The Sam Reilly Collection Volume 2

by Christopher Cartwright

  He didn’t yell out again. Instead he listened. Waiting for the sound of breathing or any evidence that Zara was still alive. It was a large subterranean lake, and might take some time to reach the other side.

  Sam moved quickly.

  His right hand felt like it had changed by a ninety degree angle. It might have been less. Perhaps only forty-five, but he was definitely no longer following the circular wall he’d expected. He swam several feet down the tunnel and then stopped. There was a light draft coming from the tunnel. The air tasted fresh, and moved. Unlike when he’d dived earlier into the subterranean lake, where the air was perfectly still, this tunnel had a definite draft. The revelation hit him like a cannon.

  We’re in a different cavern!

  Sam turned and placed his left hand on the wall so he was now facing back out the way he came in. “Tom, you still there?”

  “I’m still here. The wall stopped being round. Where are you?”

  “I’m down a tunnel. Wait there, and I’ll come to you, so we don’t get lost. We’ll need to find our way back to the main cavern where I left Zara.”

  Sam started swimming back the way he came.

  Tom said, “She’s going to be pissed as all hell at you, buddy. That girl was already terrified and now we’ve left her in a dark void.”

  “She’ll forgive us, when we return. So long as we do return.”

  Sam blinked a couple times, trying to adjust his eyes to the darkness. They were more than a hundred and sixty feet below the ground. It was impossible for light to reach them. But ahead of him, he spotted the first sign of light he’d seen since surfacing. It looked blue and shimmered. His eyes couldn’t quite make out what it was. He swam faster and then collided head first into Tom.

  Both men swore.

  “You all right?” Sam asked.

  “I’m all right, what about you?”

  “I’m good.”

  “What are you grinning like an idiot for, Sam?”

  “It will hit you in a second.”

  Tom swore. “Christ! I can see your face! It’s blue and kind of creepier than I remember it, but at least I can see.”

  “It’s our DARPA thermal suits,” Sam said, already swimming back toward where they had come from. “Their chemicals are changing the color from grey to fluorescent blue as they attempt to mitigate against the cold water.”

  “So all we have to do to be able to see is stay cold?”

  “Yeah, something like that.”

  “What if we increase the desired temperature parameters?”

  Sam adjusted small temperature gauge on his right upper arm. “You’re right. It will drain the power quicker, but we should be able use it on short bursts if we want to greatly increase the lumens.”

  Tom checked his own power module. “At current rate of consumption, my suite has approximately three days to go.”

  “Then let’s not waste the energy.”

  As Sam swam across the small cavern he looked up at their new environment. It was another dome, like the one he’d found earlier. Only instead of being massive, this one was no more than ten or so feet in diameter. The ceiling was a perfectly formed a dome.

  Tom looked at the ceiling above. “What do you think, Sam?”

  “I’m doubting any smuggler went to the trouble to build anything this advanced. Which means this must have been built by the ancient Garamantes.”

  “You mean, we stumbled across the Golden City? The same fictional one we used as an alibi for why we were carrying dive tanks into the Sahara?”

  “It looks like it.”

  “I wonder. Do you think the other stories about it being a golden city are true?” Tom asked.

  “I’m more interested in whether or not their subterranean aqueducts really did travel hundreds of miles between cities.”

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Zara rolled over onto her side. Something had changed in her environment. They say, when you lose one of your senses, the other senses become more responsive in order to pick up the slack. In this case, she didn’t even know what had changed. Only that something had changed. Her eyes had become adjusted to existing in complete darkness, but now, somewhere in the distance, the darkness turned slightly blue.

  She sat bolt upright and then stood up. On the far side of the lake she could definitely see something. It wasn’t much. A blue haze beneath the water. Not bright enough to see what it was, but at least confirmation she was not alone. She stared at it, willing it to grow. And the light did grow. A second light followed behind. Both objects were moving quickly beneath the water.

  There was just enough light to make out the island she was standing on. She spotted the water-tight backpack that Sam had brought down earlier, which carried her robes, and emergency provisions. Next to the backpack were three small bags of stones.

  Instinctively, she bent down and picked up the largest one she could find and prepared to throw it at whatever enemy was now approaching. The thing looked like two vile blue monsters. She wondered if they could be some sort of fish that had evolved to live underneath the well, in perfect darkness. Her heart raced and she picked up a second stone to hurl.

  The first monster broke the surface with a gasp, followed by the second one. They were both on the far side of the cavern. They turned and faced her directly.

  “Zara! Thank goodness, you’re all right.”

  Zara recognized the confident voice of Sam. She squeezed the cold stone in her hand and was tempted to pummel it at him, anyway.

  She said, “Where did you two go? I thought you were both dead!”

  “Sorry. I dropped the glow stick when I went back for Tom. When we surfaced we were in a different cavern and without light, so we had no idea we weren’t where we were supposed to be.”

  Tom popped his head out of the water, a few feet next to Sam. He looked calm and there was no evidence he’d been holding his breath. Tom looked directly at her and smiled comfortingly. “You okay, Zara?”

  “Fine,” she said.

  Zara watched as the two men quickly swam towards the island and climbed out. They looked like giant blue, glowing, fish. The sort of unique deep sea creatures which had evolved to live in just such a place as this. Their thermal suits no longer silvery, but glistening in blue.

  “I see you found out how to make your own light?” she said.

  “Yeah, that was good luck,” Sam said opening the backpack to dry himself with his robe. “I never noticed and certainly never expected to need the thermal suit to produce light. They won’t last too long. The power will run out. So we’re on clock, if you know what I mean?”

  “For what?” Zara asked.

  “To find a way out, of course!” Sam stopped. His eyes darting towards the cold stone she still gripped in her right hand. “What’s the story with the stone? You look like you want to use it to smash someone’s head in?”

  Zara said, “Don’t tempt me! You left me alone. I thought I was going to die here, in this cold, dark, place.”

  Sam said, “I said I’m sorry.”

  Tom grinned. “Sorry to interrupt. You two can fight about who hates each other more later. Can I ask where you found that stone?”

  “Over there,” Zara pointed to three small bags made from gazelle hides.

  Sam smiled. He walked up to the first one and loosened the drawstring. Inside there were enough diamonds to fund a revolution. “They don’t look like much more than dirty rocks to me?”

  “Do you know anything about diamonds?” she asked.

  “I know they’re the most artificially overinflated commodity in existence, but apart from that, no.”

  “Those dirty so called rocks are worth enough to fund a dozen military coups.”

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Sam turned the temperature on his thermal suit up to its maximum setting. At the same time Tom switched his off completely to conserve energy. They were going to need the batteries to work as long as possible. Sam’s body shimmered with the deep
blue glow as it quickly heated up to an uncomfortable temperature inside. The light glowed and permeated every corner of the subterranean cavern. All three of them looked up in awe. They were standing directly beneath the oculus of a massive dome.

  Sam grinned as his eyes followed the contours of the enormous dome downward until he was looking at Zara. “This place remind you of anything?”

  Zara’s hazel-green eyes stared up in fascination. The edge of her lips curled upwards and she bit her lower lip and then screamed, “The Roman Pantheon!”

  Sam nodded. “Which means?”

  “The Romans conquered this far south?”

  Sam shook his head. “No. Quite the opposite in fact.”

  Zara didn’t bother hiding her skepticism. “You think the Garamantes conquered Rome?”

  “Not conquered. But certainly heavily influenced the development of Roman architecture.”

  “That’s absurd. The Roman Empire was miles ahead of the rest of the world at the time. In the arts, sciences, and engineering. There was no comparison. And to consider their development was challenged by an ancient tribe of nomadic people is laughable.”

  “And yet, true.”

  She smiled. “Christ! You’re serious! Why?”

  Sam tilted his head to the side until a grin matched his slant. “Oh, I have my reasons.”

  Zara shook her head. “No. There’s never been any evidence to suggest the Garamantes ever traveled this far south. Besides, this dome is too complex for them to construct. If anything, I’d have to guess these are older than we’re thinking. I think the ancient Romans built them before the Sahara dried up and turned to sand.”

  Sam grinned. “No. I can prove it right here, right now that the Romans didn’t build this dome. I’m going to prove it to you, if you’ll listen!”

  “What do you think, Tom?” Zara smiled at Tom, who had already cozied up to one of the bags of stones and stretched out comfortably. “Was this dome built by Romans or Garamantes?”

  Tom fluffed the bag of stones, as he would a pillow and turned away. “I honestly don’t care one iota who built them. All I know is that we’ve been running on adrenaline for nearly forty-eight hours just trying to keep alive, and before that Sam and I had spent nearly a week in the desert. Now I’m just glad the dome exists and I can rest up while the two of you plot some new means of our demise.”

  Zara turned her palms outwards and looked at Sam. “He’s not even a little curious?”

  “Not particularly,” Sam suggested. “He’s more of a practical kind of guy.”

  “So, you don’t think this was an elaborate smuggler’s den?” she joked.

  “Do you know any smugglers who could compete with the Roman architects of the day?”

  “So you do think it was built by the Romans!”

  “No. I think it was built using similar technology as the Romans. It’s been long agreed that the Garamantes and the Romans shared similar architectural and engineering designs for their aqueducts.”

  “Yes. And I thought it was largely agreed that the Garamantes learned their trade from the Romans. If anything, I think the presence of this dome here means the Garamantes were using Roman engineers to build it. Maybe they were trading with them for the intellectual property?”

  “I think if you stare at the ceiling long enough you’ll see why this wasn’t built by the Romans. Certainly not between the 500BC and 700AD when the Garamantes were supposed to have lived.”

  He watched her eyes study the large dome. She started with the base of one of the four large pendentives. These were the triangular segments of a sphere, which were tapered to points at the bottom and spread at the top to establish the continuous circular or elliptical base needed for the dome. Her eyes studied the skirting between the bases where the water met the dome walls, and then moved upwards along the stone walls, which were still mostly covered with a mixture of limestone, like cement. Her eyes stopped at the giant hole in the ceiling directly above them. Possibly even sixty or more feet high. The opening looked like a tiny opening to the stars. Sam knew the size was an optical illusion and the opening could have been quite wide.

  Zara stopped. Her eyes met his. “Okay. I’m an archeologist, not an architect. Tell me why this wasn’t built by the Romans?”

  “You were so close,” Sam said. “The Roman influence is undeniable, but the Roman’s never could have constructed this during any period BC.”

  “But the Garamantes were around up until the 700AD!”

  “True, but work like this would have taken at least a hundred years to construct and they would have only constructed it if they still had plenty of water to look after it.”

  She asked, “So?”

  Sam said, “The Romans didn’t develop pendentives until the 6th-century. It was first used in the construction of the Eastern Roman Church, Hagia Sophia at Constantinople!”

  Zara glanced at the massive pendentives again. “Whoever built here, knew how to use pendentives a lot earlier than the 6th century.”

  “Exactly.”

  Zara asked, “What are you suggesting happened?”

  Sam said, “I’m suggesting this place was built by the Garamantes and that they were much more advanced than history has lead us to believe.”

  “There’s been a long standing debate about the similarities of the aqueducts built by the Garamantes and the Romans. Some have argued the Garamantes stole their ideas from the Romans, but some have questioned, whether or not it was the Romans who had learned from the Garamantes?”

  “That’s great, but even for an archeologist, I’m currently more interested in how we’re going to escape. We just need to stay down here long enough for our pursuers to pass by and then we can surface.”

  Sam shook his head. “You know that’s not possible.”

  “Why not?”

  “Even if we waited a week, which is the minimum we’d need to wait to escape, we’d still be stuck in the desert. By that time, we’d have gone a week on these tiny rations we took from the downed plane. We’ll be malnourished, starving, and in no shape to cross a desert on foot. Then, if we make it to Chad, or Bilma, there’ll be too many people there looking for us.”

  “So, have you got a better plan?”

  “Well, as a matter of fact, I do.”

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Sam said, “The oculus was used by the Romans, one of the finest examples being that in the dome of the Pantheon. Open to the weather, it allows rain to enter and fall to the floor, where it is carried away through drains. Though the opening looks small, it actually has a diameter of 27 feet allowing it to light the building just as the sun lights the earth. The rain also keeps the building cool during the hot summer months.”

  Zara dawdled, unsure where he was going.

  “The Romans, however, failed to discover a proper handling of the pendentive—the device essential to placing a dome over a square compartment—that was finally achieved by the Byzantine builders of Hagia Sophia at Constantinople around AD 532–37. The pendentives, which are triangular segments of a sphere, taper to points at the bottom and spread at the top to establish the continuous circular or elliptical base needed for the dome. In masonry the pendentives thus receive the weight of the dome, concentrating it at the four corners where it can be received by the piers beneath. Prior to the pendentive's development, the device of corbeling or the use of the squinch in the corners of a room had been employed. The first attempts at pendentives were made by the Romans, but full achievement of the form was reached only by the Byzantines in Hagia Sophia at Constantinople. Pendentives were commonly used in Renaissance and baroque churches, with a drum often inserted between the dome and pendentives.”

  “You’ve already told all this to me!” Zara said. “What I want to know is how you suggest we escape?”

  Sam continued, as though Zara had said nothing. “If we can accept the Garamantes had the technology to build a pendentive, we can also accept the hypothesis that they used an elaborat
e underground irrigation system, and founded prosperous Berber kingdoms or city-states in the Fezzan area of Libya and Chad, in the Sahara desert.”

  “You think they built irrigation tunnels between their other cities?”

  Sam nodded. “Known ruins include numerous tombs, forts, and cemeteries. The Garamantes constructed a network of underground tunnels and shafts to mine the fossil water from beneath the limestone layer under the desert sand. The dating of these foggara is disputed, they appear between 200 BC to 200 AD but continued to be in use until at least the 7th century and perhaps later. The network allowed agriculture to flourish, but used a system of slave labor to keep it maintained.”

  “What are you going to do? Find these foggoras and walk out of here?”

  “Yeah, something like that.”

  Sam turned off his thermal suit. The power slowly shut down and the light faded. In the darkness Tom snored. Sam gently pushed his back with his boot. Tom rolled on his side and stopped snoring. The cavern became silent as it was dark.

  “What now?” Zara asked.

  “Now we rest.”

  “After that?”

  “We’re going to go find a way out of this mess.”

  Sam listened to her shuffle on the ground, as though she were uncomfortable and trying hard to find a position to sleep.

  She asked, “What about the people you work for?”

  Sam smiled at the naiveté. “Will they come for us?”

  “Yes.”

  “They could risk serious international relations if they were seen coming in weapons blazing to retrieve two American treasure hunters.”

  “But will they come?” she persisted.

  Sam said, “You bet your ass, they would. The people I work with would turn the world on its axis to save our lives. They’d come in guns blazing until they found us, if…”

  “What?”

  “If only they had any idea we were missing. I carried a GPS tracker, but it’s on one of the camels we lost. As far as my people know, I’m wandering around aimlessly across the Sahara – which means we’re on our own.”