“We need a thicker log,” Darla said.
The crew went back to scouring the forest. They soon came back with another palm, this one much sturdier than the last. They set it up the same as the last one.
“Okay,” Louis said. “But we’re still not heavy enough. We already know that.”
“I have an idea,” Brad said.
The crew looked on anxiously as Brad climbed on top of the boulder. Excitement fluttered in Carter’s belly. His brother and first mate was about to do something truly brash and reckless. He loved it!
“This looks like probably the worst idea ever,” Louis said.
Once on top, Brad stepped to the edge of the boulder. He bent his knees, pumped his legs. “No, this is definitely the best idea. We don’t need a lot of steady force to lift the boulder; we need one quick jolt. Like smashing a bottle. You slam it on the ground, not try to squeeze it until it cracks. It’s science.”
“Spoken like a true scientist,” Louis said, his voice dripping with sarcasm.
The crew stepped back.
Carter counted down. On one, Brad jumped off the boulder. His body became a rocket, aimed straight down at the end of their lever. He hit it, pushed through his legs with all his strength. The tree bent. And then it snapped back and launched him high into the air, like he had bounded off a trampoline. He soared like a tennis ball in a long arc and crashed into the bushes at the edge of the clearing.
All were silent, holding their breath, hoping their first mate wasn’t seriously injured. Or worse.
“Brad? Are you okay?” Darla asked.
“Yeah,” Brad groaned. “Science has failed me.”
The collective laughter the crew had been struggling to hold back burst out. Carter cocked his head, thinking he heard some more rustling at the edges of the clearing, or some kind of chirping, maybe. He looked, but saw nothing.
Once Brad had climbed out of his bush of embarrassment, he called the crew around. “I did some thinking.”
“While you were in your bush?” Marcus said through a chuckle.
Brad shot him a vicious stare. “As a matter of fact, yes. It’s the only quiet place I’ve found since stepping on that boat. Anyway, I did some thinking, and I think I gave up on science too quickly. I still think my plan could work.”
“Don’t say it,” Louis said, his eyes closed.
“We just need more force.”
“Aye,” Yvette said, throwing her arms up. “El es loco tambien!”
Despite their protests, Brad, Marcus and Carter gathered atop the boulder just moments later. They inched toward the edge of the boulder as one huddled mass.
“I don’t know who’s crazier,” Yvette said from the ground. “Brad for doing this again, or you fools for following him.”
“It’ll work,” Brad said. “Trust me. It’s science.”
“I don’t think you know what science is,” Yvette said.
Carter counted down again. They jumped. The log bent. And they soared through the air like human missiles, crashing in the same bushes of embarrassment that caught Brad minutes earlier.
“Guys are dumb,” Darla said. “No offense,” she added to Louis.
“None taken,” Louis said. “I don’t know what it is about external plumbing that makes boys so stupid.”
The guys emerged from the bushes, bruised and with little cuts and scratches all over their faces.
“Science let me down again,” Brad said, rubbing a quickly forming bruise on his forehead.
“Don’t blame science,” Darla said. “According to Louis, you should blame your—”
“Avast!” Carter stood firm, planting his feet like they were cemented to the ground. He grabbed his unlit torch and swung it in a wide arc, then pointed it like a sword at the edge of the clearing. “Cleave them to the brisket!”
The crew followed the point of his torch-sword.
The two pirates who’d attacked them at sea walked out of the jungle.
19
Elbow-deep in the sputtering engine of Salty Walty, the crazed fisherman’s final voyage may have come to an early end.
Walter hadn’t taken his boat to sea in years. He knew the stories about him. He knew the legends. And he didn’t care. He knew his reasons, for what they were worth.
But their worth was nothing compared to the value of that girl, lost out there.
Either way, he never thought he’d be out at sea again. The salty wind felt good on his face. The rocking of the boat was like his mother lulling him to sleep in his crib—if his crib was a broken-down heap, that is.
To say he hadn’t kept up with maintaining old Salty was a major understatement. He may have let her slide downhill a bit over the years, but hadn’t they both? He hadn’t looked at her engine since parking her in his driveway. He was foolish to think it would look the same as it had that day.
Not that he would know the difference. The old fool was half blind. That’s why he’d really taken her off the water. He couldn’t see well enough to sail her and was too stubborn to do anything about it. Couldn’t admit to himself that he was going downhill.
And what did that get him? A house full of junk, trinkets to trick him into thinking he was still a fisherman, a man of the sea. Stubborn old man lost the only thing he ever cared about because he wouldn’t go to see an eye doctor.
He’d let himself and Salty fall apart.
A fresh cloud of acrid black smoke puffed into his face. It reeked of burnt motor oil. He rubbed the stinging from his eyes and tried to see through the haze, into the small compartment lit only by his old kerosene lantern. Any way he saw it, the engine was done for. It was amazing that she got him out this far, to the edge of the Bahamas island chain.
Walter fell back onto his butt and buried his face in his hands. Motor oil smeared across his cheeks like war paint. The engine gave one last sputter, and died.
Now, Salty Walty drifted aimlessly, an old broken-down thing.
“Lotta good times,” he said, running his hand along the deck. “Good times. The storm of ’86. Hurricane in ’93. That run-in with pirates off the coast of Haiti. Put those fools in the drink just as quick as I seen the crossbones around their necks. Brutes was what they were. Didn’t care nothin’ for the code.” He rested his head against the rail and looked up at the stars. “Seen some action, you and me. Reckon that’s all for us, though.”
And then, like the changing of the tides, the sinking sense of the end washed away. The sea air blew the doom right out of his head, leaving memories of adventure, and in that moment he knew he wasn’t done.
Not yet, anyway.
“Screw this,” he said. He stood and whipped off his clothes, revealing a full-body bathing suit beneath, complete with arm straps and stripes, like one from an old movie. He slung his collapsible fishing rod like a sword over his shoulder. He stood on the rail and took one last look at Salty.
He bowed his head and recited a prayer for the old girl. “Disturb us, Lord, to dare more boldly, to venture on wilder seas where storms will show Your mastery, where losing sight of land, we shall find the stars.”
And then he dove overboard.
20
Carter prepared to run the brigands through.
“Relax, kid,” Nestor said, his arms up as though surrendering. “We don’t mean you any harm.”
“Hornswaggle,” Carter said. “You tried to kill us. And you’ll refer to me as Captain.”
“Whoa, no way,” JJ said. “We just wanted to steal your boat. You tried to kill us.”
“We were defending ourselves,” Carter said.
“You left us stranded in the middle of nowhere on a sinking ship,” JJ argued.
“Better than you deserved.” Carter pointed the tip of his torch toward JJ’s legs. “I should set you pants on fire for being such a liar.”
Nestor stepped between JJ and Carter, his arms still up. “Look, I ain’t gonna lie. We would’a done the same to you if we had the chance. And, truth is, we’v
e been through a lot to get here just so we could repay you for sinking us, and making us look like fools. But, now that we’re here, I gotta say, I’m impressed.”
Carter felt a crack run through his guard. His cheeks blushed a little. “Say what now?”
“You’re the captain of this crew, right? Like you said,” Nestor said. “It’s plain to see. You fought us off with nothing but MacGyver’d scuba tanks. Sunk us. Made your way all the way out here. And now it looks like you’re really on to something with that map. I thought you were just some punk kid playing at it before, but it looks like you’re the real deal. You’re a pirate, kid.”
Carter’s feet slid from their firm footing. Some actual, wanted-by-the-authorities pirates thought he was the real deal. This was it—the beginning of his pirate reputation. The only thing that was more important to a pirate than his ship: his legend.
“Yeah,” Carter said, his chin high. “I am.” He lowered his torch.
Brad stepped forward, yanking the torch from Carter’s hand and putting it back on the pirates. “Now that we’ve got the pleasantries out of the way, how about you tell us what you’re doing here if not to exact bloody revenge?”
“You the mom of the crew?” Nestor said with a cocky smile.
“First mate,” Brad growled. “And the big brother,” he added with some ferocity. “Now answer the question.”
“We want to see what’s under that rock,” Nestor said.
“Then you’ll need to join my crew and swear loyalty to me,” Carter declared.
Before the pirates could answer, Brad yelled, “Whoa! Hold up, I think I need to have a conversation with my captain.” He tossed the torch to Yvette. “You and Marcus keep an eye on them.”
Marcus pulled out his bat, and he and Yvette took up defensive positions.
Give me a reason, Marcus thought, his hands tightening their grip on his trusty lumber.
Brad grabbed Carter by the arm and pulled him behind the boulder.
“Are you bat-crap crazy?” Brad barked in a poorly hushed voice. “These guys tried to kill us. Now they just pop out of the bushes, and you say yeah, sure, come along?”
“We can’t move this rock on our own,” Carter said, patting it. “And if we can’t move it, then we came all this way for nothing.”
“Better to waste our time than get killed by pirates.”
“We’re pirates.”
“Not like them. Not—”
“Real ones?” Carter finished Brad’s thought with a stab of truth. “You still think this is a game?”
Brad jabbed his finger into Carter’s chest. “No, I think you still think this is a game. I can tell you for sure that those creeps don’t think it is. And I told you I would pull the plug if this got out of hand.”
“I’m not stupid,” Carter said, his anger rising. “I know we can’t trust them. But we can’t do this without them, either. Besides, you know what they say—keep your friends close, and your enemies closer.”
Brad hung his head. “Yvette’s right, I am crazy.” He peeked around the side of the boulder. Yvette and Marcus still held the pirates at bay. The pirates smiled innocently with mouths full of crooked teeth. “Fine. But Marcus, Yvette, and I will stay on guard. We aren’t letting those guys out of our sight. And no one is left alone with them.”
“Cool beans,” Carter said.
They rejoined the group.
“Let’s do this,” Carter said. “Time to earn your keep, old guys.”
The crew climbed back onto the log, clinging to each other for balance. Once they’d found their footing, the pirates grabbed onto the end of the log and pulled down.
The boulder started to move. It rocked up and teetered on the point of rolling, not sure whether it wanted to commit.
Nestor shoved JJ toward to rock with this foot. “Push.”
JJ hunched down like a football player and charged. He drove his shoulder into it, then his hands. He spun around, trying to find the best grip.
Slowly, the boulder tipped. With one final surge, it rolled from its roost, and kept rolling until it crashed into a tree at the edge of the clearing. The lever tree fell to the ground, and the crew crashed on top of Nestor.
They were a mass of cheers and high-fives and fist bumps. For a moment, they almost forgot they were laying on top of a bloodthirsty pirate.
Everyone scrambled to their feet, anxious to see what was uncovered. They shined their torches, swept aside some brush, dug in the sand for any sign of a clue. They continued to do so even after finding nothing.
Louis finally fell onto his back, defeated. “What a rip-off.”
Marcus whipped his bat off his back and swung it into a tree.
Darla stared at the impression where the boulder sat. “I don’t get it. Why make those carvings if not as a reminder? A way to identify that rock? Why would you need to identify it if there’s nothing under it?”
Marcus fell next to Louis. “Because this whole thing is a bunch of crap. Crappity crap crap. CRAP!”
Carter wandered away from the crew, curious, his torch lit. Pirates didn’t do anything without a reason. They were savvy, clever, and strategic. They wouldn’t waste the time with the box, the map, and the carvings just to mess with some kids hundreds of years later.
He ran his had along the underside of the rock, now facing outward toward the clearing. Suddenly, he felt some indentations. And then he realized they were deliberate, carved. And that they spelled something.
He read them aloud by torchlight. “‘Fifty paces to the west, ye shall find my treasure chest. But be forewarned, the path is cruel. You’ll live like kings, or die like fools.’”
“Nice poem,” Yvette said. “But now isn’t the time for limericks or whatever.”
“Agreed,” said the captain. “But I didn’t write it. Whoever carved it into the bottom of this rock did.”
The split-second pause that followed felt heavy. The crew was on the edge of being broken, and they took that moment to question whether they believed Carter, whether they even cared, whether they wanted to press on. But it only took that second for them to decide. They all sprung to their feet and ran to investigate. They read it again, out loud, to themselves. And cared, they did.
“Treasure chest?”
“Live like kings?”
“It’s real! It’s really real!”
“Die like fools?” Brad was always such a downer.
“Which way is west?”
Everyone pointed in opposite directions. But a true captain always knows which way is north, so he always knows which was is west. He returned to the boulder’s original nesting place, and began counting off.
“One, two, three…”
21
High above the Caribbean, the determined ex-army man soared closer to his target.
Major North had forgotten how much he missed this—flying through the dead of night, geared up for a drop behind enemy lines. The mission. The team. Well, maybe not this team. A couple cadets and a bizarrely forward and clingy orphanage director. But the rest of it, the feeling, the rush before reaching the LZ. The unknown lurking out there in the dark jungle, just beyond the reach of the helicopter’s spotlight…
It was time for him to leave the military. He knew that. But not because he wanted to. Politics. The whole thing had become too political. He’d enlisted for adventure. That was what he’d wanted when he signed up, fresh out of high school. And that was certainly what he got, for a while anyway. But someone once told him that if you do what you love and you’re good at it, then you’ll get promoted, and promoted, and promoted, and soon you’d be further away from the thing you loved than you were before you’d started.
He didn’t believe it, of course. Sounded absurd. But after a few decades in the service, it dawned on him just how true it was.
So he retired.
And started working at a school.
He couldn’t remember for the life of him what had driven him to that decision. He’d
never been overly fond of children. Maybe it was still that fresh sense of adventure that came off youth like the black diesel perfume of a chopper. Maybe he hoped it would rub off on him.
It hadn’t.
If anything, it had just made him bitter, training them to set off on their own adventures while his seemed to be long behind him.
Until today, he’d been certain he’d never run another mission. He hated losing a cadet, but, in a way, he was happy the Humbolt kid had bolted.
Now he had something to chase.
“We’re coming up on Eleuthera,” Tolliver said through the headset.
Major North leaned out the door to get a better look as they hovered over the island. “There,” he said, pointing down to a clearing. “Set us down there.”
Moments later, the helicopter touched down. The old bird creaked and crunched. It probably thought its adventuring days were behind it as well.
The cadets jumped out first. For once, Major North found their youthful exuberance tolerable. A little contagious, even.
The major locked it down. Couldn’t let emotion cloud judgment. That was how you lost men. Or, how you lost cadets and an orphanage director.
Major North exited the helicopter and walked around to an exterior cargo hatch. He popped it open, and struggled to contain a gasp of excitement.
Lock it down!
There, looking back at him were some truly impressive pieces of military hardware. The most modern weaponry and tactical gear. They could storm a bunker with this stuff. They had a—
Ms. Roberts pushed past the cadets and reached into the hatch. She took out a long, cylindrical weapon with levers and buttons all over it.
Major North tensed. He thought maybe she was just eccentric. A little unhinged at the most. But maybe she really was crazy.
“Don’t move,” he said quietly, taking a very slow and cautioned step toward her. “That’s—”
She hit the lever and flipped open the weapon’s six-shot revolver-like cylinder. “A Milkor MGL forty-millimeter grenade launcher,” she said, finishing the major’s sentence. “American made. Six shots. Fires everything from HE rounds to less lethal bean bag projectiles, designed to put down a tango without any permanent damage.” She speed-loaded the weapon with specialized bean bag rounds and snapped the cylinder shut. “Perfect for apprehension and interrogation.”
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