“So, now what? Can we destroy that APC?”
“We could do that…” James smiled, as though he was genuinely considering it. “I think I have a better idea, one which won’t give away our hand quite so much. A slow win is sometimes more satisfying.”
“And what’s that?”
“We’re going to rescue my son, and then we’re going to steal Michael’s treasure.”
“Now you’re talking…”
“And after that, we’re going to make Michael pay by beating him to his ambition.”
“How are we going to do that?”
“By locating the real Mahogany Ship.”
Alana looked at the topographical map of the surrounding area. “That tunnel is almost 500 feet below the surface, we’re going to need a lot more equipment to rescue Sam…”
“That’s already covered.”
“What’s your plan?”
At that moment, the window sill started to vibrate as the ground shook, and despite the pale blue sky outside, the sound of thunder could be heard.
James smiled and stepped outside.
An enormous military helicopter approached, the twin rotors of the Chinook turning the dry land into a dust storm.
“And here come our reinforcements.”
*
Tom shut down the engine, and casually stepped out of the helicopter. He looked at James Reilly sitting on the front porch of a big old homestead, a local beer in his hand and a beautiful blonde by his side. The old man had a smile on his face that radiated sheer delight. It could have been the company of the beautiful woman next to him, or the fact that he was on an adventure with real value for the first time in years.
It took a second for Tom to recognize the stunning creature as Aliana. He hadn’t expected her to be there. No one had told him that she knew anything about this.
“It’s good to see you again, Aliana,” Tom said, as he kissed her on the cheek.
Throwing her long, slender body around him with a solid embrace, she replied, “You have no idea how good it is to see you here. Thanks for coming.”
“You’re welcome. If I’d known that you were stuck here, alone with this man, I would have come to your rescue sooner.”
“Hey, don’t you think for a second that I can’t hear you, Tom,” James said. “You want a beer?”
“I’m only kidding, James. Sure, I’ll have a beer.” Tom grinned mischievously, “Have you found Sam, yet?”
Aliana, brought up the satellite display of the now covered mine shaft, “This is what remains of the mineshaft, and this is an image nearly 50 miles away, where they say that they were working when Sam disappeared. So, it’s safe to say that this is where he is,” she said pointing to the now hidden hatch. “What we don’t know is how we’re going to get him out of there.”
“On my flight from Los Angeles here, I had time to look at the maps of the tunnels that Sam had already made. I’ve then superimposed those with the land above, based on this topographical map.” Tom opened up the satellite images of the surrounding landscapes. “As you can see, there is very little in the way of rivers above ground anywhere near here, but if you travel 60 miles north, you can see the Dharuk river flows strong for hundreds of miles and then seems to just disappear into the side of a mountain. As we all know, rivers have to go somewhere. When you look at Sam’s underground maps, you can see that this third tunnel, the largest of the five mapped underground waterways that he’s explored, it appears to keep coming from the north. That’s less than 10 miles from the end of where his initial search reached.”
“We still have no way of knowing that those two rivers are one and the same,” James pointed out.
“Not certain, but look at this.” Tom clicked another button, and a third image joined the picture. This one was created using prediction software, designed to determine future sizes of the flow of water, based on previous size and strength.
“They’re the same river!” Aliana agreed.
“Either that, or just a very close neighbor,” James acknowledged.
“Just one question,” Aliana said.
“What’s that?” Tom replied.
“How are we going to bridge that 10-mile gap?”
“That’s simple… I wasn’t sure how far we were going, so I brought the MOLE.”
Chapter Sixteen
The small team arrived at the edge of the Dharuk River early the following morning. Aliana watched as Tom drove the mole out of the back of the enormous helicopter. To her, it looked more like something a kid would draw to highlight a bad science fiction story or cover of an eighties era comic book. At the front of the vehicle, a large tunneling device gave it the strange appearance of the nose of a mole, whereas the large tank tracks, reaching the same distance below and above the machine, gave it the odd appearance of large claws. Two windows built inside the tank tracks were the only signs that people might actually be able to fit inside the machine.
Aliana was surprised by how silently it ran, being electrically powered for underwater use. Tom then advised her that the device was capable of floating and submarining in water, and could tunnel through significant amounts of rock.
“What do you think of my girl?” Tom asked.
“I’d say, by the looks of her, that you have an interesting taste in women.”
Tom unlocked and then opened the watertight trunk of the mole. A small armory appeared, including plastic explosives and four high powered handguns equipped with silencers.
James’ left eyebrow raised in surprise, “You take those on a lot of diving trips with my boy, do you?”
“I wasn’t taking any chances, this time.”
James took the first Glock out, removed the silencer, emptied the cartridge, and then replaced the rounds, before adeptly reassembling it again. “Looks okay.” He then pointed it at an old tin can, forty feet away, and fired five rounds. “Seems to fire straight,” he said.
Tom walked towards the remains of the rusty old can. There were four holes all in a grouping no more than a couple inches in total. “Four out of five isn’t bad, James.” Tom said. “I’m impressed.”
James confidently walked up to him and snatched the can out of his hand. Holding it up to the sunlight he pointed out that the fifth shot was so close to the fourth that it almost went through the exact same hole – the tiniest of marks on the side of the hole indicating that it was indeed hit by the fifth bullet.
“Five out of five. Just wait till I tell Sam his old man’s a better shot. You can shoot, that’s for sure,” Tom said.
James scrunched up his face, like he was ready to hit someone.
“Of course I can shoot. I’ve been a dedicated Republican all my life,” James replied, as though that explained everything.
“Talking about weapons, what do you know about Billie?” Tom asked.
“Billie?”
“Billie Swan. The marine archeologist.”
“Oh Bill! She and Sam have a history…”
“You mean they dated?”
“No, it’s much more complex than that. With dating you sometimes have the chance of one day getting married and then hopefully later getting divorced. What Billie and Sam have is something more definite. Why do you ask?”
“She brought a high powered pistol and silencer to the Mayan site we discovered in the Gulf of Mexico.”
James smiled. “I knew I liked that girl.”
“Yes, well she decided not to kill me, so it begs the question, why did she take it in the first place?”
“I have an idea about that, but I think Sam could better explain it.”
Aliana stood up from the log she’d been sitting on. A half-eaten apple in her hand, Aliana decided she’d heard enough. “Are we going to go find Sam or wait around talking about him?”
“Good point, Aliana,” James said, “Rodriguez and his men might just go down the mineshaft, any minute now, having likely guessed that you were on to him.”
“That’s great,” Tom
said, pulling out a rocket launcher from the back of the mole. “So we can expect company down there.”
*
The heavy mole floated surprisingly well, considering it more closely resembled a tank than a boat. Displayed along the front steel wall, two monitors displayed both the digital imaging from outside as though it were a windscreen, and on the other side, radar and high frequency sonar images.
Tom adeptly steered the craft using the pedals, like those on an aircraft, with his feet to move the rudder that dragged behind the craft. Each hand gripped the individual throttle controlling the left and right tank tracks.
“Everyone have their seatbelts on?” he asked.
Aliana double checked her five-point seatbelt, and the said, “Are you expecting us to need them?”
Tom smile reassuringly. “Not at all, just a safety kind of guy, that’s all.”
The pace of the river picked up speed as the mole approached the opening to the cave system. Sitting next to Tom, Aliana leaned forward and asked, “How sure are you that we’re not just about to go off some sort of waterfall?”
James gripped her shoulder from behind and warmly said, “Oh, he doesn’t, but it’s reasonably unlikely, wouldn’t you say, Tom?”
“It’s all right Aliana. I’ve taken into account the possible differences in depth of the river. There’s less than ten feet of movement between this river and the subterranean river system from Sam’s map,” Tom said.
“And what if we’re wrong about these two rivers being one and the same?”
“Then, we’re in trouble,” James said, sardonically.
Tom threw the tank tracks into reverse, slowing their progression down the river to a meagre crawl, and said, “Don’t worry, we’ll be safe.”
Entering the dark cave system, Tom flicked on the massive overhead LEDs, flooding the entire area with light. Small ripples flittered where the river approached the end of the large cave, before turning a slight corner and then disappearing into an unknown world.
Moving forward at a crawling pace, Tom had an ominous feeling he knew just where that water at the end of the tunnel was disappearing to. “Anyone want to guess where our river just went?”
He could see whites of Aliana’s knuckles as she gripped the stability bar hard in front of her. “I have an idea I’m not going to like it!”
And then the mole lurched forward, as it entered the first set of rapids.
Skipping over the smaller rapids as they approached the end of the tunnel and slicing through the larger ones, the current picked up considerable pace, until Tom was forced to leave the tank tracks idling. The tracks were no longer able to produce enough force to overcome the flow of the river, leaving them bounding down the river, mostly out of control, like a heavy raft.
At the end of the river, the tunnel veered sharply to the left and the ride become more violent, as the entire river turned white with froth, causing the mole to bob up and down in rapids as large as five feet high.
At its narrowest point ahead, the river was surging and plunging down the inside of the mountain. “Here comes that waterfall you were asking about,” Tom said. “Hold on everyone!”
The mole dropped five feet into the first rock pool with a giant splash as the entire craft became submerged before bobbing out to the surface again.
Out the window to his left, Tom could see that the mole was only just floating above the surface of the whitewash. It floated there for a few seconds, being pulled slightly backwards by the flow of water pouring in behind them, before becoming caught in the downward hydraulic of the river, and pulled off the next ledge.
James laughed, like a kid on a ride, “Here we go again!”
The mole dropped off the second into another rock pool. This time, the unnatural flow of the large river spun the mole around in a clockwise motion.
By the fifth revolution, they slammed into the rock at the edge of the pool. In an instant, Tom shoved the two throttles forwards, sending the tank tracks spinning, until they met traction on the rock and sent the mole shooting up and over the next drop.
Tom felt the entire contents of his stomach reach his head, as they free-dived into the deep pool of water at least ten feet below.
Slamming into the deep water, the mole’s giant drilling nose acted like a high diver’s hands as it broke the surface tension, before submerging nearly twenty feet below.
The mole popped its head above the water again, and started to gently drift down the river at a leisurely pace. James unbuckled his seatbelt, laughing like a demon as he leaned forward, and said, “That was great fun. Let’s go do it again!”
Tom shook his head in wonder. Some people don’t even know when to be scared. Aliana, on the other hand, looked as though she might spew all over the mole, but was purposely forcing herself to sit up and take in her surroundings.
“How you doing?” he said, looking at her.
“Fine… Are we done with the rollercoaster yet?”
“Almost. According to this, we should be just about to meet up with the part of the river where Sam has surveyed.” The river, now gradually moving forward with no ripples or violent waves, looked like it went on forever. “Is this a more agreeable pace for you?”
“Much, thank you,” she replied.
Tom left the tracks spinning slowly in a forward momentum, just enough to keep them facing forward as they drifted down the river.
Up ahead, the river appeared to just cease.
But rivers never end in a tunnel; they end in the ocean or large inland lakes.
“Can anyone see where the river goes after this?”
James casually buckled his seatbelt again. “I thought you said you had a map?”
“It might have been just a little wrong,” Tom replied.
“How wrong?” Aliana asked, worried that although there were no ripples, the current seemed to be increasing again.
“Wrong enough that I only have one guess where all this water is disappearing to.”
They were nearing the end of the river, and the flow was fast – like when it was about to drop off the edge of something.
Tom now recognized the distant sound of constant thunder up ahead.
“Hold on everyone.”
Just before dropping off the end of the river into the unknown below, Tom pulled on a lever above his head, and the doors to the air ballast opened to full. The heavy mole sank, like a giant stone, as he pushed throttles fully forward again.
Down, down, the mole submerged. In front of him, Tom read the depth gauge reach 80 feet, before he saw what he was looking for.
An opening appeared at the base of the deep tunnel – too small to accommodate the vastness of the river. There, most of the water toppled over the top of the large rock face, whereas some still flowed below it.
The tank tracks reached the gravel bottom with a jolt and kicked the mole into life as it started to drive along the bottom of the river.
“Think skinny thoughts!” Tom said, as he lined up both tank tracks to drive straight through the hole.
A loud thud could be heard as the mole’s tank tracks smashed through the rocky edge of the opening, and then they were out the other side. Above them, the sound of the waterfall, now on their side of the 80-foot rock, could still be heard hammering the water above them.
Tom drove confidently along the now completely submerged river system. “Ah, now, we’re in the same subterranean river that Sam mapped earlier.”
An hour later, the small team looked through the clear bulletproof dome above their heads to see the remains of a mining platform inside an enormous cavern.
“This must be what Sam said was called the Mahogany Cavern. Up there you can see the dive platform they were working on.”
“Are you sure they’re still out?” Aliana asked, noticing the lights within the cavern were still running.
“Pretty sure, but don’t worry. – we’ll be ready if they come,” James said.
Tom drove further downwards,
towards the exit tunnel.
The tunnel was longer than he’d imagined it, and for a moment Tom worried that he’d taken the wrong one. But then the depth of the tunnel started to decrease, until the tank tracks above their heads were occasional scratching on the ceiling of the tunnel.
The mole slowed, and then, like a four-wheel drive starting to become bogged in the mud, the tank tracks seemed to be turning at a rate faster than they were moving.
“You want me to get out and push?” James asked.
“Not just yet,” Sam replied. He pulled the lever above his head, which opened up every air compartment available, causing the mole to become extremely negatively buoyant.
The tank tracks instantly sunk deeper into the sandy bottom with a heavy crunch and began catching again. And then they were through to the other side.
Where the Mahogany Ship waited for them.
*
They approached the Mahogany Ship from the side, and quickly saw the large hole in its side, where Sam had been entering her bow. Aliana stared out the porthole to her right, where the ship stood. “Tom, you know what Sam would have used when he was diving here. Any sign of his equipment?”
“Not yet. I haven’t seen anything. And seeing nothing can often be a good thing when we’re talking about searching for a lost cave diver.”
“Sam’s not drowned,” James interrupted, frustration clearly displayed on his face. “There were a number of caverns full of air, and pockets of air throughout the tunnels on the way in here. There’s no way Sam could have drowned here. Heck, I bet the athletic bastard, could have managed the trip we just made, holding his breath between the underwater sections.”
The statement was ridiculous, but Aliana was grateful for his reassurance.
“Now what do we do then?” she asked.
“We have a look at Rodriguez’s fake Mahogany Ship, and take his gold!” James’s eyes lit up with excitement.
“What about Sam?” Aliana asked, feeling as though she were the only person capable of staying focused on their primary mission – to save Sam.
“If I know Sam, he would have taken the same route out that we just took to come in,” James said.
The Mahogany Ship (Sam Reilly Book 2) Page 15