by Steven Moore
But the problem with that was, who were the enemies? He really didn't know.
Who was it that were sabotaging their mission to find Atlantis? Who was it that were killing everyone they met on this journey in Spain, first young Santi, and then Lucero Perez? Who was it that had kidnapped Megan and stolen Gidget? He couldn't know, and with no enemy to focus his anger at and no likelihood of ever discovering who it was, despair consumed him. He raised his hands into the air, his fingers numb from the cold and his heart numb from desperation. He let the storm batter him, let the elements do their worst.
It was over.
He had nothing left. Gidget was stolen. Megan was gone. People were dead.
There was no point in fighting anymore against an enemy he couldn't see and against a foe he couldn't beat.
It was over.
And for the first time in his life, Ryan Bodean threw in the towel.
45
Gracias, Santi
R.B. wasn't sure how long he'd been sprawled there on the beach that formed the eastern bank of the Río Guadalquivir. But without noticing, the rising tide now lapped the shore just a few inches from his knees. Suddenly realizing how frozen he was, and how dark it had become, he scrambled to his feet and stepped back from the bulging river.
He glanced at his watch. Six thirty-five. Dammit. He shook the stiffness from his aching arms and legs, then checked his phone. No messages or missed calls. The rain had abated, but the wind still howled along the beach, whipping the river's surface into mini whitecaps, the mix of salt and fresh water stinging his cheeks as he turned and headed for the road a half mile away. As he walked, head hunched into the neck of his jacket, he reached inside and pulled out the mysterious artifact from the chapel. With the blood not yet flowing freely through his fingers, R.B. clumsily dropped the strange disk into the sand. Despite the gloom surrounding him, the object radiated a kind of ethereal glow. R.B. rubbed his eyes, as if not believing what he was seeing. When he looked at the disk again, the odd glow was gone. But in its place he saw something that—
"My god." He bent down, snagging up the disk for a closer look. This time his eyes weren't deceiving him. There on the strange artifact were a series of lines scratched into its near-flat surface. R.B. shook his head, a realization taking shape in the burgeoning darkness. Turning his back to the wind, and digging once more into his pocket, he pulled out his map, the one given to him by Barnaby Quinn. And there was no doubting it now. The lines on the map were in exact alignment to those etched onto the disk. And the large X visible on both? A one hundred percent perfect match.
"I'll be damned," he said into the near dark. "I'll be goddamned." The old man was right. It's a map to ... it's a map to Atlantis, right in the middle of Doñana National Park.
But the park was huge, and the X was a long way from where he stood now. Besides the distance, it was located slap-bang in the middle of the huge, marshy wetlands. There was simply no way he could walk there, let alone drive. He needed his damn seaplane.
Something flickered in his mind, the tingle of a memory. And then he remembered. The beautiful hydroplane in Santiago's workshop. The kid had said he'd rent it to them, so he obviously owned it. But R.B. assumed the police were still on the scene searching the building for clues to Santi's murderer. How the hell am I going to get that plane out of there without anyone knowing? But with no other options presenting themselves, he knew he just had to get there first, and work the rest out when he arrived.
With a new-found enthusiasm, and all thoughts of quitting or failure left behind on that wild and windswept beach, R.B. hustled through the storm to the car. A little over an hour later, as the dark day gave way to an even darker night, R.B. eased the car to a stop a few hundred yards from Santi's workshop at the Navantia Shipyard. The coast seemed clear, and he saw no evidence of anyone, neither the police nor any dock workers, anywhere. That was his first stroke of luck of the day. The second revealed itself less than a minute later.
Making his way quietly but at pace to the workshop, R.B. found it locked down, with a spiderweb of the ubiquitous yellow police tape marking it as a crime scene. Hmm. On a hunch, R.B. crossed the dockyard to the dock's edge and peered down. And there she was. The hydroplane sat on the surface of the dock's still water. It had likely been moved out of the workshop to make any search of Santi's premises easier. And it was just the slice of luck R.B. needed.
There were still two further obstacles. One, where were the keys? And the second? Well, it was night time now, and, providing he located the hydroplane's keys, without knowing the area R.B. would have to wait until first light so he could land safely after flying into the heart of the Doñana Park. That would obviously give more time for someone, whether a good someone or bad, time to catch him in the act of what, technically, was stealing a dead man's property.
R.B. felt certain the keys wouldn't have been left in the actual plane. That meant they were probably locked away in the office area of Santi's workshop. Great, thought R.B., not only am I going to steal the plane, but first I have to commit breaking and entering to get the keys. It was almost funny. Almost. But R.B. wasn't a criminal, and this went against almost all his better judgment. Again, almost. There was more at stake now than finding Atlantis, R.B. knew. He was certain that if he followed the map to the X, whatever was there, whether it was actually Atlantis or not, it would lead him to Megan Simons. He only hoped he wouldn't be too late.
He scurried through the darkness back to the workshop, and, after a look around in all directions to see if anyone was about, he tried the door, fully expecting it to be locked. Which it was. Scanning along the front walls of the building, he was dismayed to see no windows or other doors. "Dammit," he muttered. Hustling along to the right hand corner, he found what seemed to be nothing more than a dingy alley between the two adjacent buildings. He scooted down the alley searching for another entrance, and found it a second later.
"Bingo!" It was a small window, but large enough for him to fit through. There was just the small fact it was about four feet out of his reach. Turning on his heels, he grinned when he saw a couple of discarded pallets leaning against the opposite wall, and grabbing one and using it as a makeshift ladder, a few seconds later he was peering into the high window.
"Here goes nothing, Bodean," he said, and crashed his elbow through the glass, half expecting an alarm to destroy the silence. But no alarm came, and another ten seconds later, Ryan Bodean had committed his first, and hopefully his last, breaking and entering offense.
Dropping quietly to the floor inside the pitch-black workshop, he turned on his phone's flashlight and jogged to where he knew Santi's office area was situated at the rear of the space. After a quick search of the desk, R.B. whistled in delight. There on a notepad, next to a barely-legible scrawled note that said, in Spanish, 'Llaves del hidroavión'—a swift Google translate confirmed R.B.'s hunch—were his prize; the keys to the seaplane.
It was still only eight-twenty in the evening. Sunrise wasn't for another ten hours at least. It wasn't safe to wait out the night in the warehouse; the police could turn up at any time, and getting caught now was simply not an option. So he decided to find the nearest place to snag some food, then return to the seaplane, set an alarm, and try and get some sleep. He was both mentally and physically exhausted, and sleep would do him the world of good. He needed the rest.
Because R.B. had no doubt that tomorrow would be one hell of a rough day.
46
Into the Breach
R.B. was surprised he'd slept through until his alarm went off at five-thirty. He'd eaten a huge sandwich he bought from a deli from just beyond the shipyard's perimeter, and washed it down with a couple of beers—purely medicinal, he told himself—and had more or less passed out. He awoke to his alarm reasonably fresh, and other than a stiff neck, he felt good. It was still dark, but the first hints of dawn were shimmering over the tops of the industrial buildings to the east.
Grateful he hadn't been
spotted by any random passersby, he was even more grateful that the storm seemed to have cleared. Hope it lasts, he mused, and flicked on the camera's flashlight again. He hadn't dared last night for fear of being spotted. The first thing he noticed were the two small golden dice hanging in the windshield, and he grinned. "Good taste, Santi," he said, appreciating the homage to Han Solo's Millennium Falcon. "Just hope I don't have to outrun any stormtroopers." Or any other scumbags, thought R.B., and his mind focused on the task ahead; following the signs on an ancient artifact and a map to what might be the fabled lost city of Atlantis. Or, if things went badly, those same signs might very well lead him to his and Megan's tombs.
Next he spotted a photo showing Santi with whom R.B. assumed was his girlfriend and a ... a baby? "Oh no, Santi," he said. "I am so sorry." They hadn't known Santi had a child, and it made his pointless death all the more tragic and heartbreaking. That poor, poor young girl and their baby. It was just one more tragedy, and R.B. was more determined than ever to get to the bottom of this mystery. On a whim he tugged down the dice and the photo, and tucked them into his pocket.
"Okay, let's do this," he muttered. The controls of the hydroplane were more or less consistent with those on Gidget, and he felt confident that flying this more modern seaplane wouldn't prove too difficult. He leaned down to adjust his seat—he was clearly several inches taller than the previous pilot—when his hand brushed against something that didn't feel familiar from Gidget. Grasping the cool, hard shape, he realized it was a small pistol, and bringing it up into view, he saw Llama M82 stamped in a circle on the side. R.B. wasn't all that familiar with guns, but he was sure this was a like a Beretta. Pulling off the clip, he saw it contained three bullets. He hoped he wouldn't find himself in a situation to have to fire it, but nevertheless, he felt a little more secure as he tucked it into his waistband.
Dawn had arrived sufficiently now that he was ready to take off, and, more importantly, whenever he got there, to land safely. Firing up the engines, he didn't want to hang around, and was soon cruising out from the dock into more open water. With a final check of the fuel gauge and the other various dials, he eased forward the throttle, and the powerful craft surged through the water, reaching take-off speed much quicker than Gidget ever could. If nothing else, the flight would be fun.
Just a minute after edging away from the dock the hydroplane lifted smoothly out of the water, and another minute after that he was cruising north towards Doñana National Park, the first rays of sun piercing the grey clouds to the east and the dark expanse of the Atlantic Ocean brooding ominously to his west.
R.B. didn't know what the next few hours or days had in store. But one thing was for sure; he was going to find Megan Simons and release her from her captives, and he was going to do his utmost to prove or disprove the myth of Atlantis once and for all.
And if he could do neither, Ryan Bodean knew he would die trying.
47
Myth Busted?
The hydroplane from Santi's workshop was truly an awesome flying craft. R.B. had always loved old Gidget, and they'd shared many an adventure. But this was something else. She arrowed north as smoothly as anything R.B. had ever flown in, and cut through the turbulent skies with consummate ease.
Unfortunately, the clear start to the day was rapidly giving way to the returning storm rolling in from the Atlantic to the west, and it made visibility below tricky. Thus, as he soared over Doñana National Park's southern boundary towards where X marked the spot, he could barely see the ground below. Not ideal. Using his instrument panel and his map, he sped onwards until he was more or less over the location indicated by the artifact and the map, and slowed his velocity, taking the plane as low as safely possible in order to better see the terrain.
But R.B. saw nothing. Cruising at a little over one hundred feet, if there was anything below he simply couldn't see it. For a moment he felt as if it was all just a wild goose chase. There appeared to be nothing but empty expanses of swampy marshland, and little else, other than a few narrow tributaries spreading out like cracks in a shattered mirror.
He circled a few times, wide sweeping arcs over the imaginary X, yet still he saw nothing. "Goddammit, when will anything go ... "
His words fell away as his eyes opened wide. "What the—?" If Ryan Bodean wasn't imagining things, there below him were what seemed to be a series of concentric circles shaping the otherwise flat landscape, rising ever-so-subtly from the swamp. "Oh my," he muttered, "wait until Megan sees this."
He spotted a break in the low-lying cloud, and zoomed down and through it, where, in the clearer air, he spotted Gidget floating in an open section of water amid the marsh. At just fifty feet altitude now, he then spotted what appeared to be a kind of warehouse, which he couldn't see from higher up because its roof was disguised by a carpet of mossy foliage, blending it in against its naturally green environment. "I'll be damned."
He saw no sign of any human activity, and wondered if the area was abandoned. But R.B. quickly dismissed that thought. Of course there are people here, he knew it. This area was the big secret the madmen chasing them had tried so desperately hard to keep them from finding, silencing them forever by killing them. So far though, they'd failed to kill R.B., yet he would willingly trade in his own life if it might ensure Megan’s safety.
He took the plane higher again into the clouds, allowing a moment to make a plan. It appeared this was the place any Atlantis myths emanated from, and that in itself was mind-blowing. However, for now R.B. wasn't concerned with whether it was actually the lost city or not. He was there to find Megan, and surely this is where those bastards were holding her. He had to land the plane and find out.
The only open water he'd seen large enough to land the hydroplane was the same section in which Gidget was parked. Checking his waistband for the gun, and steeling himself for any dangers he'd encounter on the surface, R.B. made a rapid descent through the swirling dark clouds and, straightening up, he skillfully eased the plane down, gliding to a stop just twenty feet from his own bird, Gidget.
Scrambling out of the cockpit, he climbed down, sinking into water as deep as his thighs. Not waiting around to find out if he'd sink completely, R.B. slogged his way to more solid ground. Already drenched now from the sloshing water as he waded towards drier land, he barely noticed as the clouds burst, unleashing a deluge of almost biblical proportions.
Now at ground level, he could more easily make out the scope of the concentric circles he'd seen from above. They weren't very high, ranging from three to four feet above the surface of the marshy water. Though how deep they went was another question, and R.B. was beginning to realize what they were, though he hardly dared believe it. The walls to the lost city of Atlantis? Could it really be?
Then he heard a voice, and R.B. instinctively ducked down. The voice had traveled across the water from the area of the warehouse, perhaps three-hundred yards to the east. Poking his head up a little, he spotted two men, each of them carrying an automatic rifle, evidently guarding what R.B. thought to be some kind of warehouse. Other than the two guards, it appeared deserted, but he doubted it was. Edging cautiously over that first raised mound, which stretched away from him in opposite directions, curving away until he could no longer see it, he half crawled, half waded thirty yards towards the next mound, then repeated the process twice more, until he was only one hundred and fifty yards from the central structure. He realized then that it was larger than he'd first thought. Much larger, perhaps half a mile across, and he guessed it somehow extended deep underground, almost like a hidden bunker. The parts of the building he could see seemed dilapidated, rusted through in some sections, as if it had stood there for a long, long time.
He glanced at the two guards again, and now he was closer he saw they were large, powerfully built men. Both were white-skinned, with blonde hair, not typical of the region. Definitely Aryan, R.B. mused. Of course they are. But they didn't seem to be expecting anyone, and weren't paying much attentio
n to anything other than their cigarettes. R.B. saw his chance.
Ducking below the summit of the raised mound, R.B. hustled east, following the curved line of the mound until he'd reached the opposite side of the central structure. Risking a look over the grassy, reed-covered mound, he saw what he hoped he would; the rear of the building, unguarded. Scooting over the mound, he repeated his process from the other side, clambering over the next mound, then another, and finally the last mound before arriving within twenty yards of the structure itself. The water was now only knee deep, and he waded quickly to the rear wall of the building.
Taking a moment to catch his breath and let the churning water still, he listened. Nothing, other than the constant pelting of rain, each drop radiating out its very own series of concentric circles, as if temporary, mini versions of Atlantis. The guards were far enough away on the opposite side of the building that R.B. was out of earshot. Turning to face the wall, he saw a panel of metal, rusted almost clean away. Lowering his head, he peered through into an all-encompassing darkness.
"This is it," he whispered, and pulled on the panel. It didn't budge. Not an inch. Bracing his feet against the slimy bed of the swamp, he pulled harder, leaning backwards to lever away the panel. It was working, and there was now a gap between the panel R.B. clutched onto and its neighbor. Growing in confidence, he pulled harder still, the panel coming further away. "Almost, Bodean, almost." Then he slipped. The large panel slammed back against the frame, the metallic clang echoing out across the marshland. "Oh shit!"