“So do you want to go down?” the guide said.
“Yes, let’s get going,” I said.
“We can either wind around all the way back down the way we came and cross the valley to that next hill or we follow a wet-weather drainage ditch from here and head straight toward it. That’s a little rougher—”
“Let’s take the most direct course. Time is—”
“Of the essence, I get it,” the guide said.
After passing through some dense brush, we found a dry creek bed that led straight down the mountain. It was slow going, and given Keith’s age and Ray’s physical condition it took longer than it should have. We had nearly reached the bottom when a sound caught my attention.
“You hear that?” Ray said.
“Radial engines?”
“Not just any radial engines—”
“Everyone get under cover!” I said.
“What’s the problem?” the guide said.
“Now, please!”
We all scrambled out of the trough of the creek bed and into the bushes. The origin of the sound appeared a moment later, flying through the valley where we were headed, at maybe one thousand feet above the ground.
“Looky there,” Ray said.
I watched the old Grumman Widgeon fly at slow speed between the mountains, the dove gray of her belly well matched against the partially cloudy sky.
“Betty.”
“Is it Dodson?” Keith said.
“Something I should know about?” the guide said.
I nodded to Keith, then told the guide it was a competitor looking for the same location.
I had no idea how Jack guessed our destination.
The plane faded into the distance, adjusting course to stay within the valley of the two mountains. I suspected they were cruising through the entire region looking for signs. Had they seen the Jeep? It was out in the open, and Stanley wouldn’t know to move it.
Dammit.
We moved on, now at a faster pace. Keith and Ray would have to keep up.
It took another forty-five minutes, but we made it up the mountain to the caves. Surrounded by dense forest, underbrush, and boulders, they were hard to see, much less access. And I still couldn’t tell how many there were. Our guide said they’d supposedly been hiding places for the Leeward Maroons back in the days of the first Maroon war.
I glanced toward Keith, who was still breathing hard.
“Yes … that’s correct.” He took a couple breaths. “This whole area was strategic … because getting here was so difficult.”
Ray had his shoes off again and was sitting on a boulder rubbing his feet. I could see they were blistered and red. “Still is,” he said.
While the others rested, I walked around to get a view from different angles—but still couldn’t see clearly enough to determine the number of caves or the configuration. No way to tell if they matched the Blue Mountain petroglyph and the mantelpiece.
“Ray, you come with me, we’ll check this first cave. Keith and Pierce, why don’t you check the next one?”
“What about me?” the guide said.
“Keep watch and listen to see if either group needs help or calls out that they found something.”
“What exactly are you looking for?” he said.
“We’re not sure,” I said, “but we’ll know if we find it. If the plane comes back, hide inside one of the caves before it can see you.”
He just stared back at me.
We each took a backpack that contained two flashlights, a canteen, a rope with carabiners, and flares. The hike up to the cave entrances took another fifteen minutes.
The opening to the first cave was roughly twenty feet wide and fifteen feet high, but the ceiling dropped down at a sharp angle toward the back of the cave.
“I hate caves, Buck,” Ray said. “You know I hate caves.”
“They’re just holes in the rocks—”
A swarm of bats dropped down from above and swooped toward our lights. The sound of guano slapped like hail against the stone floor.
“Ugh!” Ray said. “I’ve been hit by bat shit!”
I managed not to laugh and focused ahead on the depth of the cave. I continued forward, scanning my light from side to side, searching for any other openings, offshoots, wall carvings, or paintings. In the back of the cave, maybe sixty feet in, was a small passage that continued deeper into the darkness. We stopped, knelt down, and shined our lights inside.
“Don’t even think of asking me to go in there,” Ray said.
With only enough room to crawl, I went in—crab walking while still holding the flashlight. Another thirty feet in and it became too narrow for a man to pass through, much less hide treasure. I barely had enough room to turn around and get out.
Back outside we found Keith and Pierce sitting on rocks. They stood up when we stepped into the daylight.
“Anything?” Keith said.
Ray was brushing purple guano from his shirt. “The mother lode—of bat shit, that is. Disgusting.” He rubbed his hands in some weeds.
“How about you guys?” I said.
“Wasn’t much of a cave, really. More like a ledge.”
“Any more past that?”
“One, but it was also shallow and empty,” Pierce said.
“Where’s the guide?”
Keith glanced around. “I’m not sure—”
“Up here!” The guide was up on top of the rock outcroppings that made up the roof of the cave Ray and I had explored. “Looking for more caves, but nothing so far.”
A light rain began to fall.
Lovely.
When the guide returned, we were standing just inside the mouth of the bat-infested cave to avoid getting soaked. The sound of an animal’s wail—no, a horn of some kind—made us all look up.
“What was that?” Ray said.
“I don’t know—”
“That was an abeng, I’m quite sure,” Professor Keith said.
“Which is what?” I said.
“An animal horn, often from a cow or ram, used by our Maroon ancestors to convey information across a wide distance.”
“Who would be conveying information—”
The horn sounded again. It blew three distinct blasts.
“Stanley carries an abeng,” Keith said. “Warriors alerted others to the presence of British troops with blasts from the abeng. He must be sending us a message—we should return to the car.”
“British troops?” Ray said.
“Worse, could be Gunner,” I said.
The hike back took nearly ninety minutes, and as we emerged from the trail on the hill I could see Stanley sitting in the Jeep. Sweat had soaked through my clothing. The wasted morning had me tired and frustrated. The guide was knowledgeable, but this had been a fruitless effort, other than crossing a few caves off the list of a thousand in Jamaica.
Stanley climbed out of the Jeep as we approached.
“Were you using an abeng to warn us about something?” I said.
“Got another call from the kidnappers. They wanted an update and to remind me we only had twenty-eight hours left.”
I kicked at a rock—stubbed my toe and nearly fell. I glanced from face to face. Nobody was smiling.
“Anything else?”
Stanley sneered. “They say they mean business, Buck.” His voice was flat and his eyes stared blankly past me as he spoke.
I kicked at the rock again and this time it sailed and bounced off the side of the Jeep, leaving a ding in the door. “Dammit!”
Everyone stood staring at me, waiting for some direction or a plan. If only I had one.
“I need to clear my head.” I started toward my Jeep, then stopped and turned around. “I’ll be back—”
“I need to get to my office near Albert Town,” the guide said. Everyone turned to look at him. “There’s a jerk stand out front. We could meet there—”
I froze. “That’s the same place where Nanny was grabbed,” I said
. “She said there was an outfitter nearby. Guess that was you.”
I pulled out in the Jeep and with the windows open and top down, let the air blow over me to try and cool off. There wasn’t time to waste, but I had to clear my head. It felt as if we were chasing our tails, yet my gut still said we were close. Something just had to break for us, and fast.
The potholed road rattled my thoughts as much as the Jeep. My hands were damp on the wheel, and even with the top down the steady breeze couldn’t keep sweat from making my body miserable.
The clock was ticking. If we didn’t turn up anything by tomorrow, I’d have to leave the island—Stanley had made that clear. He couldn’t risk Nanny being hurt because of my being perceived as competition. It wasn’t what the kidnappers had asked for, but assuming I couldn’t find the Morgan treasure, I’d at least surrender the island to them. I’d argued they could hurt her even if I left and we’d feel just as guilty. It didn’t matter. Neither option was good, and we both knew it.
Dammit!
I pulled over, got out my phone and squinted at the photos of circles and ovals from Morgan’s mantle at Firefly. The screen was too small to see any details well. I emailed the picture to Stanley and Ray and asked them to study it—maybe they’d see something I hadn’t.
Henry fucking Morgan, the greatest privateer in history.
I thought of his victories in Porto Bello, Cartagena, Maracaibo, and finally Panama, each employing hundreds and later up to a thousand men, each campaign utilizing unique strategies. Morgan’s creativity as a commander was still studied at war colleges. The use of surprise attacks and unconventional warfare—hell, he even sent hundreds of men in canoes up the Chagres River to reach Panama.
What must that have been like? A fleet of hand-hewn canoes, each with men and weapons, like a swarm of angry crocodiles paddling hard up the river in the deep of night. Their minds would have been focused on the coming battle, their thirst for riches. Morgan had been amongst them, calling the shots.
Did he steal the plunder from his men, or was it all a legend?
Would Nanny die because of it?
The answer’s up in the air. The answer’s u—
My body jerked and I grabbed the steering wheel tight.
“Son of a bitch! I’ve got it!”
I stomped on the accelerator—the Jeep responded with a lurch, then sped forward.
The drive to the jerk shack where Nanny had been jumped—where the guide had an office out back—took less than a half hour. I barely braked through the switchbacks that led up the hill.
I flew through the door, causing Ray to jump out of his seat. I spied bottles of clear rum on the table in front of Keith and the guide, who glanced up at me. Pierce was drinking coconut water straight from the husk. Stanley was holding an iPad he and Keith had been studying when I burst in.
“I’ve got it!” I said. “I had an epiphany.”
“And you gave us one,” Stanley said. “Come see.”
As anxious as I was to share my news, I bent down to see what had them excited. It was the picture I’d sent from my phone. The screen of the iPad was much larger, and the image—
“It looks much brighter than the original,” I said.
“We’ve been enhancing it on the photo app,” Keith said.
“The details are sharper,” Stanley said. “And look.”
He pointed toward the smaller oval shape, second from the right. I leaned closer. The picture had been enlarged to at least four times the original carving. Then he panned from left to right.
“Do you see it?”
I took the iPad and scanned the circles and ovals. The fourth one—second from the right? I saw it.
“This one’s filled in with some cross-hatching, or could that be a fat X?”
“Whatever it is, it’s something,” Keith said.
I handed them back the iPad, my mind busy comparing this realization with my own. If I was right, the two might well be connected.
“What about you?” Ray said. “What did you find out?”
My attention shifted to the guide, now drinking water.
“Do you have your map handy?”
He went out to his truck and returned a moment later. With the restaurant empty aside from us, I dragged over another table and cleared it of salt, pepper, and napkin holder. The guide laid the map out, flattening it with his palm.
“Where are we now?” I said.
He dragged his finger up the road I recognized from earlier, then stopped an inch above where we’d entered the bush this morning. I placed my finger on the map, followed the road toward Albert Town, and stopped in the approximate location of the restaurant where we now were.
“Are there any caves you know of in this area here?” My voice sounded an octave higher.
He started a slow nod. “Yeah, the whole area is full of sinkholes, some caves—”
“Caves that have been connected with Maroons from the 1680s and 90s?”
“The area around Albert Town was a popular hideout. Accompong was the center of the world for the Leeward Maroons, but the area up there was strategic—a gathering place. They stored weapons.”
“Where did Njoni live?”
Keith, standing with his arms crossed, answered that one.
“Nobody knows exactly where he lived, but there’s a good chance it was in that vicinity.”
I turned back to the guide.
“Of the caves you know, are there five that are contiguous?”
The guide studied his map, then looked up, a fresh light in his eyes.
“I have seen some clustered caves there—rarely visited because of sinkholes, a lot of them hidden under thick brush.”
Everyone was on their feet now. I checked my watch.
We had a few hours of sunlight left.
“What did you find out, Buck?” Ray said.
“That the twenty-mile radius just got a whole lot smaller.”
“So what’s it here that’s got you so fired up?” Ray said.
The smile that bent my lips was irrepressible.
“The answer’s up in the air,” I said.
All three of them looked up, just as the guide and Pierce walked over to see what we were looking at.
“Those old canoes?” Ray said.
“How old would you say they are, Professor?”
Keith stepped closer and stood beneath them. There were two hand-hewn canoes suspended from branches, both hung upside down under a high plastic canopy. One was about two feet shorter than the other. They were faded, cracked, and dried out to a pale gray.
“Very old indeed,” he said. “Impossible to say without testing, but they could date back several hundred years—”
“Could they be from the 1670s?” I said.
He glanced up again. “I suppose. Impossible to tell the type of wood they’re made from, but they’re well preserved—”
“Are there any canoes from when Henry Morgan attacked Panama in any of the museums?”
Keith shook his head. “None that I’ve seen.”
I rubbed my palms together—couldn’t help it.
“If my theory’s correct, these canoes may have been two of the ones used by Morgan during and after that raid, then used to transport whatever treasure he’d secreted off his ship upon returning to Jamaica—”
“So this is about the legend of Morgan’s missing treasure?” the guide said.
I paused, then nodded. No point in hiding it any longer.
“I thought so, but there aren’t any navigable rivers near here that connect to the sea,” the guide said.
“Exactly,” I said. “I think these canoes may well have been carried from as far as the Rio Grande, across water when possible but also over land—to hide the treasure in caves near here. That’s how the Spanish used to cross Panama to Porto Bello in those days. They carried everything, including their boats, in portage.”
Everyone was staring wide-eyed at me, especially the guide.
&nbs
p; “The road that leads toward the caves I mentioned earlier is right behind this restaurant,” he said.
I looked from face to face. “This could be it.”
Back in our vehicles we headed for a trail the guide said would take us closest to the caves. A quick whisper from Stanley—“We may have a rat on-island”—had me grinding my teeth, but given the limited amount of daylight remaining, I had to focus all my energy on the task at hand.
The drive in was on the most rugged of any trail we’d yet traveled. We had to drive around sinkholes and stop several times to clear debris, roll boulders out of the way, hold back tree limbs. We were now deep into Cockpit Country, where the erosion of the limestone plateau had left countless round-topped conical hills and valleys. Diverse tree and plant life made me feel like we were in Jurassic Park.
The trail ended abruptly at the foot of one of the many steep hills.
We’d driven as far as we could, and the sun was descending. The trip had taken an hour.
The group mobilized, donning backpacks, filling the canteens from a fifty-gallon jug the guide had provided. This time I’d brought the bigger duffel bag stocked with a full array of caving and rappelling gear. The guide produced his well-worn map and laid it out on the truck’s tailgate.
“We’re approximately here.” He tapped his finger on an area that seemed pretty close to the restaurant, but then we’d traveled slowly. “The caves I’m thinking of are in this area here.” He dragged his finger across multiple topographic circles to what looked like a wide valley.
He took the compass from his belt and adjusted the map so the symbol that pointed north was accurate, then calculated the most straightforward route to minimize climbing, maximize pace, and make the best use of our remaining sunlight.
“I’ll stay with the vehicles,” Stanley said. He held up his abeng. “I’ll let you know if anything comes up.”
We set off into the wilderness. A sense of purpose drove us faster than Keith and Ray were comfortable with, but they didn’t complain.
The guide led, stopping occasionally to consult the compass and map, which he’d folded small to expose only the area we were in. Birds cried out and flitted from trees as we passed, but human conversation was minimal. We stayed in open areas or followed animal trails where possible. The temperature was mild and there was no humidity—perfect weather for a rigorous hike.
Maroon Rising Page 17