Pandora's Temple

by Jon Land

  “What exactly are they guarding?”

  Belamo turned back toward McCracken and winked. “Just what the doctor ordered.”

  Late that night McCracken and Sal Belamo stumbled down the pier, pretending to be drunken cruisegoers having lost their way thanks to the bottles each held in his grasp. The armed guards posted before the hangar Belamo had earlier identified cut them off at the head of the pier where it broke both left and right.

  “Hey, we can’t find our ship,” McCracken mumbled drunkenly. “Any idea where the Titanic’s docked?”

  The two guards looked at each other.

  “How about the Lusitania?”

  The nearer guard reached out to grab him.

  “The Andrea Doria?”

  McCracken and Belamo felt the grasps tighten, just as Johnny Wareagle appeared behind the two guards.

  McCracken knocked on the hangar door that was locked from the inside, kept his pounding hard and constant until the side entrance was jerked open. The guard standing there noticed the pistol in Sal Belamo’s hand first and the unconscious frames of his two associates, held up by Johnny Wareagle as if they were rag dolls, next. Behind the guard, resting on the water’s surface between the floating piers was a manned underwater submersible with a pod-shaped frame attached to a pair of pincerlike extremities made for grasping and tugging objects from the seafloor.

  “We need to borrow your submarine,” McCracken told the guard.

  “Hey, boss,” Sal Belamo said, after they’d finished tying all four men up, “you know how they say hope for the world got stuck in Pandora’s jar forever?”

  “I do.”

  “Well,” Belamo grinned, looking straight at McCracken, “you ask me, it finally got out.”

  CHAPTER 73

  The Mediterranean Sea

  Doctors Bol and Whitcomb made the trek down the pier to the covered water hangar an hour past dawn. The sun burned exceedingly bright for so early an hour, courtesy of the direct angle this time of year. The crystal blue water was flat and calm, the sun’s blinding reflection making it seem brighter still.

  The Crab, a six-passenger submarine designed for deepwater research and salvage, had arrived the day before and been checked thoroughly in anticipation of setting out in search of Pandora’s Temple first thing in the morning.

  “Can you hear me, Mr. Roy?” Whitcomb asked.

  “Loud and clear, Doctor.”

  Both Whitcomb and Bol were wearing helmets affixed with both a microphone and camera, so Sebastian Roy could both see and hear everything that went on once they boarded the Crab. Neither of the CERN scientists had ever been aboard a submarine before and each had prepped heavily for the rigors the night before, though they fully expected the excitement of the journey to temper any ill effects.

  The Crab came with a complete crew specifically chosen for their areas of expertise in underwater exploration, archaeology and salvage. The salvage part seemed especially important, given that manipulation of the robotic, fully articulated, pincerlike arms would be the order of the day once they reached the area where the mapping process had identified the presence of something large and sprawling. The previous night had been spent prepping the crew for exactly what they were in search of, the coordinates and all available reconnaissance data already programmed into the Crab’s computers.

  At first glance the ship looked like something from a Terminator movie: dark gray in color with thick tinted glass for front windows that could have passed as rectangular eyes. The dual arms, which pinioned and rotated like something out of a high-tech automotive assembly line, were foreboding in both size and power. An able controller could wield them with the dexterity and strength required to either pick up a walnut off the seafloor or crush it into dust.

  “Should you find anything that even remotely resembles Pandora’s jar . . .” Sebastian Roy started.

  “. . . we will break off and await further instructions,” completed Whitcomb. “We know how to obey orders, Mr. Roy. We both want to see our families again.”

  “Then for your sakes, I hope you complete your mission successfully.”

  Bol reached the water hangar first, surprised the guard he expected to find there was nowhere to be seen. The double doors were open and he started to walk through.

  “We’re entering the hangar now, Mr. Roy,” Whitcomb said. “Right on schedule.”

  The two men entered. And froze.

  Because seated on the floor before them were the security guards, bound and gagged.

  And the Crab was gone.

  CHAPTER 74

  The Mediterranean Sea

  Sal Belamo effortlessly piloted the Crab to within a hundred yards of the seafloor, relying on the course preprogrammed into its onboard computer.

  “Told you I can drive anything, boss,” he said to McCracken. “Of course, it helps I drove steel buckets like this back in the day. I ever tell you about that?”

  “Indian and I would love to hear about it someday, Sal,” McCracken said, seated next to Johnny Wareagle. “Always thought you were army back in the day, though.”

  “I was, but the kind of missions we handled, it paid to be versatile, you know what I mean.”

  “All too well.”

  “I ever tell you about the Puerto Rican boxer I knocked out in the sixth to win my first title shot?”

  “Don’t tell me . . . Against none other than the great Carlos Monzon who you took to a decision even though he busted your nose in the third round.”

  “Nineteen seventy, not long before he stopped Emile Griffith in the fourteenth. Second time we fought he knocked me out in the fifth. But I was an old man by then.”

  “So what does that make you now?”

  Belamo grinned. “You’d think we’d finally be too old for this shit, boss. Be far away on a beach in Cancun instead. A real vacation.”

  “What do you call this?” McCracken asked, as they continued to slice nimbly through the sea.

  Katie DeMarco leaned forward in the next seat back. The Crab could accommodate six, four plus a pilot and a technician to work the sub’s remote-operated arm assembly. The confines felt cramped and claustrophobic even with only five of the seats taken. Katie imagined she could actually hear the rapid heartbeats of the others, along with their slightly labored breathing. And a single glance at McCracken told her he was just as anxious, or nervous, or both.

  “You really believe we’re going to find this temple?” she asked him.

  “Let’s ask the expert. Captain?” McCracken prompted.

  Captain Seven responded without ever taking his eyes from the thick twin glass panes that formed the Crab’s face. “I am in desperate need of a joint, MacNuts. My supply from that old hippie is long gone. And in case you’ve forgotten, last time I tried this I almost ended up as fish food.”

  “You better be wrong this time, Captain.”

  “About what?”

  “Some things not wanting to be found.”

  “When did I say that?”

  “Then let’s try this. What exactly does the computer on this thing say about where we’re headed?”

  “That there’s something down there for sure, just like Pat said. It’s big in scope and mass, and relatively intact since there’s no debris field or scatter.” Captain Seven continued to gaze out into the sea beyond, brought to life in thick ribbons of light from the six million candlepower beams focused outward from the Crab’s bow. “Just like five years ago . . .”

  “One big difference between then and now, Captain.”

  “What’s that, MacNuts?”

  “The Indian, Sal, and I weren’t there.”

  “Doesn’t change the waters.”

  In that moment the Crab hit what felt like a headwind, its nose pitching upward as it started to roll to the side until Belamo worked the controls to desperately right it.

  “Like I was saying,” from Captain Seven.

  CHAPTER 75

  The Mediterranean Sea

&n
bsp; Sal Belamo continued to steer the Crab deeper into the depths of the sea, the exterior lighting providing an incredible view of the changing marine life the deeper they descended. Schools of fish thinned in favor of smaller packs or lone swimmers, scavengers mostly at this depth notable for their oversized-looking eyes. That feature made them seem almost thoughtful when investigating the Crab, but it was strictly a natural feature of species operating at these depths. But McCracken found himself looking at Katie DeMarco instead, replaying the remainder of her words about her brother in splotches.

  “He was younger than me, two years. I was older. I was supposed to protect him.”

  “You were a child.”

  “So was he. I’d hear his door just down from mine creaking open in the night sometimes and I’d know, I’d know . . . But I didn’t do anything. I did . . . nothing.”

  “You could blow up every company your father owns and the pain would still be there. And until you realize that, it will eat you alive.”

  “Spoken like a man who knows.”

  “Because it came close to eating me alive a bunch of times. But I always stayed a step ahead.”

  “How?”

  “By never enjoying it. Once you begin to enjoy it, you’re lost forever. That’s what makes me, and you, different from your father. He gave in, he surrendered.” McCracken hesitated, unsure whether he was getting through to her or not. “Your father killed Christian a long time before Stuttgart, Katie.”

  “Don’t bullshit me, McCracken.”

  “I’m not. Maybe Johnny’s spirits are finally speaking to me, I don’t know. But I do know your father’s actions set the wheels in motion that kept spinning right up until that day. He might as well have set the fire himself.”

  “You honestly believe that. . . .”

  “I’ve seen men try justifying their actions a host of different ways, all to avoid the consequences they deserve. Your brother’s and mother’s deaths are on your father’s conscience, not yours—that’s the price he’s got to pay.”

  “And me?”

  “The pain is yours to bear. That’s the honest truth. No bullshit.”

  She looked across the aisle, seeming to size McCracken up for the first time. “How do you do it, how have you done it so long?”

  “To me saving one life’s as important as saving a thousand. Keeps things in perspective, because I’m not doing it for me.”

  “Then what happens when you finally meet the man who got your friend killed on that rig?”

  “There’s something big down here all right, boss,” Sal Belamo said from behind the Crab’s controls. “Sonar readings are off the fucking chart.”

  The seas beyond the Crab’s windows continued to darken, the exterior lights revealing schools of fish darting aside en masse to avoid it. The depths weren’t excessive, but the drop-off was extreme for waters close to the Greek shoreline. Just over fifteen hundred feet, according to the onboard computer, deep enough for a find even as big as the temple to remain elusive. Still, plenty of others had explored these depths, likely in search of something else. That left McCracken wondering how it could be possible that no one had stumbled upon the temple in passing; even a buried structure would give off some indication of its presence.

  He could feel the pressure in his ears growing. Diving had never been his specialty, nor had water-born missions. Special-operations training back in his time had been a bit thin in that regard, though he might have preferred it to HALO drops from upwards of five miles up sucking air from a tank on the plunge downward.

  McCracken felt Belamo slow the Crab and let it settle into a hover twenty feet from the seafloor. Belamo then switched on all the underwater cameras to portray the scene on the jagged seafloor now directly beneath them.

  “We’ve arrived, boss. Showtime.”

  CHAPTER 76

  The Mediterranean Sea

  “There’s nothing here,” McCracken said, running his eyes across the greenish-black world portrayed on the television monitors.

  “Geophysical indicators say what Roy’s survey teams found is somewhere right around here.”

  “Right around where?”

  “Directly below us, boss.”

  Belamo eased the Crab forward, rotating the cameras as he moved in search of some indication of the temple’s presence, anything to tell them it was, in fact, here. But all that lay before and beneath them was the empty seafloor awash in clouds of sand and sediment.

  “Only it’s not,” Belamo resumed.

  “Wait a minute,” McCracken said, “tell me what you see, Captain.”

  Captain Seven interrupted his smoking of an imaginary joint to study the scene pictured on the television monitors. “Absolutely fucking nothing, MacNuts.”

  “Sal, anything moving out there?”

  “Nothing, boss, and the seismic sensors on this thing could pick up a goldfish.”

  “So where are the blobfish?”

  “Huh?” from Captain Seven.

  “He’s right,” said Katie DeMarco. “The ocean floor is populated by bottom feeders that look somewhat like blobs. Because of the extreme pressure out there right now, these fish have this gelatinous texture of flesh with a density slightly less than seawater. They should be visible on camera right now. At this depth, there should be plenty of them in plain sight.”

  “Sal,” began McCracken, “can you scan temperature readings in the waters ahead?”

  “You bet, boss. Another toy for me to play with,” Belamo said, working the touch screen before him in search of the proper menu. “What am I looking for?”

  “Variations. Look for a temperature spike.”

  “Ding-ding, ding-ding!” Captain Seven chimed. “Man’s looking for a hydrothermal vent.”

  “A what?” from Katie.

  “A fissure in a planet’s surface from which geothermally heated water gets blown upward like the ocean’s farting,” the captain explained. “Most commonly found near volcanically active places, areas where tectonic plates are moving apart. And I believe that describes the Greek coastline perfectly. Anybody got a joint?”

  “I got something,” Belamo said. “Temperature spike a couple hundred feet to our port side.”

  “Steer toward it, Sal.”

  “You know something I don’t, boss?”

  “Just playing a hunch. What I’m thinking is if Pandora’s Temple is really down here, why hasn’t a single shred of evidence of its existence ever turned up before? Even if it’s been buried all this time, there should be an artifact, a relic, something.”

  “Makes no sense I can see, Blainey,” Wareagle echoed.

  “Exactly. And I think I know why.”

  Belamo sliced the Crab through the currents, steering for the coordinates locked in on his nav screen. “Man, this baby handles like a dream. Cadillac of goddamn submarines. Here we go, boss. Coordinates are dead ahead. Check out the main screen.”

  The largest monitor, located directly over the pilot’s seat and offering an enhanced look at the view directly ahead, filled with a huge black cloud churning outward in from beneath the seafloor.

  “What now, boss?”

  McCracken held his thought and then his breath briefly. “Steer into it, Sal,” he said less surely than he’d intended.

  “Into that?”

  “Into and through the vent. We make it through and we end up just where we need to be.”

  “Fine, boss, but what if we don’t? Or what if it leads nowhere? Or narrows like a funnel and we end up getting our asses stuck?”

  “You trust me, Sal?”

  “You trust yourself on this one, boss?”

  McCracken again regarded the plume on the monitors. “Close enough.”

  Belamo steadied himself with a deep breath and drew the Crab closer to the vent, slowing when they were just outside the reaches of its plume. The pressure rattled the craft’s interior, feeling a bit like airplane turbulence.

  “Last chance to change your mind, boss.” />
  “This is the only explanation for what the captain found five years ago and Roy’s survey teams found days ago,” he said, trying to convince himself as much as Belamo. “Only way survey equipment could home in on something that isn’t there.”

  “In that case, fasten your seat belts, people,” said Belamo, angling the Crab downward into the vent.

  It felt like an amusement park ride when they entered, a combination of a roller coaster and flume attraction. The Crab first seemed to stall as it battled the plume pouring outward from the vent. The world turned pitch-black save for the Crab’s interior lighting, which faded out only to return a moment later, the process repeating itself as the craft dipped and darted in sudden fits and starts.

  Sal Belamo felt the craft’s controls bucking in protest as it shuddered and shook in the vent’s concentration of geothermal energy. Then, all at once, the plume was gone and Belamo leveled the Crab off, a new subsurface world around them—a world that was utterly black beyond the limited reach of the Crab’s lighting. McCracken had the sense of being trapped in a jar, the vent above them now serving as the lid. He was struck suddenly by the fear there was no air to breathe, feeling his lungs thirsting for it while feeling they were all floating outside the Crab like astronauts helpless into space after their spacewalk lifelines had been cut.

  “Did I just do a hit of acid or what?” Captain Seven wondered, as if to echo McCracken’s thoughts, his face pressed against the nearest view window in search of something, anything. “Maybe that was a wormhole; maybe we are back in the time when dinosaurs roamed the earth and pot plants the size of oak trees grew wild.”

  “Try an underwater cavern,” said McCracken, as a thick school of the blobfish he noted were missing from the seafloor above swam by the front view windows, “likely the largest in the world, even bigger than Sac Actun in the Yucatán.”

  “That one’s mostly just long. This baby’s deep too,” Captain Seven noted. “Plenty deep enough to hide what we come looking for, dudes. Man, that explains it,” he added, as if realizing something.