Notes:
OOC: Please note that this story is written in the vein of pulp serials of the 1930's and not to be considered remotely accurate representation of Africa, its people or its culture. This is entirely fiction.
Chapter One:
Kpinga of Creation
SOMEWHERE IN THE CONGO - 1935
"How on Earth, do I allow you to convince me to embark on these foolhardy escapades?"
Ezra Standish, who preferred to call himself Chief Procurer, (though his associates persisted in referring to him with the less dignified appellation of Scrounger), demanded as he stood waist deep in a liquid reeking of aromatic spices, such as cinnamon, cardamom, garlic while fingers of chilli and sprigs of mint drifted past him. As he awaited the answer from inside the earthenware pot that was large enough for him and his companion to occupy, more liquid was being poured into the receptacle, as well as what appeared to be whole onions, split eggplants and strands of long, green beans.
"Relax Ezra, this is just temporary," Nathan Jackson remarked, his calm a stark contrast to Ezra's somewhat agitated state. Leaning against the curved wall of the pot, he picked up one of the beans floating by and crunched down on it. As Ezra watched appalled, Nathan dipped the remaining half of the stalk into the liquid and tasted it. "Not bad, needs more salt."
Ezra was aghast. "The salt will undoubtedly come when they boil the skin off our bones! You do realise we are the meat in this...this...vile stew!" He swatted an offending onion away, causing it to bump against the ceramic just as more liquid was poured into the pot. "When I agreed to play decoy, you assured me these people would welcome us as servants of Muluku! Their creator god! It was the only reason why I was willing to accompany you on this part of the plan!"
"Yeah because telling you the Mangbetu Tribe were cannibals was a sure-fire way to get you to come with me," Nathan grinned, swallowing down the last of the bean. "I ain't stupid."
Ezra glared at him. "You Sir, have broken my trust!"
No sooner than he spoke those words, a fresh column of soup was poured through the opening of the pot, landing right on Ezra's head. Nathan bit the inside of his cheek, knowing that he really shouldn't laugh but he couldn't help it. Ezra, who always managed to look like he stepped out of a Hollywood magazine like Clark Gable, in his riding breeches, tailored shirt and waistcoat, not to mention boots, looked like something the cat dragged in and got rid of because it just looked too sorry.
"I blame you," he smouldered before taking a step back, away from any more descending columns of soup, he was meant to enhance with his flesh.
Wisely, Nathan managed to side step more vegetables being tossed into the pot, as they created splashes upon impact. Overhead, they could see the beauty of the African sky, cloudless and painted with differing shades of cerulean. It was not quite noon and despite their current situation, had the makings of a nice day.
"Settle down Ezra," Nathan replied with a little smile, not at all concerned because this sorry incident was only a small part of a bigger plan. "If you get upset, it will just make the meat tougher and that might piss them off."
Ezra flung an onion at him. "Is that your attempt at humour? If so you are failing! How is it, whenever Mr Larabee requires a distraction of some sort, you invariably enlist me to aid you? And for some reason I cannot seem to comprehend, I always let you talk me into this insanity. When we were in Peru, I was the one who had to dress up like that virgin to charm the Chieftain."
"Yeah," Nathan tried to hide his smirk and failed completely. When the Chieftain had discovered Ezra was not in fact a lovely Amajuacas maiden but a man, the rest of the seven had believed their lovable gambler, scrounger and con man was done for. Except the Chief's taste actually went that way. And Nathan thought he had seen Ezra scared before. "Well you know, if you have given it up to the man, you would have been up to your ears in honey and mangoes."
"You have no shame," Ezra glared at him. "How can you be so calm when these people are preparing to eat us!"
Nathan let out a sigh, deciding to give the man a break. "Ezra, we'll be out of here as soon as Chris and JD get to the Temple of Muluku and get the Kpinga. Not to mention, Vin and Josiah ain't gonna let anything happen to us. Besides," Nathan couldn't help but add, "they're just preparing the base. They haven't even put us over a fire yet. A pot this size? It's going to take ages to simmer."
"I admire your ability to make such distinctions." Ezra grumbled.
The Kpinga of Creation supposedly the blade that the god Muluku used to cut the tails of the monkey to create the first men, was awaiting a buyer in Rhodesia who planned on taking it to the British Museum. Other parties had been after the blade for years, largely because the hilt of the thing was meant to be encrusted with a veritable fortune in diamonds. In their hands, the stones would be picked clean and sold individually, destroying the cultural value of the blade. While the seven weren't being altruistic in their hunt for the object, they would rather see the thing preserved than destroyed.
And if they got paid handsomely for it, why not?
Suddenly the floor of the pot beneath them lifted and both men stumbled inside the large cooking receptacle, while being sloshed around with the ingredients of the soup. Nathan managed to grip the edge and peek over it to see what was happening outside only to see the pot had been hoisted up with two carrying poles, and being ferried to what looked like a pretty intense fire a short distance away.
Oh, Ezra was not going to like this...
The chamber was fifty feet from the entrance down the winding staircase to the large doors, framed by stone panthers on the other side of the room. The ceiling was constructed of rock, with ornate circular grooves equally spaced across its entire length and breath. There was nothing in the room except cobwebs as large as curtains draped in corners and dangling from above. The floor was created from slabs of black marble, each with a faded shape that looked like a star on each tile.
While Nathan and Ezra occupied the Mangbetu with the first taste of human flesh they had enjoyed in a while, Chris Larabee and JD Dunne had slipped unnoticed into Muluku's temple to seek out the kpinga. The temple was old when the Nazarene was born and while the upper portion of the pyramid like structure saw traffic by the Mangbetu, it appeared this section had been given a wide berth. The amount of dust on the floor and the stale air told Chris the natives stayed out of here.
Fortunately, there was a little light emanating through stone windows, which were little more than slots in the wall, but wide enough to ensure they were not completely bathed in darkness. It was just as well because Chris's sense of trouble told him this room looked too benign for his liking. After years of doing this, a room like this was like flypaper. It was made to be a trap. The trick was trying to decipher how to avoid it or end up dying horribly, usually in some brutal death trap devised by superstitious people determined to protect their god.
"What now JD?" Chris glanced at the young man behind him.
JD Dunne was on loan to him from the University of New Mexico. The curator of its museum, Orin Travis had decided if Chris and his team were going to hunt down antiquities on the institution's behalf, they ought to have the expertise of someone who actually knew languages and decipher ancient codices. It was a shame the kid was going to have to go back to school soon because both Chris and Buck Wilmington had taken a real liking to him. Among the jaded treasure hunters that made up his team, JD was a breath of fresh air and Chris wanted to keep him around if only for Buck's sake.
"Okay," JD said trying not to appear nervous as he studied the ancient scroll in front of him, aiming the flashlight against the yellowed papyrus, studying the faded language on it. "According to this, to reach the Blade of Muluku, we must cross the great hall of heaven by following the spine of the cat."
"The cat?" Chris shot him a look. "What does that mean?"
"I'm not sure," JD stared at him. "I didn't even think they had cats around here. I mean lions maybe, but not cats?"
Chris lapsed into thought for a moment. "Okay, let's retrace until we can figure it out. I'm getting a sense of trouble about this room and I rather not find out the hard way what it's hiding."
"Hiding?" JD gulped, trying not to show his fear. Instinctively, his foot shifted backwards and scraped the tile behind him, without the young man realising it.
Suddenly, the sound of grinding rock screeched through the air, forcing Chris to spin sharply around on the slab he was standing on to see something shifting in the darkness above.
"JD!" He grabbed the young man by his coat and fairly lifted the young man off the ground a little so JD didn't touch anything else. A column of stone slid out of the circular grooves he'd seen on the ceiling, slammed into the place where JD would have stood like a battering ram. The impact against the stone was so loud, Chris swore he heard the slab crack like an egg. If JD had still been standing there when it came down, he would have been pulverized.
"You okay kid?" Chris asked as JD stared at the spot, almost ashen with shock.
"Yeah," he managed to nod a moment later. "I guess that's what the hall of heaven means." He replied but his voice was shaking.
"I'm fine," the young man spoke. "I guess that means we can't go backwards."
Unfortunately, the impact of stone against stone meant their covert entry into this place may have been lost, if the excited voices he could hear distantly was any indication. While Chris could not understand the language, the chatter becoming increasingly louder told the leader of the Magnificent Seven, they were about to have company.
JD who could also hear the same noise, stared at him. "Uh Chris..."
"Yeah," the Man in Black nodded. "We're about to have company."
Considering the Mangbetu's word for company also translated into 'meat for stew', Chris decided it was probably best that they were not present when the natives arrived. Fortunately, they had a narrow window of time because Chris was fairly certain the Mangbetus were prevented from entering this chamber by the same booby trap that almost claimed JD's life a moment ago.
"Okay," Chris faced front, ignoring the approach of the Mangbetu for now because they had a more immediate problem to deal with. "Read that last part for me again," He instructed, studying the room carefully, now that he was aware those grooves were in fact the base of stone plinths that would crush them if they took a wrong step.
JD nodded quickly and looked at the scroll again. "We must cross the great hall of heaven by following the spine of the cat. I didn't think they had cats around here. Lions and panthers maybe but not cats..."
"I don't think they meant it literally," Chris remarked, aware JD was still becoming accustomed to literal and symbolic translations after only a few months in the field with the team. However, the mention of panthers did get him thinking. He looked at the marble tiles they were standing on, all black, each with a star engraved in the rock. "JD, the spine of the cat, I think they mean the constellation Panther."
"What?" JD's eyes exclaimed, as if a light bulb had gone off in his head. "I got it Chris! A lot of Arabian influences filtered down to Africa, the Panther would be a Babylonian constellation they see in the winter months down this neck of the woods."
"Very good," Chris grinned. "Except we call the Panther, Cygnus. All right, I think I got this figured out."
Chris was grateful his knowledge of astronomy, at least the constellations, was up to scratch. It was a skill he found useful when one was lost somewhere without a compass or a map. The knowledge of the stars had kept him from wandering aimlessly about in the middle of deserts and in one case a jungle in New Guinea infested with tribes that collected heads as trophies. Apparently, his blond hair was meant to be something of a prize.
Taking one step to the tile left of him, Chris waited to see if he was correct in his assumption that the constellation Cygnus was the way to get across this floor in one piece. When no heavy plinth dropped down on either of them to offer a crushing death, Chris assumed he was on the right path. He took another step forward and then another left, before turning right. Repeating the sequence for another three times, they finally reached the great door on the other side of the room.
The entrance led to a smaller chamber, this one no more than ten feet across, with a pedestal in the centre of it. Lying across it was the Kpinga of Creation. The blade was gleaming, even though it had been languishing here for Christ knew how long, to say nothing about the large, rune sized diamonds encrusting the hilt. Too many treasure hunters had found themselves food for the Mangbetu because of their lust for those jewels.
"Wow," JD exclaimed staring at the weapon. "It's really here."
"They wouldn't have gone through all the trouble of protecting it for centuries if it wasn't." Chris replied as they approached the pedestal. While the scroll that led them here said nothing about traps once they crossed the final hurdle, Chris wasn't taking chances. Reaching into his black duster, he pulled out a foldable pointer and extended it to its full length.
"Get ready to move when I tell you," Chris offered a warning as he used the pointer to push the blade off its stand.
No sooner than Chris had pushed the blade off edge, causing it to clatter noisily against the floor, there was an audible snap of a mechanism and Chris saw the ornate grooves in the walls suddenly become pockmarked with small, dark holes. He had no more than a second to register this when he dropped to the ground at lightning speed, dragging JD with him. Thin wooden spikes flew out of the holes and across the room, embedding themselves in the opposite wall, intended to impale any thieves.
The spikes were sharp and lethal, no doubt laced with toxin, Chris suspected. As both he and the young student lay crouched on the floor, Chris flashed him a grin.
"Better than a classroom, right?"
Shrouded behind thick leafy shrubs beneath the shade of tall, equatorial trees with broadleaves, and ignoring the discomfort of too much humidity, Vin Tanner stared through the sight of his M1 Garand rifle, watching the Mangbetu hoisting the large cooking pot on two carrying poles towards a rather impressive fire, in the middle of the village. Surrounding the campsite where the cooking was to be done were at least thirty Mangbetu natives, chanting and pounding against hide drums, performing their version of ringing the dinner bell.
Vin was stretched across the moist ground, his rifle perched on its stands, watching the proceedings and caught a glimpse of Nathan peeking over the edge of the pot, undoubtedly surveying the situation he and Ezra were in. The action apparently annoyed their hosts who immediately launched a litany of abuses that sent the team's medic back into the pot again.
"Should we wait a little longer?" Vin asked. "Just to make Ezra sweat a little more." He couldn't help but say with a smirk. Knowing the man to the degree they did, Ezra was probably stewing already, without the need for a fire
"Probably not," Josiah Sanchez remarked, the older man was staring through a pair of binoculars in different direction, watching a group of warriors making fast tracks towards a location he knew all too well. He could see a dozen Mangbetu warriors, carrying sharp spears and cruel looking Kpingas, hurrying towards the entrance of Muluku's Temple, meaning business.
From their vantage point, Josiah and Vin had remained undiscovered, prepared to perform their part of the plan, that is being the means to allow their comrades to escape when the time came. By the looks of Ezra and Nathan's situation, not to mention the hordes about to descend on Chris and JD, that time was now.
"Judging by what's happening at the temple, I'm guessing it's time to vacate the area." Josiah lowered his binoculars.
"You take all the fun out of things Josiah," Vin smirked, not looking at the man as he took aim with his rifle, squeezing off a shot. The explosion of sound was quickly followed by the even more prolific impact of the bullet against the huge earthenware pot. The bullet shredded on impact as he intended, its duty to crack the ceramic open like an egg. It did so spectacularly, spilling out its contents, being Ezra and Nathan, onto the earth below.
The destruction scattered the warriors around the pot as Vin took pulled the trigger again. This time, the bullet struck a nearby post, the sound causing more disturbance than the actual bullet. Vin saw no reason to kill anyone, unless they tried to get in the way when Nathan and Ezra made a run for it.
Meanwhile Josiah was making his own preparations to create further discord in the village as he loaded up the compact mortar shells into the barrel of the wonderfully portable Ordance ML two-inch Mortar launcher. Pulling the trigger on the weapon, the shell exploded from the snub-nosed barrel and obliterated one of the huts nearest the campsite. Wood and pieces of thatch roof flew in all directions, creating further pandemonium as the entire village descended into screams of fear and panic. Children were clinging to their mothers as angry men barked at each other, trying to determine the source of all this chaos.
Taking advantage of this confusion was Nathan and Ezra, who were running away from the campsite at top speed. When Vin saw their departure was noticed by a warrior about to throw a spear that would have landed in Nathan's back, he pulled the trigger and downed the man with one shot. The warrior collapsed with the spear in his hands and Nathan looked over his shoulder briefly to register the shot before looking gratefully in Vin's direction.
The instant Buck Wilmington heard the mortar shells, the pilot of the plane they called Darlin' Millie, named after his sainted mother, immediately tossed aside the magazine he had been reading and rushed to the cockpit. If he knew his friends at all, when they came running out of the jungle on this strip of cleared land that served as a runaway, they wouldn't be alone. Slipping into the pilot's seat, he moved across the controls like a man with intimate knowledge of where everything was after years of practise.
Just like he did with women.
Buck glanced through the cockpit as the sound of mortar fire, was followed by gunfire in the distance and tried to glimpse the others emerging from the tree line. He spared the action only a moment because as soon as the engines came to life with a loud roar and the plane's fuselage began humming with that familiar resonance he knew as well as his own breath, he had other matters to attend. Once the engines had reached crescendo, the sound of mortar and gunfire was eclipsed by the familiar whump whump whump of the propellers on either side of the craft.
Buck wasted no time getting the wheels moving as he directed Millie from where she had been awaiting the others. Directing the nose of the craft towards the length of the makeshift runway, the intensity of the gunfire told him they would be making a hasty escape. As the engines rumbled in patience, Buck continued to stare out of the cockpit window, hoping things had gone as smoothly as they hoped.
Oh, who was he kidding? These things never went according to plan.
The first to emerge from the trees was Ezra and Nathan. Both men were running for dear life and considering the shouts of anger, not to mention gunshots, Buck guessed there was a good reason for that. They were followed by Josiah who had his launcher hanging across his back, same as Vin, who had switched to the Winchester he insisted on mutilating with a saw, every time he got near one. Firing the mare's leg behind him as he ducked an arrow shot at him.
Everyone except Vin raced into the open door of the plane, practically jumping into the cabin.
"Where's Chris?" Buck shouted from the cockpit. In truth, Buck knew his old friend could take care of himself, it was the kid that the pilot was more concerned about.
"On his way!" Josiah replied as Vin stood by the door to the plane, waiting for the arrival of their leader and their rookie recruit.
No sooner than Josiah had said those words, Chris Larabee and JD Dunne bolted out of the tree line, running hard against the red dirt. Following too close behind them appeared to be the entire Mangbetu nation, crying bloody murder as they wielded spears and blades. Vin wasted no time opening fire, not aiming at any one but giving them pause enough for Chris and JD to reach the plane. Vin continued firing, aided by Nathan, who had emerged with a machine gun and was firing above the heads of the natives.
"Come on!" Chris beckoned them once he and JD reached the aircraft.
Wasting no time, they rushed into the plane, with Vin pulling the door close behind him, just in time to hear the impact of spear points against the fuselage, not to mention the roar of Mangbetu closing in on them.
"BUCK! WE ARE LEAVING!" Chris demanded.
"Like a bat out of hell!" Buck shouted with a grin from the cockpit as the plane began to rumble forward picking up momentum as the landscape rolled by the cabin windows.
"Did you get it?" Josiah asked as the aircraft rumbled to safety.
"Yeah," Chris grinned, lifting the Kpinga for the others to see. The glimmer of jewels encrusting the hilt drew a response from small gasps to light whistles from those present. "All forty thousand dollars of it."
"Of course, if we simply decided to keep it..." Ezra who could not help himself had to remark.
"We made a deal Ezra," Chris warned.
"Of course, of course," Ezra shrugged perfectly aware of how intractable Chris could be about these things. Besides the money was not worth the reputation they would destroy if they were to double cross their client. "I was merely ruminating."
"Well ruminate after you get a bath," Vin who was standing next to the southerner remarked. "You smell like soup."
