The Paradise Affair

20 Quincannon

The bullet missed him and shattered the lantern, sent it bouncing and crashing across the floor. He landed on his right shoulder and skidded into the opposite wall, the boom of the shot repeated in lustily reverberating echoes all around him. Two seconds later the Navy Colt was in his hand and he was squirming into a pocket of shadow behind Vereen’s corpse, the weapon thrust out in front of him.

There was a second shot, the slug missing high and showering him with lava chips and dust. Behind him, the shattered lantern had left a trail of burning kerosene, but the reservoir by now must have been a quarter or less full; the flames were low and before the sniper on the ledge above could trigger a third round, they flickered out. The tube, then, was plunged into blackness as thick as india ink.

Quincannon scrambled backward and sideways toward the middle of the cave. Then, again, he froze in place. The stillness that followed was as absolute as the dark. Now he and whoever had been trying to kill him were on equal footing. If either of them fired, the muzzle flash would betray his position and make him a clear target.

A stalemate, but one that couldn’t last. Sooner or later he or the shooter would have to make a move.

How many seconds or minutes crept away Quincannon had no idea. In such darkness you quickly lost track of time. And it was difficult, if not impossible, to gauge the exact source of any sounds — both an advantage and a disadvantage.

Well?

His heightened sense of smell picked up a new scent on the air currents. And then something broke the silence — a distant dripping and thrumming. Ozone. Wind and rain. The kona storm had commenced outside. Before the ambush he would have grumbled at the fact. Now he saw it as a potential boon to his chances.

The second entrance to the burial chamber must be somewhere up near the ledge where the shooter was hidden, so the sounds of the storm would be louder in his ears. That would make any noises down here even harder to pinpoint.

In his mind’s eye Quincannon could see the shape of the chamber and his relative position. He calculated the distance to the turning behind him. Then he made his move, propelling himself backward and sideways on forearms and knees, deliberately making as much clatter as he could.

As he’d trusted, he drew no fire. He skittered across to the embankment, then backward into the turning. The floor there was not as smooth; sharp edges ripped through his clothing, gouged and sliced into his skin. He permitted himself a small outcry at one of the sharper cuts of pain. When his hands or feet encountered loose rock, he sent them rattling across the floor.

Still no rifle fire.

The confusion of sounds was his ally, and so was the fact that the farther he withdrew along the tube, the more the sounds would diminish in the rifleman’s hearing. The shooter would have no way of knowing that his target was heading back the way he’d come.

Once into the turning, Quincannon clawed himself upright and felt his way backward along the wall, still generating random noises. He kept this up until he reached the juncture with the first tube and entered that one. He’d gone far enough by then, he judged, to have passed out of earshot. He stood motionless, waiting, listening to the charged silence.

It might have been five minutes or longer that he stood there. He was a man of steel nerves, but the pitch blackness had begun to have a slightly claustrophobic effect on him. The urge to strike a lucifer alight was strong. He countered it by moving a short distance back into the larger tube, then groping forward along the wall — cautiously, now, with pauses after every step to listen for sounds of pursuit.

The silence remained so acute it was like a pressure against his eardrums.

When he finally arrived at the turning into the burial cave, he stepped out from the wall and took the packet of matches from his pocket. He set himself and flicked one aflame on his thumbnail, then immediately snuffed it and flung himself to the side.

Nothing happened.

No rifle flashes, no echoing reports.

He changed position, struck three additional matches before he was satisfied that his trick had worked. The sniper must have believed that escape had been sought through the ruins, and so had gone down to the heiau to set up another ambush there.

With a freshly lighted lucifer held aloft, Quincannon moved ahead to where the ledge jutted above. Two more matches showed him the way up to it, and revealed the opening that the shooter had used to enter the tube.

This passage, like the one in the temple, had been hand-hewn through porous rock and proved to be a much easier and more direct route to and from the burial chamber. It wound and twisted narrowly, climbed, then dipped for fifty yards or so. The currents of air grew stronger, the beat of rain and distant thunder gained volume. Up one last rise, and then he could see a slit of wet, gray daylight ahead.

He approached the aperture cautiously, the Navy cocked and extended. Outside, he could make out a small flat space surrounded by glistening black rock. He eased his head through the opening. Lines of rain slanted down like thin silver needles, but the full force of the storm had yet to be unleashed; the cloud-roiled sky was the color of a livid purple and black bruise. The hiss and pound of waves lashing the shore was like a low cannonade. All he could see was bare rock.

He stepped out, hunted up a declivity that led out of the flat space, followed it until he reached a point where the roiled ocean came into view. A few seconds after that, there was a loud boom and a spout of water burst upward below and to his left — the blowhole erupting again.

Now he knew where he was. The path down from the road, he judged, should be close by.

This proved to be the case. He located the path, hunkered there to reconnoiter. The ledge and the blowhole were now visible, but there was no sign of the shooter. Mindful of the slick footing, he started down.

He had almost reached the ledge when he spied the shooter, forted up behind a rock with the barrel of his rifle trained on the entrance to the heiau. The man’s identity came as no surprise — Sam Opaka. Sent to do Stanton Millay’s bidding, or possibly his sister’s.

Quincannon paused to wipe rain and spray from his eyes before he closed the distance between himself and the luna. His foot, when he moved again, dislodged a stone and sent it rattling down. It was a small noise, all but lost in the voice of squall and sea, but somehow Opaka must have heard it. Either that, or the man possessed a sixth sense for danger.

Opaka moved with an almost startling swiftness, in one continuous motion levering himself to his feet and bringing the rifle to bear. He fired before Quincannon did, by a second or two, but his aim was off; the bullet ricocheted harmlessly off rock. Quincannon’s shot, even though it, too, was hurried, found Opaka’s arm or shoulder and caused him to lose his grip on the rifle. But it did not take him down. He shouted something in a voice even wilder than the storm’s, and came rushing forward as Quincannon reached the ledge.

It was not in Quincannon’s nature to shoot an unarmed man. Then again, it was not in his nature to curry harm to himself by standing on principle. He triggered a round at the onrushing man, aiming low. To his astonishment, he missed entirely — a rare occurrence that he later blamed on the storm and the poor footing.

He had no chance to fire a third time. Opaka crashed into him and sent them both tumbling across the fissured surface of the ledge.

The blowhole spewed a roaring fountain of water just then, drenching them both in its downpour. They rolled over in a clinch, the luna coming up on top as foamy water swirled and tugged around them. But he was one-armed now; the bullet must have shattered bone in the other arm and rendered it useless. Even so, he was bull-strong and fending him off no easy task.

A thump to the side of the head rendered Quincannon briefly cockeyed. It also added fuel to his rage. He swore, bucked, heaved Opaka off him. Blinked his eyes clear. The Navy was still clutched tight in his hand; he cracked the luna on the cheek with the barrel, a blow that sent him reeling.

When Opaka stumbled upright he was close to the blowhole. In the tube below, the surf snarled and hissed and let loose another jet of foaming water. The boil of it coming out of the mouth-like opening churned up around the luna’s feet, caused him to lose his balance. He toppled over, sliding and splashing in the swirling backflow, clawing at the rock as he was pulled backward.

There was nothing Quincannon could do. An instant later, in a wild churning of arms and legs, Sam Opaka vanished into the blowhole.