“I hope you know what you’re doing,” Sean said as he looked on with a concerned eye.
“So do I,” she sighed. “That path leads to another corridor on the other side. It’s our only way out now.”
He didn’t like the sound of that. But there was no choice.
“What’s that noise?” Emily asked as she stepped closer to the lip of the drop-off.
“I hear it too,” Adriana said, breaking her concentration for a moment as she brought her right foot next to the left on the ledge.
“It sounds like a lot of squeaking and flapping...oh crap,” Emily backed away from the edge slowly, eyes wide with fear. “Bats!” she screamed as she jumped back.
A gust of air blew up into the alcove where the three were standing, and within seconds they were engulfed in the colony of small flying beasts. Hundreds of bats fluttered around them, squeaking incessantly. The three covered their faces and heads and crouched low to the ground in hopes that the creatures would ignore them. Emily screamed as one of the animals got stuck in her hair momentarily. She stood up, yelling, and swatted her hands wildly at the winged rodents like she had walked into a cobweb.
Adriana pressed herself hard up against the shaft wall and tried to remain calm.
After what seemed like several minutes, the horde of bats gradually disappeared.
Emily was still waving her hands around in the air as if the bats were still there. Sean smiled at her. “Hey, Em! They’re gone.” She stopped waving her hands and looked around, uncertain. “By the way,” he added, “don’t ever give me crap about being scared of heights again.”
Tommy didn’t know who was coming down the river. Even if Will had seen what happened and tried to make a break for the trap door he could have been shot by the remaining two pursuers. Hurriedly, he turned off his own light and crept into a recessed area of the cave. He watched as the person in the river above tumbled over the waterfall and into the pool. The man broke the surface, and as his light floated nearby, it illuminated his face just enough for Tommy to tell that it was Will.
“Will!” Tommy yelled over the sound of the crashing water. He turned on his light as he emerged from the dark corner. “Over here!”
Will grabbed his light and shone it on the shore where Tommy was waving. “I took out one of them, but the other guy is still up there,” he said after he climbed out of the water next to Schultz.
Tommy looked around, shining his light onto the drab walls of the cavern. In a corner about thirty feet away he noticed that the sandy floor seemed to continue around the cavern wall. “Over there,” he said quietly.
The two men took off toward what appeared to be a path. They reached it a few moments later, and Tommy looked back at the waterfall. Nothing. He and Will turned and darted into a narrow corridor, not seeing the dark figure of a body falling into the black pool.
In the pale light of their flashlights, Sean could see that the bats were making their way through the door across the abyss. Apparently, the alcove provided no means of escape for them either.
After a few minutes the obnoxious noise had grown quieter. He looked at Adriana who, for the first time since he’d met her, appeared to show a little uncertainty. He nodded reassuringly and stepped carefully over to where the ledge jutted out from the left side of the pit’s wall. Then he turned with a feigned playful grin. “Ladies first?” He motioned with his hand to Emily, obviously not excited about traversing the deep crevasse over the narrow stone bridge.
Starks had apparently gotten over her moment of weakness and was back to being her confident self. She stepped out boldly, pressing her back up against the wall as she shuffled along the ledge right behind Villa.
Once the two women were on their way, Sean lingered momentarily at the edge. His former partner looked back at him and shone her flashlight on his face. “You realize this is the only way out, right?” she asked sarcastically. “Just don’t look down, and keep your body pressed to the wall like we’re doing.”
Adriana was already halfway to the other side of the pit when he finally forced himself to step over to the narrow walkway. He gripped his flashlight tightly and pressed his back to the wall as hard as he could. A slight draft of cold air drifted up from the abyss below. Wyatt felt a vein of fear tear through his abdomen as his nerves went on overload. A quick glance to his side told him that the two women had nearly reached the door already. So he shuffled his feet, inch by inch, trying hard not to look down into the empty blackness.
“Come on, you’re doing great,” he heard Emily encourage him loudly from the ledge about twenty feet away. “Just keep moving slow like that, and you’ll be fine.”
He continued inching sideways, his intense focus on the wall just behind him. But his peripheral vision couldn’t help but register the chasm below. Momentarily, he wavered and had to stop to take a deep breath. After regaining his thoughts, he pushed himself onward.
When he reached the other side, he hopped down and leaned against the wall just inside the door. Then he glanced down at his Relic watch.
“I can’t believe that only took ten minutes. Seemed like I was out there forever.” He just stared ahead at the other side of the passageway.
“You did great,” Emily comforted. “Now can we please keep moving?”
He nodded and stood up straight. “Yeah. It’s going to be getting dark soon, and we have no idea where this passage leads.”
Adriana smiled at his resolve. He’d just faced one of his greatest fears and seemed ready to take on the next hurdle without reservation. She’d seen many men come and go in her life. But Sean Wyatt seemed different. He could take a punch and keep going. What was it about him? Was it his sense of adventure, his determination, his vulnerability she’d just witnessed? Or was it something else? She left the questions lingering in her head and came back to the moment. “I scouted up ahead. This corridor starts sloping down.” Adriana took off, leading the way down the passage, so Sean and Emily followed behind quickly.
“I’m getting real tired of being underground,” he commented as they moved along the tunnel.
They found themselves in a narrow hall carved out of the canyon rock. The jagged walls and ceiling of the corridor appeared to have been done in a hurry, chiseled for usefulness and not for aesthetic appeal. But the sheer volume of rock that had to be removed was simply staggering.
They walked for nearly twenty minutes, continuing downward into the mountain. The path had been a slight grade with a series of right-hand turns, winding deeper and deeper into the earth. Sean wondered who had constructed the place and why they would go to such great lengths. The group marched on in silence for another ten minutes until finally they reached a point where the floor leveled off. Up ahead, their lights shone into what appeared to be a room. As they drew near, their flashlight beams shone through the dust particles in the air, illuminating an enormous chamber. The ceiling was at least fifty feet high with walls separated by the same distance. All three of their flashlights searched randomly around the room until Sean’s light came to rest on something in the center. A stone pillar sat conspicuously in the middle of the room. On top of it rested another piece of gold, similar to the one that had come from the mountain near Adriana’s home outside of Las Vegas. In unison, they moved toward the pedestal. Sean aimed his light around on the floor to make sure they were stepping safely.
“It’s just like the other one,” Emily stated quietly. Even though her voice was just above a whisper, it echoed throughout the giant room.
Adriana had taken her focus off of the shiny object in the center of the room and was checking out the rest of their surroundings. There were four enormous columns in each corner, every single one engraved with a separate set of writing. And every language was one of the most ancient in the world: Egyptian hieroglyphics, Sanskrit, Cuneiform, and Old Hebrew. The inner corner of each pillar pointed toward the pedestal in the center. Then she noticed the design of the floor. When they walked in, all she had seen was a
plain stone floor. But from each of the corner columns, a line about one foot wide ran to the center where the small stand held the golden artifact. The wide lines were unmistakably bluish-green.
Sean noticed what had gotten her attention, and he too broke away from admiring the golden leaf in the center of the room to get a closer inspection of the distinctly colored lines. He looked up at the massive stone column that had Sanskrit on it. “Can you read it?” Emily asked from across the room, this time turning toward him and shining her light his way.
Sanskrit was one of the ancient languages Sean had learned almost fluently. It was the only language that was mathematically perfect. The writers of the Hindu Vedas had delivered their entire set of scriptures in Sanskrit, and it was believed by many to be the language of the gods. He’d been fascinated by it in college. And while his friends wondered why he would take classes to learn about a three-thousand-year-old dead language, he continued to attend. There had only been a few dozen students in the small lecture hall. Word had it that it was anybody’s guess if the course would even have enough people enrolled to run it each semester. But it always did, probably due to several students waiting too long to get signed up for one of the other more contemporary languages. With no options left, they had to go with Sanskrit. At the moment, Sean was glad he’d taken it. “It’s a little different from what I learned, probably an early pre-classical form of the language. But yeah, I can read it.”
Emily had slowly made her way over to where Sean was gazing at the stone. “What does it say?”
“It’s a story,” he said, staring in wonder at the ancient script.
“What story?”
He turned his eyes from the pillar and looked at both women with a semi-shocked face. “If I’m reading it correctly, it looks a lot like the beginning of the Old Testament.”
Chapter 33
Grand Canyon
Emily appeared to be confused. “You mean, like the Old Testament from the Bible?”
Sean looked back up at the sculpted stone. “That would be the one,” he answered, nodding. “It’s the early parts of Genesis, talking about the Garden of Eden. These four bluish-green lines that lead to the center represent the four rivers that ran through the garden: Tigris, Euphrates, Pison, and Gihon. Supposedly they all four ran into one larger river that flowed under the Tree of Life.”
Adriana glanced back at the small pedestal in the center of the room. It was a simple rectangular cube carved from the same stone as the rest of the chamber. As she moved closer to the object, she noticed that there was something distinct etched into the sides. It was a tree, but it was unlike any she’d seen before. It grew from several trunks, which were separate at the bottom but joined about halfway up then opened into intricately detailed branches, fruit, and foliage.
Sean had also abandoned the corner pillar and walked over to the middle where Adriana was studying the pedestal. “The Tree of Life,” he whispered reverently.
Adriana nodded.
“But why is all this Biblical stuff here in the United States?” Emily wondered out loud. “Those stories took place on the other side of the world nearly eight thousand years ago.”
Sean started drawing connections in his mind. At first, they seemed impossible. But the more he reflected on the events of the last few weeks and the evidence in stone right before his eyes, the more he began to believe the plausibility.
“What are you thinking?” his old partner asked, interrupting his intense thought.
He shook his head quickly as if snapping out of a dream. “This is going to sound crazy. But what if it is all connected?”
“What do you mean?” Emily asked.
“The Bible, the Native Americans, all of this stuff. Could it be that all of it is connected somehow?”
“I don’t follow,” Starks shook her head.
Villa stood silently, just listening.
“The Egyptian connection to the Native Americans that we found in Georgia, the different forms of writing, all of the evidence that we have discovered from the ancient world all points to one thing. It’s essentially all telling the same story and leading back to one place.” He stared at the leaf-shaped piece of gold resting on top of the altar.
“To the Garden of Eden?” Emily asked, finally starting to see the connection.
“Not quite,” Sean corrected her. “If such a place still existed, it would have been found by now.”
“The tree,” Adriana broke her silence in a tone more to herself than the others.
“What?” Emily looked confused.
“It all makes sense now,” Villa continued. “Francisco Coronado was not looking for a city of gold. He was looking for something far more valuable. The golden chambers only point the direction. The chambers themselves serve as either a beacon to the righteous or a distraction for the wicked.”
“What do you mean, distraction?” Sean chimed in, his voice resonating off the walls.
“For those of pure heart, the golden chambers would not have mattered. It was the journey that was of importance. The greedy and misguided souls would see the glittering gold and forget all about the path. They would figure they had found the ultimate treasure when, in fact, all they had found was worldly riches. Coronado must have known this. And he surely must have known that he was far too old to take on such a journey.”
“So you are saying there is something even more valuable than four golden rooms worth billions of dollars?” Emily seemed dubious.
“Money isn’t everything,” Adriana replied. “In Coronado’s book he quoted the Gospel of Mark from the Bible. I wondered for a while why that particular verse was there. It comes from chapter eight. ‘For what doth it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses his own soul?’”
“The treasure is something else...” Sean trailed of.
“Something far more powerful and potentially more dangerous,” Adriana added. “Perhaps Coronado knew this as well, confirming his thought that it should be left alone, hidden to history and time.”
Adriana stared at both of them with an intensity neither of them had ever seen before. Then she looked back at the golden leaf sitting silently on the pedestal. She drew in a breath as she considered the implications.
“El Arbol de la Vida,” she said finally. “The Tree of Life.”
Chapter 34
Washington, DC
Cars hustled by on the dimly lit streets. The air was colder than usual, almost unseasonably so. There was always a chill that time of year, but after the brutal summer, the weather seemed to have skipped autumn and gone straight to winter.
Eric Jennings checked back down the sidewalk he’d just come from and then looked in the other direction before pushing open the heavy wooden door to Bellamy’s Irish Pub. Old habits were hard to break. He was of the mindset that one could never be too careful.
Inside, the warm air washed over him, a stark contrast to the bone-chilling cold of the sidewalk outside. He took off his black trench coat and hung it on a hook in the foyer then loosened his blue-and-white-striped tie.
Despite the establishment’s rousing reputation, the bar was quiet that evening. Irish folk music played on the speakers throughout the room, but absent were the large groups of drunken revelers who usually belted ’em down here.
There were only a few people: a man and a woman, finishing off the last of their beers at the other end of the bar. They laughed and talked quietly, perhaps teasing about what the rest of the night would hold. The man’s back was to Jennings, so he couldn’t see his face.
Jennings nodded to a short, fleshy bartender who returned the gesture. Eric had been a patron of the joint for years, and Bobby had been bartending there since before then. The man’s thinning gray hair looked like it was pasted to his round head. He wore the typical white button-up shirt and apron over black pants.
The dimly lit pub had a random collection of sports memorabilia from Boston and Washington: Capitals and Bruins jerseys, autographed baseball
bats, an old Washington Senators jersey next to one from the Red Sox, and some Redskins pictures all gave the impression the place was some kind of sports bar. Of course, the Irish tri-colors were everywhere mingled with Guinness posters and placards.
Many famous people had stopped in to Bellamy’s over the years but not because it was a trendy spot. It probably had more to do with the fact that one could remain anonymous in the dark, quietude of the pub, at least on weeknights anyway.
“Usual?” the bartender yelled across the room as Eric slid into his favorite booth in a corner and unbuttoned the top button on his white dress shirt.
He nodded. “Thanks, Bobby.”
It had been a trying week. A beer and some good food would hit the spot. Bellamy’s was famous for having better than average bar food. With a full complement of soups and hearty sandwiches, it was one of the only bars in town that had to be open for lunch simply because of the popularity of the menu.
“No problem,” Bobby replied. The barkeep smiled and hurriedly finished wiping down a spot on the bar that he seemed to be perpetually cleaning then exited the room through a doorway into the kitchen.
It was hard to get service like that anymore. Most bars and restaurants had such a turnover in staffing that a person hardly knew the faces they would see from week to week. It was nice that there were a few spots still left that had people dedicated to good service. Jennings smiled at the thought.
Bobby reappeared through the swinging wooden door. “It’ll be right up, Mr. J,” the chubby man stated.
He passed by the other two customers who were obviously entranced with one another, and grabbed a pint glass from behind the bar. Through a technique he’d probably done a hundred thousand times, Bobby filled up the glass with the familiar black stout from Ireland. After topping off the foamy head of the beer, the old barkeep rapidly stepped around the edge of the bar counter and brought it over to Jennings. “Here you go, Mr. J.”
“I appreciate it. Business good today?” Jennings asked the question every week when he came in. Part of him actually did care. After all, a quiet pub with great service and food was hard to find.
Sean Wyatt Compilation Box Set Page 42