Leeds tossed the pistol to Higgins, who caught it one handed. With practiced efficiency, the former Gurkha pulled the slide action back halfway, checking that a round was chambered. He then turned, and without a trace of hesitation, crossed to where Kismet lay face down, took the trigger in a two-handed grip, and pointed it at Kismet’s head.
Only then did Higgins stop, glancing up at Leeds to see if a reprieve would be offered.
Finally realizing the futility of the struggle, Kismet stopped thrashing and twisted around to meet Higgins’ gaze. “Al…”
There were a dozen things he could have said, a score of pleas he could have made, and every one of them flashed through his head, but he kept quiet. Anything he might say would accomplish nothing more than a futile sacrifice of his dignity.
But he did not look away from Higgins.
“Do it!” Leeds’ voice was eager, hungry.
Kismet could see the tendons in Higgins’ hand bulge slightly as he started to exert pressure on the trigger — heard the faint rasp of metal sliding against metal — and then, the loudest sound in the world.
PART FOUR
Depths of a Legend
FIFTEEN
Click.
For a moment, no one moved. Higgins stood stock still, as if he had expended the last of his motive force in pulling the trigger, and now hadn’t the energy to even lower his arm. The sound of the hammer striking the evidently impotent bullet seemed to echo in the silent stillness. Then a sound intruded; the sound of Dr. Leeds laughing.
“Shit,” blurted one of Leeds’ gunmen, stepping forward and racking a round into the chamber of his pump-action shotgun. “I'll do him.”
“No.” Leeds didn’t raise his voice; he didn’t have to. The man quickly relented, backing away as Leeds continued. “No, I’ve had my little joke. You didn’t think I’d hand you a loaded gun, and take the chance that you would shoot me with it?”
Higgins sagged a little.
“When your end comes, Kismet,” Leeds continued, his voice still dripping with menace, “it will be far more…imaginative…than the swift release of a bullet in the brain.” He turned to his subordinates. “Tie them up.”
“Wait,” protested Higgins, recovering a little of his nerve. “I meant what I said. You have to believe me.”
“I don’t have to do anything,” countered Leeds. “As it happens, I haven’t figured out what to do with you. I’ll admit; your change of heart, if sincere, surprised me. Right now, I haven’t the time to figure out where your loyalties really lie, but soon…Well, I’ll have an eternity.”
One of Leeds’ men produced a roll of silver duct tape and commenced wrapping several thicknesses around Kismet’s wrists — joined behind his back — and ankles. He repeated the process with a scowling but quiet Annie, but then, following a gesture from Dr. Leeds, allowed Higgins to remain free. The former Gurkha chose not to look Kismet or his daughter in the eye, but sank to the ground, and sat with his head resting against his knees as if exhausted or perhaps nauseous.
Kismet still wasn’t sure what to make of the earlier scene. He still couldn’t believe that Higgins had betrayed them; there had to be some other explanation, and yet, he had pulled that trigger. If not for Leeds’ sleight-of-hand, rendering the weapon harmless, Higgins would have taken his life.
Kismet drew comfort from a single fact: he and Annie were still alive; anything was possible.
As soon as Annie was bound fast, Leeds waved his men off and knelt in front of Kismet. “Now, where is it?”
“Where is what?” Kismet replied with mock innocence.
Leeds calmly extended his maimed right arm and placed the tip of the hook in Kismet’s left nostril. Despite his determination not to give the occultist the satisfaction of a reaction, Kismet instinctively tried to lever his body up and away from the pinpoint of pain that radiated across his face.
“It’s out there,” Higgins said, pointing the lake. “Just offshore. That’s all he knows.”
Leeds stared at Higgins for a moment, weighing the veracity of the admission, or perhaps just trying to decide whether or not to continue tormenting his prisoner, then gave the hook a twist and let Kismet’s head fall away. The occultist rose disdainfully and began snapping orders to his confederates. When he finished, all but two of the men vanished back into the woods. Leeds and Elisabeth remained behind, as did his two newest recruits — Russell and Higgins.
Kismet could taste blood in his mouth, trickling down the back of his throat from the scrape in his nostril,minor though it was, the fresh wound somehow hurt more than the dull throbbing in his leg where the alligator had grabbed him. He spat a bright red gobbet in Leeds’ direction, not quite close enough to invite a reprisal, but nevertheless a gesture of contempt.
“I’m curious about something, Leeds. How exactly do you plan to keep control of the Fountain once you find it? I don’t care how persuasive Lizzy there is, I don’t think the government is going to put you in charge. Or are you and the ‘white power’ boys going to launch the next Civil War from here?”
Leeds cocked his head sideways thoughtfully. “The Fountain? You disappoint me Kismet. I would have thought you’d have figured it out already. The Fountain of Youth is nothing more than an intermediate goal; a means to an end. I thought I explained all this. The Fountain is just a by-product of something far more important.”
“You want the source,” Kismet said, thinking out loud. “A Seed from the original Tree of Life. Take that and you can make a Fountain of Youth anywhere you like.”
“Yes. But it is so much more than that. It is the source of…of everything. Unlimited power.”
“Oh my God,” Annie whispered.
Leeds licked his lips hungrily. “Indeed.”
She blinked at him and then seemed to regain a little of her steel. “I meant, ‘oh my God, he’s a nutter.’”
Leeds just laughed.
Kismet and Annie, still bound, were bodily carried along the top of the serpent mound to an idling pontoon boat. The craft, a commercial model used for chartered fishing trips, could comfortably seat a dozen passengers and crew, but as they were dropped unceremoniously on the deck, Kismet saw that much of the available space was filled with bright yellow air tanks and other pieces of SCUBA equipment. Four of Leeds’ hirelings crowded aboard; the rest melted back into the woods.
Kismet mentally arranged the boat’s occupants like pieces on a chessboard, testing different strategies for escape. Leeds’ thugs were pawns, but deadly ones, who would probably kill without hesitation. But what about the rest? What about Russell, could he be turned with an appeal to reason? Was Higgins beyond redemption, or would he choose to put his daughter’s safety above all else, even as he had apparently done when deciding to surrender in the face of overwhelming odds? With Russell and Higgins on his side, they might be able to overpower the four hired guns; Leeds and Elisabeth didn’t pose much of a physical threat. If Kismet tried to escape with Annie, would the two men try to stop him, or would they throw in their lot with he and Annie?
When the last of the group had crowded onto the boat, the skipper — one of Leeds’ men — nudged the throttle on the outboard and steered toward the spot where they deduced the entrance to the cavern would be found. The boat had been equipped with a very sophisticated sonar DownScan Imaging Fishfinder; the video screen painted an image of the bottom — and what lay beneath the soft accretion of sediment — in stunning hues of color. But as amazing as the technology was, it only served to verify that Kismet’s earlier conclusion about the site was dead-on; at the exact spot where the serpent mound’s tale and head would have met, the sonar identified a large round hole in the limestone of the lake bottom — a submerged cenote.