The drone of a motor drifted in above the surf. At first, I thought it was Threader coming around the island to pick us up, but the sound wasn’t right.
“A seaplane,” Niki said, spotting the aircraft first. “Scientists? Journalists maybe?”
I slogged out of the water and stood next to Niki, watching the plane as it made a low pass before setting down and taxiing to the beach in front of us.
A sudden spurt of adrenaline shot through my veins when Vito and Apollo stepped out. Giacopetti was on their heels. How the hell did he know we were here?
The gorillas drew their guns as the three men approached. This time, they didn’t bother to attach the silencers.
“Well, well,” Giacopetti said cheerfully, “if it isn’t my American friend and his lovely companion.” He bowed in mock humility before Niki. “Dr. Mikos, what a pleasure.”
“Murderer.” The word seethed through Niki’s clenched teeth like a poisonous vapor.
“Murderer? Is this any way to greet a fellow countryman?”
“You burned Captain Threader’s boat. You tried to kill him.”
“Ah yes. I do recall hearing something about a fire in the harbor. An unfortunate turn of luck for the captain, the loss of such a valuable piece of property.”
“It was all he had.”
“That is most regrettable,” Giacopetti said, feigning sadness. “Still, he has his life, does he not? I do not remember hearing anything about a … murder, as you say.”
“No thanks to you, he still lives.”
“Yes, well, all this talk about the loss of property, it brings up a small matter that, quite frankly, has had both of my good men rather upset. Pistols, Mr. Adams. I believe you have a pair that do not belong to you.”
“Didn’t bring them with me,” I said, trying to control a sudden shallowness of breath. Predators like Giacopetti fed on fear, and I was determined to deprive him of the pleasure. “If I’d known you were coming, I would have gladly brought them.”
“So poised, you Americans,” Giacopetti said. “But then, what would one expect from the country that produced the great John Wayne? Are all Americans so bold, Mr. Adams? Or is it just the occasional fool, like yourself, who dreams of being the tough guy?” He shot me a surly glare. “Yes, well, I do want to trust you. I really do. But if you don’t mind, Vito here would like to search you for his gun.”
“Actually I do mind,” I said, wishing I hadn’t left the pistol in my cabin, “but since you’ve got the firepower …” I raised my hands.
Apollo kept me covered while Vito stepped in for the frisking. When he finished, Vito drove a fist hard into my stomach. I crumpled, gasping for air.
“Pig!” Niki screamed, falling protectively on top of me. “You had no reason. He has nothing of yours.”
With a cruel smile, the big man backed slowly away, snatched up my backpack, and started riffling through it. Finding nothing, he made a shrugging gesture to his boss.
“Perhaps you do not have the pistol after all,” Giacopetti said, kneeling in front of me. “But I can see by the pile of sand that you two have been busy little bees, very busy indeed. The scroll, Mr. Adams. Did you happen to find it?”
“We found nothing,” Niki said.
“I see. The fruits of the archaeologist’s labor, they are sometimes bitter, no? Vito, perhaps you should have a look around, see what kind of nothing our busy little bees have found.”
Vito plodded through the sand to the cave.
I regained my breath, but I stayed curled in a ball. I was sure Giacopetti was going to kill us, and I had to do something. Niki’s knife dangled from her belt, but what good was a knife against two guns? I noticed something unusual: grains of sand toppling from the edges of our footprints. There was another subsonic rumble and a tremor so slight it would have gone unnoticed if I hadn’t been lying on the ground. It stopped. Seconds passed. Then, with no further warning, Kyropos exploded in a horrifying burst of ash and missiles that hurtled like comets in every direction. The sea between Kyropos and the Rock started to swell.
Vito ran out of the cave, and the three Greeks scrambled in wide-eyed terror toward the rocks and higher ground.
“The wave,” I said to Niki. “There’s another wave. We’ve got to get to the Zodiac.”
Niki turned to see the rising water, her eyes flashing in fear. “Oh my god! We’ll never make—”
“The boat,” I said, gathering my feet. “Just think about the boat. It’s the journey, remember? Time to enjoy it.”
Niki smiled, the confidence flooding back into her eyes. I grabbed her hand, and we sprinted for the Zodiac. Shots rang out, and bullets pelted the sand around us, but only for a moment. The Greeks were too busy clambering higher into the rocks to save themselves.
Then, another strange thing happened. The shoreline began to recede, exposing the sea bottom for two hundred yards. The monster wave was sucking up every drop of water in its path. Niki and I tumbled into the boat, covered our heads, and waited. The ground shook so hard it bounced the Zodiac down the empty slope of the seafloor.
“Hang on,” I yelled, the terrible thunder reaching a hideous pitch. Gulping what might have been my final breath of air, I held Niki tight and braced for the impact. Seconds passed like hours. Then, the monster curled and fell over us like an imploded building, a terrible crushing blur of blue and white. The Zodiac lifted from the sand like a crippled rocket aimed directly into the cliffs.
In that terrifying instant, there was no doubt in my mind that Niki and I were going to die.
The wave hurled the Zodiac through the air like a fleck of debris. Helpless in its killing grip, we could only cling to each other and wait for death. Eternity passed, but the impact never came. Instead, the horrific thunder settled into a deafening calm.
I lifted my head and squinted hard against the blare of naked sunlight. By some miracle, we were slipping down the back of the wave a hundred yards from the cliffs.
Niki peered over the side of the Zodiac. “My god!” she gasped, her voice cracking with disbelief. “We … we made it.”
We sat up, embraced, and laughed and hooted at our impossibly good fortune, but only for a few seconds. A bullet sizzled into the water, leaving a gaping wound across the top of the Zodiac. My jaw tightened with anger when I saw the Greeks standing high in the rocks taking potshots even as the black smoke of their smashed airplane billowed up behind them. Two more bullets sizzled into the water.
“Let’s get out of here,” I yelled, slapping a hand over the hole.
Niki twisted the starter and cranked the Zodiac full throttle. The Greeks sent a few more wild shots into our wake before scrambling toward the Penelope.
It was a credit to Threader that Penelope had survived the wave. Unaware that they were about to come under attack, Threader and Father Jon stood on the deck and watched our approach in the wounded Zodiac.
“They must get away from the island,” Niki shouted. “Giacopetti will kill them.” She lunged to the front of the boat. “You take the throttle.”
“I can’t take my hand off the leak!”
“Take the throttle, damn it! Now!”
It was no time to argue. I’d barely taken over before Niki was tearing through her canvas bag. She pulled out a flashlight, fell over the hissing hole, and started signaling the Penelope.
Threader stood still for a moment and then ducked into the cockpit. A plume of blue smoke went up from the diesel engine.
The pop of pistol fire punctuated the scream of the Zodiac’s motor. Threader eased the yacht away from the Rock, pulled out the Winchester, and cracked off three rapid shots, enough to scatter the Greeks and buy time to reach a safe distance from the island.
Niki climbed aboard Penelope. The Zodiac had taken at least three hits and was going down fast. Threader tossed a rope around the motor to keep it from sinking. I scrambled off the collapsing boat with the grace of a drunkard doing a jig on a waterbed. We all wrestled the crumpled corpse of the Zodiac on board.
“Damn girl,” Threader said, laughing. “You remembered the code.”
“Did I do it right?” Niki asked. “It has been years.”
“Gunfire from rocks. That’s what you said. Remember I told you that you’d need it someday. Girl, you probably saved my life.” He scooped her into a bear hug, still laughing.
“I did not know what else to do,” she said. “I knew you could not hear me.” She turned to me. “The flashlight, it was a code that the captain devised and taught me when I was a child. Not even my father knew. We would talk to each other when he was at sea. No one but the captain and I knew what we were saying.”
Father Jon had been standing at the bow of the boat watching the black plume rise from the far side of the Rock. “The smoke, it is from the airplane?”
“I think so,” I said. “But to tell you the truth, that wave had me just a little too preoccupied to see exactly what happened.”
“Well,” Threader said, “we’d better get the hell out of here. Father, if you’ll pray real hard, I mean real hard, we may make it before that thing blows.”
“Threader,” I said, “we’ve got to go back.”
“That’s just what I said, Adams. You knock something loose in that noggin of yours?”
“To Kyropos.”
Threader froze, his eyes narrowing into an incredulous stare. “To hell you say.” He stepped in close to my face, his upper lip contorted into a curl. He spoke in a low tone intended for my ears only. “Are you outta your friggin’ gourd?”
“Maybe,” I said, unflinching under the gust of his stinking breath.
“What makes you think the scroll is there?”
The rigid set of his eyes told me he wasn’t into discussing the validity of visions. I saw no reason to try to make a believer out of him.
“Let’s just say I feel it.”
“You feel it, do you?” Threader turned away, scratching the back of his neck, a sarcastic grin cracking one side of his face. He paced in short arcs and glared at me as he spoke. “Let me get this straight. You want me to take this boat to the shore of that volcano”—he pointed—“risk the lives of these people, because you feel like the scroll is on Kyropos?”
I met his glare head-on. “That’s right.”
Threader shook his head, his mouth half open in disbelief. “You sure as hell knocked something loose, Adams.” He let out a dismissive chuckle, turned, and stepped into the cockpit. “Since we’re getting our feelings out in the open here, let me share one or two of mine. I feel like if we don’t get the hell outta here right now”—his face grew redder, his voice louder—“it ain’t gonna matter if we find a hundred scrolls. We won’t be alive to tell about it.”
He fired the engine and cranked the wheel to bring the boat to a more favorable angle to the wind.
I spotted the Winchester lying on the table, picked it up, and leveled it squarely between Threader’s eyes. I had no idea what the hell I was going to do next.
J Douglas Bottorff 