Crown of Serpents

by Michael Karpovage

  Nero pointed at her with his cigar. “You missed the press conference,” he stated in a demeaning tone.

  Stanton ignored him, getting right to the point. “I was studying a history of Seneca County and I’ve concluded that we’re searching in the wrong place. We need to go further inside the Depot.” Although it was coveted information, she gave it up with a deep sense of inward gratification, knowing she had already set his downfall in motion. In fact, it was she who leaked to the press that he was dying of throat cancer. “I found some clues of the cave location when these lands were first settled, after it was turned into the Military Tract.”

  “Go on,” Nero grumbled.

  “In the Boyd’s cave cipher you text messaged me, he refers to a marker tree, right? Well, that marker, I’m pretty confident, was actually a horseshoe with a Freemason symbol on it and a date of September fifth, seventeen seventy nine. He placed the horseshoe in a tree — the marker tree. I think I know where that tree once stood. It will take some time to find where it was of course.”

  Nero’s eyes widened. He studied her face. A glimmer of hope sparkled in his eyes. “And my cave is supposed to be directly across from this tree.”

  “Yeah, but first it involves us finding the foundation of an old farmhouse once belonging to a Wilhelm Van Vleet, if that even still exists. The tree fell down in the back of his lot, across the brook near a spring. And from a modern-day contour map cross-referencing on top of an old 1850s map the supposed location is just past the railroad tracks over there, deeper into the base.”

  “Let’s get there, now.”

  “Rousseau!” yelled Stanton. She jolted the man from his drowsiness. The head thug turned slowly, his battered face giving her a nod. “Follow that little brook past the main rail lines and into those woods,” she ordered.

  “Yes ma’am,” replied Rousseau, in a barely audible voice.

  As the Hummer lurched forward, Stanton glanced at the necklace around Nero’s neck. It held the White Deer Society broach. Her heart skipped a beat. Her mouth opened. Then she couldn’t help but notice the old map with strange markings on his lap. “What have you there?”

  Nero smiled. He flipped the map over, hiding it. He also hid the necklace back inside his shirt and then patted her thigh. “In due time my dear, in due time. Just find me that cave.”

  31

  Town of Romulus. Seneca County, N.Y.

  REFRESHED AND ONCE again dressed in his Class A uniform, Jake felt a bit back on track after the emotional and physical beat down of last night. He looked in his rearview mirror at his bruised face knowing that in his current condition he would have to bypass Rae Hart’s police station and any chance meeting with her. There would be too many questions.

  Heading down 96A, Jake noted that the weather had been cooperative for this time of year. Clear blue skies and mild temperatures were forecast for the day, although he did hear scattered reports of another cold front moving in later in the evening. Rolling farm fields and a glimpse of Seneca Lake on his right kept his spirits up. Several old farmsteads dotted the landscape next to upscale country homes. He passed a new start-up winery and rows upon rows of harvested grape vines. The beauty of the region always astounded him.

  Up the road ahead a triangular-shaped, blaze orange hazard sign on the right shoulder of the road caused him to ease up on the gas pedal. As he approached, he saw that the sign was attached to the back of a black horse-drawn carriage. Slowly and cautiously Jake passed, noticing an older couple sitting under the carriage canopy. The old man wore a wide-brimmed black hat, a Lincoln-like beard on his face, and the plaid shirt of a Mennonite. His wife was dressed in a floral country frock and white scarf about her head. A fine black horse pulled their carriage. Jake produced a wave out of his window and received the same in return. He pressed the gas pedal.

  It wasn’t long before he slowed down again. This time a large eight-wheeled John Deere farming tractor, pulling a 5,000-pound tank of liquid cow manure, took up three quarters of the road. Jake followed behind for a short distance, unable to pass. Finally, it veered off, entering a freshly turned farm field. A brown spray immediately emitted from the back of the tank as it fertilized the earth. Jake motored on.

  Soon the Depot lands appeared on his left. With a furrow in his brow, Jake observed several individuals milling about with signs along the base perimeter fencing. The same anti-Indian sticker that adorned the volunteer firefighter’s helmet he saw a few days ago had been duplicated on their signage. Further down the road, near a trailer park, more placards and banners had been erected along the fence, announcing the opposition to the sale of the lands to the Indian Alex Nero. The belligerent press conference earlier in the day had apparently galvanized some of the locals to voice their opinion. And quickly they responded.

  The crowds thickened as Jake approached the hamlet of Kendaia. With vehicles now parked along both shoulders of the road and people waving their homemade signs toward the drivers, Jake had to slow down for fear of running one of them over. Then an odd sight caught his eye. Sitting on a boat trailer in front of a home strewn with old lawnmowers and rusty cars sat an old pontoon boat. Three grungy looking young men sat under the pontoon canopy with scoped hunting rifles at their side. One of them waved a large red, white, and blue sign. Their message was filled with simple ironic humor to Jake. It read Save Our White Deer.

  Fifty feet away were two black Seneca County Sheriff’s vans parked on the shoulder of the road near a collision shop. Several deputies kept watch over a larger gathering of protesters converged there. Then Jake noticed a black luxury SUV, its windows tinted black, parked near a small junkyard. As he passed, he slouched low in his seat, angling his black beret down over his face just in case it was a security detail for Nero.

  Peering at the road ahead, he tapped his brakes as two men dashed across his path with a flowing bed sheet scrawled with red lettering. Their clever slogan read, No Reparations, Tax the Indian Nations. Cute, Jake thought. He continued on.

  Driving by the Sampson State Park entrance on his right, he suddenly slammed on his brakes. A rusted, blue, Dodge Ram pickup truck cut him off from a copse of woods on his left. Jake noticed a heavy-set man with a baseball cap behind the wheel, completely oblivious to the boneheaded move. Jake sped up and maneuvered his SUV right up on the pickup’s rear bumper to make his presence known. A quick scan of the cab’s sticker covered rear window gave a glimpse of what the driver apparently valued most in life. A 9-11 memorial sticker sat next to a NYPD logo and an American flag followed by a cartoon boy urinating on a Chevy logo. Several more stickers showed his hatred against Native Americans, Muslims, and immigrants but his support of U.S. troops. Go figure, Jake thought.

  Jake tried to make eye contact with the driver by flashing his high beams. Still the man made no visible response. He then laid on his horn. The driver jumped in his seat, fishtailed, and finally glanced back in his mirror. Jake slowly eased off, giving the pick up some distance had the driver decided to slam on his brakes as payback. Instead, the driver flicked a cigarette butt out his window, followed by a bandage-wrapped middle finger for extra emphasis. The cigarette hit Jake’s SUV hood in a shower of sparks. The man then accelerated away in a cloud of black exhaust. Jake returned the salute, counted to ten, then drew a deep breath. He’d let the prick go.

  A little further on, after passing several farm fields, the Depot’s airfield runway appeared on Jake’s left. He knew Rae’s state police station turn off was just up ahead, but he couldn’t help but wonder at that time and place the farmland he was driving past once held the true location of the Seneca Indian village of Kendaia. He had come full circle in just a few days time.

  And that precious time was slowly ticking away.

  As if to validate his arrival in history, a granite block appeared on his right at a pull off rest area. Jake slowed down as he passed. The stone block was a tribute to the Sullivan campaign, advertising that key moment in history when the Americans rolled through.
Jake pulled over on the shoulder of the road and backed up in front of the monument. A weathered brass plaque gave some verbiage about the importance of the military mission and also showed a map of the route the army took through the Finger Lakes. Next to the granite marker was a dark blue state historical sign proclaiming the supposed location of the Indian village at the ground he stood on.

  He looked around to take in the moment, glancing out of his driver’s side window back across the farm field toward the Depot’s airfield control tower. Jake’s thick eyebrows then pressed together. In the distance, off to his left, he could make out several black SUVs and a dozen or so black-clad men walking about.

  Nero’s boys. Searching for the cave. His enemy was in sight.

  Spurred back to action, Jake eased out into the roadway and speculated if his visit to the Town of Romulus Historical Society would help him find an alternative way into the cave first. Or would it be a dead end? It was just a few more miles down the road. As he drove on, he thought of his whisper with death the night before. It shook him to the core. Never, in all of his years in the hottest combat zones, had an enemy ever gotten close enough to press a gun against his temple. Kenny Rousseau’s problem was that he hesitated. A professional soldier never did. And because of that simple delay, Jake had a chance to fight back and survive. His life could have been snuffed out like a light. Surviving that moment reinforced his personal philosophy even more — that life needed to be lived on the playing field, not wasted as a detached observer in the audience.

  Between a News10Now reporter’s van and a state police patrol car, Jake spotted the road leading to Rae’s Trooper station and airfield facilities. He drove right by. A jaunt further down 96A and he entered Willard, a small hamlet overlooking the bright blue waters of Seneca Lake’s eastern shore.

  The town historical society was housed in the old railroad depot dating back to 1878 just outside an abandoned state agricultural college now converted into a probation violator’s boot camp and mental hospital. Instead of pulling in however, Jake drove to the end of the lane waiting to see if any black vehicles had tailed him. Feeling comfortable after a few minutes, he swung back around and parked in the society’s lot. He then gathered up his research materials, patted Rousseau’s confiscated Browning pistol hidden in his coat, and walked under the covered front porch. He took off his black beret and entered.

  Several hours later as dusk crept over the area, Jake enthusiastically exited the front door. He shook the head historian’s hand and thanked the gentleman profusely for his time and the documents he was allowed to photocopy. The man told Jake to drive safe — that it was his pleasure to serve the Army and a fellow Brother.

  Jake strode to his vehicle with a distinct feeling of confidence. The afternoon’s research was a complete success, allowing him to hopefully gain ground on Nero. If not for the historian’s due diligence in cataloging and organizing the Seneca Army Depot materials, he would have needed a whole week to sift through the information. He lucked out again. But in the same thought, he wondered how long his streak would last.

  Settling in behind the wheel of his truck, Jake placed his cell phone in its dashboard cradle and dialed his uncle on headset. As he waited, he scrutinized the area around the parking lot making sure no one was staking him out.

  “Joe? Yeah, Jake here. How’s Lizzie doing?”

  “She doing okay,” answered Joe. He sounded tired. “She picked up a bit of a head cold last night from the weather while we were, ahh, you know, taking care of our two guests. But she’s strong. She’ll be alright. She’s safe.”

  “Well, I guess I don’t want to know where our guests ended up.”

  “We gave them a proper send off six feet under. Truly. Lizzie showed mercy and blessed them. She says they will accompany her on her journey beyond the sunset.”

  “I see.” Jake didn’t want to know any more details. He quickly changed the subject. “Listen, how did you make out with the local intelligentsia on your end?”

  Joe cleared his throat. “Well, I spoke with professors at Hobart and William Smith, Ithaca College, and Cornell University. Here it all is in a nutshell. Here’s what’s under Seneca County.” Joe went on to describe how after the one mile thick retreating glaciers of the last Ice Age — twelve thousand years ago — had cut deep steep-sided trenches in the existing river valleys, what was left were ten long parallel lakes oriented north-south as fingers in a pair of hands.

  He added, “Indian legend has it that the Great Spirit placed his hands over this beautiful area as a blessing.”

  “Indeed, it is God’s country,” said Jake, nodding to his cell phone. “The Finger Lakes are called the Switzerland of America for good reason.”

  “Anyway,” continued Joe. “Seneca Lake is one of the deepest in North America at over six hundred feet deep, while Cayuga Lake is the longest of the ten lakes at over thirty eight miles. But legend has it that both of these large lakes have bottomless, spring-fed holes or cavities that are receptacles for the dead who drown in their waters.”

  “I’ve heard that theory before too,” commented Jake. “That these two lakes rarely give up its dead. But they can’t be bottomless. I do know that the bottom bedrock of both lakes is well over a thousand feet below sea level, which is rather a mystery in itself. But on top of all that bedrock are hundreds of feet of sediment. Mud.”

  Joe confirmed that. “And it’s also interesting to note that one of the deepest sections of Seneca Lake lies just off the old Sampson Naval Base — now the state park — across the road from the Seneca Army Depot. Right where the old village of Kendaia was razed. And these depths also happen to be adjacent to the narrowest landmass between the two lakes — the isthmus of Seneca County. So, if there were any type of subterranean river connecting the two lakes it would be in that general vicinity.”

  “Uh huh,” agreed Jake. He took notes in his research binder. “And that is how caves are carved — by underground rivers.”

  “Right. That’s what the professors confirmed,” said Joe. “But over millions of years. You see this whole area was once under a great receding ocean that contributed to the cave formation. There’s more to back that up. Let me read from my notes here. Just a second. Okay. Seneca County sits on mostly a thick stack of sedimentary rock made up of various types of clay, gravel, shale, sandstone, and limestone. But there are two layers of this limestone strata that are most likely to have cave formations — the Encrinal limestone and the Tully limestone — both of which run directly below the Army Depot and are over one hundred and fifty feet thick in some areas. So, there you have it. The conditions are ripe for caves.”

  “Wow. Great work old chap,” replied Jake, in an old English accent. “You sound rather impressive spouting out all those academic and scientific terms.”

  “Screw you Major!” Joe chuckled. “But seriously, remember when I took you to the Howe Caverns near Albany?”

  “Yep, sure do.”

  “Well, that’s what these academics said any cave network under the Depot would look like. Stalactites, stalagmites, flowstone, vast caverns, a snaking river, placid lakes, waterfalls, rapids. Basically very, very beautiful, but also extremely dangerous as well.”

  “Great,” said Jake, snidely.

  “So, what did you come up with on your end? Find anything out about those underground bunkers?”

  Jake turned to the first print out in his binder. It was of a bunker floor plan. “Oh, I sure did. Matter of fact you could say I hit the jackpot.”

  “You’ve been holding out on me this whole time? Letting me ramble on and on?”

  “Well, only out of respect for an elder,” countered Jake. He received a guffaw from his uncle. “Just let me take you through the other evidence I found first. It’s really very cool. Remember that story you heard about a well being dug on the base and hitting a current of water?”

  “Yes sir. They added dye to it to check the direction of the flow.”

  Jake nodded. “Y
ep, well I confirmed it. It took place in 1941 when Army engineers struck an underground flow at a depth of almost three hundred feet. The location was north of the airfield near the old base incinerator. They placed a dye in it and the very next day the dye came out due east in Cayuga Lake — near Canoga. Go figure.”

  “Makes sense, since Seneca Lake is sixty feet higher in elevation than Cayuga Lake.” Joe said. “And gravity would pull water downhill. So what about the freaking bunker? You’re killing me.”

  “I’m getting there.” Jake cranked the ignition of his SUV and pulled out of the parking lot. He headed back north up Route 96A toward the Depot. As he drove he explained his findings into his headset.

  “Back in the early 1960’s at the height of the Cold War, the Army hired an engineering firm out of Rochester to dig facilities for deep burial of highly toxic chemical munitions. That firm also received a secret directive if you will, to also dig underground shelters for base personnel in case of a nuclear attack.

  “During the digging, a construction crew at the lowest level of the main survival bunker blasted through a limestone wall and ended up in a void at a depth of one hundred and eighty feet below the surface. They reported finding Indian markings on the cave walls, several arrowheads, and broken pottery. They informed their escort-handler, an Army sergeant who wrote up the report, and he ordered them to seal the wall back up with masonry blocks. That was it. The report was then filed in the commander’s archives for all these years. Forgotten! But I now have the bunker number, the sub level floor plans and the construction report from 1963 in my hand, as we speak.”

  “Holy crap!” shouted Joe.

  “It even shows exactly where that lowest level room is and which wall was penetrated. We are in business big time!”