The Mahogany Ship (Sam Reilly Book 2)

by Christopher Cartwright

  And there, below them, rested the depressed marks of what could only have once been the most extraordinarily large ship of ancient times. No wood remained, and grass and trees had grown where the ship once rested, but from the air, there was still no mistaking this was the final resting place of the Mahogany Ship.

  *

  Michael Rodriguez looked at the drawing his great ancestors had made of the Ark of Light, all those millennia ago. It brought back memories of the first time his father told him of his true purpose in life.

  That his family had been chosen, thousands of years ago, to look after a sacred artefact that held the key to unlock all of mankind’s unimaginable powers. He still recalled the shame that he felt as his father explained that his family, sworn to protect the scepter, had lost it nearly a six years ago. Followed by the pride to know that he would one day discover it again.

  But of course, he had no intention of protecting it. A device that offered such power would surely be a waste to keep buried. No, soon it would be his, and with it, he would introduce a new system of power on earth.

  Sam had done just as he wanted, and soon, his father would lead him straight to it.

  *

  “Okay, dad, do you want to read out that map of yours for me?” Sam asked, staring at the desolate land around them and wondering how such a monumental historical artefact could disappear into the sands of time, in such a place.

  “No need, I’ve read it enough to know it verbatim.”

  “All right then, let’s hear it.”

  “We need to fly exactly 22 miles due north of the northern tip of the bow of the Mahogany Ship,” James said. “And, before you ask, we’re going to need this to be exact, so let’s work out where the different tips of the ship are.”

  “Okay, I think it’s there,” Sam said, pointing to the ground to the right of them.

  Aliana leaned over, kissing him on his cheek, and said, “Good guess darling, but I think you’re wrong. Zheng He’s treasure ships had a two-tiered bow, meaning that the deep imprints that we can see now are the main keel, whereas the final southern tip would be another fifty feet back.”

  “She’s right son. Didn’t you study archeology or something at some stage as a minor?”

  “Egyptology, to be exact – never ancient China.”

  Tom banked to the left to make a large circle before starting the trip from precisely fifty feet back from where Sam had suggested the northern tip of the ship had once been.

  “Everyone happy?” Tom said.

  There was a general murmur of agreement, before they continued on along the treasure hunt.

  Aliana picked up and then looked at the old map. “Hey James, what makes you think any of these markers on this map are still there?”

  “Because old Jack Robertson may have been a murdering bastard, but as a crooked highwayman he’d been used to burying treasure for years. If anyone knew how to make a map that couldn’t be tainted by time, it was old Jack. Just look at this – all we have to do is find the tip of the highest point inside these three points and then walk north 150 feet. Easy.”

  After the 22-mile flight, Tom said, “Now where?”

  Sam’s father then pulled out the map that he said he’d memorized and looked at the landscape. “Just hover there for a minute, would you?”

  “You’re the boss, James.”

  Almost immediately, he put the map down and said, “Okay, take us down, over there.”

  Landing on the top of the mountain, Sam used the helicopter’s radar to determine if there was another mountain within fifty miles higher than the one they were on – and there wasn’t. “Well dad, I guess you have a bit more luck this time.”

  Together, the four members of the team counted 150 feet, and then stopped.

  The land was dry, with a few hardened native shrubs, the only plants to be seen.

  James looked around and happily said, “This is it. Here’s the spot.”

  “That’s great. Where’s the Ark of Light?” Aliana asked.

  “Below us… well, actually, it’s somewhere down a river that’s below us.”

  Sam jumped up and down a couple times and said, “The soil appears pretty sturdy to me. Did you have a plan of getting to the river below?”

  “Yeah. Tom, do you mind running back to the helicopter and grabbing that box I brought, while I dig a hole?”

  Tom nodded his head and then ran back to the helicopter, returning a few minutes later with the box.

  “What did you bring, dad?”

  “Dynamite. I’m not sure how old it is. I found it on the old homestead I was staying at, and thought it might come in handy.”

  “Shit, you could have killed us. Do you have any idea how unstable that stuff is, particular after a number of years, rotting away?”

  James laughed, “I’m only kidding. It’s just ANFO, ammonium nitrate/fuel oil, the more contemporary, and cheaper, explosive commonly used in mainstay mining and just a little more stable.”

  Sam, by this stage, had dug nearly three feet deep in the soft soil, but each time he tried to dig further, more surrounding sand seemed to fill the hole.

  “You want to keep digging until you reach that river, or shall I use the ANFO and speed the process up a little?”

  “Be my guest,” Sam said, stepping away from the hole.

  Sam watched as his father laid the ANFO and set the charge cable with surprising dexterity, making him wonder just how many times his father had done this before.

  “All right, everyone back… and I mean a long way back.”

  Five minutes later, James pulled the detonating switch, and the ground in the distance disappeared. Slowly, the small party of four, walked up to where the hole had been. What remained was a limestone cavern large enough to drive a truck through. And at the bottom, a small creek flowed gently, into the unknown.

  *

  Rodriguez drove his six-wheeler at a pace that would have made the German engineers at Mercedes proud. He knew where they were headed, but still hadn’t taken into account that they’d use a damn helicopter, making them a lot faster.

  Behind him, Frank and Byron struggled to keep up in their own six-wheelers, each armed with an AK 47, loaded and ready to go.

  Up ahead, and to the left of them, a giant plume of black smoke reached for the sky, followed by a loud boom, four or five seconds afterwards.

  “Shit, they’ve already reached it!” Rodriguez said out loud, as he swung the wheel and headed towards the smoke. His foot to the floor, he challenged every inch of the million dollar Mercedes’s engineering price tag.

  *

  Sam reached for the fourth dive tank from the back of the helicopter, ready to follow the stream down as a team of four.

  Aliana put her hand on it, effectively stopping him from removing the tank. “No way. I’m not following you or any of your other crazy people down through another one of those stupid subterranean rivers. I’ve been there, done that – not again.”

  “Really? I thought you’d had fun.” Sam grinned. “That’s all right, but I think you’re underestimating the significance of the Ark of Light!”

  “I doubt it. I’ve heard little of anything else from your father since you left. Says it has the ability to provide him with unlimited power… I thought that’s what he already has?”

  The two started walking towards the opening where the subterranean river flowed. Sam laughed. “Yes, that sounds like my father, but this could be the greatest historical artefact ever found. It could bring peace to the world, and in the wrong hands, destroy it.”

  “I hate to be the pessimist, but in the hands of mankind, I fear it’s more likely to do the latter. So what, exactly, is it supposed to do?”

  As they approached the cave, Sam saw that his father, already inside it, had started to run out a long cable, and smiled at Aliana, as though she, like a naive child, would never understand the importance of gold and power.

  “This scepter,” Sam continued, “when p
laced on top of the Pyramid of Giza at the midday of winter solstice in the year 2020, will point to the final vault of the ultimate artefact – the God’s Relic, an ancient requiem of all human knowledge, from the first cycle.”

  “What do you mean by first cycle?” Aliana asked.

  James smiled as he overheard the conversation. Sam recognized it as his ‘I’m about to tell you something that will blow your mind type smile’ and then replied, “The generation of humans before present day civilization occurred.”

  Aliana turned her head slightly as she thought about what he’d said. “We weren’t the first?”

  “Not even the second, I’m afraid. The human race only ever seems to evolve to a certain state, before we inevitably wipe ourselves out. Some civilizations get further than the next, but somehow we always seem to mess it up. It’s in our nature,” James said.

  “And where do we fit into this? Are we the furthest along the stream of evolution?”

  James thought about the question for a moment and then replied, “No. And we’re unlikely to beat some of the more successful civilizations.”

  Aliana stared at him. Her expression told them she was considering if there could really be any truth to any of it.

  “Legend has it that this scepter holds the key to a vault, which contains all human knowledge, spanning all the cycles of civilizations gone by,” Sam said.

  “How does the information get there?”

  “No one knows. Some people have hypothesized that earth has a caretaker… like God, who keeps an eye on things, and stores all the information that man accumulates until a cycle finally becomes so intelligent as to break the code.”

  “What code?” she asked.

  “The ability to not destroy yourself. Something that so far, all civilizations before us have failed to do.”

  “That’s ridiculous. It’s in the same realm as a child being told that Santa Claus delivers presents to children all over the world in a single night!”

  Grinning mischievously, Sam said, “Then again, it might just have been a longstanding fable, like the Mahogany Ship, that means nothing…”

  Aliana clearly didn’t believe a word his father had said. She replied, “Well this sounds very exciting, but if it’s all the same to you, I think I’ll just wait here until you retrieve it.”

  “Very good,” James said, then throwing his dive gear over his shoulders, impatiently said, “We’ll see you soon.”

  Sam kissed her and said, “I won’t be long.”

  Tom then looked at him, and said, “Actually, I’m going to leave this one to you and your father. I’m going back for the truck you stole earlier. Based on the weight predictions that James has given me, there’s no way I’ll get the Super Huey off the ground with that thing on board.”

  “You don’t want to dive now, and go back for it afterwards?”

  “No, it’s going to take a couple hours to get back with it, and I don’t want to be flying once it’s dark. Let’s not forget that Rodriguez and his men are still searching for it, too.”

  “Good point.” Sam said, unconcerned. “While you’re there, you might want to load the wooden crate from the Chinook, too.”

  “Okay, will do.”

  Sam picked up his netted duffle bag, and then slid into the water. Surface swimming to the end of the tunnel, he then disappeared below the surface.

  Ahead of him, Sam found his father dragging the cable over his shoulder.

  He caught up quickly and switched on his high powered, rock penetrating sonar so he could see the images of any heavy metals below.

  The two swam on.

  Like its surface siblings, the subterranean river meandered side to side as it searched for the easiest means of travelling towards the ocean hundreds of miles away.

  By the third corner, nothing was visible below with his naked eyes, but the sonar monitor displayed something.

  It was the outline of a staff, about six feet long. And next to it, a sheet of metal, no larger than a piece of A4 writing paper.

  “I think we found it, Dad.”

  James looked at the monitor.

  “Either that, or we found its twin.”

  The two swam another twenty feet below the water, where the Ark of Light lay entirely buried by two centuries of river silt.

  Chapter Twenty

  Sam withdrew four inflatable bags from his duffle bag and carefully attached them to the Ark of Light, still mostly buried.

  His father, impatient as always, tried vainly to lift the scepter by hand so that he could better examine it. But in the soft river bed, his feet were unable to obtain enough perch to lift it.

  Sam slowly filled each bag with the air from his dive regulator. “We’ve waited a lifetime to see this, Dad. Surely it won’t kill you to wait until we get it back to the cave before we examine it.”

  “I suppose you’re right,” James said; his hand stabilizing the now buoyant Ark of Light, and attaching the cable to the end of it.

  Sam studied the monitor of his sonar again to make certain he hadn’t missed anything. “What about this?”

  His dad looked over his shoulder, and said, “Looks like a really old piece of paper, to me. What do you think, the instructions for the weapon?”

  “I doubt it. But if Jack Robertson thought it was important enough to go to the trouble of taking it with him, there must be something to it.”

  “You’re right, go see if you can find it below all that silt, and I’ll start bringing this to the surface.

  Sam fished his hands through the soft silt until he found what he was looking for. It was made of brass, and despite the filth of being submerged for so many years, Sam could clearly see the writings painstakingly chiseled into it.

  And they were written in the ancient text of the Master Builders.

  He couldn’t make out every word. He would need Billie’s help for that, but he could make out enough of them to understand the purpose of the message.

  The Ark of Light must be returned to its rightful place, on top of the great pyramid of Giza, by Midday of… Winter…S…. in the year 2020 before the end of this cycle. To be activated, it must be joined with its other siblings, or it will not work.

  It then listed four locations.

  The first three he couldn’t quite make out, but the last one, he’d certainly heard of.

  Atlantis.

  Sam put the brass tablet in his duffle bag and quickly swam to catch up with his father.

  By the time he reached the cave, his father was already trying to drag the heavy Ark of Light on to the beach of the cave.

  Sam helped him lift it onto the beach, and then explained to his father what the note Barloc had left, said.

  “Well, that’s just great, isn’t it?” James stood up, ready to leave the cave. “It’s taken me sixty eight years to locate this device, only to discover that it needs to be armed with four other relics before it will show me the way – and the only one we’ve even heard of has been thought to be nothing more than a legend by the world’s best archeologists.”

  “All right dad, let’s get this thing up top, and see what Aliana’s doing. Then we can work out what our next move is.”

  It took all their strength to drag it to the top of the cave and out into the open.

  At the edge of the tree line, Aliana appeared still as a rock.

  “Aliana,” Sam called out. “We did it!”

  It was then that she turned around and mouthed something to him. He couldn’t quite see what she was trying to say, until it was too late, but he could see the sickening expression on her face.

  “Oh shit!” James said, realization hitting him faster, and throwing himself on Sam.

  A moment later, the powerful staccato of the UZIs raked the ground they were standing on.

  The two fell, head first, down the cave.

  Sam, rolled as he landed and quickly looked around the room to see how he could arm himself. He surprised by the speed his father had reacted.
>
  “You all right, son?”

  “Fine, but they’ve got Aliana!”

  “We’ll get her back,” James reassured him.

  They heard the sound of the machine gun raking the entrance of the cave, and the two quickly dived into the water.

  Above, they heard the sound of someone entering the cave and shooting over the top of the water. Bullets, slowed by the drag of water, fell harmlessly above them.

  After a couple minutes, Sam heard a loud bang, as a grenade destroyed the roof of the cave, leaving them in complete darkness.

  *

  Aliana watched in horror as the man she loved was buried alive for the second time in a week. And she wondered if he could possibly be lucky enough to survive it twice. That was, if the blast hadn’t killed him already. Her thoughts then turned to the man who’d betrayed him, Michael Rodriguez. Her anger rose as she considered the sinister, power hungry man, behind the friendly façade.

  “Aliana, how lovely it is to see you again.” She recognized the voice instantly.

  “Rodriguez. You surprise me. I thought a man of your caliber wouldn’t stoop to get your hands dirty? When I saw your lackeys, I guessed, they were under your orders, but hadn’t expected to see you here, too.”

  Michael dipped his hat, and said, “Your words compliment me, greatly. I’ve always prided myself on being willing to get involved in every aspect of my work – even when that involves, getting them dirty, as you say. Besides, as a mining magnate, it’s my duty to return an area of destruction to its normal view after it has been mined. My men just removed that ugly eyesore from the ground, where a hole once was.”

  “You can call it what you will – you just murdered Sam Reilly and his father. Although you may not have considered it, I’m sure that sort of thing comes with some serious repercussions.”

  “It is, as you say, frowned upon in civilized society to kill a billionaire and his brat son, but hey, out here, they’re just a couple of guys in the middle of the woods, am I right?” Rodriguez laughed, as though he were having a casual conversation with a neighbor. “If you must know. I never had any intention to murder Sam. He’s a bright man. I would have gladly let him continue to think he’d discovered the Mahogany Ship, while his old man and I conducted our business. But the kid just couldn’t let it go, could he? He was too smart, and had to figure it all out. Heck, I still can’t work out how he escaped last time.”