The Reluctant Warrior (26 page)

When they finally stumbled into the base it was to a shocked but elated reception, for they had been given up as dead. Hasty explanations of trekking three weeks across the continent and coming out on the coast, then making their way down towards the base surviving on penguin meat was barely believed, but their hosts couldn’t come up with any other rational explanation as to how they had come through the ordeal unscathed, and so the cleverly fabricated story passed into the official log books.

One week later they managed to hitch a ride on a flight to New Zealand, and from there they flew back to the States. Rex and Jonathon immediately set to work selling up everything they owned, and converting it into medicines and other items that would be useful to the Noragin.

Unfortunately their story had beaten them home and their faces were splashed across the media from one end of the country to the other. It wasn’t long before the magazine and talk show offers came flooding in. Rex and Jonathon convinced Jed that they should accept every offer they could, as the more money they made the more medicines they could afford to take back with them. So Jed did it for the good of the Noragin, lied his way through every interview, all the while wishing he could just slip back into the quiet life he had enjoyed before all this had happened to him.

He had been home three weeks when she turned up on his doorstep, looking all tanned and rested from her holiday in Hawaii. She didn’t wait for him to invite her in, just breezed past him and then waited for him to catch up with her in the lounge.

“I was over the moon when I heard you were safe,” she cooed. “I was devastated when I heard you had disappeared down there in that dreadful place. I swear I cried over it for days.”

Jed poured himself a scotch and sat down. She looked from him to the scotch bottle and back to him again before walking over and filling herself a glass. Sitting down on the sofa opposite him she almost had the glass to her lips when she froze. Placing the glass down on the coffee table in front of her she stared at Jed intently. “You look fantastic,” she said incredulously. “I was expecting your ordeal to have aged you, but I swear you look ten years younger.”

“What can I say but the Antarctic climate agrees with me.” He slugged down a shot of scotch before leveling his eyes at her. “I take it everything is over between you and this John fellow?”

She huffed. “I dumped him the moment we got back from Hawaii, he was so boring. All he wanted to do was laze around on the beach and swim all day. Not once did he take me shopping.”

It was funny really, he had always thought her to be such a stunning woman, but as he studied her now he couldn’t help thinking she wasn’t a patch on Amora. Whatever attraction he had felt towards her before had completely disappeared, and now all he felt was sadness that he had wasted so many years of his life on a woman who wasn’t worth it.

“I’ve got my bags in the car now,” she was saying, “and I thought that after I’ve moved back in for a while we could take a trip to Europe. I’ve always wanted to see Venice, and now that you’ve got loads of money coming in from all these talk shows you’ve been doing we can do all the things we’ve always wanted to do.”

So that was why she was back, she had heard about the trio’s lucky escape from death, and how they were in hot demand with the highly paying media and wanted her cut in it. It was so typical of her, and it made him sick to his stomach. She didn’t care one iota about him it was just the money that appealed to her, and the prestige she would gain from being the woman of one of the country’s well known faces of the hour.

“Maybe when we get back from overseas you could use some of your contacts in the media world to get me a modeling contract.” She smiled sweetly at him, and he couldn’t help comparing it to one of Amora’s smiles. Cassie’s was a contrived packaged to order smile designed to get what she wanted, whereas Amora’s was a genuine heartfelt emotion that lit its recipient up with its loveliness. “You know how much I’ve always wanted to be a model,” she continued, totally unaware of how much he was despising her. “Maybe I could put out my own label. With the sort of money you’ll have coming in from now on you could easily bankroll me.”

Jed put his glass down on the arm of his chair and stood up. “Get out, Cassie,” he said quietly.

“What…?” She looked at him as if she hadn’t heard him correctly.

“I said…get out,” he repeated.

“Jed, I know we’ve had problems but it’s nothing we can’t work out. You know how much we both love each other.”

Jed thought about the love he and Amora had shared, a pure sacrificial love where neither would deliberately hurt the other. That was why he had refused to bring her to New York, for he knew the pain of losing him would be less than the pain of her homesickness living in a strange and unfriendly land. But Cassie had no idea what love was. The only person she had ever loved was herself.

“Get out and don’t ever come back,” he said angrily. “I don’t ever want to see you again.” He waited until he heard the front door slam shut before he picked up the phone and tapped out Rex’s number. “Hello Rex… its Jed. I’ve changed my mind. I’m going back with you…back to Amora.”

“Jedidiah David Rand?”

Jed peeped round the partially open door and took the stranger and his associate in. Dark suits, dark glasses, and dark sinister look. “Who wants him?”

The stranger flipped open his wallet flashing an official looking identification card at him and snapping it shut before he had a chance to take a good look. “I’m agent Lennox and this is agent McCallum from C.I.A. special investigation unit,” he said. “We’d like to ask you a few questions about your time in Antarctica.”

“There’s nothing much to tell. Antarctica’s not much more than ice and freezing cold temperatures.”

“All the same, we’d like to come in and speak with you for a few minutes if we may.”

Jed opened the door wide and waved them in before following them down to the lounge and easing himself into his old armchair while they took up the sofa. “So what is it you want to know?”

Agent Lennox leaned forward on the sofa, the tips of his fingers on his right hand resting against those of his left. “What we really want to know is what you saw in the six and a half weeks you were missing.”

Jed laughed. “You’re kidding me…right?”

Lennox’s face remained rigid. “No, Mr. Rand, we’re not. Could you answer the question please?”

“I saw snow and ice and penguins. Does that answer your question?”

“I don’t think you’re taking this very seriously, Mr. Rand,” Lennox said sternly.

“Well, how can I? Honestly, what did you expect me to say?” Jed looked from Lennox to McCallum and back again. “You know that Antarctica is a wasteland. In fact, it’s a miracle we survived at all.”

“We think so too. Actually, we think that no man could survive for six and a half weeks in that environment with only three weeks rations.”

“Have you seen our talk shows?”

Lennox nodded.

“Then you would have heard our explanation on how we survived already.”

“Humor us again.”

Jed gave a great impression of a bored sigh. “In a nutshell, we headed in what we hoped was a straight line until we reached the coast. From there we managed to live off penguin meat until we were fortunate enough to stumble across the base.”

“That’s an awful lot of good fortune,” Lennox said. “You see, Mr. Rand, we don’t believe you were wandering around out there on the ice all that time.”

Jed feigned surprise. “Where else would we have been in Antarctica?”

McCallum who up until now had remained silent popped open his briefcase, and taking out a file set it down on the coffee table in front of Jed. “Does this mean anything to you, Mr. Rand?”

Leaning forward Jed picked up the file and read its title aloud, “The private journal of Admiral Richard E. Byrd.” He swallowed ever so slightly and hoped they hadn’t noticed his Adams Apple bob up and down. He had heard they were trained to pick up on little things like that. “Isn’t that the chap who flew over the North and South poles in the 40’s and 50’s,” he said, as nonchalantly as he could manage.

“Come on, Mr. Rand, don’t play games with us,” McCallum said. “Not only do you know who Byrd was, we believe you’ve seen what he saw.”

“What did he see?”

McCallum sighed, and reaching back into the briefcase extracted a set of photographs that he handed to Jed. Reluctantly turning his eyes to look at them he was startled to see black and white prints of mammoth elephants, saber toothed tigers, a dinosaur, and a host of other animals he had seen during his time with the Noragin.

“Are these clones,” Jed asked, hoping to throw them off the trail. “I’ve heard the Russians have been trying to bring back extinct species using genetic material that’s been frozen under the ice for centuries.”

“You are starting to annoy us, Mr. Rand,” Lennox said sharply. “You know where these photographs were taken.”

“Look…I don’t know what it is you want from me.” He looked from one to the other again, before handing the photos back. “If you are suggesting there are prehistoric animals living in Antarctica and that my friends and I have seen them then you are sadly mistaken. There is nothing there but snow and ice.”

“Colonel Charles Lionel Montrose,” Lennox said slowly, and then fixed Jed with an enquiring gaze.

Jed shrugged his shoulders. “Is the name meant to mean something to me?”

“Possibly, at this stage we’re not sure. There was a Colonel Montrose who was sent along with an entire division to Antarctica to set up a base inside the earth.”

“Inside the earth…I don’t follow you.”

“The earth is hollow, Mr. Rand. It is teaming with animal life, and maybe even human life. That is where Montrose was sent to set up his base. What we want to know is did you come across that base, or any survivors of that division?”

Jed threw back his head and roared, laughing until the tears streamed down his face, and hoped he was putting on a convincing show. “Rex and Jonathon have put you up to this haven’t they?” he said, getting up and tipping what was left in the scotch bottle into three tumblers. “They really got me good this time. You almost had me with all that C.I.A. stuff.” He held out a glass to each man.

Lennox stood up while McCallum gathered up the file and photographs. “We will be speaking to you again, Mr. Rand,” he said coldly. “So please don’t leave the city.”

“Oh, you’re good…you’re very good,” Jed said, still chuckling away. “I hope Rex paid you well for this, because you just put on a top performance.”

Lennox eyed him savagely. “We’ll let ourselves out, Mr. Rand,” he answered curtly, “and we’ll be in touch.”

Jed waited until he heard the car speed off before putting his glass down and picking up the phone. “Rex… its Jed… the C.I.A. have just been here.”

“I know, they’ve just been here too, and I’m willing to bet they paid Jonathon a visit as well. Tell you what…how about meeting Jonathon and I at the bar tonight…usual time.”

As Jed arrived at the bar at 8.30 that night he had no idea whether he had been followed or not. If the C.I.A. really were so interested in their activities inside the earth then they would probably have all three men’s phones bugged, and would be tracking their movements.

“Let’s get down to business,” Rex said, after Jed had ordered his drink and sat down at the table beside Jonathon. “We all agree that this is a serious situation?”

The other two men nodded.

“I’ve been in touch with Simon Marshall.”

Jed placed his drink down on the table. “The billionaire fellow who hired us to help him search for that lost city in the Amazon?”

“That’s him. Do you recall us sending Jonathon down on a rope to save him when he went over the cliff and landed on that ledge?”

“It would be difficult to forget that, he almost died.”

“Yeah, well, he was very appreciative of our efforts at the time and kept on saying if there was anything he could ever do for us we shouldn’t hesitate to let him know.”

“You sly dog what have you been up to?”

“There’s no way we can fly back to Antarctica on a conventional flight now, the C.I.A. would pick us up and then we’d be taken into custody. That pod only has a couple of week’s power left in it before it shuts down, so we can’t afford any delays.”

“So what are you suggesting?”

“Simon has a company that’s contracted to freight medical supplies and equipment to the base in Antarctica. He’s going to unofficially let us hitch a ride, and as there’s only one stop along the way, on a private airstrip on a sparsely populated island in the South Pacific, there’ll be no customs to go through.”

“Perfect,” said Jed. “Not only do we get ourselves back to Antarctica without the authorities being any the wiser, but also we can smuggle in all the medicines we want for the Noragin.”

“That’s right, but we have to be at Simon’s airstrip by 4.30 tomorrow morning for takeoff.”

“How’re we going to give the C.I.A. the slip?”

“Simon’s sending a limousine round to the bar at 9 o’clock sharp. Three men are going to get out, and then they will enter the bar and exchange clothes with us. We’ll then get into the limousine which will take us to Simon’s, while they drive back to our places in our vehicles.”

Jed lay in a billionaire’s bed that night but he slept very little, all he could think about was getting back to Amora and her little farm. If it meant he had to be king and govern the various tribes that inhabited that hollow earth then so be it, just so long as he could be with the woman he loved.

When they touched down in Antarctica Simon managed to keep everybody occupied elsewhere as his three friends slipped off the plane and out into the barren wastes beyond the base, then it was simply half an hour’s walk with the locator device in Rex’s hand until they came to the pod.

Two days later they were skimming over the warm lake and then the forest of red flowers towards the prairie lands of home. Jed’s heart began to beat faster as the forest where the caves were came into view, and he could barely contain his excitement when the pod alighted in the clearing. Jumping clear of the doorway he shouted over his shoulder, “Let’s go and get our women,” and then with the other two beside him he jogged up the trail to the caves. But he didn’t find her at the caves.

“I’ve just been talking to a woman who says Amora’s gone back to the farm,” Rex informed Jed when he had caught up with him later on. “Jonathon and Anna are going to stay on at the caves for a couple of weeks, but Frida and I are taking the pod out to our farm,” he explained. “We can drop you off at Amora’s place on the way through if you like.”

Jed spotted Amora digging in the garden a minute or so before she heard the pods approach. Putting her hoe aside she walked slowly towards the site it had landed, and Jed knew he would be the last person in this world she would be expecting to step out.

She stopped dead in her tracks when she saw him, and so he wasted no time in covering the ground between them.

“I’ve come back,” he said simply.

“You told me you would never be able to return.” She looked so confused, and this was not the reception he had been hoping for.

“I found a way to get back, and now I shall stay forever.”

“Did you go back to see your woman?”

He could see the suspicion in her usually trusting eyes. “No…I didn’t go back for her.”

“But you did see her?”

“She came to see me, but I told her to go away, because I am in love with you.”

“You left me and went all the way to the land of the Sky-Gods just to tell her that?”

Rex stepped forward, sensing that this could mean the end of the relationship he knew he must do some damage control. “In the land of the Sky-Gods Jed is not just a mighty warrior he is the mightiest warrior the Sky-Gods have ever seen. A warrior that mighty, and that famous, had to return to put things right before he left his land forever. It would not be fair to take a man like Jed Rand away from his people without giving them the chance to say goodbye.”

Her eyes flicked back to Jed. “Is it true…are you the mightiest warrior the Sky-Gods have ever seen?”

Rex’s eyebrow went up, daring Jed to contradict him and risk shattering her happy illusion.

“Yes, it is true, Amora,” Jed said, determined not to let her slip away from him because he had been stupid enough to leave her and return home. “I am considered to be the mightiest warrior the Sky-Gods have ever seen.”

For the first time a smile played about her lips. “And are you back to make me your wife as you once promised me you would?”

“I am,” he said firmly, “and I will never leave you again except for those times I am away on matters concerning the kingship.”

“And will my husband the king live here, with his wife, on our farm?”

“I will,” he answered, and then fishing around in his pocket he produced a sapphire ring he had purchased in New York only hours before the C.I.A. had come knocking. “In the land of the Sky-Gods it is the custom of our men to give their brides a precious ring before they marry them. I selected this ring because the stone reminds me of the color of your beautiful eyes.”

As he slipped the ring onto her finger she gasped. It was the most beautiful ring she had ever seen, and she was sure it would be the most beautiful ring the Noragin had ever seen too. Slipping her arms around his neck she pulled his mouth down to meet hers. “I will make you the best wife,” she said, as soon as their lips had parted, “you see if I don’t.” And then taking him by the hand she led him down the path to the house that was soon to be filled with their love for each other, and in the years to come with the sound of eleven pairs of tiny feet.

THE END

I hope you enjoyed Jed Rand and friends in “The Reluctant Warrior.”

You may like to try my YA/SciFi/Adventure novella –

“The Traitor of Rahzine.”

Word Count: 31700