Relics

by K. T. Tomb

  “Not that friend, smart ass.”

  There was no longer any doubt in my mind who we were speaking to after that comment.

  “She’s more of an acquaintance. Great diving instructor, though. You should take her class. This is just our second day and we’re already doing shit that a lot of…”

  “Can it!” the man snapped. “You guys need to come with us. Move along quietly.”

  “That’s alright, we said we’d meet our friend at the car. Nice talking to you, though.”

  I still didn’t have a plan in my mind. I couldn’t tell if the dude had a gun on us or not. He might have been counting on that. He and the woman had positioned themselves so that we really couldn’t see them very well. I grabbed Ishi’s elbow and we started on. “Just keep going,” I whispered.

  “I said,” the man’s tone became more authoritative, “you need to come with…”

  He wasn’t able to finish the sentence before a silhouette suddenly attacked him and laid him out cold. The woman attempted to react to the sudden threat that had struck her partner, but before she had a chance to do more than raise her arm, she too was instantly struck and laid out just like her partner had been.

  “Get to the car, quickly,” Cat ordered, the empty scuba tank she’d used to nail our two antagonists was still in her hand.

  It really wasn’t a good time for a discussion, so Ishi and I hurried to the Amigo with Cat coming along behind.

  “Toss your stuff in and let’s get out of here,” she directed when we got to her lemon-yellow car.

  It took about a half mile before I spoke in a low tone. “So, now I know why they call you Cat. What the hell kind of kung fu, ninja shit did you just pull?”

  “Not ninja. Muay Thai; it’s a method from Thailand,” she replied.

  “I thought that a mai tai was one of those drinks that you put an umbrella in,” I quipped.

  “Not hardly. And, you might care to know that it’s also spelled differently.”

  I noted that Cat was not only driving at least twice as fast as she had before, but she also wasn’t headed back toward our cabana. Since getting away from whoever had just tried to grab us was just fine with me, I decided that I really only needed to point out the second fact of the two.

  “Where are we going?”

  “Somewhere safe,” she replied. Her answers had been short, snappy and out of character for the Cat that I’d gotten used to.

  We pulled off of the paved road and onto a winding, narrow dirt path that penetrated a thick jungle. At the end of the path was what looked like a small Quonset hut. She pulled Isabel up into the hut, turned off the engine and then scrambled to get the door closed behind us.

  “Come on,” she said, leading us out a smaller door at the other end and down a steep trail to a small house that would have been nearly impossible to find in daylight. She pushed the door open and waved us inside.

  Chapter Eleven

  “You guys are really going to have to let me in on exactly what it is that you’re after,” Cat said, once we’d settled into the small house. She was disturbed, no doubt, but she was still in control of herself. “It’s my job to make certain that you retrieve whatever Spence sent you here for, but I won’t put my neck on the line any further without full disclosure.”

  “You first,” I responded. I wasn’t sure that I liked the new Cat as much as the old one, even though she’d saved our asses. “I had you labeled as a girly-girl scuba instructor. That mai tai shit, or whatever you called it, makes me think differently.”

  “Okay, fine,” she answered. “We’ll trade off, deal?”

  “Deal,” I replied. “However, you might not want to know what we’re after and who we might be pissing off.”

  “I’ll take my chances with that before I take any more chances with my life,” she smiled. It didn’t hold the same thrill for me as it had before.

  I glanced over at Ishi. He’d definitely formed a brand new opinion of our guide. He had an expression of awe for what he’d seen her do earlier. “You okay, buddy?”

  “Fine,” he replied. “I’d sure like to hear her story. That was amazing. I’d like to have you teach me that after we finish with the diving.”

  “Yeah, well, Muay Thai will take more than two days to learn and a whole lot longer than that to master.”

  “Let’s start this off easy,” I said. “Where did you learn to fight like that?”

  “I spent six years in Thailand studying with the best.”

  “So all that stuff about you and your sister was just part of your cover?”

  “Nope. She studied with me. We were sent there by the Colombian government and trained in order to infiltrate FARC camps as assassins. You see, it is nearly impossible for a man to infiltrate FARC, but they love women, so it is very easy for us to slip in. The machismo of Colombian males, especially paramilitary types, makes it impossible for them to consider any woman to be a threat.”

  “So, the diving thing is just a cover?” I asked.

  “No, it’s a legitimate business, Nick,” she said. “Everything about me is legitimate, but I’m a good operative too. When I get a call, I respond to it. I do the job and come back here to continue living my everyday life. I am a happy, cheerful person. I enjoy living. Even though, on occasion, I have to take a life, or a few, in order to protect others.”

  “So, how did you get hooked up with Project Golden Eye?” Ishi asked.

  “Project Golden Eye?” She wrinkled her brow and stared at him. “What’s that?”

  “That’s who we work for, at the moment,” I responded. “We’ll get to that in a minute. I want to know how you got assigned to us.”

  “I got a call from some guy asking me to train a couple of guys to scuba dive and asking me if I knew the location of a particular cave. The guy then told me that he would need verification that I met up with the two of you and had me give him answers to three questions for later verification. What was the name of your first pet? What was the scariest movie I ever saw? Who were my three favorite sports personalities? Money was wired to my account and then you guys showed up.”

  “So, you were told nothing about who we were and what we were doing?”

  “No, and I was told not to ask. It was made quite plain that it would be safer.”

  “Not knowing is safer, Cat,” I replied.

  “Oh no, uh uh, we had a deal. If I’m going to risk my ass, I want to know what and who I’m risking it for.”

  I looked over at Ishi, wondering what he thought of me telling her what we were doing.

  Ishi shrugged. “It’s up to you.”

  I sighed and then deciding it was best to err on the side of caution, I opted to go with a watered down version. I told her about our background and how we’d gotten assigned to Project Golden Eye as an alternative to being prosecuted. Most of that part was true, though I probably made Ishi and me out to look a lot better than how William Spence might have. However, not only could I not bear putting Cat’s life in danger by telling her the truth, but I had a firm rule about keeping most of what I knew to myself. Ishi and I had survived because of that and our current set of circumstances didn’t warrant a change.

  “So, basically, we’ve been sent here to recover Captain Morgan’s treasure.” I wasn’t ready for the response that came after that announcement.

  In fact, I don’t know if it was just a release of tension or if the entire idea was completely ridiculous, but she laughed so hard that she had tears streaming down her cheeks and could barely breathe. Ishi and I got caught up in it as well. It got to the point that we were laughing about other people laughing and the entire thing spiraled out of control.

  Cat was still fighting back the giggles when she finally responded. “Captain Morgan’s treasure is complete bullshit; you know that, don’t you?” Still smiling, but more in control, she continued. “People have come here for years, some of them with maps that they’d bought from a super-secret source who knew the truth. They have
scoured this island and the coastline from top to bottom and, as far as I know, no one has ever found a single ha’penny, let alone Spanish bullion or a chest of doubloons.”

  “I told my boss the same thing,” I chuckled.

  “What is this ha’penny?” Ishi asked.

  “A half a penny. It’s an English coin from before they started using decimals for counting money,” Cat replied, trying to keep from laughing at Ishi’s out of the blue question.

  Ishi wrinkled his brow, trying to follow what she was telling him. It didn’t make a lot of sense to me either, though I’d heard the term before.

  “This island was mostly inhabited by English traders for a very long time,” Cat clarified.

  There was a long pause as we all tried to figure out why Ishi still looked confused. I finally broke the awkward moment.

  “There’s something else that Captain Morgan was supposed to have hidden here, besides treasure; something that treasure hunters might not even notice. That’s as far as I’m going to go.”

  “Nick, we had a deal,” Cat protested.

  “Trust me, Cat, the less of the details you know in this situation, the better off you are. In fact, Ishi and I are already beginning to wish we didn’t know as much as we do.”

  “Fine,” she sighed after a long moment of staring at me. “If that’s the way you want it.”

  “That’s the way I want it.”

  “So, I guess I’ll dig around and see what I can come up with for us to eat,” Cat said, standing and moving into the small kitchen. “All this talk about Captain Morgan’s treasure has made me hungry.”

  “All of this talk of treasure has made me thirsty for some of the Captain’s best. You wouldn’t happen to have a bottle, would you?”

  “Will Medellin’s best do?” she asked, turning from one of the cabinets waving a bottle of dark rum.

  “At this point, I’m not going to get too picky. If it’s strong and wet, you’ll get no complaints from me.”

  With a wide smile, Cat dipped back in, reached for a shelf and produced three glasses.

  Chapter Twelve

  As it had turned out, Cat had more than one bottle of Medellin’s brand of rum, which, I’ll have to admit, wasn’t too bad.

  I surely sampled enough of it to know. In fact, I’d drank so much of it that Ishi’s disappearance and the things that Cat had done to me after he’d presumably gone to bed, were just a very pleasant blur, with momentary flashes of things that continued to make me smile when I awakened the following morning; even though I was pretty sure that my insides were making war with each other.

  “Wow, you look like crap,” Ishi grinned when I came stumbling in for breakfast. It was daylight, but not by much.

  “Yeah,” I responded, sitting down with a slump and unceremoniously lighting a menthol.

  “You guys have fun last night?” he beamed. He was enjoying my pain way more than normal. In fact, if I didn’t know better, and I might not have at the time, I’d think we’d switched bodies during the night. Because he was the cheerful and optimistic member of our partnership and I was the sour-faced one.

  “I really have no idea, but could you keep your voice down?”

  Worse than Ishi was the return of Cat’s be-bopping personality. Trust me, though it was good to see her back in the spirits that I’d gotten used to, it’s not the type of behavior that mixes well with a hangover.

  “Hey stud,” she winked. “How you feeling this morning?”

  “Do you really have to ask?”

  “You know, one of the worst things about rum is that the high sugar content makes your hangover twice as bad,” Cat said, handing me a room temperature cola to drink.

  “Gee, thanks for that little tidbit.”

  My sarcasm switch was on but my ego knew better than to argue too much with the woman. I took the soda and downed it; the name of the game was quick and efficient re-hydration.

  “But everybody lives through it and today, we’re going treasure hunting.” She over-exaggerated with her eyes as she said it. She was mocking me, but I didn’t really care.

  “You sure we can go in this condition?” I asked.

  “Ishi and I are fine. I guess we could go without you.”

  “Yeah, right, not a chance,” I replied.

  Cat shrugged.

  “Let’s go then,” I mumbled. “But keep your voices down, please.”

  “That’s quite a change from last night,” Cat laughed. “You seemed to be quite content with doing things that made me make all sorts of noise.”

  “I had a hell of a time getting any sleep,” Ishi added, grinning broadly.

  Something wasn’t right. My partner wasn’t lecturing me about being careful, falling too quick and too hard for a woman and all of that jargon. I was suspicious that they were having a good laugh at my expense, but my brain really wasn’t interested in going through the painful process of figuring it out. What I did figure out rather quickly, and painfully, was that the Caribbean sun was way too bright that morning.

  I started into the Quonset hut where we’d left Isabel the night before, but Cat called out to me.

  “Can’t take that one today; it’s a little too conspicuous, don’t you think?”

  “What does it matter? Aren’t the people who were trying to nab us dead?”

  “I doubt it,” she replied. “I just put them down for a little nap. They’ll be looking for Isabel, so we’ll put our stuff in James, park in a different place and slip into the water from somewhere totally unexpected. The good news is that once in the water at the point I’m thinking of, we’ll be nearly on top of the cave entrance.”

  “And the bad news?” I asked as I watched her and Ishi carrying equipment from the Quonset hut to what looked like a completely destroyed Bronco with all but the windshield and half of the doors cut off of the top of it. There was always bad news after any announcement of good news.

  “No bad news, really. It’s a pleasant walk to the spot where we’re getting in.”

  “A walk? Sweetheart, I think that is the bad news.”

  “Yeah? Well, you’ll probably need the recovery time before we go into the water. You better get to drinking.” She was pointing at a case of sports drinks in the back of the brightly painted vehicle she affectionately called Isabel, as she pulled out the diving equipment we would need for the day.

  I still wasn’t thrilled about going diving. Something about the pressure underwater and my current state of health didn’t intrigue me about the prospect.

  “But you’ll have to carry your own equipment once we get down there,” she said, winking at me and then smacking me on the butt as she passed by. “Get in.”

  I’d been standing in the shade, avoiding the sun to the best of my ability. In order to get to the Bronco, I’d have to cross through what looked to be brighter than a thousand suns. Jesus, Nick why do you do this kind of crap to yourself? Loaded up with the case of drinks, I put my head down and pressed forward.

  The winding dirt road didn’t do me any favors. In fact, it was about all that I could do to hold down the tiny bit of breakfast that I’d eaten, like two bites of breakfast. We were on the paved road for only a very short time before Cat found a rougher, more winding dirt road upon which to inflict more torture. By the time Cat finally parked the Bronco, my stomach had been shaken up enough that I couldn’t control it any longer. I left my two bites of breakfast, all my precious liquids and some other stomach contents in a jungle ivy.

  “You alright?” Ishi asked, coming to check on me.

  “Yeah, I’ll be fine,” I lied.

  “Here,” he said, handing me a couple of granola bars. “You’ll probably want those before we get to the water. You’ll want some energy under there.”

  “Gee, thanks,” I replied. I half-heartedly accepted the granola bars.

  “If you don’t feel like you can do it…”

  “Forget it, Ishi,” I interrupted. “I’m not letting you go in there without ha
ving your back.”

  “We could wait ‘till tomorrow,” he suggested.

  “No, we need to get this done and get the hell out of here before our friends find us again.”

  He stared at me, wearing that look that someone does when they’re visiting a friend in the hospital.

  “Hey, buddy, I’m fine. Just give me a minute.”

  I had to suck it up. There really wasn’t any other option. It wasn’t easy to do, especially weighted down with the scuba gear over my shoulder, but it wasn’t the first time I’d forced myself to fight through a hangover. With a couple of bottles of the sports drink and the two granola bars, I was feeling a lot better by the time we reached the small, hidden beach and started putting on our equipment for the dive.

  We waded down into the water, put on our flippers and after some last minute instructions from Cat, we tested our communication equipment, a new little piece of technology that Cat decided to surprise us with that morning. With everything satisfactorily working, we dove under the water. I wasn’t quite as thrilled as I had been the day before, but it was still pretty impressive to be swimming among the coral and the fish. We didn’t spend a lot of time out in the reef before we entered the cave, just like we had the day before.

  “How you doing, Nick?” Cat asked as we started deeper into the cave.

  “I’m fine,” I replied. I was hungry and a little bit weak from what little bit was in my stomach but I pushed forward.

  “I’ve got some more good news for you,” she announced. “Most of this little expedition won’t be underwater.”

  “I’m not sure that I follow you.”

  “You’ll see in a little bit,” she answered.

  Chapter Thirteen

  I would never admit to a soul that I was confused all of the way up until Cat led us up through what could only be described as an underwater well, which ended in a pool with a limestone beach up above. Behind the underground beach was a cave opening. We swam to the beach and slipped out of the water.

  “This is a cool little place,” I said, scanning the walls and ceiling with the light attached to my head illuminating it. “Why didn’t you tell us about this place?”