Treasure Hunters

by James Patterson

  “Actually,” said Tommy, who’d made a surprise appearance in the hallway outside Storm and Beck’s cabin door, “as you know better than anybody, Storm, because you totally memorized the whole nautical-terminology entry on Wikipedia, ballast is something placed on a vessel to, um… what was it again?”

  Storm couldn’t help but fill in the blank for Tommy: “Provide desired stability.”

  “Yeah, that’s what I was gonna say. Ballast on, like, a balloon, can, um…”

  Storm smiled a little. “Control the center of gravity.”

  “Exactly,” said Tommy. “You’re our rock, Storm. In a good way. Not like, you know, gravel. Or a rock in your shoe.”

  “You’re like the Rock of Gibraltar,” I said. “You’re the rock-solid center that helps the rest of us stay on course.”

  “Thanks, you guys,” Storm mumbled. “But—”

  “But nothing,” said Beck. “Who outsmarted that Cayman Islands cop yesterday?”

  “And who busted Daphne, the mask thief?” I added.

  Now Storm couldn’t help but grin. She raised her hand. “That would be me.”

  “And were you not, on both occasions, totally awesome?” said Tommy. “Besides, if you ask me, that map we were following was pretty sucky. Come on—what kind of pirate draws his treasure map on the back of, like, a movie ticket stub?”

  “But what about our financial crisis?” said Storm.

  Tommy paused. “So you definitely think we’re in a crisis here?”

  “Yes, Tommy.”

  “And would you say it’s an emergency-type situation, too?”

  Storm nodded.

  “Cool,” said Tommy.

  “Uh, what?” said Beck.

  “Well, if Storm has declared a state of emergency, I am free to act. Bick, stand by to hoist anchor.”

  “Huh?”

  “We need to shove off and set sail for the Florida Keys. We’re gonna go dig up some Spanish doubloons I know about.”

  “What?!” Beck, Storm, and I all shrieked together.

  Tommy shrugged. “Hey, Dad told me if there ever was an emergency financial crisis and he and Mom weren’t around, we should go tap into our college fund. He even showed me how to find it. Cool, huh?”

  Nobody said a word. For once, I was speechless. Luckily, I have a bigmouthed twin to help me in these situations.

  “You mean you knew where we could go to stock up on treasures all this time, and you waited until now to say something?” Beck said incredulously.

  “I waited until Storm said it was a financial emergency,” Tommy explained. “That’s what Dad told me to do because he trusted her to know when it was time for a last resort. She’s our, you know, compass or whatever. She tells us which way to go.”

  Storm stood up. “Dad said that about me?”

  Tommy nodded. “We couldn’t do this without you, Storm. You’re as important as any of us. And don’t you forget it.”

  CHAPTER 22

  “We need to be in The Room,” said Tommy. Storm raced off to the galley. When she came back, she smelled like coffee beans and brown dust was all over her right hand.

  Guess we know where she hid The Key that time.

  Tommy opened the solid steel door, and the four of us trooped into The Room together.

  “Um, what happened to that big, old-school map?” asked Beck.

  “I hid it,” said Storm. “Along with the photographs of the paintings and Al Capone.”

  “Where?”

  “Sorry,” said Storm. “That information is classified.”

  Beck winked. “Good.”

  Tommy sat down at the desk and fired up Dad’s computer. We clustered behind him so we could see the screen.

  “Okay, check it out,” said Tommy, clicking on a folder labeled KIDS’ COLLEGE FUND.

  The file opened and listed several documents and image files.

  “You know that legend about the four lost galleons from Córdoba’s fleet?”

  “Sure,” I cracked. “One of them was carrying solid-gold potty-training seats.”

  “Well, that legend isn’t completely true.”

  “Duh,” said Beck. “Don’t remind us.”

  “No, I mean there are only two ships still missing. Dad already found the other ones.”

  “No way,” I said.

  “Way. In fact, he found them twelve years ago, right after you two were born.”

  Storm raised her hand. “Tommy? How do you know all of this?”

  “Dad told me. That time you found The Key for us in the cookie jar. Anyway, right after Mom had Beck and Bick, Dad found these two underwater twins. He told me he considered the incredible coincidence of having twins and discovering twins to be, like, an omen.”

  Tommy clicked the mouse and an underwater photograph came up. It showed two Spanish galleons lying side by side at the bottom of the sea, their barnacled masts completely intertwined, almost as if they were spindly skeletons holding hands.

  “The one on the left he dubbed La Hermosa Señorita Rebecca. The one on the right he called El Muy Brillante Señor Bickford. According to the ships’ manifests”—he clicked the mouse again and scrolled down a list of incredible treasures—“these two galleons were carrying more than two thousand boxes of gold and silver coins, plus bullion bars, hundreds of ingots of copper, jewelry, religious medals, and junk like vanilla, chocolate, and indigo.”

  “Uh, Tommy?” said Beck. “Is this why you told me to ‘chillax’ yesterday? That no matter what happened, we’d be ‘golden’?”

  Tailspin Tommy got a sheepish grin on his face. “Yeah. I was kind of goofing on, you know, the word gold.”

  “And you know how to reach the dive site?” asked Storm.

  Tommy slid a flash drive into the computer. “Even better. I just need to copy this navigational file, load it into the computer up in the wheelhouse, and put The Lost on autopilot. It’s not too far from Alligator Reef, southeast of Upper Matecumbe Key. But it’s far enough out that nobody else knows about it.”

  “Is this for real, Tommy?” I asked, because I couldn’t believe we were finally catching a break.

  “Yep. By this time tomorrow, I figure, we’ll be the richest kids in the world. Except for, you know, that guy in the comic books. Richie Rich.”

  I raised both my arms over my head and shouted, “Woo-hoo!”

  When the navigational file was copied onto the flash drive, the four of us marched out of the room and paraded up to the wheelhouse singing rock songs and sea chanteys like we used to when we went adventuring with Mom and Dad.

  Dad particularly enjoyed a good Jimmy Buffett tune. So while Storm hid The Key someplace new, Beck, Tommy, and I launched into a very loud and extremely off-key rendition of “Cheeseburger in Paradise.”

  It felt like the good old days—you know, six months ago.

  But the days to come were looking up. At the very least, I had a pretty great feeling that when we pulled into port after tapping into our college fund, we’d all be able to order as many cheeseburgers as we wanted.

  CHAPTER 23

  We sailed north by northeast toward the treasure coast of Florida, our spirits buoyed by hope and the crazy anticipation of the dive to come.

  A little after noon, Tommy gave the air horn five sharp blasts.

  Yes, this was even bigger than the Dolphins winning the Super Bowl.

  “Navigational software is making all the right noises!” Tommy hollered from the poop deck. “Gear up!”

  Beck and I had been in our rubberized wet suits since breakfast (not a bad way to eat, by the way, especially if you slurp and spill a lot).

  Storm was right there with us, helping us strap on our tanks, checking valves, handing out the dive bags, standing by with fresh tanks so we could keep diving all day. But this time, Beck and I didn’t have our sticks to poke the ground. Tommy was so confident about Dad’s dive coordinates he was going to be the only one toting a metal detector.

  “You guys are go
nna need your hands free to scoop up all that booty,” he said with a wink.

  When the three of us were good to go, we actually grabbed hands and jumped into the water together.

  You’re basically looking at an underwater wall of bubbles after you do that.

  Tommy flashed us a series of hand signals—ending with a thumbs-down.

  Don’t worry—in diving, that’s a good thing. It means “descend.”

  We slowly made our way to the bottom, waiting for the moment our twin galleons would appear.

  A school of five billion tiger-striped silvery fish parted in front of us like curtains opening on a stage.

  And there it was—the silhouette of the intertwined masts. We had found Dad’s hidden ships, tucked up against a coral reef. And I know this is going to sound weird, but, for just a second, I felt like Dad was right there beside me, patting me on the shoulder, giving me a big okay hand signal because we’d done good.

  We’d kept the family together.

  We’d helped one another through thick and thin and crying over lost treasure maps.

  Now it was time to reap our reward.

  Tommy led us around a crustacean-encrusted cannon and down through a narrow hatch opening. Dozens of golden fish were swimming beside us, probably curious to see what we found down in the hold of King Philip III of Spain’s long-forgotten galleon.

  They weren’t disappointed.

  Tommy flicked on a floodlight, and I could see we were inside a room the length, width, and depth of our entire ship. The heavily timbered chamber was like a warehouse filled with barnacle-covered sea chests (it looked like someone had poured wet concrete over them) stacked one on top of another.

  Tommy signaled to me, and we kicked up to a chest at the top of one stack. Then, using our dive knives, we snapped open the brittle lock and loosened the crusty buildup clinging to the latch hasp.

  Tommy raised the heavy lid.

  You know those ball pits people sometimes have at birthday parties? Picture that, but instead of brightly colored balls, put in gold coins.

  Tommy and I ran our gloved hands through the mound of sparkling treasure. There was so much, it dribbled through our fingers like clamshells into a bucket.

  I couldn’t help it. I did a slow flip, pumping my arms and making a sound like… well… like I was yelling underwater. We were rich! We were beyond rich!

  Beck swam over toting a rusty old helmet she’d just found. Then the three of us manned our scoops and started filling up bags and buckets and even the helmet with loads and loads of solid gold doubloons.

  We made a total of seven dives down to the shipwreck.

  While we were hauling everything up, Storm was in charge of counting the coins and sorting them into cloth sacks—the thick kind they carry on armored cars that drop money off at the bank. She put the jewels (diamonds, emeralds, rubies) in separate sacks and kept the artifacts in another pile for further study.

  Before the sun had set, we had several million dollars’ worth of loot on board The Lost.

  We didn’t feel so lost anymore.

  And the two galleons down below?

  Tommy said there was no need to be greedy. That it would be smart to keep our “rainy day” bank account open, in case we ever needed to come back and make another withdrawal.

  Judging from the treasure I had seen in the cargo hold of that one galleon, that wasn’t going to happen anytime soon. The four of us would be able to go to any college we chose, if we wanted to go to college. We could probably buy the football team a new stadium, too.

  Tommy was right. We were suddenly the richest kids to ever sail the seven seas!

  CHAPTER 24

  There’s really only one problem with having ten dozen sacks of antique gold doubloons: You can’t really take them to a Coinstar machine at the supermarket to turn them into modern American cash.

  So I made a suggestion: “We should call Louie Louie.”

  Beck made one of her famous “gag-me-now” finger-throat gestures.

  “Seriously,” I said. “Look, I know the guy is sleazy. But he knows people who deal with things like this.”

  “Bick could be right,” said Storm. “After all, we haven’t fully complied with all the laws of salvages and finds as established under the UN Law of the Sea.”

  In other words, we weren’t all the way to sleazy with our retrieval of the loot, but we were definitely borderline skeevy.

  “We should call the creep,” Storm said bluntly. “Dad has a satellite telephone in The Room.”

  “He does?” said Tommy. “Awesome. You guys make the call; I’ll steer us out of here. Don’t want to draw any undue attention to our secret fishing hole.”

  Beck and I followed Storm into the head (that’s boat talk for bathroom) off Mom and Dad’s cabin.

  The Key was taped underneath the toilet lid.

  Then we headed into The Room, and Storm gestured toward the satellite phone, which was acting as a paperweight on a stack of file folders.

  “Now we just need to find Louie Louie’s phone number,” I said.

  “Um, it’s in here,” said Beck, studying the face of the phone.

  “What?”

  “Louie Louie. Cayman Islands, three-four-five area code. It was the last call Dad made before he, you know…”

  “Disappeared,” I said, so Beck and Storm couldn’t say “died.”

  Beck pushed the recall-last-number button and switched on the speakerphone.

  “Hello, this is Louie. How may I be of assistance?”

  Beck motioned for me to do the talking.

  “Uh, Mr. Louie, this is Bick Kidd.”

  “Really? My, my, my. What a delightful surprise. To what do I owe the pleasure of this call? Are you seeking a buyer for your, shall we say, cargo?”

  “No, sir. We have a question.”

  “Indeed? Do go on.”

  “Let’s say we went for a dive and found some, you know, ‘merchandise.’ Where would be a good place to take it for a fair… uh… exchange?”

  There was a long silence.

  “You found merchandise?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Recently?”

  “Yes, sir. This afternoon.”

  “Really? My, my, my. Will wonders never cease? Congratulations. Your father and mother would be very proud. Very proud, indeed. Now, then, where are you currently located?”

  “Um, that’s kind of confidential.”

  “I see. Of course. Completely understandable. However, if I am to direct you to a merchandise… dealer… I need an approximate geographic location.”

  Beck mouthed the word Miami.

  That was good. Miami was about ninety miles north of our secret treasure trove.

  “Miami,” I said.

  “Ah! Good. I have an associate in Miami. A businesswoman interested in doing business with those interested in doing business with her.”

  “Good. Where do we find this friend?”

  “I will make all the arrangements. Simply call me when you reach port, and I will provide you with further instructions.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “Of course, my finder’s fee is fifteen percent.”

  “But we found the treasure.”

  “And I found the dealer. If my terms are in any way unacceptable…”

  I checked out my chief negotiator, Beck. She didn’t like it, but she was nodding. Storm, on the other hand, wasn’t really paying attention to the phone conversation. She was busy flipping through papers in a manila folder.

  “Okay,” I said, “you get fifteen percent.”

  “And, of course, my friend will be entitled to her cut as well.”

  Beck nodded again.

  “Fine. We’ll call you when we reach Miami.”

  “Might I suggest you dock at the Sea Spray Marina?”

  “Not if it costs us another fifteen percent!”

  “Oh, no, dear boy. The marina already pays me a very handsome retainer fee for
all referrals.”

  “Great. We’ll call you when we dock in Miami.”

  I punched the Off button.

  “Yuck,” said Beck, shivering. “My ears feel slimy just from listening to him.”

  “Yeah. He kind of oozes out of the phone.”

  “And he oozed into here, too,” said Storm, tapping the file folder. “According to Dad’s notes, Louie Louie holds the key—to everything.”

  CHAPTER 25

  Storm showed us the note (scrawled in Dad’s handwriting) that she’d just found inside the manila folder:

  “Who’s Dr. Lewis?” said Beck.

  “An expert on antiquities,” said Storm, who, apparently, had memorized the latest edition of Who’s Who in Expertise. “With Mom out of the picture, Professor Lewis was probably the only person Dad trusted to authenticate the bee amulet. He teaches at Columbia University in New York City.”

  “We should take him the pendant,” said Beck.

  “Or take it to Mom, over in Cyprus,” I suggested.

  “You guys?” said Tommy, appearing in the doorway. “First things first. Let’s go cash in our treasure.”

  We docked in Miami at the marina suggested by Louie Louie. He then directed us to a shady character named Miss Laticia, who, it turned out, was a full-service black marketer with a soft spot for orphans.

  “Ever since I read that Dickens book!” she wheezed in her froggy voice between coughing fits.

  The lady smoked a lot.

  Storm had memorized the price of gold on the mercantile exchanges that morning, so we knew Miss Laticia was giving us a fair price for our doubloons (minus the 30 percent handling fee she split with Louie Louie). Miss Laticia then wire-transferred our profits into a “Kidd Family Trust” bank account she’d set up for us—complete with debit cards that Tommy tested around the corner at the nearest ATM before we officially closed the deal.

  Then, never asking any questions as to where or how we found our treasure, Miss Laticia called a stretch limousine and sent us on our way with a briefcase filled with one-hundred-dollar bills.