Serpent's Kiss. Alex Archer

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СКАЧАТЬ if her accent was American or Canadian. He knew there was a difference between the two, but he didn’t quite know how to tell. He would have known if she had a British inflection.

      “ Grimjoy, ” one of his father’s men said as if he were familiar with the vessel.

      “I know.” Rajiv nodded happily. “I know that boat.” He looked at the radio operator. “Can you locate it?”

      The man made a few final notations on the map. “I have it now.” He handed up a slip of paper with the coordinates listed.

      “How far away are we?” Rajiv demanded.

      “Ten or fifteen miles. They’re north of our position.”

      “Is the boat in the open sea?”

      The radio operator shook his head.

      Goraksh knew that within the country’s boundaries the authorities would arrest his father for what he was doing. Most of the men on the Black Swan had been in trouble with the law on some occasion.

      “Does anyone else know they’re out there?” Rajiv asked.

      “I’ve been monitoring this frequency. So far they’ve received no reply.”

      “Good.” Rajiv gave the paper with the coordinates to the helmsman. “Set a course to take us there immediately.”

      The man nodded and hurried away.

      Rajiv strode out of the wheelhouse and onto the deck. He bellowed orders to abandon the sinking cargo ship and put on sails.

      Goraksh watched his father, but he listened to the woman’s plaintive voice coming over the radio frequency.

      “Please. Someone has to be out there. We’re adrift. I don’t know how to work the boat.”

      In seconds the Black Swan got under way. She heeled hard to port, caught the wind and sliced through the rolling waves like a thoroughbred.

      When he joined his father on the deck and saw the savage exuberance on his father’s face, the sick knot inside Goraksh’s stomach twisted more violently. He’d never seen his father kill anyone, but he was aware of the stories that were told in the rough bars and opium dens in the darkest corners of Kanyakumari that said Rajiv Shivaji was a murderer several times over.

       5

      “Dude, nagas were evil.”

      “Maybe in Dungeons & Dragons Third Edition, but not in Three-Point-Five. In Three-Point-Five you could roll up a naga character and play one. You could be Lawful Good if you wanted to.”

      “Yeah, well Three-Point-Five ripped D&D’s canon all to hell. It was just a stupid marketing ploy to bring back players who wanted to play monster characters and got pissed because they couldn’t.”

      “Playing monster characters is cool.”

      The constant chatter had finally gotten on Annja’s last nerve as she scanned the ocean shallows for more artifacts like the naga. She’d been listening to the arguments cycle viciously between Jason and one of Professor Rai’s students for two hours. At first the discussions had been amusing. Now they were exhausting.

      “Hey!” Annja turned around quickly and brought both of the younger men up short. They splashed to awkward stops in the water. “Gamer geeks—enough with the chatter.”

      Jason and the other young man just looked at her owlishly. They even blinked at about the same time.

      “The naga statue we found isn’t a playing piece from some long-lost D&D game,” Annja said. “We’re supposed to be out here looking for more artifacts.”

      She and Lochata had agreed to keep the students busy until the rescue helicopter arrived. They’d salvaged enough water and energy drinks to get them through the next few hours.

      “You think that naga was like part of a chess set?” the other young man asked.

      Irritated, Annja pinned him with her gaze. “What’s your name?”

      “Me?” The young man pointed at himself and looked surprised.

      “Yes. You.”

      He shrugged. “My name is Sansar.”

      “Fine. Listen up. No, I do not think that naga statue was part of a chess set. Or any kind of game.”

      “It would be kind of big, I suppose.”

      “Sansar,” Annja said, struggling to maintain her composure.

      The young man looked at her.

      “What I think is that the naga statue came from somewhere out there.” Annja waved at the shallows that lapped at the foot of the cliff. The flooding had almost totally receded.

      “Like, it was just laying out here somewhere?”

      “Or was buried under the sand.” Sand, shells and other debris from the sea lay strewed across the dig site and into the jungle. “The tsunami moved a lot of sea floor. Maybe it shifted some things around,” Annja said.

      “You think there’s more out here?”

      “I think there could be more out here,” Annja corrected. She couldn’t believe how lackadaisical the two were about potentially finding more artifacts.

      “So we could be out here tromping around in the water for no reason,” Jason said.

      “Personally, I think it beats sitting around the dig site in muddy clothes waiting for help to arrive,” Annja said.

      Jason frowned. “If my PSP hadn’t gotten washed away, I’d rather be sitting in the shade playing a game.”

      Okay, Annja thought with a sigh, forensic anthropology in a nice, quiet lab is soooo going to be your thing.

      “When’s the rescue helicopter going to be here?” Sansar asked.

      “I don’t know,” Annja answered. She felt a headache coming on, but she didn’t know if it was caused by hunger, the hot sun, spending the night in a tree or listening to the never-ending argument.

      “Man, I hope somebody finds more food,” Sansar said. “Do you think a Pringles can could survive getting submerged? I mean, if it hasn’t been opened. Those things are watertight before you peel them open.”

      Annja turned to face the two. “I’ve got an idea.”

      They waited.

      “Why don’t you two walk in that direction?” Annja pointed in the opposite direction.

      Jason looked that way, then he looked back at Annja. “Why do we have to walk that way? Why can’t we walk with you?”

      “Because we can cover more ground if we separate.” Annja hoped she sounded reasonable instead СКАЧАТЬ