Hunt at The Well Of Eternity gh-1 Page 5

  Gabriel flung himself aside as the gun roared. The glass in the display case behind him exploded as the bullet hit it. Krakowski yelled in fear and pain as slivers of glass stung him. The reenactor’s rifle was leaning against the case and Gabriel grabbed it as he rolled across the floor. When he surged up onto his feet the gunman fired again, the bullet shattering another case.

  Gabriel didn’t know if the rifle was loaded or not; probably not. But that was the wonderful thing about these old rifles. They didn’t need to be loaded in order to do damage. Gabriel raised the bayonet point and charged.

  The guman tried to fire again, but Hoyt picked that moment to make a break for it, twisting and writhing in the gunman’s grasp. He wasn’t strong enough to break free from his captor’s grip, but he forced the man to turn halfway around to hang on to him.

  Gabriel struck in grim silence, thrusting the bayonet past Hoyt and into the shoulder of the man’s gun arm. The killer howled in pain as his fingers opened involuntarily and the gun hit the floor. He maintained his grip on Hoyt with his other hand, though, and used it to throw the old-timer at Gabriel. The impact made Gabriel stumble backward. While Gabriel struggled to disentangle himself without hurting the old man, the killer ripped the bayonet from his shoulder, threw it aside, and shoved open the glass door behind him. He lunged out into the muggy sunshine with blood welling between the fingers of the hand he was using to clutch his injured shoulder.

  Gabriel scrambled after him, scooping up the gun the man had dropped. While he was at it, he pulled the Colt from his waistband. Armed with both pistols, he ran to the door.

  The glass shattered as he started to push it open. Gabriel ducked back. It meant the gunman hadn’t been alone. He had at least one accomplice outside—maybe the second Jet Skier? Gabriel risked a look and saw the injured man disappearing into the pine forest. Muzzle flashes came from the shadowy gloom under the trees, and Gabriel had to dart for cover as several more bullets stitched through the space where the glass door had been.

  “Stay down,” he yelled to Hoyt and Krakowski.

  “You bet,” Hoyt called from behind a display case. When Gabriel glanced around he saw that Krakowski was crouched there, too.

  No more shots came from the forest, though, and after a few moments Gabriel decided that the gunman and his accomplice probably had fled. He waited a while longer to be sure.

  “Are they gone?” Krakowski asked.

  “I think so.”

  “I’m going to call 911 and get the sheriff’s department out here,” Krakowski said. “They’ll know what to do.”

  “Hoyt, do you think you can take me back where we came from?” Gabriel was careful not to mention their destination, so Krakowski wouldn’t know where they were headed.

  “You don’t figure I’m gonna argue with a fella holdin’ two guns, do you?”

  “Wait a minute,” Krakowski protested. “You have to wait for the police—”

  “Sorry,” Gabriel said. “I can’t do that.” Pocketing the killer’s gun, he took two hundred-dollar bills from his pocket and laid them on one of the display cases that hadn’t been shattered by flying lead. “That’ll pay for some of the damage, and I’ll see to it that the rest of it is taken care of later.”

  “But…but…those men may still be out there! They could shoot at you again!”

  “Not likely. The way he was bleeding, that guy will need medical attention pretty quickly.”

  “That’s one of them,” Hoyt said. “The other—”

  “It’s a chance I’ll take.” Gabriel looked at Krakowski and said, “Quickly, is there anything else you can tell me about Fargo and the Fifth Georgia? Anything you told them that you didn’t tell me?”

  “N-no. I can’t think of anything. I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be. You’ve been a big help. I’m sorry to put you in harm’s way.”

  Gabriel walked outside, Hoyt trailing close behind, broken glass crunching under their feet as they went. Hoyt cast a few nervous glances at the pine forest, but no shots came from the trees as they hurried along the road toward the dock where the airboat was tied up.

  Hoyt heaved a sigh of relief when they came in sight of the craft. “I was afraid those sons o’ bitches might’ve sunk her or shot up the motor.”

  “Better check it over before you crank it,” Gabriel suggested. He didn’t think his enemies had had time to plant a bomb on the boat, but it never hurt to make sure of these things.

  “Oh, yeah, good idea,” Hoyt agreed. “Those fellas you’re goin’ up against won’t stop at much, will they?”

  “From what I’ve seen, they won’t stop at anything,” Gabriel said.

  To give Hoyt credit, the old-timer didn’t demand to know what it was all about, which was good because Gabriel still didn’t know. He just checked over the airboat, reported that nobody had tampered with it, and started the motor. They swung away from the dock and Hoyt pointed the craft back toward St. Augustine.

  The roar of the motor was too loud for conversation, which was all right with Gabriel. He used the time toreplay in his head everything that had happened and to consider what he had learned from Krakowski.

  Instincts honed by years of dealing with trouble told Gabriel that General Granville Fordham Fargo was the key to the whole thing—thoughhow that could be, more than a century after the man lived, he couldn’t say. Mariella Montez, whoever she was, had been in possession of a flag that had definitely belonged to the general, as well as an old whiskey bottle that might have. She had come to the reception to give those two items to the Hunt Foundation, prompting a gang of gunmen to try to stop her. Mariella herself had to be important, too, and not only because she’d had the flag and the bottle. Otherwise they wouldn’t have kidnapped her.

  The last place anyone had seen General Fargo was Texas, Krakowski had said, but Gabriel thought it was safe to assume that the general had made it into Mexico. Otherwise the Fifth Georgia’s other battle flag wouldn’t have wound up in the museum in Mexico City.

  Again, it was only a slender lead…but a slender lead was better than none. It was time he made it to Mexico City himself, Gabriel decided.

  “We agreed on three hundred bucks,” Hoyt protested.

  “That was before you got shot at not once but twice,” Gabriel said as he pressed five hundred-dollar bills into the old-timer’s hand and closed Hoyt’s fingers around them. “You earned this, that’s for sure.”

  “Well…I ain’t gonna argue with you. We’ll just say that some of it’s for bein’ ignorant when the cops ask me about it. I won’t know where you came from or where you’re goin’. All I know is you waved a gun in my face and made me do what you told me.”

  Gabriel grinned. “Thanks, Hoyt. If they ever catch up to me, that’s what I’ll tell them, too.”

  They were back at the Ponce de Leon Harbor marina in St. Augustine now, having made it without any more trouble. It was early afternoon, and even though Gabriel hadn’t had any lunch yet, he wasn’t going to take the time for it. He shook hands with Hoyt, bid the old swamp rat farewell, and headed to the motel to pick up his gear and the rental car.

  He kept an eye out for the cops, thinking that Krakowski might have already put them on his trail, but he didn’t even sight a police cruiser on his way to the airport.

  A short time later he was in the air, talking by radio with Michael and filling him in on everything that had happened in Florida.

  “Good Lord! They tried to kill you twice today?”

  “It just proves that what ever we’re dealing with is pretty important,” Gabriel said. “To someone, anyway. Of course, we knew that when they tried to kill me twice yesterday. Not to mention when they were willing to shoot up the Metropolitan Museum.”

  Michael’s voice came crackling through the radio’s static. “I don’t suppose it would do any good to try to talk you out of continuing with this.”

  “None whatsoever. And you don’t really want me to. You don’t want the bastards t
o get away with it, either.”

  “I suppose not. And there’s Miss Montez to consider, too.”

  “Exactly. We may be the only ones who can help her.”

  “You mean you may be. I’m not doing anything.”

  “There’s plenty for you to do,” Gabriel said. “Find out which museum in Mexico City has that other flag and wangle me an introduction to whoever runs the place.”

  “Consider it done,” Michael agreed. “There’s not a museum the Foundation doesn’t have some connection with.”

  “There you go,” Gabriel said. “Just get the information for me as soon as you can.”

  Gabriel signed off and concentrated on his flying. He was over the Gulf of Mexico, a seemingly endless expanse of dark blue water. Eventually a green line appeared on the horizon to the south. That was the Yucatan Peninsula, Gabriel knew.

  Not long after that a radio call came in from Michael. “I’ve located the flag,” he told Gabriel. “It’s at the Museum of the Americas, a small museum affiliated with the university down there. The director is a Dr. Almanzar. I don’t know his first name and didn’t speak directly with him, but his assistant arranged for you to meet with him this evening at the museum.”

  Gabriel let out a whistle of admiration. “That’s fast work, Michael. Maybe this Dr. Almanzar can tell me how the museum came to get its hands on Fargo’s flag in the first place.”

  “Let’s hope so. And that this leads to some actual answers and not just more questions.”

  He had outraced the sun, so it was only late afternoon when he landed in Mexico City and went through customs. He had worried a little that the Florida authorities, not to mention the ones in New York, might have put out an international alert for him since hell seemed to start popping everywhere he went, but if the Mexican customs officers knew anything about the troubles back in the States, they gave no sign of it. Gabriel passed through without any problems, rented a car, and headed for the hotel where he stayed every time he was in Mexico City.

  He took the bag containing the flag and the bottle fragment with him off the plane. He had decided that he wasn’t going to let it out of his possession again.

  By the time evening was settling down over the vast city in its high mountain basin, Gabriel had showered, shaved, put on fresh clothes, and eaten a decent room service meal washed down with strong Mexican coffee. When he left the hotel he felt considerably refreshed.

  Although affiliated with the national university, the Museum of the Americas was located in Chapultepec Park, downtown, rather than on the university campus. The large park was the site of several museums and one of the city’s cultural centers, Gabriel recalled from previous visits to the city. A purplish sunset hung in the sky as he parked in front of the small but still impressive stone building.

  The main entrance was locked, but a security guard let him in when he called through the glass in fluent Spanish that he had an appointment with Dr. Almanzar and gave his name. The guard consulted a clipboard and then unlocked the door, ushering Gabriel inside. The man pointed down a hallway lined on both sides with display cases and large paintings and said, “Dr. Almanzar’s office is at the far end.”

  “Gracias,” Gabriel said. The lighting in the hallway was subdued, but it was enough for him to see various items in the cases as he walked past them. He looked for the battle flag Krakowski had described but didn’t see it. The paintings on the walls depicted various scenes from every period of Mexico’s history.

  Gabriel knocked on the door at the end of the hall, and a woman’s voice told him in Spanish to come in. He opened the door and stepped into an office cluttered with books and papers. The woman stood beside the desk, frowning at a book in her hands. This must be the assistant, Gabriel figured. Though she didn’t appear very scholarly in a dark blue, formfitting halter dress that looked like she was ready to go out for an evening on the town.

  “Hello,” he said. “My name is Gabriel Hunt. I’m supposed to meet with Dr. Almanzar—”

  “I know.” She closed the book with a snap of pages and set it on the desk. “My assistant told me about your brother’s call. I’m Cierra Almanzar.”

  Well, thought Gabriel.

  Chapter 7

  “I don’t have much time, Señor Hunt,” Dr. Cierra Almanzar said. “What can I do for you?”

  “I’m here about General Granville Fordham Fargo.”

  She nodded. “Carlos mentioned as much. We have the battle flag of General Fargo’s cavalry regiment here at the museum. It’s not on display at the moment, but I can arrange for you to see it.”

  “That would be helpful, thank you. But what I’m especially interested in is how it came to be here.”

  “In a Mexican museum, you mean?”

  “That’s right.”

  “We have numerous American artifacts and documents in our collection. Any time one of your countrymen came down here to my country to live, he brought at least some of his possessions with him. Over time certain of those items find their way into museums. Quite a number of Confederate military men came to Mexico after the Civil War, I understand, including your General Fargo.” Dr. Almanzar ran her eyes up and down Gabriel’s rangy form. “You are doing research on the American Civil War?”

  “You could say that.”

  “I mean no offense, Señor Hunt, but you do not strike me as the scholarly type.” A smile spread over Gabriel’s face. “What?”

  “Nothing,” Gabriel said. “It’s just that I was thinking exactly the same thing about you when I first saw you.”

  She returned his smile. “I have an event I am expected to attend tonight. I do not normally dress like this.” A crease suddenly appeared on her forehead and she snapped her fingers. “Wait a moment. Gabriel Hunt. Of course. You were the one who located the Dumari Temple in Indonesia a couple of years ago!”

  Gabriel shrugged.

  “Michael Hunt’s brother,” Dr. Almanzar went on. “Of course.” She pushed a lock of raven hair back from her lovely, olive-skinned face. “I read your parents’ book. I was sorry to hear about what happened to them.”

  Gabriel shrugged again, his smile fading. Nine years had passed since their disappearance at sea, eight since they’d been declared dead. With everything he’d managed to find in that time, all the headline-making discoveries, he’d been able to make no headway at all on what had happened to them, and it continued to gnaw at him.

  “I’m sorry, Dr. Almanzar, but if you have another engagement, perhaps we’d better get started…”

  “It’s just a fund-raiser for the museum.” Her tone of voice made it clear that she considered the event a chore. “I can be a little late if I need to. You wish to see the general’s flag?”

  “Yes, and I’d like to know as much about its provenance as I can.”

  She gestured with an elegant hand toward the computer on her desk. “I’ll check our records and see what I can find out. While I’m doing that, you can ask Carlos to let you into the Special Collections room. The flag is stored there.”

  “Carlos is your assistant?”

  “That’s right.” Dr. Almanzar sat down at the keyboard and began clicking away. “I’ll join you there in a few minutes.”

  Gabriel nodded and left the office.

  Carlos turned out to be the man he’d thought was a security guard. He led him down another short hallway to a locked door, produced a ring of keys and unlocked it. The large room on the other side of the door was full of shelves and display cases. Gabriel saw pre-Columbian statuary and pottery, stone knives and axes, some sort of feathered headdress, tapestries and paintings, and glass-topped cases full of documents.

  When Gabriel asked, Carlos said, “The American Civil War stuff is over there,” pointing to the left-hand wall. “Your country is very fortunate, amigo.”

  “Why do you say that?” Gabriel asked.

  “You’ve only had one Civil War. Mexico has had so many we lose track of them.”

  Carlos left Gabrie
l in front of the Civil War artifacts, but not before issuing a warning not to touch anything until Dr. Almanzar got there. Gabriel agreed. He leaned over the case where the flag was displayed and studied it through the glass.

  As Stephen Krakowski had said, it was a standard Confederate battle flag, two diagonal rows of stars intersecting in the middle of a red field. Tattered around the edges, and with a hole in it that had probably been made by a minié ball. Gabriel didn’t see anything unusual about it.

  He straightened as he heard the click of high heels in the hallway outside. Dr. Almanzar came in a moment later with a couple of pages she had printed out from the computer in her office.

  “This is actually quite interesting,” she said. “It seems that the museum acquired the flag from a private collector in Villahermosa in the early twentieth century.”

  “So it’s been here for a hundred years?”

  “That’s correct.”

  “Where did the private collector get it?”

  “That sort of information would not necessarily be in our records…but in this case, it is. The flag was handed down to him from his grandfather, who claimed it was given to him in return for a service by ‘the gringo warlord.’”

  “The gringo warlord?” Gabriel repeated.

  She showed him the section of the printout where that very phrase appeared. “There is apparently a legend in the Chiapas region of a white man from the north who came there to raise an army with the goal of returning to overthrow the invaders who had enslaved his homeland. He disappeared somewhere in the jungle along the border between Mexico and Guatemala and was never seen again.”

  “General Fargo?”

  Dr. Almanzar shrugged. “Perhaps. The warlord’s name is long since lost to history, Señor Hunt. But given the history of this flag, it seems at least a likely possibility.”

  “Chiapas is a pretty rough area,” Gabriel mused. “Lots of rebels down there.”

  Dr. Almanzar made a face. “Lots who call themselves rebels. Politics is often nothing more than an excuse for banditry. I don’t know why you are so interested in General Fargo, but if you are thinking of going to Chiapas to look for more information, I would advise against it. You might find yourself in much danger.”