“Jeez, man, it’s like staring at a pint of milk.”
“And you should cover up,” Caitlyn added. “Sunburn ain’t choosy.”
“Shit, I feel like I’ve inherited a couple of bossy sisters.”
Alicia then put down her spade and climbed out of the earthy hole she’d been digging. She took a long look at their day’s work and met Crouch’s already knowing eyes.
“It ain’t here, boss.”
Crouch climbed up and sat on the edge of his own small void in the earth. “I just don’t get it. Did I miss something?”
“Hey, can’t win ’em all. If every treasure hunt was a success it wouldn’t be worth searching for.”
Caitlyn brought them all water. “Why not check the maps again?”
Crouch studied his mud-caked fingers. “First, a wash I think.”
“You and me both,” Alicia murmured, then flicked her head up. “But not together!”
They wandered down the free-flowing brook. Crouch stopped first around a slight bend, courteously letting her stroll further away to find some privacy. When Alicia came across a suitable place, she knelt in the stream and took her time washing. It was a perfunctory cleansing; she was at heart a soldier and would never let herself become too vulnerable in such an open place. She made do with what she had, and that was good enough.
As they returned to camp, Russo suddenly gave out a yell. “Oh, hell!”
Alicia sprang into action, racing over to the big man and signaling Healey to take a closer look at the perimeter.
“What is it?”
“I don’t know. But it sure as hell ain’t treasure.”
Of course, Russo did know. He was waiting for Alicia and Crouch to come over before indicating his find. Caitlyn came up as they stared in silence.
“Bones,” Alicia said, and felt a little shiver despite the increasing warmth of the day.
“Old bones,” Caitlyn said. “This might actually make sense.”
“Why? How can you tell?”
“Well, obviously I can’t tell the exact date they were placed here but looking at the condition I’d have to say a considerable time ago. And they were buried. And see the strongbox underneath? Somebody’s going to have to grab that.”
Russo didn’t hesitate, but carefully and respectfully placed the bones aside and hefted the strongbox. It was a basic, metal container with a rudimentary lock, also clearly many years old. He brought it out of the hole and placed it on the ground.
“Wait,” Crouch said as the soldier gripped the lid. “Caitlyn? What did you mean when you said this makes sense?”
“I did a bit of digging of my own,” Caitlyn said with a smile. “The part about the Black Book bugged me. Why include it? Why talk about burying it? Surely it had to have some significance to Morgan and his treasures.”
“And what is a black book?” Crouch asked.
Alicia reached down to help Russo back out of the hole as Caitlyn spoke.
“It started as far back as the 1300s and was a listing of maritime laws and codes of conduct. Offenders were always punished hard. To the pirates it was a collection, physical or verbal, of those of their own kin that committed crimes against them. Their ‘black book’ was buried here.”
“You couldn’t have mentioned that before we started digging?” Alicia asked.
“Well, I wasn’t sure. And you all seemed so eager.”
“And now we know.” Crouch nodded at Russo, who tore the worn metal apart with his bare hands. The edges were sharp and ragged, and Russo took his time. Inside, they found a sheaf of old parchment, partly covered in a thick, black script. Crouch stared at it hard but didn’t dare touch it.
“We can’t mess with this,” he said. “The experts should be allowed to figure it out. But I’ll say one thing for sure—there’s no treasure here.”
“The map was an account of Morgan burying the transgressors,” Caitlyn said. “Maybe we should move on to the next one.”
“Not exactly,” Crouch said. “There was more.”
He moved away and dug out the maps once more. Alicia walked with him. Healey popped his head around a tree to report the all clear and then vanished once more. Still, they were undisturbed.
“Carried away it was, inland with our blood money. The channel behind, the forest ahead. We returned soon enough. Below decks among timber spars it was sent, but the trees they tell a story all their own. Our Black Book, buried there. As the crow flies, through two stands and at the foot of the hill.”
“Now it makes sense,” Alicia said with a grin.
“Always does when you know the answer,” Crouch said off-handedly. He was concentrating on the map. “Come with me. All of you.”
The team gathered as quickly as they could, Russo still slapping at his trousers to remove clinging mud and shrugging into a T-shirt. Backpacks were hefted and Caitlyn pointed out the precariousness of their find.
“Don’t worry. We’ll report it as soon as we can. Problem is, we’re backed into a corner here with nowhere to go.”
“You could always ask a few contacts to find Jensen,” Alicia suggested. “Cut out the treasure hunt.”
Crouch looked at her as if she might be mad. “You’re kidding me, right? That’s why we’re here.”
Alicia sighed. She knew his love of treasure hunting came from a rich youth reading old books and getting into trouble. She also knew he’d dreamed of a job like this through decades of army duties. The joy, for Crouch, was the hunt itself.
Their boss took them back toward the old fort and the waters beyond. Alicia picked out several yachts bobbing on the surface, their polished hulls and golden ornaments shining under a rising sun, their white sails billowing. Closer still, half a dozen tourists walked the ruins of the old castle, cameras dangling around their necks.
Crouch stared at the harbor.
“Imagine it. Half a dozen pirate ships at anchor, day and night for two months. Stocked full with provisions, goods to barter and pirate plunder. Untold wealth. Surrounded by it every moment, it would make a man become suspicious. On edge. It could make a man so distrustful he might come up with a crazy, brilliant plan.”
“What plan?” Russo asked.
“Scupper a ship. Let it go down, the treasure with it.”
Alicia frowned. “How? What? I mean . . . how would they ever retrieve it?”
“It’s a shallow bay. Remember what Caitlyn said? Morgan and his men had to sail upriver by boat to take out the forts. They would have sailed the ships in very carefully a bit later.”
“Wouldn’t people have noticed a sinking ship?” Caitlyn asked.
“Undoubtedly. But who would question it? Most of the locals probably welcomed the sight of it. Invent some kind of story. Mutiny. Drunken men. Whatever. And let it all die down. There’s even the possibility that the men Morgan buried with the Black Book were thieves, trying to steal some of the treasure, which drove him to come up with this audacious plan.”
“All right. But what’s your evidence?” Caitlyn asked.
“The map. The script. Below decks on timber spars it was sent.”
Alicia shook her head. “That’s pretty vague, boss.”
“Of course it is. It’s meant to be vague. A pirate isn’t about to make it easy for you. But timber spars are how a ship ends up on the bottom of the sea when it’s scuppered and the word sent—I believe means exactly what it says.”
Alicia turned her face toward the bay. “So it’s out there? Somewhere.”
“I believe so. Maybe a spot of research would confirm the number of ships, though I doubt we’d get lucky enough to see their positions. In any case they’d be as close to shore as possible. Pirates weren’t known for putting in extra work.”
“So how do we find out?”
Crouch indicated an area in the distance where rows of huts and makeshift shopfronts had been erected on the beach. “We rent diving gear.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
In the spirit of diving fo
r treasure the sea bottom gave up very little. Alicia remembered some figure about there being over a million shipwrecks on the sea floor, with 70 percent of them not found. In three recent finds alone estimators guessed they’d netted $4.5 billion in loot. Somebody once said, “We know more about the surface of the moon than the bottom of the sea. It’s the last frontier.”
One estimate put the figure of sunken loot at $60 billion.
Small wonder then, that thousands of people and mega-rich companies put time and effort into combing the waves for them. She might even do it herself if she had known what the hell she was actually doing. But this diving shit?
She had a bad track record for underwater exploration. Her last had resulted in a subsurface explosion that took out a potential lost kingdom. No biggie. This time, she donned the mask and strapped on the air tanks with some trepidation and sank below the waves in no hurry at all. The team had spent hours in fruitless research, then decided to take their best guesses and start exploring. All except Caitlyn, who hadn’t yet learned how to dive. The proprietor that rented them their diving gear wasn’t much help, except to tell them his trade wasn’t exactly booming.
In short, they dived for long hours, then dived some more. They didn’t take enough breaks. They became tetchy, anxious. Where on earth was Jensen? Perhaps he’d already known that the town of Porto Bello was a red herring.
They slept that night again in tents, and were back on the beach before the proprietor. He wasn’t surprised to see them, since they’d already booked the night before and handed over a fat tip. The man didn’t say much, face creased by sun, winds and saltwater, but the look in his eyes told them he knew they were far from curious tourists.
Under the waves was a dark, gloomy world, pleasant near the surface but descending into murk the further they swam offshore. Crouch led the way, taking them to where calculations showed the closest possible anchor point was for Morgan’s ships. From there they fanned out.
And became lost.
In the end, the team could do no more. They enlisted the help of two local divers that earned their living from diving and teaching others how to. Truth be told, they were more laid-back than a deck chair, but once properly motivated they worked like men possessed. It still took the rest of the day but by sunset one of the men had located something which he described to the team as timber spars.
The words electrified Crouch, Alicia could see. It was all they could do to pass another night wondering, talking around a beach campfire, and then start back at first light. The divers did all the work, and presently two more came to help. Pretty soon, a bevy of relaxed locals were setting up on the beach, jobs ignored for the day, rum punch and smoothies being poured and speculations made. With the local dive team swelled to six, Crouch and Russo were the only ones now out there, trying to help.
They found the strongbox that afternoon and hauled it back to the beach. Crouch took charge but invited all the locals to watch and bear witness to whatever they found.
Crouch held a hand out. “I think we need a tool this time. A chunky screwdriver maybe?”
Alicia rummaged in her pack and muttered, “Pretty sure you used a tool last time.”
Russo was out of earshot. Healey stood with Caitlyn, the latter resting her head on the former’s shoulders and smiling lightly. Alicia didn’t have the heart to comment as Crouch poked at the strongbox.
“Found a weak spot,” he muttered. “Just have to . . . there we are.”
The box was a little bigger than the last, sturdy and coated with silt and even a barnacle or two. Crouch pried it open with a little help and then stared at its contents. To a person, the assembled throng leaned forward.
“No doubloons,” Caitlyn said with disappointment.
“But there is something,” Crouch said.
He reached inside and drew forth several golden necklaces, bracelets and a pile of small trinkets. As he rummaged through, a trinket box was revealed, tacked together with dark wood and with a sliding front drawer and lid that revealed several fine drawings of ladies and gentlemen when raised. There was a small mirror, ruined through time, and a smaller box inside. Crouch immediately pointed to the date inscribed into the underside of the lid.
“Oh, dear God. We may not have found the treasure, but this, to some people, could be just as important.”
Alicia understood, of course. The date was 1665. This trinket box would have been present in Porto Bello at the same time that Captain Henry Morgan sacked it.
“These are the people’s treasures,” Crouch continued. “Sentimentals. Personal possessions. Morgan didn’t want them but couldn’t bring himself to give them back.”
“So he sank them to the bottom of the sea?” Healey asked with disbelief.
“I guess pirates do that,” Caitlyn said.
“And left a map to their whereabouts?” Healey still sounded unsure.
“Could be a touch of guilt. A touch of mischief. He knew they’d never be found without the maps, which he carried away. One thing has occurred to me now, though, on making these two finds—maybe the maps were Morgan’s way of making a log. Cataloguing timelines and events. It would make sense.”
The locals were crowding close now, trying to get a feel for what was inside the box. Crouch asked one of the divers to find a phone and call somebody in authority. Alicia fancied someone had just mightily increased their workload.
“This is a good find,” she said. “It may even give some people closure. Heirlooms and valuables like this are all family treasures and close to somebody’s heart. If only they can match them with the right people.”
“I’m sure they will try,” Crouch said and rose. “But we’re not done here, guys. As you can see, this isn’t what we’re looking for.”
“Nothing like,” Healey said.
“So what’s next?” Alicia asked.
“Next? We visit a treasure island.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Feeling rested and uplifted, the team soon found themselves on a flight to Haiti. Crouch decided they had lost too much time with the frustrating and yet satisfying search of Porto Bello and needed to catch up. They did manage to rent a private plane though, which helped with the contents of their backpacks. Private airfields and planes were more plentiful here than palm trees.
Healey sat beside Caitlyn, the two talking quietly, whilst Crouch spread out along the back seat, taking the time to rest. Alicia found herself dozing alongside Russo whilst fielding calls from her primary team and her boyfriend, Drake.
“Can’t do without me,” she said cheerily.
Russo looked across. “Desperate men need desperate things.”
“What the hell’s that supposed to mean? And stop with the pretend complaining, Russo. I know you love me.”
The big soldier choked.
“Well, we do work well together. As a team.”
A sigh. “Y’know, I guess we do.”
“So, ease up on the criticism, eh? Tell me, how are you really doing?”
Beneath the many thick layers Russo was a complex man, always trying to control the rage and make himself a better person. If one thing could be said about him, night and day, it was that he never stopped trying.
“The struggle continues,” he said simply.
“You think you’ll get used to it?”
“I don’t think this is something a person could ever get used to. That could be referred to as sweeping the problem under the carpet. With me, it’s always here.” He tapped his forehead. “Always recognized and kept in check.”
Alicia leaned back in her seat. “That’s a hell of a way to live, Russo. A hell of a way.”
The big soldier shrugged. “It is what it is. What about you?” He eyed her. “Am I detecting something different?”
“Are you?”
“Well, you seriously asked about my wellbeing. The old Alicia would have rather eaten a moose’s hoof.”
Alicia smiled. “I hear they’re pretty tasty. We’re soldi
ers, Russo. We don’t feel. We don’t talk about feelings. We get down to the job.”
“Nothing else?”
“There’s the possibility of something else. I don’t know what. But all my life I’ve been running. Running from home and then from enemies and then from one damn battle to the next. I’ve changed all that now.”
Russo settled back. “Really? How?”
“Easy. I stopped bloody running. You have to face what comes. That’s what makes us the people we are.”
“For good or bad.” He appeared to agree.
“Struggle gives you strength. It makes the next battle a little easier.”
“Jeez, woman, that’s a pretty dour outlook.”
Alicia punched him on the arm. “It’s my new slogan.”
They both laughed, perfectly aware of the maxim Alicia had always lived by. One life, live it. An ideal like that worked with any scenario.
The pilot announced they were a half hour away from their destination and that brought Crouch awake, shaking his head and asking for coffee. Caitlyn soon joined them along with Healey and they began to discuss the next stage. Crouch unrolled the second map and laid it out before them.
“Henry Morgan’s special place. His sanctuary. An island off Haiti called Île-à-Vache, also Isla Vaca. It was here that he felt safe and planned assaults on settlements such as Cartagena, where much of the gold the Spanish brought from Peru was held in transit. Of course, it was also the site of many accidents and deaths since it was where the pirates . . . um, shall we say ‘let their hair down. ’ ”
Caitlyn had also looked into Morgan’s antics. “Ah, this was the place where Morgan’s flagship, the Oxford, sent by England to protect Port Royal and then gifted to Morgan by Port Royal, was utterly destroyed. Drunken sailors accidentally ignited the ship’s explosive cache, killing many and making deserters of many more. An event like that was seen as a bad omen. But Isla Vaca itself is considered one of the most beautiful of all the Caribbean islands, with some of the best scenery. And, naturally, many shipwrecks surround its rocky, reef-lined coastline.”
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