Treasure of the Deep Read online

  My kind of gals.

  Chapter Two

  All four were dressed similarly.

  They wore traditional Indian pleated lehengas and tight fitting cholis beneath colorful saris. Overdressed for the humid summer season, they could be sisters, with long dark hair pulled back, large round dark brown eyes, and matching black bindis on their foreheads. I recognized the marks were a sign of protection against evil. But, if these sweethearts had listened to the sixth chakra they were shielding, they’d certainly realize the frightened Tawankan and his too-pale American companion were harmless.

  Despite my apparent waning charms on the opposite sex, there wasn’t any need for the venomous looks, or shoving two of the rifle barrels in our faces.

  “Hey, take it easy, ladies...you don’t have to play rough,” I said, while Ishi grinned beside me. Very few things ruffled my pal, which was one of the reasons I kept him around.

  Anyway, the closest woman snatched the map out of my hands, briefly glancing at it before it disappeared beneath her sari. I was about to protest when I felt the cold steel of one of the rifles press into my cheek.

  “What’s mine is yours,” I said, which was very much not a part of my code of ethics.

  Anyway, none of these Amazons in Hindi attire responded or even seemed to hear me. They didn’t seem to care much for my sly grin either, which was puzzling. At least to me. Maybe they didn’t understand English or appreciate true American charm. I doubted French or Spanish would get me any further than my own native tongue. I had visited India only once, a dozen years ago with my former colleague, Mario Thomas. While there, we scavenged the remains of a Portuguese dig near Nepal for several days, and then moved on to an ill-fated encounter with Leonardo Da Vinci in Egypt. We stayed in India just long enough to get a taste of the culture and local cuisine, but not long enough to learn the language. Ditto for the local customs’ subtle nuances that might’ve come in handy with this hostile foursome.

  The two gals not threatening us with their guns grabbed Ishi and me by our shirts and shoved us back toward the jungle, assuredly nixing our cave exploration plans. But at least we were still among the living. They wanted something from us better served with a pulse, or they would’ve killed us already.

  Again, I like that in my women.

  All my senses were on edge. The girl ahead of us pushed through dense foliage, not bothering to cut it away. A sudden painful prod from a gun barrel to my lower back encouraged me to do the same, and forced me to ignore Ishi’s light chuckling.

  The youngest of the four, a girl of maybe seventeen, flanked my right side. I caught several curious glances from her, as if she had never seen a white man before. For that matter, I doubted she’d ever laid eyes on a Tawankan either. I’m sure she didn’t realize I was just as curious about her and her companions.

  We soon reached a clearing that was home to a dozen thatched huts. My earlier concern about fresh water was answered when another young woman drew water from a well in the center of this tiny village.

  “So, you are the invaders who landed on our island last night?”

  At first, I didn’t see who was the owner of this sultry voice. The English words were delivered with a refined British accent, and this woman was roughly ten to fifteen years older than any of our captors. The voice, I soon realized, came to us from a doorway of the largest hut, just beyond the well.

  It came again: “You are trespassing, and those who rule this island will have you shot once they learn of your presence.”

  I didn’t hear everything she said, as I was too busy staring at the woman who emerged from the doorway. Although this woman shared the same physical traits as the others, she reminded me more of someone else. Someone non-Indian and, until very recently, dear to my heart: Marie Da Vinci.

  Ishi seemed to share my reaction, and was no longer grinning. No doubt, he marveled at the same physical features that had taken me aback. Same big doe eyes as Marie and just as blue. I was fairly certain I was having a hallucinatory dream. After all, a drug-induced dream made a lot more sense than all of this. Maybe I’d eaten a bad coconut or two. Another prod from the hard barrel of a rifle seemed to suggest that I wasn’t dreaming. I sighed, cursing my luck.

  She sauntered toward us. “So, who do we have here?” She sounded perturbed.

  “Just a couple of lost tourists,” I replied.

  “Oh, really?”

  The girl who took the map from me now handed it to her. The woman looked it over and then brought her gaze back to me. It was unnerving the way she looked at me. I felt completely naked, as if she could easily determine my deepest secrets from where she stood. I worried about losing the Beretta I’d taken from Marie’s unsavory uncle, Leonardo, presently strapped to my thigh, six inches from the edge of my khaki shorts.

  “I think you lie. I think you are treasure hunters.”

  “It’s a working vacation,” I grinned.

  “What’s your name?”

  I gave her our names. As I did so, six other young women emerged from their own huts. The singular beauty in front of us said, “Fortune smiled when your plane left this morning, since they would’ve tried to shoot it out of the sky if it had left any later.”

  “And who are they?” I asked.

  She ignored my question. “Still, you are also unlucky for choosing to stay behind...or for coming here in the first place.”

  I didn’t know who the hell she was talking about, nor did I care. I had crossed paths with my fair share of warlords and bastards. So far, I’d been able to talk my way out of some pretty shitty situations. Or run damned fast.

  I said, “And miss your Maldivian hospitality?”

  Admittedly, I was unable to resist trading barbs with this gorgeous woman. Maybe it was because she reminded me of Marie, and I had plenty to say to the woman I had thought I was falling in love with. Still, this one was different, and not just in the darkness of her skin.

  “And why did you stay behind, Mr. Caine?” she asked, studying me closely.

  “Like I said, we’re on vacation.”

  “Vacation?”

  “Birdwatching,” I said.

  Ishi said, “Birdwatching,” and chuckled quietly to himself. Ishi always found me funny, which was one of the reasons I kept him around.

  The woman before us, however, didn’t seem so amused. “I think you lie, Mr. Caine.”

  “Well, think what you want. But unless you’re going to kill us we could use a drink and a smoke—and not necessarily in that order.”

  She held my gaze for a moment...then laughed softly, revealing a generous smile. At her smile, I sighed in relief. After all, I still had no idea what we had stumbled onto. Also, I began to believe everything about her was lovely. She regarded me with an amused look as she stepped off the small wooden porch in front of the hut. Like the others, she wore a colorful sari. Unlike them, she was unarmed. The richness of her crimson attire extended to her lehenga and choli. The color of love and violence.

  “You are a charmer, Mr. Caine,” she said, when she stood before me. She glanced at Ishi, who had been watching her with some amusement. “We will see about the hospitality you speak of. But, understand you will always be in danger here. You will never be welcome. When they find out about this, they will kill you.”

  She held out the map and lightly shook it to make her point. Her eyes turned misty.

  “They? What the devil are you talking about?” I tried to snatch my questionable map to an even more questionable treasure, but she withdrew it and placed the map inside the layers of her clothing.

  “The men who stole our men and sons,” she said, motioning behind us. I craned my head and was surprised that a dozen more women—some old and some young—had crept out of the remaining huts, doubling the ranks of those who stood behind us.

  Ishi and I exchanged glances. We’ve found ourselves in some weird shit in the past, but this just might take the cake. “What men?” I asked.

  A nearby torch fl
ickered and from somewhere in the near distance I heard the pop-pop-pop of gunfire. I raised my eyebrows. So did Ishi. For Ishi, this was the equivalent of him saying “Holy shit!”

  The woman didn’t appear to hear the gunfire; instead, she intoned, “Pirates. Bloodthirsty pirates.”

  Chapter Three

  Her name was Norema.

  Born in Calcutta, she was the daughter of a magistrate’s assistant who was wrongly accused of corruption near the close of the twentieth century. Her family lost everything and became the scourge of their peers. She married young, to a man who would’ve been considered unfit for her by her protective father. Her suitor’s name was Aamir, and he fathered a son—their only offspring—whom they named Aafreen, which means “encouragement”. She is understandably quite proud of her boy...more on him in a moment.

  This we learned while sitting on her porch that sweltering afternoon. It was just the three of us: our hostess/captor, Ishi, and me. Ishi himself gave a brief summary of his life as a Honduran orphan, and how I procured my young friend’s emancipation from forced servitude shortly before his nineteenth birthday. That was six years ago, and he had proven himself to be an invaluable companion to me many times over.

  As for me, I rarely speak of my parents, my only family. Despite Norema’s claims of being a seer by trade in Calcutta, and ignoring the strange sensation I felt when she studied me intently, I would rather take my chances with the standard lie that my folks were alive and well in San Diego, California. Hell, it was the last place in America they resided, before our fateful relocation to Sudan. My parents were brutally murdered by marauders my father had chased away from a dig he and my mother were working on. They were cut down by machine gun fire—nearly torn in half by bullets. To this day, I hear the men’s laughter and the echo from my terrified screams as the murderers’ jeep sped away...

  “How did you end up here?” I asked, while sipping on a beverage brewed from roots harvested on the island. “Surely, being scorned in Calcutta would have a few upsides compared to this place. No offense intended.”

  What can I say? I’m a straight shooter who’s never cared to dance around the pink elephant in a room, and had no intentions of doing that two-step now.

  She eyed me curiously. “My husband ran afoul of the Indian authorities, and to ensure my cooperation in joining him, he kidnapped our son and brought him here,” she explained. “Nearly half of the women here at present had already arrived on the island, and it was a few months before we learned what Badri intended to do with all of us. We had left our wealth and belongings behind, some to pursue promises of greater wealth and happiness...or those like me, who came to claim our children.”

  “Does this Badri have your boy, Aafreen, with him?” I asked.

  “He does,” she said finally. “He took my son when the others refused to give their sons. Badri then ordered his men—his pirates—to line up nine boys and nine men, over by the mangrove tree that marks the entrance to our village. Before any of us understood what was happening, Badri’s pirates shot them all, and then finished off the ones who survived the first bullets...My husband was one of those killed.”

  Frankly, I didn’t know what to say next. The loss in her voice was enough to make a grown man weep. Luckily, I don’t consider myself a grown man. An oversized boy, perhaps. Had I known her better, I might have reached out and put a hand on her shoulder. But I didn’t, and so Ishi and I sat there awkwardly. Through the hut I heard the sounds of chopping and the muffled voices of women talking among themselves. Work was continuing in the makeshift village. What on God’s earth had we stumbled upon?

  “I am sorry,” said Ishi first, his voice filled with emotion. “No woman should watch her son killed as so.”

  Norema seemed to appreciate his words and nodded. There was some more silence but, as I well knew, silence often provides a means to getting things back on a track I like, and I moved to change the direction of our conversation.

  “Does this Badri have a campsite somewhere on this island?”

  Ishi suddenly looked up at me, raising his eyebrows. No doubt, he realized where I was going with my latest line of questions. I may be a bastard and I may be a thief, but I was all heart, dammit.

  Norema nodded. “He and his gang of cutthroats live on the northern side of the island in a cave not far from the one marked on your map,” she said. “The remaining boys, including my son, are their slaves. They clean, cook, and help store the drugs and weapons Badri sells to dealers in Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and other countries.”

  “How many pirates are there, and are they armed with traditional cutlasses and muskets—or outdated Winchesters like your lady guard corps seem to prefer?”

  Okay, I couldn’t resist. But determining how large Badri’s army was and how well they were armed would go a long way in deciding if we could help her get her boy back or not.

  “I believe there are between thirty to forty men, but they are well armed. They have the weapons we have wanted, but cannot obtain. Their guns come from the Soviets and black market.”

  “Automatic rifles and pistols, huh?”

  “Yes. Rocket launchers, too.”

  Great, just frigging great. But a plan was brewing in my head. Whether it was a good plan, remained to be seen. I said, “Norema...do you know anything about what is supposed to be hidden in the caves on the map you commandeered from me?”

  She grinned. “You mean the buried treasure?”

  “Yes,” I said, almost regretting I brought it up. “Is it still hidden there?”

  “Assuming it’s even real...maybe,” she said. “Badri once was looking for it, too. For all I know, he found it.”

  One would think that what I was about to say next would have been a little more thought out, but it wasn’t. Not really. What came out next was the kind of inner prompting I sometimes get to help those who couldn’t help themselves. Annoying as hell because there was treasure to be found. And I was, after all, a looter through and through. I said, “If I help you get your son back...would you then be willing to lead us to this cave?”

  Her eyes flicked over at me and held my gaze, and I saw the look of hope on her face. I almost cautioned her not to hold out too much hope. We were, after all, just two looters who’d managed to get caught by a village full of women. But sometimes hope is all we had, and I was not about to take that from her.

  After a moment, she held up the map. “You doubt the accuracy of the map?”

  “A map...and a beautiful guide is all that a man in my business can ask for.”

  “You are a charmer, Mr. Caine.”

  “I’m something. So do we have a deal?”

  She only considered my words for a moment before saying: “It’s not usually wise to deal with the devil to secure a place in heaven, but my son means everything to me, and I am willing to do whatever it takes to get him back from Badri. Rescue Aafreen and I will take you to the caves depicted on the map. But, if you fail me, I will see to it that you die before you ever lay eyes on the gold of the ancients.”

  I swallowed, suspecting she meant every word. “We have a deal, then?”

  “Yes, Mr. Caine. We have a deal,” she said, rising to her feet. She motioned for Ishi and I to do the same. Before we finished standing, our guards from earlier had returned, old rifles trained upon our backs.

  Whether we would succeed in keeping our end of the deal, or not, I didn’t know. But there was one thing I was suddenly sure of: there was no way for Ishi and me to survive this latest misadventure.

  No way in hell.

  Chapter Four

  I wanted to immediately get started on our search and rescue mission.

  Wasting little time to liberate Norema’s kid and explore the cave system for our treasure seemed like a clean-cut proposition. Especially so, if we surprised this Badri character and his men and freed Aafreen before they could react. Or, we could pursue what I considered a much safer route, sneaking into their cave later that night and taking the
kid while the bastards slept. We could visit the treasure cave, stake out our claim, and get the hell out of there before these modern-day pirates had any inkling we’d been by for a visit.

  I liked the second option best. Liked it a helluva lot.

  However, our hostess and her antique gun-toting followers were less than keen on the idea. They huddled together near the well, speaking in hushed voices, and in the standard Hindi language I barely understood. The verdict was obvious even before Norema addressed us again, near her hut.

  “It’s better to go during the day, since Badri prefers to prey on shipping barges and the bigger tourist boats that run by the northern islands from early morning until the afternoon,” she said. “Since he and his men won’t be there, it is the best time for us to do this.”

  “In the broad light of day?”

  “Yes.”

  I couldn’t hide my contempt for what I felt was an asinine idea. “A good looter is like a good pirate,” I said, trying hard to mask my irritation with an endearing smile. I’m told that if I really turn on the charm when I’m miffed, my blue eyes take on an alluring glow. I hoped that was happening right then. “If Badri’s hideout contains the horde of weapons, drugs, and whatever else he considers valuable, damned straight you can bet on him keeping enough guards on hand to ensure his shit’s still there when he returns each night. That’s what I’d do, as well as any unscrupulous hoarder I’ve ever dealt with. We’ll be cut down by bullets, or join Badri’s cave cleaning crew on a permanent basis the minute we get close enough to be noticed...unless we do this in the dead of night.”

  “The dead of night is when he’ll be waiting for you, Nick Caine,” she said calmly. “Even if you do have your trusty Beretta.”

  What in the hell? She couldn’t possibly know about my gun, and definitely not in that level of detail without seeing it firsthand...or could she?