by JC Ryan
“I know, but I shouldn’t have let you,” Dylan answered.
“Hey, stop. Blaming ourselves isn’t getting the kids back. So, if there’s any merit in the theory, how would it have worked?” Carter asked, too distraught to think for himself.
“You got a ransom demand from the guy who has the dolphin, am I right?” Dylan asked.
“Of sorts. He wants Merrybeth to show him where the Minotaur supposedly is.”
“How does he even know that Merrybeth would know? And how did he know to send you the note?”
Carter stopped pacing. “I don’t…”
“He’d have to have heard you two talking, right? You were broadcasting the translation device, not using a headset?”
“Yeah.”
“So, he knows you can talk to the dolphins, and he knows you’re helping her. How would he know?”
The answer flashed for Carter like a bolt of lightning. “He was there. He heard us.”
“What else could he have heard?”
“Damn, Dylan, I don’t know, but I left a trail a blind man could follow.”
“What do you mean?”
“I chartered that helicopter from a local, and I didn’t caution him not to tell anyone where I went, or anything. I’ll bet he heard us talking about the kids, on the way back. If the bad actor who has Carmen questioned him…”
“I think you’d better find out. When’s Sean due?”
“Any minute.”
“Okay, well, I’m going to give the police this information. Don’t know how it will help, but let’s keep each other posted. If it’s the same guy, he’s likely to get you the ransom demand instead of anyone here. Your in-laws are practically sitting on the phone, by the way.”
“I pray this is what it is. The worst thing possible would be a random sick-o.” Carter was doing his best not to think of the remains of the child in London, without success. That had been random, he was sure. Random kidnappings weren’t about ransom, and the victims didn’t last long, usually. He forced his thoughts away from that outcome. “Here’s Sean’s plane, now,” he said. “Holy crap, it’s Air Force One! Gotta go.”
Carter rushed outside to gape at the plane. Sean was the first one down the steps, but he was followed by a couple of the Executive Advantage people he’d met and a dozen or so others he didn’t recognize. The President was not among them, which was only a surprise because they were exiting his plane. Every face was set in hard lines, some grim, some just determined. Sean’s expression warmed as he recognized Carter and raised an arm in greeting.
As he greeted Sean, Carter said, “Who are all these people?”
“You know my guys. This is FBI agent Dan Simmons, our comms expert. His opposite is headed to Athens to join Dylan’s team. They’ll set up a link for instant messaging.” He continued, introducing a cadre of four SEALs who would be guarding their underwater operations, a couple of CIA operatives to handle land-based investigations on Crete, and an administrative type from the State department.
Carter said, “I’m overwhelmed. Thank you all!”
One of the SEALs stepped forward. “I have kids, sir. This could have happened to any of us. We’ll get your kids back, and that dolphin, too. We’ll make the bastard regret the day he was born.”
Carter snapped his fingers. “Sean, I’ve been thinking. Dylan’s right. If this is related, he’s going to deliver the ransom note for my kids the same way he did for Merrybeth’s daughter. We’ve got to get out there.”
Sean nodded. “Agreed. These guys have all been briefed, and they know what to do.” He singled out one of the Executive Advantage men. “You’re in charge in my absence. You guys get to work.” To Carter, he added, “I agree with Dylan. You know what we always say. We don’t like coincidences.”
“They do happen, but I’m with you. I don’t think this is one. And that gives me hope.”
On the way to the coordinates where he always met Merrybeth, Carter noticed several dolphins trying to keep pace with the boat and had the captain slow down. He set up the translation device and hailed them. When they came closer, he recognized two of them as Merrybeth’s sons, who were supposed to be looking for another entrance to the cave system.
“Have you found anything?” he asked.
One of the dolphins whistled, but the translation device didn’t have a reference. Carter thought for a second it was a malfunction, and then realized the dolphin had given his name. Carter quickly assigned the whistle the name Jasper.
He said, “It’s good to see you, Jasper. Have you found anything?”
“Not yet, Carter. Our mother said to tell you she is hunting. She will be with you soon.”
“Thanks! I’ll wait in the usual place.”
With that, the dolphins peeled off and headed back in the other direction.
Sean asked, “Is that unusual? Getting a message from one dolphin by way of another?”
“Kind of. We don’t talk to new dolphins that often, and it’s always a stretch to discover again that they can understand us without the translation device. I envy them that. Wish we could still understand them without it.”
“How’d you know his name was Jasper?”
“I didn’t. You know each dolphin has a unique identifier. As unique as our fingerprints. Remember, the device records the sonogram – the sound’s wave pattern – and we assign a name we can pronounce to it. Then the device uses the wave pattern when it translates our words. We think the dolphins then adapt to hearing the name we call them by, even though it sounds nothing like their whistle. But they’re hearing both together – the translator’s version of Dolphinese and at the same time, our words. Because their hearing is so much more sensitive to the uniqueness of their whistles, they’re learning more of our language –stuff they’ve never been exposed to before – much faster than we’re learning theirs.”
“Oh, I see. They’re still calling Mackenzie Sunhead?”
“That’s just my doing. They call her that because of her red hair – you knew that – and it makes me smile when I hear it, so I didn’t program the translator to convert it to her name. Of course, Merrybeth calls me by a unique whistle that’s assigned my name. We all have whistle-names they’ve given us, just like we’ve given them human names. Land-human,” he corrected himself again. “I had to hand-program the translator to coordinate them.”
“Cool.”
They’d arrived where they were to meet Merrybeth, and soon after, she arrived as well.
“Good hunting today?” Carter called to her.
“Enough,” she said. “I did not hunt for two suns. But today we had news. Carmen is alive!”
Carter experienced an adrenaline rush. “Could you tell where she was?” He assumed the evidence was an ansible transmission.
“She is somewhere in the land,” Merrybeth answered. “We heard her and used your triangulation idea. But we cannot reach her.” She made a mournful sound that the translation device didn’t recognize.
“If our theory is correct, Merrybeth, she’s actually under the land. Remember Sean?” he asked, drawing Sean to the rail for Merrybeth’s visual identification. He is a strong swimmer and a fierce fighter. Together, we are going to explore the cave and find Carmen. We think my children may be with her.”
“She didn’t say,” Merrybeth answered. “But I will ask her. If she can signal again, I will tell you.”
Carter experienced another adrenaline surge. Of course! If they’re in the same place… But he knew that was a big ‘if’.
30
ON THE WAY to the coordinates where they met Merrybeth, Carter had checked his email for the first time in the past few hours. He’d almost forgotten his visit to Alan Connery, so he was surprised to see a reply to his email.
In it, he learned that there was a Labyrinth expert vacationing on Crete, by the name of Ahab Bashar. The name sounded vaguely familiar, but Carter couldn’t place why. Connery had provided contact information, but before Carter could compose an
email to Bashar, they’d arrived on the scene. The excitement of Merrybeth’s news had driven the email out of his mind.
Then he’d taken Sean to the coordinates just beyond the tunnel entrance that led to the cave where Merrybeth had cautioned him not to get out.
“It’s a long swim. Merrybeth towed me the first time, and even at her speed it took about fifteen minutes. I’d say we’ll take two or three times as long, unless dolphins tow us. I’m concerned. We can get closer to the entrance now, so the tanks may be enough to get us in and back out of there,” he explained, “But I ran out of air before we got back to the boat.”
“Not a problem. I brought rebreathers for both of us,” Sean answered. “We can get a tow if you want, but we’ll be able to stay underwater for a couple of hours. Should be enough to get us in and out, if we dive from close enough.”
“Some of the tunnel is pretty tight,” Carter cautioned.
“Understood. I brought the most compact model that could support that amount of time. Could have bought us more time, but the tanks would have been bulkier. Dylan said you’d told him the tunnel was tight.”
“I’m losing it, Sean. I know I have to be on top of my game, but there’s only one other time in my life I’ve been this worried… I feel like my brain is wrapped in wool. Like I’m missing something.”
“I know. I’ve got your back, buddy. You’re still one of the smartest people I know, and you know that’s saying something. Plus, you’ve got a whole lot of other very smart people on your team. We’ll get them back.”
“Are we ready to dive, then?”
“Soon as we gear up.”
Inside the cave a little while later, Carter surfaced and pulled his helmet mask off. Sean surfaced behind him. They’d decided to leave the dolphins behind, since they weren’t sure how long they’d be out of the water.
“You sure we can get back into this stuff?” Carter asked.
“One hundred percent,” Sean answered confidently. “Let’s see what we can find out about this place.”
From the bag affixed to his dive belt, he pulled two headlamps and shoes more suitable for walking on the rough cave floor. From his, Carter pulled out his shoes, two bottles of water, and a sealed plastic bag with a couple of energy bars. They climbed out of the water, peeled out of their wetsuits and other gear, and sat on the rocky floor of the cave to have their snack before setting off to explore. Carter finished first. He’d practically swallowed his energy bar without chewing, anxious to make some progress after so many days and challenges.
Sean joined him a few seconds later, and they set out to determine how large a cave they were in. It didn’t take long to discover it was quite small, and even more disappointingly, there didn’t seem to be any other opening in the cave that would lead to where the river had been dammed. They checked where each other had been already, and then checked a third time, this time together at every step.
The third time, Carter saw something that they’d missed before. “Look. The rocks here look like they’ve recently been broken. What do you make of that?”
Sean bent to look, bringing his headlight closer and illuminating better what Carter had discovered. “This whole section has been brought down quite recently. What do you want to bet the bad guy did this to keep us from exploring further?”
Carter stood straight. “No bets. I think you’re right, and it confirms to me that there’s got to be another entrance leading to that river. Come on, we need to do what a colleague of mine suggested a couple of days ago. We need a geologist.”
Back at the boat, Carter pulled up his email and saw a message was already open. He’d forgotten it. Before he ran a search for local geologists, he sent an email to the contact Connery had given him, asking for a meeting as soon as possible. He included a few details but left out mention that he was on the trail of someone looking for a live Minotaur.
A few minutes later, they were on their way back to shore to meet with a geologist who specialized in mapping the voids and waterways below Crete’s surface.
AHAB EMERGED FROM the karst spring exit in the bay and swam to his yacht. He’d been to the cave where he was keeping his hostages and provided them with a little food and water. The dolphin seemed sick, so he was glad he’d had the forethought to secure the boy and girl. Although, if he’d known what a pest the boy would be, he’d have left him on the Acropolis and made off with just the girl.
It took all his self-control not to begin his experiments on them right away. Before he inflicted injuries, he needed their cooperation in a proof-of-life video, and they needed to be in good shape for the first one. He assumed if Devereux demanded one for the dolphin, he’d do the same for his own children. And Ahab was angry with himself for not remembering to take something to prove the date. He’d have to go back before he’d planned, to complete the task.
It had been several hours since he ate, so the first thing he did was prepare a large lunch of rice, steamed vegetables and lamb. The recipes called for slow-cooked sauces, but he patiently prepared his favorite foods, making enough to eat later in the day as well. He didn’t especially enjoy cooking, but he did enjoy eating, so the cooking was a necessary evil.
While his sauce was simmering, he decided to check his email.
A moment later, his laughter was ringing out across the water. The great Carter Devereux wanted his help!
Ahab could not contain his amusement at the situation. His expertise about the Labyrinth was needed for ‘a matter of extreme time sensitivity’. Devereux had been cagey in his details, but knowing what he did, Ahab understood that he was being recruited to help find and trap himself! It was too delicious.
From the tone of the email, it was clear Devereux didn’t remember him. Ahab took a while to think through the implications of agreeing to work with Devereux. On the one hand, he might get plenty of warning if they were getting close. On the other, he wanted to be sure Devereux didn’t see him face-to-face. He wasn’t certain why he thought it would be a bad idea for Devereux to recognize him, but for some reason it was the way he felt.
In the end, he emailed back. ‘Dr. Carter, I would be glad to be of assistance, were I still in the area. However, you are welcome to any insight you may get from my thesis, which you will find attached. Please do not hesitate to call upon me again if I can give you any further assistance.’ He attached the thesis and sent the email, confident that he’d be able to outwit the man without knowing his exact moves anyway.
He thought it was particularly clever to indicate he was no longer in Greece.
31
CARTER READ WITH disappointment that the Labyrinth expert was no longer in the area. But the man had kindly attached his thesis to the email. Before he had a chance to read it, the boat had reached the harbor and he and Sean rushed to meet the geologist in his university office.
The geologist, who breezily told them in accented English to call him Theo, fit Carter’s mental image of geologists to a ‘T’. He was short and wiry, dressed in casual clothes consisting of well-worn jeans and a tee-shirt showing several boxes labeled ‘favorite rocks’, ‘oversize rocks’, ‘pretty rocks’, ‘books’ and ‘sharp pointy things’, with a caption that read Never volunteer to help a geologist move. To make it even funnier, there were several boxes of rocks labeled with their mineral makeup stacked in every corner of the office. Theo’s warm brown eyes gave Carter a sense of his kindness, and his tousled, curly brown hair made him look young for a professor of geology.
“Thank you for seeing us on short notice, Theo. As I mentioned in my call, we’re searching for another entrance to a cave system where we believe an underground river flows and exits here.” He’d unrolled a map of the shoreline near the karst spring and pointed to an X that he’d drawn on it in as close an approximation of the coordinates as he could.
“Ah, yes, I know that area,” Theo answered. He turned to a wall next to his desk and tapped his chin for a moment while studying several strings hanging from what loo
ked like a stack of rolls. He selected one and pulled down a larger, more detailed map. He used an old-fashioned stick pointer to tap the map in the same place.
Carter and Sean leaned forward, then frowned slightly. The markings on the map were all in Greek. Carter flashed Sean a warning. If he said, ‘it’s all Greek to me’… But Sean pressed his lips together and didn’t say it, though Carter could see his lips twitching.
Carter described his two dives into the tunnel and their suspicion that the cave had been sealed off recently. “Do you know of another entrance?”
“Understand, I’m not a spelunker. I haven’t been in those caves,” Theo answered. “But as you may know, there is a global effort to map below the surfaces of the earth to understand what happens above. I have Radio Frequency Identification data, and seismic imaging as well.” He went on to explain at some length the science behind what he would show them.
Carter curbed his impatience, not wanting to get into the reasons for their interest, but he was aware of every passing moment and the urgency of their mission.
“…take me some time to trace the sub-surface route of the underground river you’re interested in,” Theo was saying. “But I could have it done for you in, let me think, perhaps one month?”
Carter slumped. A month was far too long. He was going to have to tell this man about the kidnappings, which would lead him into top-secret information about the dolphins, as well as revealing the reason for the dolphin’s kidnapping.
Theo looked at him curiously. “Is something wrong, my friend?”
Carter took a deep breath. “Our request is urgent…”
As he explained that he thought his children and a dolphin were being held somewhere in the cave system, Theo’s expressive face revealed surprise, shock, outrage, and then disbelief, in that order.