The Solomon Curse

“Some of them were,” Lazlo said from the wall near the entry, where he was regarding three more skeletons. “Same treatment here—zip ties, wrists bound behind them.”

“But no sign of what killed them,” Sam said under his breath. “That’s odd. Maybe there was some sort of deadly outbreak and the natives decided to take care of their own? A mass grave?”

“Doesn’t explain why some of them were tied up,” Remi said.

“There are a few shoes in here, too. Modern,” Sam said.

“Why would the rebels kill mostly children? That makes no sense,” Lazlo said.

They stood, puzzled, at a loss for words. Eventually, Sam edged to the narrowest section of the cave and peered into it, and then he called out, “Look at this.”

They moved to where he was staring at another skeleton, this one not completely decomposed. A swarm of maggots were finishing with their meal in the corpse’s rib cage. Remi frowned in revulsion. “Recent,” she said, her voice tight.

“Yes, and an adult, male probably, judging by his size—or, if not an adult, at least older than the rest of them.” Sam crouched by the bones and pointed at the skeleton’s shattered spine. “But check out the vertebrae . . . I’d bet money that was the cause of death. He died from a broken neck. Although look at his ribs and his left arm—also broken. And his ankle.”

Sam stood and played his light farther into the cave. He gasped at the spectacle before him and took a step back. Remi drew close to him and took his hand. Hundreds of skeletons were collected in a pit, the bones dull in the flashlight beams.

Lazlo’s intake of breath was a groan. “Good heavens . . . it is a massacre.”

They took careful steps into the new section of cave, Sam leading the way. When he neared the edge of the bone pit, he paused and examined the skulls closest to him. “These look older. And they’re adults. Larger.” He peered at the nearest skull. “This one died of a gunshot wound to the head. See the entry wound?”

“This one, too,” Remi said.

“Look at this chap,” Lazlo called out from their left. “Both his legs were broken, looks like, and only partially healed. You can see the calcification.”

“What’s that?” Remi said, directing her light at one of the skeletons. Sam’s eyes narrowed as he regarded where she was indicating.

“Looks like manacles. Rusted beyond recognition. They’ve been here a long time—probably from the war years,” Sam said.

“The murdered villagers?” Lazlo asked.

“Doubt it,” Sam said. “They were left where they fell, according to Nauru’s account. And I don’t think the Japanese would have found much use for slave labor that couldn’t walk because of broken legs. No . . . this is something different.”

“Maybe this is where the victims of the medical experimentations wound up?” Remi said softly.

“That makes more sense.” Sam shuddered involuntarily at the thought, the sheer number of dead difficult to comprehend. He moved around the edge of the pit to where the cave continued deeper and lit the co

“The ceiling drops to next to nothing and it gets impassible. Looks like there might be another cavern on the other side, but if there is, we aren’t getting in through here.”

“If we can’t get through, neither could the Japanese. Whatever horror this is, it doesn’t have anything to do with the treasure,” Remi said.

“No, I don’t think it does,” Sam agreed. “But it does create several more mysteries.”

“Ones we need to get to the bottom of,” Remi whispered.

“Agreed,” said Sam, his expression grave.

Lazlo glanced at Sam. “I understand the war dead, at least intellectually. But the children are more than puzzling.” He stood, lost in thought, and then continued, his words quiet. “I wonder if there’s any truth to the stories of the giants. Didn’t you say that the legends have them stealing villagers and eating them?”

Remi stared at him. “Lazlo. There are no such things as giants. Come on.”

“Right. Of course. But what I’m suggesting is that perhaps the stories are based on some sort of fact. That perhaps there’s an element of truth to them. I don’t know . . . maybe there are surviving soldiers from the war who never surrendered, who went mad and became mass murderers. I remember a movie like that—the blighter was still going years after the war had ended because nobody ever told him it ended.”

Remi gave him a perplexed look. “They’d be in their eighties or nineties. You really think that’s realistic?”

“Preposterous,” Leonid spat.

“I agree, although one might have said the same thing about a sunken city just off the coast.”

They retraced their steps until they were back in the sunlight, the mass grave left behind, and Sam checked the time. “There have to be other openings along this ridge if the diary is accurate.”

Lazlo nodded. “It makes sense. We have the water sources to create the cave system, we have the right sort of limestone . . . but how do we proceed from here? And what about the skeletons? Surely we have to report them to someone.”

“When we do, we can expect the authorities to take this area apart,” Leonid observed. “Any chance of us locating the treasure is lost at that point.”

“But this is mass murder,” Lazlo said.

“Yes, it is. And we’ll report it.” Sam hesitated, his gaze locked with Remi’s. “In due time. For now, we’re here, but we haven’t found what we came for. I think we have to stay focused on our objective. Once we find the treasure, we’ll have every cop in the islands crawling through these caves. But we need to continue our search before that happens.” He stared at Lazlo. “Agreed?”

Lazlo nodded. “How much more daylight do we have left?”

“At least half a day. It’s only eleven-thirty.”

“‘The way lies beyond the fall,’” Remi quoted, gesturing at the waterfalls. “There are the falls. We need to keep going along this ridge until we find the right cave.”

As Sam glanced at the jungle, the hair on the back of his neck stood on end. He sca

A feeling like they were being watched.

“I know it’s a little strange, but I can’t help but feel like we’re not alone,” he said softly.

Remi turned and fixed him with a deadpan stare. “Are you hearing voices again?”

“I’m serious,” he said, glancing around.

“Sam, honestly. There’s nobody out here but us giants.”

“Very fu

CHAPTER 42

After another half hour of hard going, the jungle thickening as they made their way east, Remi stopped and pointed. “Look. Another cave,” she said, indicating a dark area between two groves of trees midway up the ridge. The group regarded the opening—small, by any measure, barely large enough for a human to squeeze through.

“You’re right,” Sam said. “Come on, gang. This could be it.”

They worked their way up the rocky slope, the terrain rough underfoot. Sam slowed after nearly going down when his foot shifted an unstable rock. “Be careful. Some of this is loose. Probably a recent landslide,” he warned.

“We’re right with you,” Remi said.

Sam continued up to a small flat area just outside the cave and waited for them to make it up. Lazlo was huffing by the time he arrived, and Sam was about to say something, when Leonid cried out from down the slope.

“Gah!”

Sam and Remi hurried to where Leonid was face down on the rocks, his left leg bleeding where it was wedged between two flat boulders. “Are you all right?” Remi asked.