The Lost Island

by Douglas Preston

  “I knew it.”

  He shoved the open book at Gideon, with a picture of the Phorkys Map. “Oh, God, this is even better than I expected.”

  Meanwhile, Gideon could hear the sound of the launch, crossing the water between the two boats. It landed at the swim platform and Cordray’s wife, Linda, hopped off.

  “Look at this!” Cordray cried, triumph in his voice. “It’s just what you thought. They’re treasure hunters, like us—and they’ve got a fucking treasure map!”

  She took it, examined it in the cockpit light. “Unusual.” She came up and stared at Gideon, then at Amy. “I think we might need some help interpreting this.”

  Silence. Amy hadn’t said a word. Gideon could feel blood trickling from the side of his mouth. But Cordray hadn’t been strong enough to really hurt him. If Pirate or Mustache ever hit him, that might be a different story.

  Linda came up close to him and looked in his eyes, breathing rank cigarette breath into his face. “The name’s Mark, right?”

  Silence.

  “Mark, let me explain something. I don’t know if you two are really a married couple, or what. I don’t give a shit. I do know this: if you don’t explain this map to me, my husband’s going to do something awful to her. Something really awful.”

  Her raspy voice was almost thrilling with a sort of anticipation. She was, Gideon realized, actually getting off on this.

  “It’s not a treasure map,” said Gideon. “It’s…it’s an old Irish map, that’s all. No treasure—”

  Amy spoke for the first time. “Shut the hell up.”

  “But—”

  Linda stepped back. “Hank, handle this little bitch, will you?”

  Cordray stepped forward. “Dame el arpón.”

  Mustache handed him the harpoon. It was a vicious-looking thing, with a savage double blade at the end and an enormous steel hook. He held it up before Gideon and turned it around, slowly.

  “This is a flying gaff harpoon,” he said, in his soft voice, “and we use it to kill sharks. Big sharks.”

  He touched the bladed tip. “This is called the dart. You can jam it deep into a shark. But the real business part is this flying gaff. It’s razor-sharp. You hook this into a shark’s belly and pull. With one stroke, you can disembowel a great white and watch him eat his own entrails.” He smiled.

  Gideon looked from Cordray to his wife. She was standing back, watching. Her face was flushed, her breathing fast.

  “That’s exactly what I’m going to do to Amy, here. I’m going to hook her in the belly and pull this through her. Unless you start telling me everything I want to know.”

  “Don’t say a word,” Amy told him.

  When Gideon didn’t answer, Cordray reached over to Amy and ripped open her pajama top. He detached the enormous barbed hook—six inches in diameter—and slowly moved it toward her belly.

  Linda watched eagerly.

  The gleaming point of the gaff hook just touched Amy’s skin, piercing it. Blood welled out. Amy’s face remained expressionless.

  “Okay,” said Gideon. “I’ll tell you everything. Just stop that.”

  “Shut up,” said Amy.

  “Keep talking.”

  “It is a map to a treasure—a really big one.”

  “What kind?” the woman asked eagerly. “Pirate treasure?”

  “No. Spanish fleet.” Gideon racked his brain for what he knew about treasure from the museums and historical societies he’d burglarized in an earlier life. “Back in the early sixteen hundreds, the Spanish treasure fleet was caught along this coast in a hurricane. Several ships were damaged. They had to unload and bury it on this coast. It’s still here.”

  “And the map?”

  “Shows where it is.”

  The woman stared at the map. “It’s in Latin. I don’t get it.”

  “A lot of early Spanish government documents were written in Latin,” said Gideon, not at all sure that was true. “It’s a very difficult map to understand. Deliberately obscure.”

  “So where’s this treasure?”

  “All we need to find…is one landmark along this coast. Just one.”

  “Which is?”

  He hesitated. “Devil’s vomit.”

  “What?”

  “It’s the seventh clue on that map. The inscription reads: ‘Follow the Devil’s vomit.’ We don’t know what that means. We’re trying to find the landmark. That’s where the treasure is buried. That’s why I asked you about landmarks.”

  He could see they were buying it lock stock and barrel, greedily drinking in every word. And understandably so—for treasure hunters, this would be the score of a lifetime. But he was merely buying time—for what, he didn’t yet know.

  Linda was looking at the map, hands trembling. “Devil’s vomit…what the fuck?”

  “Look at the drawing,” said Gideon. “The landmark is something that looks like an upside-down U with that knob on the side. A cave, maybe. Maybe you’ve seen something like that around here.”

  “Upside-down U…Knob…okay, I see it…” The woman was really excited now.

  “That’s where the treasure is buried.”

  She stared and stared. “Jesus Christ. I know this.”

  “What?” Cordray said.

  “It’s that rock arch, you know, that cay down the coast—the one with the strange name—Cayo Jeyupsi. That’s the outline of it—I swear.”

  “But the Devil’s vomit?”

  A hesitation. “Who cares? That’s the cay, I’m telling you!”

  Cordray peered at the drawing. “Fucking hell. So it is.”

  The woman turned back to Gideon. “So where’s it buried on the cayo? Where?”

  “Talk.” Cordray moved the hook a little. Amy winced.

  “We don’t know, damn it!” Gideon said.

  “Yes you do. Where on the cay? Where?”

  “I already said we were still looking for the spot. I can’t tell you right here, right now.”

  “Yes you can. You will. What does the map say about the exact location?” Cordray was practically screaming. “Tell us or I gut her!”

  “Take that hook away,” said Gideon, “or I’ll never talk.”

  The hook didn’t move away.

  “He doesn’t think you’re serious,” said Linda Cordray. “Go ahead—gut her. And then he’ll talk.”

  “My pleasure.” The hook began to bite deeper into Amy’s flesh.

  23

  AS THE GAFF hook sank deeper, the trickle of blood became a rivulet.

  “You hurt her,” said Gideon, “I’ll never speak another word, I swear.”

  “Shut up,” Amy told him again. Her eyes were clear, her jaw set. Gideon had never met a person less afraid of death.

  “You’ll never find the treasure,” he said.

  “Do it,” Linda urged her husband. “When he sees her all over the deck, he’ll talk.”

  They were working themselves up, and Gideon believed they really might do it. But maybe he could use their craziness against them.

  “It’s worth over a billion dollars,” he said. “You hurt her, you’ll never get it.”

  That stopped Cordray cold. “A billion dollars? Of…what?”

  “Five tons of gold. Coins. Bars. Crosses encrusted with jewels, reliquaries, ecclesiastical treasure.”

  The pair was transfixed.

  “You kill my wife, kiss it good-bye. You’ll just have to kill me, too, because I swear to God, I’ll never talk after that.”

  “Five tons? Buried on the cay?”

  “Take out the hook and promise not to hurt her, and I’ll tell you where it is.”

  A hesitation. And then Cordray withdrew the hook a few inches from her flesh. “Start talking.”

  “I can’t think with that damn hook so close. Take it away.”

  “How do we know you’re telling the truth?” said Cordray.

  He seemed a little less irrational than his wife. And the question gave Gideon another idea.


  “All right. I wasn’t telling you the whole truth. We already found it.”

  This had the both of them openmouthed. Amy turned to look at him. “Mark—” she began.

  “Some of the treasure’s right here on the boat,” he added.

  “You dug it up?”

  “There’s way too much, we had to leave almost all of it. We have to bring a bigger boat. But we took as much as we could. I’ll make you a deal: let us go and you can have it. Take the boat, take everything. Just let us go ashore.”

  “Where is it?” cried Linda.

  “In the galley. Hidden in cupboards behind the food supplies. Bars of gold, crates of doubloons.”

  He glanced at Amy, who was staring quizzically at him. Slowly and deliberately, he moved his eyes to the gaff hook in Cordray’s hand, its long, razor-sharp tip gleaming.

  “Jesus Christ, go look,” said Cordray to his wife.

  But she was already on her way, pushing past them on the narrow deck, into the pilothouse and down the companionway to the galley. The lights were still on from the previous search and Gideon could see, through the pilothouse windows, her climbing on the dining table and opening the cupboards, pulling and tossing foodstuffs out of the cabinet.

  Cordray was distracted. He kept looking in the window. “Is it there?” he shouted.

  “Give me a fucking chance.” More stuff came flying out of the cabinet. Now even the two naked pirates were staring in the windows.

  Gideon could now see Linda trying to get through the wood panels in the back of the cabinet. She got off the table, grabbed a kitchen knife out of the drawer, climbed back up and began stabbing and prying at the wood. Meanwhile, Cordray watched her eagerly, his eyes fixed on the window. The gaff hook was in his right hand, forgotten, the hook pointing inward toward his own belly.

  Now or never…

  Gideon lunged forward, checking Cordray’s upper arm and body with his shoulder, a sharp, hard blow. The check did exactly what he hoped—thrust the gaff hook deep into Cordray’s abdomen.

  With a piercing scream he fell back, instinctively trying to pull back on the hook and tearing himself more in the process, blood spurting over the deck. In an instant Amy exploded into action. With one deft move she twisted around, raised her tied hands and hooked them over the bloody, protruding edge of the gaff hook, slicing off the plastic bonds. She then fell upon Cordray, grabbing the end of the hook.

  At the same time, there was a crash in the galley as the woman jumped down from the table, scrambling up the companionway, gun drawn. The two pirates, taken off guard, scrambled backward, raising their guns but unable to fire into the tangle of people.

  “Don’t move or I pull this hook,” Amy said, her voice remarkably calm. “Drop your weapons or I’ll gut him.”

  “No!” screamed Cordray. “Manuel, Paco, no se mueven!”

  The two pirates froze.

  Following Amy’s lead, Gideon sliced off his own ties and advanced on the men. They stepped back, guns leveled.

  “Baja las armas!” Amy cried, starting to pull the hook.

  “Baja!” cried Cordray. “You too, Linda! Oh, Christ, the blood, look at the blood!”

  After a hesitation, the men tossed their guns on the deck. Gideon picked them up and backed away, keeping Pirate and Mustache covered.

  “You too,” Gideon said, pointing a gun at Linda, who was in the door of the pilothouse, frozen, staring at the hook in her husband’s belly. “Or Amy pulls.”

  She dropped her gun.

  “Oh, my God!” shrieked Cordray. “I’m bleeding to death!”

  Amy let go of the end of the hook and backed up, snatching a proffered gun from Gideon. She pointed it at the two pirates. “En el agua. In the water.”

  The naked men needed no further encouragement. They dove into the water and began swimming as fast as they could back to the Horizonte.

  She gestured at the wife. “Put your husband in the launch and get out of here.”

  “Yes. Yes.” Linda was trembling all over. Cordray was moaning, holding his stomach with blood-soaked hands, the hook still inside. She tried to help him up, but he couldn’t rise. He was sobbing.

  “Look at all this blood,” he moaned. “God, it hurts…Please, get me to a hospital—”

  “Get in the launch now,” said Amy, firing the gun into the air.

  Gideon took Cordray by the arm and hauled him up, helping him to the stern, while he screamed piteously, the wife stumbling along, through the stern gate, onto the platform, and into the launch.

  He pointed his gun at them. “Now get the fuck out of here.”

  The wife started the engine, Cordray lying in the bottom of the boat, doubled up, gasping. They moved away into the darkness, toward the Horizonte. Gideon could see the two pirates now climbing over the side, into the boat.

  “We’re still within small-arms range,” said Amy. “Go cut the anchor rope. We’d better get out of here.”

  Gideon went forward. He could see the two pirates, and two other crewmen, helping Cordray and his wife onto the Horizonte. And then one of the crew went to the foredeck, where he pulled a piece of canvas off what Gideon had assumed to be storage crates or equipment—exposing a large mounted gun.

  24

  OH, SHIT,” SAID Gideon. He sawed through the anchor rope as he heard the engines of their own boat fire up. The Turquesa leapt forward just as the rope parted, the dual jet drives blasting a huge roll of water behind as the boat surged.

  As they roared into the darkness the deck gun erupted behind them with incredible noise, a column of white water stitching toward them. The Turquesa veered abruptly, so hard that Gideon was thrown into the rail and almost went into the water, the rounds zipping past their stern, then whipping around again. The boat jerked once more, zigzagging, the hull almost coming clear of the water with each turn, Gideon clinging with both arms to the rail, his legs dangling over the side. There was a sudden eruption of water at the bow and the sound of rounds smacking into fiberglass and Kevlar. But the Turquesa was moving fast, and soon the gouts of water kicked up by the gun were going ever more wild.

  They surged out of the bay and hit the swells coming around the point—a rough sea that almost swamped them. Amy slowed slightly, to stabilize the vessel, but it was still leaping and pounding through the swells. Gideon managed to climb back through the rail and crawl into the pilothouse.

  “Damn,” said Amy, staring at the radar. “They’re coming after us.”

  Gideon grabbed a pair of binoculars and looked back. The Horizonte, brilliantly lit, was indeed following them. Fast.

  Amy reached down and slapped a bunch of circuit breakers with the palm of her hand, dousing all the lights on the boat. A moment later the Horizonte also went dark.

  “They can’t outrun us,” said Gideon.

  Amy stared at the radar. “I’m not so sure about that.”

  “That tub?”

  “That tub is going thirty knots and getting faster. It must have monstrous engines. And it’s a much heavier boat—it can plow this sea better than we can.”

  Even in the darkness, Gideon could see blood running down her leg and pooling on the deck. “Amy, you’re hurt. That hook—”

  “Superficial. Didn’t pierce the peritoneum.”

  “We need to stop the bleeding. It can’t wait.”

  “It has to wait. A storm is coming. As the sea gets rougher, they’re going to gain on us.”

  “I’ll take the helm while you take care of that wound.”

  “No.”

  “I insist—”

  “You’ll obey my orders.” She said it quietly, but with such conviction that Gideon knew it was pointless to argue.

  “I’m going to treat you right here, then.”

  She didn’t reply. Gideon went into the galley, clinging to everything as the boat lurched through the rough sea. Feeling around in the darkness, he brought up a first-aid kit and some water in a squirt bottle. She didn’t stop him while
he opened her pajama top, sponged out the wound and examined it. The hook had made an inch-long cut. He cleaned it with Betadine, spread on some antibiotic ointment, taped the wound shut, and applied a dressing.

  The boat continued to leap through the dark sea. He could see nothing around them but darkness, broken only by the faint gray outlines of streaming whitecaps. But the Horizonte was visible on radar, a green blob half a nautical mile directly behind them.

  “They’re gaining,” said Amy.

  “What’s the range of a 50-caliber machine gun?”

  “Two thousand yards.”

  He peered at the radar screen. “They’re only a thousand yards out already.”

  “In a sea like this, both of us moving the way we are, they can’t aim.”

  “They’ll put a lot of lead in the air and try to take us down that way. Those rounds’ll go right through our Kevlar hull.”

  As if in response, he heard a distant, rapid-fire burst from behind. Fifty yards to port, flashes of white water indicated where the rounds had hit. More fire, more white water, this time to starboard.

  The boat thundered on, banging and leaping off the waves. Gideon could hear stuff crashing about in the galley.

  Amy changed course. “We’re not going to outrun them,” she said. “Find us a plan B.”

  “Plan B?”

  “It’s all I can do to drive this boat.”

  Gideon’s mind raced through a dozen possibilities, rejecting them all. There was another fusillade of fire from the Horizonte.

  “Gideon—!”

  “Okay, okay. I have an idea. We’ll light up our launch like a Christmas tree, send it off, use it as a decoy while we escape in the darkness.”

  Amy rolled her eyes. “They have radar. They can tell the difference between a dinghy and a yacht.”

  Gideon fell silent.

  And then Amy said: “No, wait. It could work.”

  “How?”

  “Radar reflectors. In the rear storage chest.”

  “Radar reflectors?”