get out of sight.

Immediately he took charge, guiding Yorgi to drive their Jeep to the nearest cover and then beckoning Smyth over. The small stand of trees huddled up against a dune would work with a lazy, careless observer—aka the Pythians’ new bunch of mercs—but not with anyone of even the slightest prowess.

Nevertheless, Drake and the rest of the team crawled and scrambled their way to Jenny’s side. The tracker had shuffled through heaped sand, dirt and rocks to the bottom of the steep slope by that time.

“Over that rise,” she whispered, her red hair now matted and yellow with sand. “I’m pretty sure it’s what you’re looking for.”

Drake stared at her. Despite his willingness and tenacity to explore he was surprised to find he had believed this entire quest would be nothing but a wild goose chase. Even when the mercenaries attacked he assumed it had to be some kind of trap.

“A ship?” He all but goggled at her. “Up there?”

“Take a look.” Jenny shrugged. “Over the rise.”

Racked by mixed emotions of awe and trepidation, incredulity and astonishment, the Yorkshireman crept steadily up the sandy slope. Smyth wasted no time dropping to his side and Jenny crawled behind them to take another look. Drake stopped twice to listen and to examine their surroundings with a detailed eye. As the crest approached he slowed even further, sinking as low as the hard earth would allow.

At last, he peered over the edge.

CHAPTER THIRTY ONE

Drake felt his face go slack as a lost wonder from a bygone age filled his field of vision.

Beyond the crest of the slope lay a deep valley. About a third of the way down the opposite slope, half buried into its vertical side, its deck even now being exposed by a bevy of mercenary workers, was a perilously perched, ancient pirate galleon.

Men slipped and skidded downhill about twenty feet to reach the excavation around its deck, taking their lives into their own hands. They worked very slowly, fearfully. No wonder this was taking some time. The great bulge that constituted the galleon’s side jutted out from the slope’s face, an enormous stepping stone. Drake saw several rivers of sand falling away from the unseen base of the ship and winced.

That thing could go at any moment.

Or it could last an eternity.

Maybe it had. Maybe sometimes the valley filled up and allowed men to walk across. Maybe the other side emptied of sand and allowed men a glimpse of what lay beneath. But none of that mattered now. What mattered was the ship was real and the Pythians were here.

“It’s . . . staggering,” Jenny whispered, the first time Drake had seen her anything other than entirely self-assured.

“It’s cool,” Smyth agreed. “Sorta cool enough to strip even
my
coolness away.”

Drake gave him a look, followed by Jenny. Smyth motioned ahead. “Stop staring at me, guys. There’s a friggin’
ship
stuck to the side of that sand dune.”

“I did notice,” Drake said. “And the boatful of mercenaries attached to it. I wonder where Bell is at?”

Jenny motioned briefly toward the top of the sand hill and away to the right. Drake tore his gaze away from the galleon. There, arrayed a short distance from the edge of the drop, were a muddled arrangement of camouflaged tents, covered by wire netting. He fished a pair of binoculars out of his pack.

“Jackpot. I see Bell and Bay-Dale just lounging over there. Deck chair, I think. Bay-Dale has a glass of red.”

Smyth flushed with anger. “Figures. Let the commoners do the work and take the risk whilst the management sit back and laugh.”

“It could be worse,” Karin offered. “In ancient times, in Europe and Egypt, the Kings and Queens would have roped their own people into this undertaking. Literally.”

“There’s a waiter over there too.” Drake rubbed his eyes tiredly, just happy that the endless drudgery of the search was over. “Lauren, you keep saying Bell’s a potential ally in the enemy camp. I must admit, I really don’t see that.”

Lauren exhaled. “After everything I witnessed in that hotel room with General Stone, I’d like a chance to try.”