The Emerald Scepter

CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

Kurtz was dressed like a gangly version of World War II tank commander General George Tecumseh Patton. Twin pearl-handled revolvers hung from his hips. Three white stars emblazoned his shiny black helmet. The short-waist Eisenhower jacket buttoned tightly across his narrow chest was festooned with a rainbow of military service ribbons. Tan riding pants drooped from his thin legs. The steel-shod heels of his leather knee-high boots clacked as he strode across the wooden floor. He whacked the side of Sutherland’s bunk with his riding crop.

“Time to move out, corporal.”

He gestured with his crop to Krause, who unlocked the handcuffs from the bunk. He pulled Sutherland to her feet and re-cuffed her hands in front of her, then prodded her toward the door with his rifle. The skin between her shoulder blades was tender from previous jabs and the gun’s muzzle hurt. She stopped and turned to Kurtz.

“General, please tell your soldier boy that if he pokes me one more time with his make-believe manhood, I will take his weapon and stick it where the sun don’t shine.”

Krause blinked at the low, menacing voice coming from the pudgy round face, and then he laughed and turned to Kurtz for reinforcement. The general chuckled and smacked his thigh with the riding crop:

“Do as the prisoner requests or she’ll hit you over the head with the Geneva Convention.”

Krause used his hand instead of his rifle to push Sutherland through the door and out into the gray darkness. The World War II army Jeep was parked outside the barracks with its motor running. A big Ford 250 pick-up with four militia men was parked behind the Jeep.

The general told Sutherland to get in the back seat. Sergeant Paine sat beside her. Kurtz climbed into the passenger seat and Krause got behind the wheel. Kurtz raised his riding crop in the air and pointed forward.

As they drove past the deserted barracks, Kurtz said airily, “You think I don’t know why you came here, corporal? Well I know all about my grandfather and Prester John. You came here to steal our property. Admit it.”

Sutherland answered with her name, rank and made up serial number.

“Military rules? I’m okay with that, but you might not be.”

Sutherland didn’t like his tone, which was smug and threatening, but she kept her mouth shut.

The two-vehicle convey drove past the mansion and through the ghost town. After about a mile the road began to climb through the woods, becoming steeper as it meandered back and forth in a series of ascending switchbacks. The road surface was dirt and gravel and studded with boulders, but the slow-moving vehicles made steady progress. After traveling nearly an hour, they emerged from the woods into an open area at the base of a high ridge.

The general studied a large rectangle of paper for a few minutes and told the driver to keep going another hundred yards.

“This is it,” he said. “Stop.”

The headlights picked out a crumbling shed and behind it, rails emerging from the side of the hill. The mine entrance itself was almost invisible, a rectangular shadow partially obscured by brush that had grown around the opening. Kurtz got out of the Jeep and walked up to the entrance. He flashed his light on, showing a wall of weathered gray boards, and then ordered his men to give him a hand.

At the general’s orders, a couple of his men used crow bars to remove the barrier. The boards easily pried away from the rusty nails holding them in place.

Kurtz consulted the mine diagram again.

“The main shaft goes straight in. There are four tunnels off to the right. We want the third one. Saddle up.”

He strode into the mine with Krause, then came Sutherland and Sergeant Paine, followed by the militiamen. The tunnel sloped down at a gradual angle. The blockade had protected the interior of the mine from moisture and destructive forest creatures and the timbers supporting the walls and ceiling were mostly intact.

They trudged in silence between the narrow tracks and encountered the first side tunnel about an eighth of a mile in. They kept moving, passed another opening after a few hundred yards, and after a slightly longer walk came to the third. A few yards beyond the opening, the main shaft ended in a blank wall.

“Something’s not right,” Kurtz growled.

He studied his diagram, and then wheeled about and with his entourage following, slowly retraced his steps, playing the beam of his flashlight on the walls. He stopped and studied a section of wall that seemed to be slightly indented. He borrowed a crowbar and pried away a slab of rock that was no thicker than a flagstone. Wood could be seen through the hole where the rock had been.

He stepped back and handed the crowbar to a militia man, who pried away more of the flat rocks. Behind the façade was a wooden plank blockade similar to the barrier at the mine entrance.

Kurtz led the way. The tunnel was smaller than the main passage, and went in for a couple of hundred feet before it ended in a wall of steel plates. Painted on the wall in red paint was a primitive drawing of a skull.

“What the hell is that?” Krause said.

“Indian hex sign,” Kurtz said. “Figures. They say Grand pop Hiram hired a bunch of Utes to keep an eye on the more valuable mines. They weren’t interested in gold or silver and could keep their mouths shut.” He stepped back. “That hoodoo won’t bite you. Take ‘er down.”

The men took turns working the crowbars through gaps in the plates. Once one section was pried off, the others came down easily. After about ten minutes a gap around three feet wide, reaching from ceiling to floor, was opened in the barrier.

As soon as the gap was opened Kurtz pushed through. There was silence, then something that sounded like a choking cry.

“You all right, general?” Krause said.

A mad cackle of laughter issued through the opening.

“I’m more than all right.”

The voice had a ghostly echo, as if it were coming from the inhabitant of a sepulcher. The militia men exchanged puzzled glances and nervously clutched their weapons.

Krause said, “You want us to come in, general?”

Kurtz answered simply. “No. I’m coming out.”

He squeezed through the opening, an object wrapped in shreds of cloth clutched close to his chest. He removed the cloth and cradled in his arms was a cross around three feet long that seemed to glow with a green and yellow fire.

The horizontal arms were shorter than the main shaft, and the entire surface was covered with swirling filigrees of gold. The beams from the flashlights reflected off the finely-cut facets of dozens of emeralds inlaid into the gold. At the top of the cross was an emerald as large as an egg.

Kurtz slowly raised the scepter high above his head like a medieval warrior clutching a broadsword. The militiamen stared at the object as if hypnotized by its unearthly glow.

Clearly visible where the arms crossed, inlaid in smaller diamonds, was the letter J.

Sutherland had been brought up in a religious family, but her army experiences had left her cynical and her world had become one of technology rather than superstition. But even she could feel the magical power that radiated from the scepter and seemed to flow down through Kurtz’s upraised arms and into his body. The light from the precious stones reflected in the general’s eyes, which burned with a supernatural glitter.

The subterranean surroundings with the shadowed walls, the vacant stares of the armed militiamen, and most of all, the cross in the hands of a fanatical madman, all seemed part of an unholy ceremony that mocked good and celebrated evil.

Sutherland’s literal mind could not comprehend the totality of what was going on. But she knew from the shivers dancing along her spine that she had every reason to be very afraid.

Hawkins swooped down and emerged below the wooly layer of clouds. He was going too fast so he brought the glider’s nose up, precipitating a string of beeps from the variometer warning him of a stall. He pushed the control bar forward and stabilized his flight. He was still having trouble keeping the wing level when Calvin dropped out of the clouds seconds later.

Hawkins pressed the finger switch on his radio. “How do I look?”

“Like a drunken condor. But you’re headed in the right direction. Down.”

Hawkins glanced at the forest below, then at the GPS screen. “Our LZ is directly ahead. Check out the lights at eleven o’clock.”

“I count two vehicles moving up the mountain,” Calvin said. “What do you want to do?”

Hawkins had to make a quick choice. They had targeted a clearing near the camp as a landing zone. But if Sutherland were with the vehicles advancing up the side of the mountain, it could take hours to climb to her.

“Scrub the original plan. We’ll land on the mountain.”

Hawkins scanned the slope for an opening in the trees.

“Off to the left,” Calvin said.

Hawkins saw a knob of gray rock that protruded from the forest in the shape of a human shoulder. The promontory was shrouded by misty threads and looked about the size of a dime. Hawkins hoped that it just seemed small from a distance.

“Good for a sparrow perch, maybe, but I’ll give it a try.”

“Just wheel around in a gradual curve, approach the target, ease out of the hammock, keep it slow, and push your bar up at the last second as you get your feet under you. Pieceofcake.”

Hawkins shifted his body weight to put the glider into a turn that pointed the front of the wing directly at the rock. He started moving too fast again, brought the nose up, and then down, making sure the wings were steady. It was a smooth save, and Hawkins began to feel more confident. His cockiness ended as he made the approach and saw the deep fissures in the promontory. Rather than being smooth and flat on top, the rock was lumpy and uneven.

It was too late to veer away.

He had already slipped his legs out of the cocoon, and had them under him, knees bent slightly. A few feet from the ledge he brought the wing up and slowed almost to a stop. His feet hit the hard ground. The shock on his bad leg was greater than he expected, and the impact, and the weight of the gear he was carrying, threw his center of gravity off.

He wobbled dangerously, but by using every ounce of strength in his arms and shoulders, he managed to keep his footing on the uneven surface and immobilize the wing.

He unsnapped the harness and lifted the wing over the side. The glider landed in the trees about a hundred feet below the knob. Then Calvin came in and landed lightly beside him, took a few steps in, and brought the wing down. Hawkins helped him out of the harness and they pushed the wing over the side to join the other hang-glider.

Hawkins and Calvin turned toward the mountain and pushed their way through the brush into the woods. They headed in the direction of the last headlight sighting. After trekking through a murky forest, they stepped out onto a road. Fresh tread marks could be seen in the dirt in the light from the rising sun.

They started hiking up the steep-angled road, but after ten minutes of walking, Hawkins put his hand up to signal a halt. As if on cue, a series of angry shouts shattered the morning stillness.

Then a gunshot echoed throughout the forest.

Hawkins and Calvin began to run.