The Vanishing Tribe Read online

  “Behind you!” Lenny cried, and Annja turned just in time to see a dark winged shape swoop down at her from the nearby tree line with stunning speed.

  She didn’t stop to think, dropping into a crouch and bringing her arms up over her head to protect herself as the thing flew past. She quickly got back to her feet, but it had already disappeared into the darkness.

  “What the hell was that?” Lenny asked in shock.

  Annja didn’t have any answers. She’d barely gotten a glance at it. What she had seen left her with the impression of a winged creature about the size of a large child, but that could just as easily have been her imagination filling in the blanks for what she hadn’t seen.

  Of course, it could also be the very thing they’d come here to find.

  The bat men of Botswana.

  “Get those cameras rolling, Lenny,” she said as she moved from side to side, trying to catch a glimpse of the creature.

  Her suggestion was unnecessary. Lenny was already all over his equipment. “Cameras one, two and three are live,” he reported. “Four is giving me some trouble but I should have it online in another moment or two.”

  “Good. We don’t want to miss this thing a second—”

  “Look out!” Lenny yelled, but his warning came too late. Annja was turning when she felt claws rake her left shoulder. Pain flared down her arm. And then the thing was gone again. Quickly taking stock, she could feel blood beginning to seep down her back but didn’t want to lose her night vision by turning on a light to inspect the injury. She’d deal with it later.

  First things first.

  If it came back, which it most likely would, this time she would be prepared to meet it on its own terms. She’d been using a walking stick to help her navigate the uncertain terrain of the swamp for the past few days and she snatched it up now, holding it before her in two hands like a baseball bat.

  “Do you see it?” she asked.

  Lenny didn’t respond. He was standing with his back to her, fumbling with something in front of him that she couldn’t see and muttering darkly under his breath.

  Something wasn’t right.

  The strange buzzing sound the creature made whenever it swiped at them. The lack of aerobatics from a creature supposedly born to fly. Her companion’s current distraction.

  The answer, when it came to her, seemed so obvious she was surprised it had taken her so long to figure it out.

  Lenny straightened and, without turning, said, “It’s coming back, I think!”

  This time, Annja was ready for it.

  She could hear the swoop of its wings as it approached. Underneath that, though, was the same dull whine she’d noticed before. She had some idea what was causing that sound now and she intended to put her theory to the test.

  “Here it comes again!” Lenny yelled, and suddenly the creature was diving at them for the third time that night.

  This time, Annja was ready for it. She brought her staff around in a vicious swing, getting the full force of her hips into it, like a baseball batter determined to knock the ball clear out of the park.

  “No, Annja!” Lenny shouted, but it was too late.

  Her strike was right on the money.

  She heard a loud crunch, felt the shock of the blow reverberate all the way up her arms and saw the creature go careering off in an uncontrolled spin. A moment later there was a loud crash ten feet below them.

  Not a thud, but a crash.

  Annja headed for the ladder.

  “What are you doing?” Lenny called.

  “Putting an end to this right now,” she replied. She descended from the platform and then pulled her flashlight out of her pocket. Flipping it on, she cast about for a few minutes before locating the object she’d struck with her staff. She hurried over and shone her light on the wreckage.

  The so-called bat man was in reality nothing more than a medium-size drone with a pair of motorized wings and some special effects added to give the suggestion of something more when glimpsed in the near-dark. Knowing that, it didn’t take a genius to put two and two together. After spending days on end with nothing to show for it, Lenny must have been ordered to use the drone so the trip wouldn’t be a complete waste. After all, footage of some barely seen flying creature was better than no footage at all, right? She knew just the producer who would think that way, too.

  She looked up as Lenny finally joined her. Her expression must have reflected a fair bit of what she was feeling, because he winced.

  “I think you have some explaining to do,” she said through clenched teeth.

  He held up his hands in a placating gesture. “Would you believe this was all Doug’s idea?”

  She would, she would indeed.

  2

  The sun woke Annja just after nine the next morning. She tried to go back to sleep, thinking she deserved a few more hours after the fiasco of the night before, but found she just couldn’t. Bowing to the inevitable, she rose, dressed and ran through her usual routine of morning stretches to awaken her body in preparation for the harder exercise to follow.

  After listening to Lenny’s explanation about the drone the night before, Annja had decided she was done with the episode and stalked back to their rented Nissan SUV. Lenny had followed sheepishly in her wake. The ride back to their hotel had passed in silence, and Annja had retired to her room as soon as they arrived. There she finally got a chance to look at the shoulder wound. It turned out to be minor—a deep scrape most likely caused by the outer edge of the drone’s wing as it swept past her. She cleaned it out, bandaged it and fell into bed exhausted.

  This morning her arm was a little stiff but she quickly worked out the kinks as she ran through her warm-up exercises. When her muscles were good and limber, she reached into the otherwhere and drew forth her sword. It sprang into being in her hand with the speed of thought, fully formed, the hilt already warm to her touch as if she’d only been holding it seconds before. Who was to say she hadn’t been? For all she knew time ran differently in the otherwhere—the mysterious place where the sword stayed until she pulled it out. Days here might be the merest microseconds there. Only one thing was certain. The sword was always there, waiting for her.

  Her life hadn’t been the same since that fateful day when she’d brought the broken, scattered pieces of the sword together for the first time since their original owner, Joan of Arc, had been burned at the stake five hundred years earlier. The sword had miraculously re-formed in a flash of power right before her very eyes and, in some strange way she still didn’t understand, had chosen her to be its next bearer.

  The role came with its own unique set of responsibilities, protecting the innocent first and foremost among them. Her innate sense of justice seemed amplified when she carried the sword and as a result she’d found herself in any number of situations others would have walked away from. Numbers didn’t matter, nor did the odds; what mattered was that she acted whenever possible to defend those who couldn’t defend themselves.

  It wasn’t a life she would have chosen for herself, but now that she was in it, she couldn’t imagine doing anything else.

  Annja slipped into a series of movements designed to continue honing her already considerable skills with the weapon. Kata after kata flowed out of her as naturally as water from a spring and Annja quickly found herself lost in the synergy of thought and motion, becoming one with the sword in such a way that it ceased being a separate object but was instead an extension of herself. When she finally slowed to a stop over an hour later, she felt energized and ready to take on the day.

  She released the sword back into the otherwhere, marveling at the way it vanished in the blink of an eye. She showered, changed and left the hotel behind, looking for a place to eat.

  Upon arrival in Botswana, they had set up a base of operations in Maun, the district capital of northwestern Botswana that served as the jumping-off point for exploration of the Okavango Delta to the north and the Makgadikgadi Salt Pans to the e
ast. What had once been a small village along the wide banks of the Thamalakane River had grown over the past couple of decades into a town of some forty thousand people. It was an interesting mixture of the old and the new, where hotels, lodges and even a rental car facility vied for room with square cinder-block homes with tin roofs and an infestation of donkeys and goats every morning when the local farmers brought their goods to market. Annja found a small café just down the street from the hotel and had a leisurely breakfast of fresh fruit and toast.

  While she ate she eyed her cell phone, debating whether to call Doug now or wait until later. She was still pretty ticked off about the events of the night before but the sooner she dealt with this, the sooner she could move on to whatever was next on the agenda. She couldn’t imagine going back to the swamp again.

  When her breakfast was over, she snatched up her cell phone, dialed the familiar New York number and waited.

  “Doug Morrell.”

  “What do you think you’re doing?”

  Doug recognized her voice, but not her tone. “Right now?” he asked. “I’m drafting a memo to Marketing about—”

  “Don’t give me that nonsense,” Annja interrupted. “You know exactly what I’m talking about.”

  “Um, actually, I don’t,” Doug said. “I can hear that you’re upset, Annja, but—”

  “Of course I’m upset! Did you think I wouldn’t find out?”

  “Find out about what? I really don’t understand—”

  “You had the special-effects department create a simulated bat man and coerced my cameraman into using it when it looked like we wouldn’t get any real footage. Something I told you would happen before we even left the States.”

  There was a moment of silence, and then Doug said, “I have no idea what you are talking about, Annja.”

  The smile that crossed her lips at his suddenly flat tone was almost predatory. “Good,” she said. “Then you certainly won’t mind that I practiced my Babe Ruth impression on it with my hiking staff and knocked it out of the sky in midflight.”

  “Wha-a-at?” Doug shrieked. “Are you insane? Do you have any idea what that thing cost? Effects is going to kill me, never mind what Accounting will do to my budget....”

  “I thought you had no idea what I was talking about?”

  Silence.

  “Um, you see...” Doug finally stuttered.

  This should be good.

  “Ah, it was strictly a backup plan. You know, just in case the bat men were migrating or something....”

  Annja let him babble for several minutes as she sipped her coffee. Doug had tried to enhance—his word, not hers—her shows with special effects in the past and each time she’d soundly shot him down. This time he’d conspired to do it behind her back, with her cameraman, no less.

  A message needed to be sent.

  “...and so I took it upon myself to support you—”

  “Doug?”

  “Yes, Annja?”

  “I’m taking the day off, Doug. I’m going to do a little shopping, eat out at an expensive restaurant and generally enjoy myself in an effort to forget that you just tried to pull off a mechanical bat man. All of which will be coming out of your budget, of course. Come tomorrow, when I’m in a better mood, we’ll talk about what we’re going to do next. Understood? Good.”

  She could hear Doug spluttering for a reply in the background as she disconnected.

  She finished her coffee, paid the check and then stepped out the door. There were several clothing stores around the café where she’d just had breakfast. If she didn’t find anything there, she would wander back past the hotel to the large outdoor bazaar that filled the streets for several blocks in that direction.

  The first couple of stores didn’t have anything that interested her, but the third one was full of fabrics dyed in brilliant hues and she quickly fell in love with several items. The proprietor, a woman a few years younger than Annja, took particular pride in showing her around the shop. She quickly found her irritation at Doug and the events of the night before slipping away in the wake of the young woman’s enthusiasm over helping her. In the end Annja bought several brightly colored tops and even a beautifully cut sundress just to show her appreciation.

  She was headed out of the shop when a small white sign stuck in the corner of the window caught her eye. She leaned closer for a better look.

  Public Notice of Auction

  Personal Effects of Explorer

  and Adventurer Extraordinaire

  Robert C. Humphrey

  Willoughby’s Auction House

  10:00 a.m., Today Only

  Robert Humphrey. She knew that name.

  A glance at her watch told her it was a few minutes before ten. If she hurried, she might just make it.

  She stepped back inside the shop.

  “Forget something, miss?” the proprietor asked.

  “Willoughby’s Auction House. Is it far?”

  “No, miss, not far at all. Four blocks up on the right,” she said, pointing for emphasis. “Above the post office.”

  “Thanks.”

  Annja hurried up the street. The post office wasn’t hard to find and a quick question to one of the locals standing in line outside brought her around the side of the building where a staircase led up to the second floor. A door at the top opened up into a wide room that was clearly the site of the event, if the large Willoughby’s banner across the back of the room was any indication.

  The auction was already under way when Annja slipped inside and found a seat in the back. She was surprised by the turnout. About two dozen people, many of them clearly not locals, filled the rows of chairs in front of the auctioneer’s podium. As each new item was introduced, a pair of assistants would hold it up in front of the group. At the same time a large image of the item was projected onto the wall behind the auctioneer.

  The sale moved along briskly and Annja was amazed not only by the scope and variety of the items up for bid but also the amounts individual buyers were willing to pay for them.

  Humphrey, she remembered, had once been a highly respected adventurer. He’d been the height of celebrity back in the mid-eighties, thanks to a series of well-publicized activities such as climbing—without oxygen—the highest mountain on each continent, dog-sledding solo across the South Pole and breaking the record for circumnavigating the earth by hot-air balloon. He’d even hit the top spot on People magazine’s Most Eligible Bachelor list five years straight.

  Then a tabloid paper had revealed that Humphrey had sunk several million dollars into an effort to prove the existence of the abominable snowman, or yeti. The public had laughed it off. Celebrities, even men like Humphrey, were allowed their pet projects, it seemed. But then other reporters began digging deeper and it quickly became apparent that Humphrey had more than just one pet project. UFOs. Pyramid power. Bigfoot. Nessie. The hollow earth theory. Name just about any subject on the outer edge of science and myth and Humphrey was involved in it somehow. When the information came to light, he went public with his enthusiasm for all things esoteric and paranormal. That had pretty much sealed his doom. The reporters went on a feeding frenzy, like sharks in a pool of chum. Humphrey had withdrawn from the public eye for many years. From time to time you would hear that he was involved in some crazy expedition or another, like the time he’d tried to retrace the route taken through the Amazon jungle by Colonel Percy Fawcett in his quest to find the ancient city known only as “Z.”

  Listening in on the conversations around her, Annja learned that Humphrey had been living here in Maun for at least the past ten years, possibly longer. He’d disappear into the outback for weeks at a time, hunting for who knew what.

  Maybe he’d been looking for the bat men of Jiundu, as well, she thought wryly. He’d certainly chased crazier ideas than that.

  He and his entire expedition had disappeared two years ago while chasing down the legend of the Lost City of the Kalahari, an ancient city of enormous proport
ions supposedly built by the ancestors of the modern-day San tribesmen. Given that the San had been one of the most nomadic people on the planet, Annja found the idea that they’d built a massive city in the desert ludicrous. Then again, Humphrey and even Chasing History’s Monsters had certainly searched for stranger things.

  She was just about to get up and make her way out of the auction when a new item was introduced that caught her eye. It was a small drawing on what looked to be old parchment paper, mounted in a simple wooden frame.

  “Our next piece shows an artist’s representation of Lake Makgadikgadi in its heyday, somewhere around twenty thousand years ago. Mr. Humphrey’s records indicate that this drawing was done by a man named Gilarmi Farini in 1895, though we have not been able to substantiate the claim. Is it possible? Certainly! Is it likely? I’m afraid I can’t answer that. So, let’s start the bidding on this fine piece at fifty dollars. Do I hear fifty?”

  On impulse, Annja raised her hand.

  “Fifty dollars from the lady in the eighth row. Do I hear seventy-five? Seventy-five dollars?”

  A man a few rows in front of Annja raised his hand.

  “Seventy-five, it is! Can I get one hundred? One hundred dollars?”

  A sudden sense of need ran through Annja, so sharp it was almost painful, and while she didn’t understand it she decided to listen to it. Her hand went up a second time.

  “One hundred dollars! Do I hear one twenty-five?”

  For a moment Annja thought the man a few rows ahead of her was going to bid again, but he must have thought better of it. He let the moment pass.

  “One twenty-five, do I hear one twenty-five? No? Then it’s one hundred dollars going once, one hundred dollars going twice, and sold to the woman in the eighth row!”

  No sooner had the auctioneer’s gavel rung out than the doors in the back of the room were thrown open and a man rushed inside.