“You hear everything, Dad?” I ask him.
I connected my father before Olivia and I started talking. He wanted to be down here with us but hadn’t been feeling well when I left. He’d been complaining of a bad stomach ache and cramps and I didn’t want to risk it. We’d be a long, long way from his doctor, no reason to chance it. NVS conference calls were the next best option.
“Yes, I did, Harrison.”
“You think Xander may have been working for Zero?” I say, asking the obvious question.
“I seriously doubt it—at least not on purpose anyway. Nothing in his past, some thirty-plus years in the field, suggests otherwise. Still, we may want to be cautious.”
“What do you think, Kane?” I ask another of the listeners.
Kane being our official government liaison and all has the final say when it comes to divulging classified material to someone outside our group. As of now, there are the three of us, my father, and Ben Fehr—who Dad insisted on bringing aboard. He was actually downright adamant about it. Dad said Ben wanted to help as much as he could since he was the one who recommended Omar to be our guide in Algeria. He wanted to make it up to us any way he could, even though we told him we didn’t hold it against him. Omar fooled us all, not just him.
“Huh?” A voice gurgles in my ear. All I can hear is munching and swallowing in my ear piece.
“Seriously man, put the snacks down and come out here, will ya’?” I turn to where I had last seen Kane venture to—the only place where he could get food—the camp’s mess hall. Or is it a mess tent? Never mind, forget it.
Kane steps out of the food storage place with a bag of Chex-Mix in hand, shoving handfuls into his mouth. He ambles over to us, stopping to check out Olivia, looking up and down her colorfully adorned arms.
“You got Scar in there somewhere?” He asks, still studying her body, an impressed look creeping onto his face. “Or Jafar?”
Nicole rolls her eyes and turns away, an irritated look spreading onto her face. It most likely resembles my own.
“Both,” Olivia answers, obviously pleased that someone has taken an interest in her collection, “but, they’re on my back. I’d have to take off my shirt to show you.”
Kane’s eyes perk up at her unintentional invitation. “We could…you know…step into a tent—”
“Kane!” Nicole and I yell in unison.
“What?” He says startled at our twin outbursts, dropping his snack. It’s then he finally notices our plainly clear expressions of frustration and anger.
“Oh, right. What were you asking?”
Nicole moans, rubbing the back of her neck. She tends to do that when trying to ward off a headache.
“I asked you what you thought about everything,” I say putting a little zing into the words, hoping they sting him a little, but he either didn’t notice or didn’t care.
“It’s all screwed up for sure,” he says. “This darkness, or whatever the hell it is, is potent stuff. If it was to fall into the hands of Zero, we’d be in deep shit. We need to be careful who catches wind of this…for…sure.” He trails off as he finishes, finally realizing what I was asking for while he was chomping away on his munchies.
I look to him and then to Olivia, who is just standing there with a confused look on her face.
“Catches wind of what?” Olivia asks. “What aren’t you telling me? Who’s Zero?”
I breathe a heavy sigh, shaking my head, as I step aside, giving Kane the floor.
“All yours,” I say, sitting on a vacated crate, giving him the responsibility of retelling the events that we have endured over these last few months.
* * *
“Atlantis? You’re kidding, right? You three found Atlantis—in the desert!”
“Technically,” I say to the flabbergasted woman. “We found an Atlantean necropolis under where Atlantis was, not the actual city itself. It’s been destroyed for the last few millennia.”
“But, you proved its existence?” She asks.
“Not really, we—” I say.
“Due to national security,” Kane interrupts. “Or, I guess you would say, international security, we weren’t able to divulge any of our findings. What we’re telling you is beyond what you would call top secret.”
“How secret?” Olivia asks.
“I have the authority to eliminate any and all people, who do in fact, reveal anything related to what we found.” He accentuated the word eliminate so she would understand what he said, loud-and-clear. And she did.
“Oh, right then,” she says with a nervous smile. “Now what?”
I look to Kane, “Specs, please.”
Kane hands Olivia a set of NVS2 glasses, plugging her into our network. She looks them over quizzically and puts them on, flinching when the lenses come to life. They scan her retinas for identification, also a new feature to a first-time wearer.
From here it looks like her eyes are just aimlessly darting back and forth, but she is really just trying to take in all the information that’s being uploaded to her device.
She relaxes and looks back to me and sees me smiling. “What?” She asks a little defensive.
“Nothing…” I answer. Did I look like that when I first put them on? “Dad, you there?”
“Dad?” Olivia asks, a look of confusion on her face.
“Yes, I am Harrison, and hello to you again Ms. Dubois.”
“D-Dr. Boyd! Is that you?” Olivia asks, shocked.
“Yes, it is,” he replies and then gets right to work. “So I assume you’ve been caught up to speed?”
She nods her head, yes.
“He can’t see you nodding,” Nicole quips, also smiling, an amused look on her face.
“Yes sir, I have,” Olivia says, this time, audibly answering my father.
“Good then. Harrison, what’s your next step?”
“Honestly, I’m not sure,” I reply. “Olivia, do you think it’s safe for us to search the tomb?”
She shrugs, “I don’t know. If the rain diluted the mix out here then it’s safe to assume whatever’s in there,” she points towards a hill a hundred yards away, “is dry and still toxic.”
“What do you suggest?” Dad asks.
“We have the necessary equipment on location to use in just this situation, including Haz-Mat suits. You never know what you may dig up, you know?”
Smart lady, I think, or maybe it’s just dumb luck. I decided not to delve any deeper into it. “Let’s take a look at the entrance and then we’ll decide on a course of action, okay?”
She nods and leads us towards the dig site.
“So,” Kane asks from behind. “How did you disable the jamming device that was blocking communications? You have training in that sort of thing?”
“No,” Olivia says, shaking her head. “I went out for a walk to clear my head after a few hours of work and stumbled upon a black plastic box and immediately noticed it wasn’t anything we had brought. It sort of looked like a computer modem from ten years ago.”
“What did you do?” Kane asks.
“I took a pick-axe and smashed it to bits,” she answers, talking over her shoulder as she walks. “Communications opened up immediately and I called Dr. Boyd in Washington.”
I glance back and see Kane nod his approval, an impressed look spreading across his face.
“Primitive, yet effective. Nice job, Belle,” Kane replies, referring to her as the French bookworm turned princess.
Olivia doesn’t turn to acknowledge the man, but walking next to her I can see a slight smile forming on her face. Uh, oh, I think. The theme from Love Boat pops into my head, but before I can join in and sing the chorus, we arrive at our destination.
“This is it?” I ask.
Olivia nods, staring at the ground in front of the entry way.
“What is it?” Nicole asks.
“This is where it happened,” Olivia explains. “This is where Jason came out of the tunnel screaming, exposing everyone to t
he agent.”
“How do you know it was him?” Nicole asks.
“Just a hunch. Dr. Weaver wouldn’t have acted so rashly. He knew what would happen if he was infected and brought it out here,” she shook her head. “Jason was self-centered and would never have sacrificed himself to save everyone else. It fits his profile perfectly for him to do this, not that it was intentional. Honestly, I never understood why he was here to begin with?”
“Ahem,” comes a voice over our network.
“Oh, sorry Dr. Boyd, I forgot you were there. I didn’t mean to imply—”
“It’s fine Ms. Dubois,” he replies, a hint of annoyance in his voice. “Carry on.”
Olivia shoots me an “oh shit” look and grimaces. Questioning your boss live over the airways isn’t a good way to get ahead in any kind of business in my opinion, especially when he’s on the other line.
“What makes you think it’s a biological agent?” Kane asks getting back on topic.
“What else could it be?” Olivia asks, thankful to be moving on from the prior faux pas. “This place hasn’t been touched in over a thousand years. I figure it’s got to be something natural. I mean it’s not like someone could just sneak a weapon or some other device into here and cover it up. You would be able to see evidence of a dig of that magnitude.”
“What is it then?” Kane asks.
“Salt acid,” I say, interrupting the two.
“Wait—what? Salt acid?” Kane asks, confused by my outburst.
I continue, putting my new found knowledge on the subject matter to good use. I was a little unprepared in Algeria for this sort of thing, but not anymore. “The ancient Egyptians were known to booby-trap their valuable relics with a variety of nasty things, pressurized salt acid being one of them.”
“So you think it’s a booby-trap?” Nicole asks.
“Maybe, but there is no way to know for sure without going in there,” I say motioning with a nod to the three-by-three hole.
“In there?” Kane asks, thumbing towards the entrance. “You expect this,” he motions with his hands to his own large body, “to fit in that hole?” I laugh, “No man, you stay out here and comb the grounds for clues or better yet…get a snack and stay put and wait for us.”
Kane’s about to argue, but thinks better of it and heads back towards the row of tents, mumbling under his breath. He says something about getting more Chex-Mix but is then too far away for me to hear anything else.
I look back out over the quiet expanse of land that used to be a bustling expedition lead by a veteran of thirty years in the field. It should have been a relatively quick and standard operation, but instead turned into even more of a mass grave than before.
Kane called in and delayed any sort of response so we could have time to investigate before the general public eventually caught wind of what happened. It’s not like we can sweep this under the rug and pretend it didn’t happen. Families and friends will need to be notified and arrangements planned. We will need to organize the eventual burial of every single person involved in this disaster. That is, all except one.
“Olivia,” I say, looking at the resilient woman. “Where are the Haz-Mat suits?”
17
Isla de Jaina, Campeche, Mexico
Crawling through the tomb’s tunnel entrance in our bulky Haz-Mat suits proved as difficult as we expected. The already tight squeeze became even worse with the added girth our protective cocoons provided. Thankfully, Kane did, indeed, stay behind. He would have definitely gotten stuck, I thought. The man’s shoulders are as wide and bulky as a powerlifter. His build, while effective in a fight, was a hindrance in confined places, like where the three of us are now. Pushing him out would have been a literal pain in our backs.
Before we entered, Kane wanted to contact his superiors in the States and update them on what we found so far. He also wanted to scour the area for anything else that could possibly identify the culprit who had planted the jamming device, an answer that still eluded him.
“Why would someone need to cut off communications?” He asked rhetorically. He wanted to find out immediately.
As we shuffle through the opening, I notice the rows of feet. They are unnerving for sure, but expected, considering the island is known as a vast burial ground anyway. Leading Nicole and Olivia through the confining space barely takes a couple of minutes, but when you’re surrounded by so much death it seems like a hell of a lot longer.
The passage opens up slightly, relieving some of the built up anxiety I had started to feel. I’m not claustrophobic by any means, but knowing I’m surrounded by the dead, both past and present, can make anyone feel uncomfortable.
Lost in thought, I unknowingly exit the tunnel and enter a chamber, my gloved hand striking something hard and round. I lift it and in the glow of my NVS2 night-vision, I see that what I felt was a coin, gold by the looks of it. It has what looks like a man’s head adorned with a headdress on its surface.
I place my hand back down and hit another one and then try to lift my head to see further into the room, but I can’t, the Haz-Mat’s hood won’t let me bend my neck that way.
“There’s a chamber up here,” I announce to the women following me. “Possibly a treasure room.”
I finally pop out of the hole in the wall and stand. Now free of the tunnel and having full range of motion, I look up, deeper into the room. Lit up in various shades of green are mounds of gold, some reaching the six-foot ceiling. I can tell its height since I have to hunch a little being six-two myself.
“Oh,” I say, taken a little off guard with what I see. There are piles of gold mixed with an assortment of valuable gems. They line the walls and cover the floors, not a single shred of the dirt floor can be seen, at least, not what I’ve seen so far anyway.
I continue to scan the room as Nicole emerges from the tunnel exit. I look back down to her as she effortlessly slides out and kneels, about to stand and join me. She lifts her eyes to the room for the first time, “Oh…”
Her exclamation, while being the same as mine when seeing the room for the first time, is in a completely different tone. It’s one of gloom.
It’s then I notice that her line of sight is lower than mine and that she is obviously looking at something I’ve missed. I look to the ground, not twenty feet in front of me, and see what she has discovered. Lying in the middle of the room is the bloodied remains of Dr. Xander Weaver.
I groan a curse under my breath and—
“Oh, God!”
My thought is cut off by another voice, this one, full of despair. I glance back to see Olivia standing next to Nicole, hands raised to her suited mouth. I hadn’t noticed she exited the tunnel as well.
Consoling the distraught woman, the best way she can, Nicole just silently places a hand on Olivia’s shoulder, squeezing it. Her mentor is dead.
“It was Keen,” Olivia says a-matter-of-factly.
“How do you know?” I ask.
“He and Dr. Weaver were the only ones authorized to enter the tomb until everything was accounted for and cataloged, just in case any of the locals got a little greedy.”
Makes sense.
“But why?” I ask, turning back to the body.
“Isn’t it obvious,” Olivia says, motioning to the vast wealth surrounding us. “Jason was always an ambitious little troll. I wouldn’t put something like grand theft past him—”
“And murder?” I add.
She just shrugs.
I let out a long breath, “Dad, you getting all this?”
A moment of silence goes by before he answers, “Yes…but barely…any deeper and I’ll be…cut off.”
Through the short cutouts, I can hear his somber tone. “Sorry, Dad,” I say apologetically. “Xander was a good man.”
“Nothing you could have done, Harrison. Let’s just try to figure out what happened here.” Dad’s voice comes in grainy, making it hard to hear any emotion from him. But I know he is truly upset. He and Xander were
close and long-time colleagues. Next to Xander, Dad is the longest tenured employee in their department.
Well, I guess ‘now’ it’s Dad.
I carefully step forward, past the prone body, trying not to slip in the mix of blood and spilled loot. My foot lands awkwardly and I stumble on the uneven ground, but luckily stay upright.
The lack of accounting and precision of this place bothers me too, knowing that the Maya were advanced in mathematics. They should have been a little more clear-cut when bringing in all of this wealth. They were a very organized people, for sure. Ancient OCD, I think to myself.
“What’s that?” Nicole asks, pointing towards the back of the room. “Is that a coffin?”
I take another cautious step forward, closer to the crypt, if that is in fact what it is, and stop. I look down at my feet and see what looks like a sword’s hilt sticking out of a mound of gold, its blade buried beneath. If it had been stone, it would have looked like Excalibur. That is, except for the blood surrounding it.
My eyes refocus on the potential burial spot and I’m about to take another step forward, but am stopped.
“Hank.”
I turn to see Nicole standing over the murder scene, eyes wide, but not looking at the body. I’m about to ask Nicole, “what?” But she supplies the answer for me, no question needed.
“The hilt,” she says now kneeling next to the sword.
I turn my attention to the protruding hilt and gasp. How did I miss that? I step back towards the scene again, this time, my attention fully on the artifact. I kneel next to Nicole doing my best not to look into the dead man’s open, lifeless eyes, which is hard since at this angle he’s staring straight at me. Three months ago this would have traumatized me, but after the death and destruction I’ve witnessed, my nerves have hardened. I’m not quite sure if that’s a good thing or a bad thing, though.
The hilt’s pommel, the decorative end that also supplies proper balance, shines like a beacon in my night-vision now that I’ve seen it for what it is.
“Lights,” I say. We all then switch over to our headlamps, extinguishing the NVS glasses.
Mayan Darkness (A Hank Boyd Adventure Book 2) (The Hank Boyd Adventures) Page 9