Tracker

Tucker used the distraction to touch his throat mike and try radioing Kane.

Can you hear me, buddy?

* * *

Kane crouches amid the shadowy pack.

He bleeds, pants, and stares the others down.

None come forward to challenge. The one who first did slinks forward on his belly with a low whine of submission. His throat still bears the mark of Kane’s fangs, but he lives, having known to submit to an opponent who outmatched him. He still reeks of urine and defeat.

Kane allows him to come forward now. They lick muzzles, and Kane permits him to stand, to take his place in the pack.

Afterward, Kane turns. The battle has carried him far from the car, from the gun. As he stares, pondering what to do, a new command fills his ear.

“TRACK ME. BRING GUN. STAY HIDDEN.”

With this wild land now his, Kane heads back to where the fight began. He rushes silently through the woods, whispering through bushes, leaping darkness, dodging stone.

But it is not only the land that is his now.

Shadows ghost behind him.

He is not alone.

* * *

Csorba called out in Hungarian, holding out his GPS.

He had stopped near a flat-topped crypt raised a foot above the ground. Its surface was mostly obscured under a thick mat of leaf detritus and mulch, as if the earth were trying to swallow the tomb up.

Tucker was handed a hammer and a crowbar. He considered how best to use them to his advantage, but now the professor had a pistol in hand, pointed his way, plainly not planning on getting his own hands dirty. Plus the man still had the wireless transmitter in his pocket. Tucker remembered the frightened look on Aliza’s face, the grief shining from her father’s.

He could not fail them.

With no choice but to cooperate, Tucker worked with the others. Using hammers, they managed to loosen the lid. Once done, they all jammed crowbars into one side and cranked together on the slab of thick marble, as if trying to pry open a stubborn manhole cover. It seemed an impossible task — then, with a grating pop of stone, the lid suddenly lifted. An exhalation of sulfurous air escaped, like the brimstone breath of the devil.

One of the trio made a sign of the cross on his forehead, in some superstitious warding against evil.

The others made fun of this action, but only half-heartedly.

Afterward, with some effort, they pushed and shoved and worked the lid off the base of the crypt.

Csorba came forward with his flashlight and pointed the beam down. He swore happily in Hungarian. Cheers rose from the others.

Stone stairs led from the lip of the tomb and vanished into darkness below.

They’d found the right tomb.

Orders were quickly made.

Tucker was forced to sit on the edge of another crypt, guarded at gunpoint by two of the men. Domonkos and Csorba, both with flashlights in hand, climbed down together to see what lay below, vanishing away, leaving only the glow of their lights shining eerily out of the open tomb.

With nothing to lose, Tucker sat with his arms behind his back, feigning full cooperation. As if mumbling to himself or praying, he subvocalized into the throat mike. “Kane. Keep hidden. Bring gun.”

He held his palms open behind him and waited.

He breathed deeply to keep himself calm. He let his eyes drift closed.

C’mon, Kane…

One of the men yelped. He saw the man twirl pointing his pistol toward the woods. A low growl flowed from the forest, a shadow shifted to the left, twigs cracked. Other throats rumbled in the darkness, noise rising from all sides. More shadows shifted.

The two men spoke rapidly in Hungarian, their eyes huge.

It was the cemetery’s pack of wild dogs.

Then Tucker felt something cold and wet touch the fingers behind his back. He jumped, startled. He hadn’t heard a thing. He reached back there and found fur. Then something heavy was dropped into his palms.

The pistol.

“Good boy,” he whispered under his breath. “Stay.”

It seemed Kane had won over some friends.

Tucker gently placed the pistol on the tomb behind him. Using the ongoing distraction, he reached blindly back to Kane to investigate the audio glitch. He didn’t want to be cut off from his partner any longer.

Especially not now.

He needed this link more than ever.

He toggled the camera off, then on again, rebooting it, praying that was enough.

A moment later, a satisfying squelch of static in his left ear meant all was right with the world.

“All done, Kane. Go back and hide with your friends.”

All he heard as Kane retreated was the softest scrape of nail on marble. Within another minute, the forest went quiet again, the pack vanishing into the night.

The two guards shook off their fear, laughing brusquely now that the threat seemed to have backed off, sure they had intimidated the pack away.

As Tucker listened to the soft pant of Kane in his ear, he slipped the pistol into his belt and hid it under the fall of his jacket.

And not a moment too soon.

A shout rose from the open crypt. The light grew brighter. Then Domonkos’s pocked face appeared and barked new orders, smiling broadly. Tucker could almost see the sheen of gold in his eyes.

Had they actually found the stolen treasure?

Tucker was forced to his feet and made to follow Domonkos down into the crypt. He guessed they needed as many able-bodied men as possible to haul up the treasure from below. Tucker mounted the steps, trailed by the other two men.

The narrow stairs descended from walls made of brick to a tunnel chiseled out of natural stone. He lost count at a hundred steps. Conversation had died down as they descended, stifled by the weight of stone above and the dreams of riches below. Soon all Tucker heard was the men breathing around him, their echoing footfalls, and somewhere far below the drip of water.

Good.

At last, the end of the staircase appeared, lit by the glow from Csorba’s flashlight.

Reaching the cavern, Domonkos entered ahead of them, sweeping his arm to encompass the space as if welcoming them to his home. He found his voice again and chattered happily to his comrades.

Tucker took a few steps into the space, awed by the natural vault, dripping with water, feathered with thick capes of flowstone and spiked above by stalactites. Tucker wondered how many Jewish slaves Oberfuhrer Erhard Bock had worked to death to tunnel into this secret cavern, how many others had died to keep its secret — and as he stared over at Csorba, he wondered how this Jewish scholar could so blithely discount his own heritage and prepare to steal gold soaked in his ancestors’ own blood.

Csorba stood next to a stack of crates, each a cubic foot in size and emblazoned with a swastika burned into the wood. He had broken one open, pulled down from the top of the pile. Hundreds of gold ingots, each the size of a stick of butter, spilled across the floor.

Csorba turned, wide-eyed.

He spoke to the others, who all cheered.

He even shared the news with Tucker.

“Erhard Bock lied,” he said, awe filling his voice. “There are not thirty-six crates here. There are over eighty!”