Instinct: A Chess Team Adventure - By Jeremy Robinson Page 0,78

dinosaurs here and this cavewoman couldn’t hold a candle to Edgar Rice Burroughs’s barbarian queen. Burroughs’s heroes never fell in love with something so . . . primal. They would have shot it on the spot.

But the man. The enigma. His presence complicated things. Were there others like him? Would they have been safer on the other side of the river with the hulking hairy midgets? He couldn’t be sure. All he really wanted was to get the hell out of Vietnam.

Screw the rest of the world, Rook thought, I already died from Brugada once. I can do it again. Let the rest of the world here figure it out on their own and let Cha-Ka and Rick Marshall live happily ever after.

As he thought it, he knew it was a passing fancy, the whim of a normal person. But that wasn’t him. At his core he was Delta, and his mission was far from complete. And it wouldn’t be until they got away from these two and figured out what to do next.

But a shifting breeze ruined any chance of going undetected.

Cha-Ka lifted her head and sniffed, her very slender, very human nose crinkling with each breath. Then she casually leaned over and spoke into the man’s ear.

Neither Rook nor Bishop could hear the woman’s words, but they knew they’d been detected. Before either could slip away, the man’s voice boomed over the river’s roar. “Come on out. We know you’re there.”

Both men froze. Neither wanted anything to do with the man and his hairy counterpart. But they were caught like a pair of Peeping Toms. The man didn’t sound angry or nervous, just in control. Master of his domain.

Bishop spoke in a whisper. “I’ll go out. You stay down. They may not know there are two of us.”

“I’ll go,” Rook said.

Bishop shook his head. “You’ll do something rash and get yourself killed.”

“And you won’t?”

“You know me,” Bishop said. “I’ll hardly say a word.”

Bishop stood up, his six-foot-tall body clearing the thick stones. He leaped up and over the boulders, landing like the Incredible Hulk on the other side.

The man and strange woman took a step back. They were clearly expecting a local, perhaps a five-foot, half-starved man or woman. A gigantic Middle Eastern who looked like a professional wrestler was a rare sight in the Annamite Mountains.

Then the man’s confidence returned. “My, my, aren’t you a strapping young man.”

Bishop stood still, trying to glean what he could from the stranger’s face. His confidence seemed genuine. He wasn’t afraid of Bishop at all. Bishop remembered the raw, physical strength of the creatures they’d encountered in the tunnels and the way the woman here had smashed the catfish. If the woman standing before him now had the same strength as her more feral neighbors, the man had good reason to be confident. Judging by his use of “young man” and the crow’s-feet around his eyes, Bishop placed him around forty-five years old, but his muscle tone looked like an athlete’s. Bishop realized the man lived in this jungle, probably had for years.

“You speak English,” Bishop said.

The man’s eyebrows rose in surprise. “As do you.”

“I do, too,” said the woman, though her voice sounded more like a young woman’s. Closer now, Bishop could see that while her body was like that of an adult, her face appeared younger, no more than twelve years old. “Father, tell him I do, too.”

Bishop’s muscles tensed.

Father.

“He can hear you just fine, my dear,” the man said. He stepped forward. “My name is Anthony Weston. Dr. Anthony Weston. You’ll have to forgive her. She’s just a child.”

It was Bishop’s turn to be surprised. “This is your . . . child?”

“Yes.” Weston appeared confused for a moment. Then his face brightened. “This must be terribly confusing for you.”

Weston turned his back to Bishop, walked past the girl, and sat on a rock behind her. She stood motionless between them. “She is not my daughter. She is my son’s, son’s, son’s daughter. My great-great-granddaughter. They all call me father, as I am the originator of their race. I am their Adam. Isn’t that right, Lucy?”

The girl smiled.

Bishop tensed. The man’s story was more twisted than he could have guessed. But it didn’t match up. This girl had to be at least a teenager. Then two generations before her . . . That would make Weston far older than he appeared.

“How much do you weigh?” Weston asked.

“How could she be your great-great-granddaughter?” Bishop asked, ignoring Weston’s question. “You’re not