Hunt at World's End

by Gabriel Hunt

  “Where’s Joyce?” Daniel asked over the low hum of the engine.

  “Belowdecks,” Gabriel replied, his eyes scanning the horizon. “She’s checking on the dive equipment.”

  Daniel nodded. “I don’t know what I would have done if you hadn’t found her, Gabriel,” he said. “She came very close to dying, didn’t she?”

  “Yes. We both did.”

  “This isn’t what I wanted for her,” Daniel said. “This life. Don’t get me wrong, I was happy when she showed an interest in archeology and anthropology. In fact, I took quite a bit of pride in it, knowing I’d had a hand in it. Her favorite uncle.” He smiled weakly. “When she was younger, she would spend more time with me than with her parents. I would tell her stories about all the amazing things I found whenever I went on digs. You should have seen the way her eyes lit up, hearing about it. I knew even then that she had the bug. I hoped she might find a good university to teach at, do some traveling, work a dig site or two during her off time. The usual routine. But that’s not how it turned out.”

  “What happened?” Gabriel said.

  “You did,” Daniel said. Gabriel didn’t say anything, just continued steering. “I remember the day she brought me a copy of National Geographic and asked me if the man on the cover was the same boy she’d met all those years ago at my house in Maryland. I told her yes, it was. You remember that article?”

  How could he forget? He’d only been on the cover the one time, shortly after his discovery of the tomb of the Mugalik Emperor. He hadn’t meant for it to become public, at least not as quickly and as widely as it had. But there’d been a spy in his crew, not in an enemy’s pay but in CNN’s, and his face had been all over the world the next day.

  “After that,” Daniel said, “she never stopped following your career. All your adventures in the papers and magazines. That TV special on the Discovery Channel a few years back.” That unauthorized TV special, Gabriel thought. “She became obsessed with you, Gabriel. She headed off to follow in your footsteps, and she almost died because of it.”

  Gabriel didn’t know what to say. He’d never set out to be anyone’s role model, least of all Joyce Wingard’s. But that didn’t absolve him of responsibility if that’s what had happened. He remembered her comment to him back in Merpati’s place: “You don’t know how I used to dream about hearing those words come out of your mouth…The great Gabriel Hunt, impressed.”

  And he remembered the touch of her lips.

  “I’m not blaming you,” Daniel went on. “She’s an adult now. She makes her own decisions. But I thought it was important for you to know. And if you were to talk to her, I think she’d listen.”

  Gabriel shifted uncomfortably. “What do you mean?”

  “You might be able to talk her out of this life, Gabriel. When this is all over, convince her she’d be better off with a university job where the only attacks she’ll ever have to fend off will be to her funding, or her tenure application. Where she’ll be safe. She’s like a daughter to me, Gabriel. I couldn’t stand it if something happened to her.”

  “I doubt she’d listen to me,” he said. “I don’t think she’s one for taking advice from anyone.”

  “I’d appreciate it if you’d try,” Daniel said.

  Gabriel stood on the wooden planks of the aft deck, leaning against the steel railing with the sun beating down on his shoulders. In the distance, the Turkish skyline retreated toward the horizon until it was little more than a dark band at the far end of a field of rippling turquoise. The waters were calm. The nearest boat, a massive cruise ship anchored some miles away, looked like a bathtub toy. He felt the engine cut out before he heard it, the vibrations below his feet slowing to a stop. He’d left Daniel to steer and keep an eye on the coordinates; the man wasn’t a seasoned sailor, but he knew more about all the machinery in the pilothouse than Gabriel did.

  As the Ashina Tuwu bobbed gently in the waves of its own wake, Daniel emerged from the flybridge and climbed down the steps to the deck. “This is the spot,” he announced.

  “You’re sure?’ Gabriel asked.

  “Have you seen the computers up there? This boat could find Amelia Earhart if you plugged in enough numbers.”

  Gabriel nodded and turned back to the water. According to Arnuwanda’s ancient map, the second of the Three Eyes of Teshub waited somewhere below the undulating blue waves. He only hoped Grissom hadn’t beaten them to it.

  Below the flybridge, the door to the cabin opened. Joyce stepped down the shallow steps to the deck, her hair tied back in a tight ponytail. She’d changed into a black bikini while she’d been below, and the sunlight glistened off her bronzed skin. She held an oxygen tank in each hand and planted them before Gabriel on the deck.

  “I take it we’re here?” she asked.

  “The exact coordinates,” Daniel said. “Assuming the map was correct to begin with and nothing has changed in the centuries since it was drawn, the Eye should be right below us.” He ducked into the cabin and came back a moment later with the rest of the equipment.

  Gabriel and Joyce put on their scuba masks, fins and gloves. They hooked dive lights and small knives to their weight belts. Gabriel unzipped the nylon backpack he’d brought with him, pulled out the Death’s Head Key and hung it around his neck in case they needed it to deal with whatever was waiting for them down there. As he zipped the backpack again, the Star of Arnuwanda caught the sunlight, glittering at him from inside. Joyce had insisted on bringing it with them when they left the hotel. After all they’d been through, she didn’t want to let it out of her sight. Gabriel felt the same way about his Colt, which rested at the bottom of the backpack. Old habits died hard.

  Daniel checked the tanks and regulators to make sure they were working properly, then brought them over to where Gabriel and Joyce sat at the edge of the deck. There was no railing behind them, only a short drop to the water below.

  “There are deep trenches in the seafloor all along this part of the Mediterranean,” Daniel said. “If the structure housing the second Eye hasn’t been found in all this time, it’s a safe bet it’s at the bottom of one of them. I don’t know how deep you’ll have to go, but if the pressure gets too much for you, if you get lightheaded or sick, come back to the boat right away. Please—” He caught Joyce’s eye. “Don’t put yourself in any more danger than necessary. Worse comes to worst, we can always come back tomorrow and try again.”

  “We won’t get a second chance,” Joyce said. She slipped her arms through the straps of an oxygen tank and straightened it on her back. “If we don’t get the Eye, Grissom will. Tomorrow’s not an option.”

  Gabriel strapped on his tank too. “Keep the boat here,” he told Daniel. “And turn on the dive lights on the bottom so we can find you again.”

  “Already done,” Daniel said. He turned to Joyce as she fit the regulator into her mouth. “Be careful,” he said. Joyce gave him the thumbs-up, then tipped backward into the water with a loud splash.

  Daniel shook his head. “You see what I’m dealing with? She’s completely reckless.”

  “I’ll try to bring her back in one piece,” Gabriel said.

  “Yes,” Daniel said, “do that, please.”

  Gabriel slipped the regulator into his mouth. He took a couple of breaths to test the action, then dropped backward off the deck and followed Joyce into the sun-warmed water. Though the salinity levels were low in this part of the Mediterranean, his scars stung as the water washed over them. A moment later the stinging subsided, or at least he got used to it, and he kicked his way deeper. Above him, bright red lights ran along the bottom of the ship’s hull, a beacon to guide them back. He spotted Joyce ahead of him, her body tipped downward, coursing lower into the depths where the shimmering columns of sunlight that broke through the surface grew diffuse. He hurried to follow her, angling his body and kicking his fins. The Death’s Head Key swung on the strap around his neck and floated behind him as he swam. Roughly four hundred feet below, he co
uld make out swaying masses of seaweed at the bottom, and a dark, jagged crack cutting across the sand and stone of the sea floor. A trench.

  Schools of fish darted around him as he descended, gray bullet tuna and long, thin silver garpikes parting to either side in undulating sheets. Joyce was still ahead of him, kicking her fins hard, not waiting for him to catch up, not even looking back to see if he was still there. At that moment, it was hard to imagine her giving a damn about anything he or anyone else had to say about her career choices.

  He had to admit, there was a dichotomy to her he found intriguing. Sometimes she was funny, tender, even affectionate, and other times she was stubborn, single-minded, even hostile. It was almost as if she became a different person when they were in the field, like she was trying to compete with him, desperate to prove her mettle. It fascinated and frustrated him at the same time. He didn’t want to see her risk her neck again and again taking foolish chances, but it was when she was like this, barreling full steam ahead into the unknown, that he felt more drawn to her than ever. It was foolish, he knew. And a little uncomfortable—his family and hers had been so close she felt almost like a relative. Yet the more he was around her, the more he realized there was something about her he couldn’t shake. And didn’t want to.

  Joyce continued toward the trench in the seafloor, her slender form gliding gracefully through the water. Gabriel followed, closing the distance between them. The water grew colder the farther they got from the surface and the reach of the sun. Ahead, Joyce passed into the shadows of the trench, disappearing from view. A moment later, her dive light went on, a bright shaft that cut through the darkness and illuminated her body in silhouette. Gabriel approached the mouth of the trench, pulling his own dive light from his weight belt and switching it on. A fat spotted eel dove into the sand to hide as he passed, descending into the trench, the darkness and cold closing in around him.

  In the glare of his dive light, he saw rugged stone walls on either side. Tufts of marine plant life grew out of the cracks and swayed in the gentle current. The deeper he swam, the more the pressure built, making the bruises and wounds on his torso and face throb dully.

  He caught up to Joyce as she passed a rounded outcropping in the trench wall. She glanced at him, her eyes hidden in the shadows of her swim mask, then shone her light deeper into the trench. The beam pierced the darkness for a hundred feet, then faded without touching anything. There was no telling how far they were from the floor, only that at this height the trench seemed bottomless.

  The Death’s Head Key floated up in front of his mask. He reached up to push it out of the way, but before he could touch it the key jolted suddenly to the side. He pulled it down, but the key yanked up to the side again, too insistent for it to be due solely to the current. It felt like it was pulling against the strap of its own accord. He signaled to Joyce to follow him, then swam in the direction the key was pointing. It remained floating in front of him as he swam, which wasn’t right—his momentum should have caused the key to trail behind him.

  He remembered the key leaping out of Grissom’s hand into the lock of the crypt in Borneo. Grissom had muttered a word Gabriel almost hadn’t caught.

  Magnetized.

  The key angled up suddenly as he neared the trench wall, pulling at the strap with such force that Gabriel thought the leather might break. He shone his light up and saw he was directly beneath the large outcropping, the rock’s surface slick with sea moss and thick weeds. Joyce swam up beside him, adding her light to his in illuminating the enormous stone above. The key kept tugging forward.

  He swam closer, Joyce right beside him. The Death’s Head Key rose over his head, almost pulling the strap from around his neck before he could grab it. It was aiming itself directly at the outcropping. Gabriel released the key. It sped a few inches through the water and attached itself to the bed of moss.

  Grissom had been right. Somehow the key was magnetized, responding to something in the outcropping.

  He started pulling at the weeds around the key, tearing them off the surface of the rock. Joyce dug at the moss as well, scraping handfuls away. Together they cleared a wide swath, enough to see that the surface underneath was made of metal. As they pulled away more vegetation, it revealed itself to be a large, square hatch, decorated under a thick patina of rust with the same sorts of ornate designs as the door in Borneo. As before, there was no knob or handle, only a lock featuring the same peculiar triple-slotted keyway and the same etching above it of a skull with a diamond shape between its eyes.

  Gabriel retrieved the Death’s Head Key from where it was stuck, quivering, in the moss and angled its three blades toward the keyway. The key leapt from his fingers to sink into the lock. Joyce looked at him in amazement. He tried to turn the key, but the pins and tumblers inside the lock hadn’t moved in thousands of years, and the water had all but rusted them in place. He kept forcing it, and just when he thought either the key or his arm would snap in half, he felt something give inside the lock. Using both hands, he managed to turn the key, first just forty-five degrees, then the rest of the way around. He felt a powerful vibration inside the door, then a heavy clonk, as of a bolt sliding aside.

  Taking hold of the key, he planted both flippered feet against the rock and pulled as hard as he could. Joyce slid her knife into the edge between the hatch and the surrounding rock, to try to help wedge it open. It felt like he was trying to pull the entire outcropping out of the trench wall with his bare hands. The hatch refused to budge. He wondered if it even would be possible to open it after all this time. Then he felt something give. The hatch popped open a crack and slowly swung wide. Behind it, Gabriel saw nothing but pitch-black, a tunnel into the rock. He pulled the key from the lock, struggling against the magnetic force that tried to keep it in place, and hung it around his neck again. He shone his dive light into the opening.

  Something moved in the distance, heading toward the hatch.

  Joyce shone her light in as well, then recoiled and screamed into her regulator, sending a rush of bubbles over her head.

  Long, white arms reached suddenly toward them, followed by the leering face of a skull.

  Chapter 15

  Gabriel swam aside to let the skeleton drift harmlessly past. It bumped against the trench wall and its bones broke apart, tumbling away loosely with the current. He turned his light on Joyce. She put a hand out and pushed the light away. In the brief glimpse he’d gotten of her face, she’d looked embarrassed.

  It was nothing to be embarrassed about. Most people would scream if they saw a skeleton apparently swimming toward them, even if they hadn’t just spent five days imprisoned by men wearing skull masks. But here again Joyce seemed to need to prove she was every bit the hardened veteran he was. He just hoped this tendency on her part wouldn’t lead to her doing something that would be worse than embarrassing—possibly even fatal.

  In any event, he wasn’t going to give her the chance to do so here. Gabriel swam into the tunnel first, the beam from his dive light leading the way. Joyce followed, shining her light along the walls. The entire stone outcropping was hollow, angling slightly upward from the hatch and extending some thirty feet into the trench wall. Rough alcoves had been carved into the walls on either side, just as there had been in the crypt in Borneo. Inside all but one alcove was a skeleton, wrists and ankles manacled to the stone. In the empty alcove, broken manacles hung where they’d once held the skeleton that had floated away. All traces of skin and clothing on the skeletons were long gone, and the Hittite armor they had worn when buried had corroded to shapeless patches covering their rib cages and in a few cases the tops of their skulls.

  Gabriel’s heart beat faster at the sight of a familiar shimmering green light playing along the walls at the far end of the chamber. As he swam closer, he saw a pedestal on the floor, and atop it a huge emerald, the same shape and size as the one in Borneo, clutched in a similar stone hand. Like its twin, this jewel glowed from within, painting the walls ar
ound it with flickering green rays that illuminated a row of carved cuneiform symbols. Gabriel recognized them as the same Nesili words they’d seen in Borneo.

  The light at world’s end.

  The stone fingers looked like they had a firm grip on the gemstone; at minimum they had prevented it from floating away all this time. Remembering what had happened in Borneo, Gabriel examined the walls and ceiling for any sign of booby traps before touching the stone hand. Nothing.

  He signaled to Joyce to keep an eye out, then pulled the knife from his belt. He placed one palm over the emerald to brace it and felt a strange vibration travel up his arm. What Grissom had felt, presumably; the power of the storm god, he’d called it.

  Gabriel slid the blade of his knife between the emerald and the stone thumb. The hand in Borneo had had hidden hinges in the knuckles. If he could bend the thumb away, he might be able to pry the gemstone free. He pushed with the knife, trying to lift the thumb. It didn’t budge. He pushed harder. It was difficult to gain leverage while floating, but finally the thumb started to give. He slid the knife deeper between the emerald and the thumb and pushed again, but instead of bending on its hinge, the thumb broke off entirely. The oblong bit of stone spun away from the pedestal and sank slowly to the floor.

  He put the knife away in its sheath and grasped the emerald carefully with both hands. With the thumb gone, he was able to shift the gemstone easily within the confines of the other fingers. He maneuvered it toward the space where the thumb had been and with a little finessing and a lot of yanking, he managed to pull it free.

  Joyce swam over to him, her eyes flashing with excitement. She gave him a thumbs-up.

  Movement at the corner of his eye brought Gabriel’s attention back to the pedestal. The stone fingers began to bend inward on their hinges to form a thumbless fist. Just like in Borneo, before they’d almost gotten buried alive in the chamber. He pointed in the direction of the hatch and started swimming, gripping the emerald tightly and kicking his legs as fast as he could. He glanced back to make sure Joyce was still behind him. Past her, at the far end of the underwater crypt, a panel in the ceiling was sliding open (damn it, he hadn’t seen a seam!), and a large, jagged stone fell through, moving at a tremendous pace as though hurled by some sort of spring mechanism. It smashed the pedestal beneath it and careened off the floor. Because the chamber was angled downward toward the hatch, the stone caromed toward them. It banged off the walls, smashing off shards of stone that spun through the water like shrapnel. Behind it, another stone, even larger than the first, shot out of the hole and barreled toward them in the first one’s wake. Then a third. Gabriel twisted back around and kicked as fast as he could toward the hatch.