* * *
The Krim device sensed a valuable one. Highly charged with emotion. A low personal credulity level. Perfect for the application of prukrin transfer. It responded.
PART II
It cracked and growled, and roared and howled,
Like noises in a swound!
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge,
“Rime of the Ancient Mariner”
9
It’s all Greek to me.
There was no moment of transition. One second there was a fight in the Oriental Institute, between polished glass cases and under modern track lighting. In the next moment there was searing sunlight. And the group tumbled onto the deck of a wooden ship, which was sliding down the front of the swell. The sea was wine-dark and laced with champagne bubbles, as the ram sliced through the wave.
Jerry had a fine view of the water. He’d nearly fallen over the front of the gunwale in landing, before pulling himself back from the drink. Then he almost wished that he hadn’t.
The villainous-looking crewmen were rowing the wooden ship with frantic energy. Well, about forty of them were. The other ten or so were bearing down on the newcomers—armed either with bronze swords or with long spears in hand. There was something about the way they moved on the bucketing deck that, even to a landlubber like Jerry, said old seamen. The only thing that said it more was the stench. Jerry wasn’t giving any odds that they were unfamiliar with the swords or spears either.
He glanced sideways. They were close to land. Worth swimming for . . . except that it was a sheer cliff that they were skimming next to. The gray wall looked almost polished. He looked the other way hastily, as the sailors advanced. What he saw made him swallow and wonder if he should grab an oar. The dark water was trailed with racing foam. No wonder the rowers were pulling frantically! Even from here he could hear the grumble of the white-lipped whirlpool. The air above it was hazed with a smoking mist. One way or another, this was going to be one mother of a wild, wild ride.
One of the advancing sword-swinging sailors shouted a recognizable word . . . “Odesoos.”
* * *
Jerry Lukacs was, in many ways, the epitome of the absent-minded professor. And he was possibly the most frightened person on the ship. But camouflaged by the perpetually vague expression on his face was an acute mind. Quick, too. It took him barely seconds to work out where they were. Somehow they were between Scylla and Charybdis, on board Odysseus’ vessel. One of the famous black ships.
The unknown holds terrors for the imaginative person. But knowing all about the terror that really is coming gives the imagination a focus. Jerry thought he knew exactly what came next—even if having read about it wasn’t at all the same as actually being there.
Therefore he was the only one who was not giving his full attention to the advancing sailors. Instead he was looking ahead.
There, in the middle of the sheer, cloud-capped expanse of gray cliff, was a dark stain—the maw of Scylla’s cave. And, if he understood the odd-sounding Greek correctly, then Odysseus was being wily again. The leader of the Achaean sailors was shouting: “Herd them into the bow! The monster will take them!”
* * *
It happened with such speed and casual brutality. Private Hooper was the closest to the advancing men. One of the scruffy-looking sailors stepped up to him and started yelling at him. Hooper was a big guy. He didn’t take too kindly to being pushed and yelled at by someone at his armpit level. Not even on a strange boat with the pushee bellowing in some goddamn foreign language, with a pigsticker in his hand. So he pushed back.
Sergeant Anibal Cruz saw the sword blade come right through Hooper’s back—in a fountain of blood. And then, abruptly, Hooper disappeared.
Cruz had grown up in a tough neighborhood. There’d always been some gang trouble, and Anibal had been familiar with violence since he was a kid. But that seaman took “natural-born killer” to a whole new level. That guy had stabbed Hooper just like a man might kick a stray dog.