Ellis took a few more strides toward the door. “Sometimes it’s hard to be the princess,” he said. “Sometimes you have to make hard decisions.”
Cam checked the harness, the carabiners, the knots on the climbing rope, the strap on Amanda’s helmet. And then he checked them again. “Does your walkie-talkie work?”
“I’m fine,” Amanda said, kissing him. “Willum bought top of the line equipment.” She tapped the tip of his nose with her finger. “Just don’t drop me.”
Willum and Boonie had secured the climbing rope to a boulder using three spring-loaded camming devices, any one of which would have been sufficient to support Amanda’s weight. The rope ran through a series of pulleys and attached to a carabiner on Cam’s harness—through this system Amanda could lower herself as Cam let out slack but, in the event she fell, Cam would be able to catch her and arrest the fall. The use of pulleys reduced her weight so that Cam would not be pulled over with her. For redundancy, Cam himself was tied off and anchored to a second boulder.
“On belay,” Amanda called.
“Belay on,” Cam responded and let out a few feet of rope. They had done some indoor rock-climbing together so he knew a bit about the terminology. And she had done a bit of outdoor climbing. But never off a fifty foot rock cliff.
“Climbing.”
“Climb on,” he replied, peering over the side as she pushed off.
Using this system, in fits and starts Amanda backed down the cliff face, using her feet to bounce out away from the rock while she descended. “I’m here,” she said. “Off belay.” This gave her slack to walk about the cave.
“Okay, but I don’t want to give you too much slack in case the ledge you are on gives way,” he yelled.
She didn’t respond.
“Amanda?” Nothing. He tugged on the rope but felt no tension. “Amanda!”
Using high-powered binoculars, Ellis watched as the men lowered Amanda down the cliff face. He cursed. Willum was wasting too much time looking for the chest and not enough time working on the fuel cell. And the fact they were sending her down there indicated they believed they had found the right cave.
He leaned back against a tree. He couldn’t very well ask Georgia to order Thorne not to help Willum with his treasure hunt—that was what Willum had invited them to the compound for in the first place. And it was the thing that made Willum trust them. Ellis needed to add an external variable to the equation, something that would push Willum out of the mountains and back to his compound. The problem with adding external variables is that they often resulted in collateral damage. He shrugged. Such was the cost of doing business.
Amanda unclipped her carabiner as she examined the markings near the mouth of the cave. A few runic characters, and below them the distinctive splayed cross of the Knights Templar. “Bloody amazing,” she breathed.
She leaned out and yelled up. “I found some markings. A Templar cross. This is the cave.”
She didn’t wait for a response. Flicking on her flashlight, she scanned the rest of the cave. It was smaller than the other, perhaps the size of a butler’s pantry. But it dog-legged like a golf fairway to the left. Using her free hand to push aside the cobwebs she crept deeper in.
She jumped as her walkie-talkie buzzed. She put it on speaker and held it in her hand with the flashlight. “I’m walking toward the back of the cave,” she reported. “There’s a cavity or compartment in the back. It looks like an MRI tube.” She froze and gasped. “There’s some kind of crate or chest in there.”
“Wait. Don’t go near it,” Cam said. “Remember the prospector got zapped by it.”
She aimed her light deeper. “It’s about the size of a blanket chest.”
“What color?”
“I can’t tell. It’s covered in gray dust.”
“I can’t believe I’m asking this, but are there angels or anything on the top?”
“There’s something decorative there, but I can’t tell if it’s angels or gargoyles or a partridge in a pear tree.”
“Can you take a picture with your phone and text it to us?”
“Too dark.” But she snapped a picture with her digital camera. The flash illuminated more of the cave, and she noticed a couple of poles standing at the dog leg. “I can touch the poles, right?”
Cam paused. “As long as you don’t get too close to the chest.”
She bent over and picked up a pole. Dusty but smooth, and heavier than it should have been even given its hefty diameter. She splashed some water on it and rubbed it with her shirt. “Gold,” she breathed.
“What?” Cam said.
She held the light closer to the pole. “The pole is gold. Or at least gold-colored.” The light played on the cave wall as her hand shook. She splashed some water on her face and took a deep breath. The poles used to carry the Ark of the Covenant were gold-plated.
“How close are you to the chest?”
“Perhaps ten feet.”
“Hold on.” He spoke to Willum in the background. “One of the things Willum put in your pack was a Geiger counter.”
She slipped off her pack and pulled out an orange device that looked like a channel clicker. She flicked the power switch on and held it out toward the chest. It made a clicking noise for a few seconds, then displayed a number on the readout. “It’s giving a reading of 7.4.”
Cam spoke to Willum before returning to her. “Okay, that’s counts per second. Normal levels are one or two. Dangerous levels are anything above ten. So you’re not in danger, but whatever is in that cave is radioactive.”
Amanda backed away. When she turned the dog leg, the readings fell to three. She still had the pole in her hand. “So now what?”
“Good question.” He again consulted with Willum. “Are you sure you have a picture?”
She checked her camera. “It’s as good a shot as I can get without cleaning it off.” She also snapped a shot of the Templar cross and runic characters.
“Okay. Then let’s get you out of there.”
“Wait. I want to check the illumination.” Again using the astronomy app on her phone, she projected the sun’s path across the horizon on June 21. Just as the sun crested over the horizon to the east, its rays would squeeze past the front edge of the near wall of the cave and brighten a few inches of the far wall—in fact, she could see where a section of the near wall had been chiseled away to allow the sun to penetrate. Just enough sun to illuminate the carvings, and only on the summer solstice. Amanda smiled—these guys were good.
Cam grabbed Amanda’s wrist and pulled her over the lip of the cliff. “You brought me a gift,” he smiled, his jaw unclenching now that she was safe.
“Actually, I believe it belongs to Willum.” She handed Willum the pole.
He, in turn, handed it to Boonie. “It’s actually as much Boonie’s as mine.”
Boonie spoke. “It’s heavy.”
“I think it’s gold-plated,” she said. They all stared at it. She spoke the words on everyone’s mind. “Would the Templars use gold-plated poles for any chest other than the Ark of the Covenant?”
A few seconds passed. “Wait, what’s that clicking noise?” Amanda asked. She removed her pack and pulled out the Geiger counter. “I never turned this off. And now it’s getting a radiation reading again.” She moved it around herself in a circle—it increased in frequency when she held it toward Willum. “I’m getting a pretty high reading, Willum. Have you been around any radiation?”
His eyes widened. “So that’s it. I’ve been losing hair and getting these rashes on my face, but I didn’t know why. It must be from the experiments I’ve been doing in the lab.”
“The white powder of gold stuff?” Cam asked.
“Yes. I was in the lab all night working with it.”
“That’s odd,” Amanda said. She explained how their research showed that the Ark of the Covenant may itself have been radioactive. “It seems like quite a coincidence that both the powder and our chest also display radioa
ctive qualities.” She smiled. “And Cameron says we are not allowed to believe in coincidences.”
Willum nodded. “Well, one of my theories is that the Ark might have been an ancient fuel cell, energized by the desert sand. If somehow this process produced radiation, it makes sense radiation would emanate from both the Ark and the powder that is the byproduct of the reaction.”
Cam rubbed his face with both hands. “So wait. Are you guys saying that chest down there might be the actual Ark of the Covenant?”
Amanda exhaled. “Doubtful. But I suppose anything is possible.”
“No, some things are not possible,” Cam said. “The Ark of the Covenant is not in that cave below our feet.”
Willum looked Cam in the eye. “You’re the one who doesn’t believe in coincidence, Cam. You explain it.”
Amanda interjected. “Look, we’ll know soon enough. We just need to examine and test the chest. But I agree with Willum—the golden poles and the radioactivity and the prospector getting zapped and the decorations on the top are all very … curious.”
“As am I,” Cam said. “Whatever it is, we need to get down there again and check it out. Willum, I don’t suppose you know where we can get some Hazmat suits?”
“That’s some good work before lunch,” Willum said as he led the way along the ridgeline. Cam nodded. It was good work. But they should have thought to bring some Hazmat suits with them.
He pulled a granola bar from his pack and devoured it in three bites, knowing he needed it to keep his blood sugar stable. They had traversed the ridgeline and were about five minutes into their descent when Cam turned to check on Amanda. As he did so, the loose dirt gave way beneath his lead foot and he began to skid off the trail. He looked up just in time to see a greenish-brown snake eyeing him from atop a low, flat rock. The snake flicked its tongue at Cam and rattled a warning as Cam clawed at the dirt to arrest his skid, but he came to rest with his foot covering the snake’s rock, like a runner sliding into third base. Shit. A sharp sting punctured the back of his calf, followed immediately by the sound of another rattle, this one louder and angrier. “Damn it, I’ve been bit.” The snake slithered away a few feet and hissed, warning Cam not to be so stupid again.
Amanda jumped to his side and nestled his head while Willum, cell phone in hand, approached the snake from below and snapped a shot as the snake slinked into the brush.
The original pain felt like a bee sting, but within seconds the pain magnified—it now felt like a hundred bees stuck sitting on his leg, stinging away furiously. Cam’s heart pounded. “Shit that hurts.”
Amanda’s face blanched. “Was it poisonous?”
“It rattled,” Cam said.
Willum scrambled over to Cam, knelt next to him and pulled up the pant leg of his jeans. “I got a picture of the snake. It was a Mojave Green. They’re the most lethal of all the rattlers.”
“Just my luck,” Cam muttered. He felt the sweat break out on his forehead.
Willum probed the wound. “Looks like he got you pretty good.” He opened his pack and removed a plastic case which contained a scalpel-like device, some rubbing alcohol, a tube of antiseptic and a couple of gauze pads. “This is going to hurt a bit,” he said as he disinfected the scalpel. Cam bit on a leather glove as Willum made a clean cut into Cam’s skin, connecting the two puncture wounds and going a bit beyond. “See that yellow stuff? That’s the venom. I’m going to let that ooze out a bit. Some of it is already in your bloodstream, but the more we can get out the better.”
Amanda held Cam’s hand and dabbed his forehead as Willum worked. Cam alternately tried to focus on the mountains in the distance and the way the sunlight danced inside Amanda’s emerald eyes, but mostly he chewed on the glove and fought back the tears. After a few minutes, Willum said, “I think we got out as much as we can.” He squirted some antiseptic onto a gauze pad, pressed the pad against the wound and taped it securely in place. “We need to get you to a hospital. Soon.” He removed his bandana and tied a tourniquet around Cam’s leg just below the knee. “I don’t want to totally restrict the blood flow, just slow it down. You need to tell me if your toes start to tingle.”
Willum handed Boonie his pack. “Cam, I’m gonna carry you down.”
“I can walk, I think,” Cam said.
“No. No exertion. The harder your heart beats, the more quickly the venom spreads through your body. We’ve got a forty-five minute climb down, best case. And then it’s a thirty mile drive to the hospital in Sierra Vista.”
Amanda’s eyes widened. “How long do we have?”
“With a Mojave Green bite, anything more than two hours is dicey.”
“Then we should be fine,” Amanda said.
He shook his head. “When we get there, they still need to prepare the antivenom.” He handed Boonie the keys to the Land Cruiser. “Get to the bottom as quick as you can. Then bring the car as far up the trail as it’ll go. If you have any cell coverage, call the hospital and tell them we’re on our way. Make sure you tell them it’s a Mojave Green.”
Willum turned to Amanda. “Give me your harness.” He loosened the straps and stepped into it. Quickly he looped a rope through the harness and handed the end to Amanda. “I want to move down hill as fast as I can without worrying about falling forward. If you walk behind me and keep some tension on this rope, that’ll help.” A memory flashed in Cam’s mind from a few weeks earlier, Astarte angling down the slope as Cam snowplowed behind, leash in hand, keeping the girl’s speed in check on her first day skiing. He’d like to be around to watch her grow into an expert.
Amanda slipped on her gloves. Willum crouched and Cam climbed onto him, piggy-back style. As Willum staggered forward, Cam began to feel dizzy. He tried to speak, but his tongue felt heavy and thick. And his throat was beginning to constrict.
“Best thing you can do is to close your eyes and relax. Slow that heart rate down.” Willum turned and smiled. “You’re going to owe me a beer for this.”
Willum staggered under Cam’s weight, his thighs burning as he picked a path down the trail. Cam’s breathing, only inches from his ear, had become more and more labored. And he had begun to moan from the pain. From what Willum knew, a Mojave Green bite was about as painful a thing as existed in nature. Like fire ants crawling into an open wound.
Amanda did a great job supplying tension on the line and they were making decent time. But decent time might not do it. He thought about stopping to check on the tourniquet, but at this point Cam losing his foot was the least of his concerns. In retrospect, maybe he should have tightened it fully and sacrificed the foot from the beginning.
He called back to Amanda. “How long has it been?”
“Thirty-one minutes,” she replied. He was afraid to look at her. The one time he had turned around it nearly broke his heart. Not just because of how concerned she was, but because it had been a long time since anyone had loved Willum like that. Probably not since his mother passed away almost twenty years ago. Gregory loved him, but how strong could that bond be when the boy only saw his father once a month? He sighed. It sucked being lonely.
Fifteen minutes later Willum spotted the long-legged Boonie loping up the trail toward them. “I’ll take him, boss,” Boonie said.
Willum transferred Cam to Boonie, dropped to his knees and gulped some water. His back was drenched and his breathing labored. And his legs felt like overcooked spaghetti. He was getting too old for this.
Boonie had driven the Land Cruiser a couple hundred feet up the trail and covered the final descent, Cam on his back, in less than five minutes. Willum, after a quick rest, plopped into the driver’s seat just as Boonie and Amanda settled Cam in the back. “Amanda, don’t let him lie down—make sure the wound stays well below his heart. We want to keep as much of that venom down in his leg as possible.”
Willum bounced the SUV down the trail, anxious to rush but also aware that a flat tire or broken axel would likely be a death sentence for Cameron. Finally they hit the
dirt road and Willum raced over the rutted path, bouncing and careening toward the highway.
He yelled over his shoulder. “Amanda, call 911 and tell them our situation. We are going to be on Highway 82, heading east, about fifteen miles west of Highway 90. If they can give us a police escort, that would be great.” An ambulance would be even better, but they were few and far between in this secluded area of the state.
They hit the highway a few minutes later and Willum flicked on the hazards and pushed the accelerator to the floor. A mile later, as they cruised at ninety MPH, a sheriff’s car, lights on, appeared in his rearview mirror and overtook him. Willum accelerated to near one hundred as they crested a rise and headed down out of the mountains. Twenty minutes later they screeched to a halt at the hospital entrance, a medical team lifted Cam onto a gurney, and Willum exhaled.
He looked at his watch. Elapsed time since the bite: eighty-seven minutes. He had done his job. Now it was up to the pros.
Amanda couldn’t get the vision of the yellow, honey-like venom oozing from Cam’s wound out of her mind. They didn’t have rattlesnakes in England and she didn’t realize how dangerous the situation was until she saw the grave look on Willum’s face. That was reinforced by the emergency room doctor, a heavy-set Hispanic woman in her sixties whose apparent competence and confidence only served to undermine the seriousness of the situation.
“Someone said you had a picture of the snake?” the doctor asked with a slight accent, dispensing with any niceties.
Amanda pushed through the swinging doors and found Willum seated in the reception area. “I need the picture of the snake.”
He handed her the phone and she rushed it to the doctor. “Yes, a Mojave Green,” the doctor said. Her face was covered but a pair of concerned brown eyes met Amanda’s gaze. “It’s good you called this in. Different snakes require different antivenoms. We made up a batch of Mojave Green when you called.”
Powdered Gold: Templars and the American Ark of the Covenant (Templars in America Series Book 3) Page 16