“You want my hankie?” Kane asks with a little boyhood teasing infused into the jab.
“Um, no, it’s filled with fat-guy sweat remember?” I quip and give him a hard knock in the shoulder, a smile blooming on my face. He looks as though he’s about to protest my calling him fat, of which he obviously isn’t, but I don’t give him the chance.
“Get the winch up and going, will ya’?”
The winch system is hooked up to a massive dump truck which rumbled into place a few minutes before Dad’s tirade
I whistle with admiration over the sheer size of the thing. It could easily hold a bus on the other end let alone a few people.
“Well, it’s big enough,” I say still staring at the monstrous house sized vehicle.
“Just a little precaution on my end,” Kane answers.
“How much cable do you have?” I ask.
Nicole answers, “Each of our three trucks on hand is equipped with 500 feet of cable, why?”
I step up to the 5 x 5 opening in the orichalcum slab and take a glow stick out of my pocket. I crack the long slender rod and shake it, the fluorescent orange glow growing brighter with each agitation. Once the chemical mix is at its peak, I hold out my arm and drop it into the unknown and watch it, counting the whole way.
As I get past the desired distance and keep counting, it finally stops, barely visible on the floor of what must be a huge chasm. I look back at the others, “Because, we’re going to need more.”
“How much more?” Nicole asks.
“Give or take, another 500 feet,” I answer a little shocked.
“Are you kidding? 1,000 feet deep! What the hell is this place?” Kane exclaims. “You do realize that’s 100 stories down?” he finishes, shaking his head.
“Has anything ever been discovered that deep that wasn’t a natural formation?” Kane asks.
I shrug, “No idea. I doubt it though.”
I step back away from the 1,000 foot drop and clench my teeth. I look down at my hands and see them shaking a little. It’s not much, but it’s enough.
Geez, I think. Get a hold of yourself, we aren’t even in the hole yet.
I turn.
“Nicole, how long before our A-Frame is up and ready?”
“The engineers are finalizing construction now and will install it shortly. So…” She checks her watch, “Maybe twenty minutes before we descend—thirty tops.”
“Alright guys, let’s use that time to finish suiting up and get our gear in order.” I look to Nicole. “I assume you have travel packs with food and supplies on hand, ready to go?”
She nods.
Kane finishes locking everything in place on the truck wench and stands.
“I’ll get another spool rigged and get our stuff, Hank.” He then heads back to the examination tent where we left our own packs.
“So what’s his story?” Nicole asks staring at me with a raised eyebrow but motioning to Kane.
“Him? He’s on loan from the government—most likely the CIA. Haven’t gotten him to cough up that much yet.” I tug on my harness, thoroughly inspecting it. “He’s sort of like our personal one man army. Met him in the hospital after the attack in Algiers and he’s been glued to us ever since. Hates being referred to as, the muscle, or anything that implies he has bricks for brains. We are his new assignment.”
“Must be nice,” Nicole says, a newfound look of respect for the big guy on her face.
“Yes and no,” I answer. “Yes, because, we have some back up just in case something else happens.”
“And no?” She asks.
“No, because…I’m not sure I want to be around when Mount Kane blows his top.” I give her a smile.
“So, does he?” She asks.
“Does he what?”
“Does he have bricks for brains?” She asks with a sly tone.
“Funny enough, no. He’s very sharp…in a clumsy Shrek kind of way.”
A beat of silence goes by, just the hum of electricity and the desert breeze.
“What about you?” I ask.
“What do you mean?”
“What’s your story? Why are you here?”
She looks away, a little uncomfortable with the question.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to…”
“No, it’s fine.” She looks back to me. “I met your father a few years back on a project in Spain. Nothing special, just a small dig near the coast. My husband was his project leader at the time…”
My eyes go wide. I know this story.
Four years ago Dad was called to Spain by a colleague in Europe. He said they may have found something of significance, but needed his expertise. His project leader, Tomas Andersson, another Swede, was already there getting everything in order, just like Nicole was doing here. Dad got the call ten-minutes after his plane landed. There was an attack on the site by an unknown party, no one was said to survive, except Nicole, who they found shot and left for dead next to her already murdered husband. The site was ransacked and everything of value stolen and everything else was torched.
I didn’t hear anything about the woman after that. I assumed she recovered and went about putting her life back together. I was so wrong.
She finishes and I’m about to say something, but she cuts me off.
“Before you ask, no, I don’t know who attacked our camp.”
I have my mouth hanging open like a guppy, not having anything to ask now. Then something hits me.
“What did you find in Spain that required my father being flown out on less than no notice to go see?”
“We found a coin,” she says.
“A coin?” I ask a little surprised.
“Not just any coin, Mr. Boyd.”
“Hank,” I say.
She nods, “Not just any coin, Hank.”
She pauses collecting her thoughts navigating through painful memories of tragedy, death and loss.
“My husband and I thought the coin was Atlantean.”
As soon as the word Atlantean leaves her mouth a single, shocking thought snaps into my mind.
Zero.
20
“Dad, you and Omar are coming with us. Get yourselves geared up and ready to drop in five.”
My father looks confused, the request throwing him off and Omar looks like he’s about to vomit. A lot.
“Absolutely not, Harrison. I’m not about to—”
“William,” interrupts a small voice from the corner of the tent.
Dad looks over and sees Nicole leaning against a table staring at the floor.
She looks up at Dad, her eyes wet, tears forming, “We think this could be related to Spain.” A look of pain shoots across her face, like it hurts to even mention the country.
This gets my father’s full attention considering it was his expedition that was lost and his friends that were killed. He walks over to Nicole and puts a fatherly hand on her shoulder.
“Harrison?” He asks, clearly wanting me to explain instead of making Nicole.
“We think Zero hit the dig site in Spain four years ago. Nicole said that she and Tomas believed the coin that was taken was Atlantean-made.”
Dad looks down at Nicole, “What? Why didn’t you say anything then?”
Nicole shrugs, “Because it was a professional death sentence if we announced it then. I mean Atlantis…really? Who would have believed us? But…in the end, we didn’t get deep enough into our examination to find out anything else.”
Cough.
We look over and see Kane fumbling with his hands.
“Yes, Mr. Kane? Would you like to share something?” Dad asks his tone serious.
“Zero did in fact attack your camp in Spain.”
If there were crickets in the desert you would have been able to hear them from a mile away. No one says a word. We all just stare at the big guy, waiting.
“Like I said before, we’ve been monitoring their actions for years and tracking their hits, but we had no idea what was tak
en from your dig. No one did. That is…until now,” He says motioning to Nicole. “I didn’t even know that she was a part of that excavation. She wasn’t on any type of roster or dossier that we saw.”
“She wasn’t on payroll,” Dad explained. “Just her husband. She came and helped us when she was on break from her studies in Germany.”
Nicole takes over, “I was twenty-two at the time and studying Maritime Archeology in Munich—specifically ancient seaside cultures. Atlantis was always a romantic idea of mine, but not now. It’s only brought me death and yours…” She tips her chin towards me, “Near death.”
Kane continues, “Believe me, if I had known about Nicole and her ties to you guys I would have used that intel earlier and come to the same conclusion. We may have saved some time and you wouldn’t have even stepped foot in the Algiers airport and almost been killed. We would have put two-and-two together and flown you in ourselves.”
“So that’s why those men were after us? They found out that we were spearheading the dig and wanted to intervene?” Dad asks.
“Looks that way,” Kane answers. “I’m sorry—“
“It’s not your fault,” I say. “You’ve done your job to the best of your knowledge. But, back to the mission at hand.”
“Yes, about that?” Omar asks. “Why do you need us?”
“I need him…” I say pointing at my Dad. “Because, he has more brains than any of us combined and we will have no way of contacting base camp from below. I want whatever info he has to be by my side at all times.”
“And me?” Omar asks again.
I look at Kane and Nicole and give them a wink, bringing a smile to Nicole’s somber face, “We need someone of your special ability to carry our equipment.”
Omar’s face reddens. He looks like an overinflated red balloon about to pop.
“Harrison!” Dad says in a voice that reminds me of when my high school principal used to yell at us for skateboarding on school grounds.
“Fine! Sorry! Look, Omar, we will probably need you to translate things along the way. Dad and I can handle some of the basic languages, but we may need you to help with some of the trickier ones, okay? Plus, you’re documenting the whole trip right? We’ll need you to record everything we find.”
Omar’s complexion finally comes back down to a normal tone. He still isn’t thrilled with the idea of repelling into a hole the depth of the Empire State Building.
I honestly don’t think any of us are.
21
The A-Frame positioned directly over the entrance kind of reminds me of a scene in Ghostbusters 2. Ray is hanging on a line slowly being lowered down a hole in the middle of a busy street, only to find a river of slime in an abandoned train station directly beneath him.
Hopefully, when I’m dangling like a worm on a hook there won’t be anything down there to make me yell, “Get me out of this hole!” The most noticeable difference in our situation compared to the supernatural eliminators from New York is that our frame is really, really big.
It stands at 20 feet tall and another 20 feet wide at its base. It’s pyramidal in shape and made of titanium. Nicole had the science team do a thorough scan of the ground below to make sure it was solid enough to hold the frame’s weight. They said that there were no more trap doors to fall through and that we should be safe. Should.
I look up at the peak of the fairly simple yet amazing piece of hardware, “Is that just a normal pulley system rigged to the top?” I was expecting something a little more modern and ingenious to be honest.
The pulley system is the same one you would find anywhere in the world except, this one is built to handle our gauge of cable, which is really thick. The overall design is basically the same though.
“Yep,” Kane says. “Why mess with what works? Mankind has been using these for thousands of years and they almost never fail.”
“Almost?” I say. He had to say almost.
“Well, nothing’s perfect,” he says with a shrug.
“Thanks for the reassurance, bud.”
“Look, you dying here and now doing what you love is better than slowly rotting away in a hospital somewhere waiting for Thanatos to come calling!” Kane snaps.
I give him a shrug of my own, accepting his simple yet deep philosophy. Then I playfully ask, “Who’s Thanatos?”
“The Greek god of death. The Reaper,” Kane answers.
I’m about to ask how he knows who the Greek god of death is, but I guess it really doesn’t matter.
My silence puts him on the defensive, “I’m not just the muscle, you know! I read and research stuff too.”
Now I’m laughing, “No one said otherwise, man.”
“What’s so funny?” Nicole asks. She must have arrived while I was mid-giggle.
“Nothing,” Kane says sharply. “We almost ready?”
She pats her thighs, and not in a sexual way either. She has two guns strapped to her legs, each in a customized holster, perfect for a quick draw.
Kane’s eyes light up at the sight of the weapons, “You any good with those—”
Twin pistols snap up towards his face and load with a click, held firmly in each of Nicole’s steady hands.
“Shit!” Kane yells tripping backwards and falling on his butt. Normally a man with his background wouldn’t even flinch because of something like that, but I don’t think he was expecting her to be able to handle them as expertly as she just did. Even I twitched and they aren’t even pointed at me.
“Nicole, please,” Dad says coming up from her left and Omar from her right.
Kane relaxes, but is visibly embarrassed. He leans onto one elbow and looks up at me.
I’m doing my best not to crack up and burst out laughing at the man.
“Ruger SR22, lightweight and dependable. These bad-boys hold ten rounds each and come with something a little extra…” Twin beams appear on Kane’s chest as he lay prone on the ground, “A little modification to help with the aiming. Not that I need it.” She holsters the boys and helps Kane up.
Kane dusts himself off, “Damn woman, who are you, Lara Croft?”
I can tell by the blank look on her face that she doesn’t get the Tomb Raider reference. Apparently Kane sees it too.
“Aw, never mind,” he says a little frustrated. “So, is that a yes? We’re ready to get a move on?”
“As ready as we’ll ever be,” Omar says obviously a little disheartened.
“I believe we can begin our journey to the center of the Earth,” Dad chimes, in quoting the title of his favorite classic novel. There even seems to be a little more pep in his step than normal.
“You feeling alright, Dad?” His mood change catching me off guard.
He smiles at me, “With everything that has happened I completely forgot why I got into Archaeology in the first place.”
“The chicks?” Kane jokingly says getting a laugh out of me and Nicole.
“Why yes, Kane. Harrison’s mother was a beauty like none I’ve seen since. A real treasure. But, that’s a conversation for another day.”
It’s the first time I’ve heard Dad call Mom by the nickname he gave her. They met in grad-school on a sponsored dig. He said he found “his treasure” that day and it stuck.
“Alrighty, Mr. Kane lead the way,” I say.
“Yes, Sir!” He mockingly answers with a salute and grabs hold of the cable extending into nothingness. He sighs and looks back at the rest of our party, “Down the rabbit hole?”
He gets a nod of encouragement from everyone and grabs his carabiner climbing clip. He clips it onto the cable and quickly re-explains the proper repelling technique he went over earlier.
“Don’t forget your gloves either. You’ll have zilch for skin after this if you forget them.” Then under his breath he says, “Let’s do this,” and leaps into the realm of the unknown.
22
The ear piercing scream made me flinch and almost fall when I touched down. Kane led the way with Dad, Omar, Nic
ole and finally myself bringing up the rear.
The plan was for everyone to land and disconnect from the cable, each of us would then fan out and draw our weapons, covering the next person. Only we didn’t plan on landing on a pile of mangled corpses…I didn’t see that coming.
When Nicole landed and moved to cover my approach, she tripped and stumbled on what appeared to be someone’s crushed sternum.
Now, she’s kicking and thrashing, eyes wide in fright…not that I can blame her.
“Nicole, you’re fine. Breathe,” I say trying to get her under control.
What’s left of the rib cage is stuck around her ankle and won’t come off, even with all the dancing she’s doing. It ain’t budgin’.
“Gahhh. Okay. I’m fine, I’m fine,” She finally says calming her nerves. She re-aims her Ruger, obviously embarrassed and not in the mood to hear about it. What’s even more impressive is that she’s almost back to her cool, calm, and collected self…even with part of a dead body still attached to her foot.
“Okay. Lights,” I whisper and draw my gun.
Everyone cracks open their own glow sticks and throws them ten feet in front of themselves. A circle of orange illumination appears around us, a veritable light show in the dark space. What we see is both horrifying and confusing.
Bodies. Maybe a half-dozen or so of them—could be more—but the parts are everywhere. It would be almost impossible to tell exactly how many there are even if we did try to piece them back together and count. It looks like a tornado hit them and tore them apart or like what would happen if you fell from…
I look up, “No way.”
“What?” Omar asks, visibly twitching in fright.
I look at Kane who understands, “You don’t think?” I say pointing up.
He answers, “The missing Special Forces team. Ho-ly shit. Well, that solves one mystery.”
“They must have found this entrance and then got hit by a storm. You said there was one the night they went missing, right?” I ask.
He nods.
“Well, it looks like you’re not the only one to literally stumble upon the trap door,” Nicole says. “Thank goodness your dad was there to catch you.”
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