Golden Legacy

by Robert James Glider

  “Jac, I just realized that I forgot the camera. I left it on the boat.”

  “It’s okay, Peri. It doesn’t matter now. We’d better get going. They should be here any time now.” Jac stood up and reached into his pocket. “Oh crap!” he said. “You go to the cellar and head for the tunnel Auntie Mick showed us. I forgot my cell phone. I know where it is. I left it in the bedroom. Go on … I’ll be right behind you.”

  When Peri left, Jac started toward the bedroom he’d been staying in. He took one last look at the kitchen table. He’d left all the contrived evidence he and Peri had created laid out so it looked as if they had been working on it, got tired, and went to sleep.

  A three-quarter moon shone through a high window providing dim light in the main hallway. Jac turned left into the narrow passageway that led to the bedroom he’d stayed in last night. He felt helpless. It wasn’t just dark. It was as if he had entered a void. The blackness was overwhelming. If he had his phone, he could have used the flashlight app. Groping his way along the cement like wall, he could feel the rough bumps in the concrete. Chauncey had told him when she took him on a tour of the house that this wing was part of the original house built sometime in the late sixteen hundreds. The floorboards were also original and made noise with each step he took. The many sailors’, smugglers’, and pirates’ boots had worn the boards down over the years, making them uneven. The pressure of each step Jac took produced a creaking sound. Jac carefully slid his foot forward and was about to take another step when his foot sunk down on a loose board. It caught his shoe. He stumbled and reached out to break his fall, but there was nothing to hold onto. He went to his knees and mumbled a few expletives. He sucked in a deep breath and decided it was safer to proceed on the ground. He crawled forward until his head bumped into the bedroom door.

  James drew another map of the inside of the house. He explained that the tunnel had been dug over two hundred years ago by smugglers who needed a way to escape from the house if they were raided by government men or intruders intent upon killing them and taking their spoils. He said that, at the end of the tunnel, there was an old metal door with a broken lock. Once they got the door open, it would take them into a passageway behind the walls of the house. “In the passageway you’ll see a steep stairway with no handrail. Be careful, the stairs are really old, so take your time getting to the top. At the top of the stairs, face the wall of the house and look for two sliding bolts. When you release the bolts, the wall will swing like a door on a center post, and you will be able to enter the attic.”

  A half hour later, fifty yards in front of Auntie Mick’s house, Mulee and Kincaid began their crawl through the heavy brush and foliage to search for the secret entrance. “I’m not going into the house,” Kincaid muttered.

  “You’re going with me. If you don’t stop complaining, I’ll stuff my fist up your nose,” Mulee whispered. He turned on a penlight to check the map for the rough location of the tunnel. The area was overgrown. “I think we’re close. Put on your gloves and use your light on the right side. I’ll take the left.”

  Several minutes passed as both men moved methodically and cut through the maze of nettle-infested shrubbery.

  A few minutes later Kincaid called out, “I think I found it!”

  Twenty minutes later, Mulee and Kincaid had cleared out the foliage and dug out a mound of dirt covering the entrance. They squeezed and crawled through the opening. They were inside the old tunnel. James had told them the shaft would take them about six feet under the ground. As they inched deeper, the odors of musk and the ocean intermingled. The temperature dropped as the tunnel got deeper. The floor of the tunnel was uneven. Large humps of dirt blocked the way in some areas where some of the roof had given way over the years. They cut at roots, cleared spider webs, and dug out shell-encrusted earth for what seemed like hours. Mulee shined his flashlight into the darkness and smiled. Several feet away the light beam hit a wall.

  The tunnel opened up and was now wide and high enough for them to stand up tall. Moving forward they saw the entry into the house. James had said there would be a rusted metal door at the end of the tunnel.

  When they reached the door, both men wiped away the sweat dripping from their faces and sat down to catch their breath.

  “With all those spiders, it’s a good thing we wore clothes that cover our arms and legs,” Kincaid said.

  “Yeah … let’s get going now.” Mulee said. He pushed down on the handle, and grunted and strained his arms, but it wouldn’t give. “Lets both put our bodies behind it. You push down on the handle, and we both push hard on the door with our shoulders.”

  Leaning their shoulders into the door, Kincaid tried the handle again, but it wouldn’t give. Both men grunted as they dug their feet into the soft ground and pushed.

  “It’s stuck,” whined Kincaid.

  “Try again, and this time, use both hands on the handle. I’ll push on the door when you push down on the handle.” Mulee put his shoulder against the door and grunted as he prepared to push with all of his might. “Now!”

  The handle gave way, and the door creaked open a few inches. Both men pushed hard, and the door opened just enough for them to squeeze through.

  Mulee shined the flashlight around the small room and found another door. He turned the handle and found it opened into a narrow passageway between the walls of the house. “It’s just as James described,” Kincaid whispered.

  “There’s the staircase along that inside wall. That’s where we should find the secret panel that will open into the room,” Mulee said. “We should find some of what we’re after in the room, and the rest will be somewhere in the house. Most likely the room adjacent to the kitchen.”

  “What if we run into trouble?”

  Mulee reached into his pocket and pulled out a Baretta 9 mm. He pulled the slide back, chambering the first round. “Don’t worry. I’ll take care of any trouble we find.”

  “Those stairs don’t look safe. I’ll wait for you here,” Kincaid said.

  “You want me to shoot you now? Get your ass moving!”

  Kincaid took the first step and tested it. When it didn’t give way, he started to climb. Old, run down, and in disrepair, the steps groaned from weight they hadn’t felt more than once in over a century.

  At the top, a ten-foot ramp ran behind the wall. James had told them the secret passageway was a swiveling door that would lead them into the house. He’d said to apply body weight at the right-hand seam and pull on the two bolts. The door would swing open.

  “Okay,” Mulee said as he pushed at the seam. The door groaned and gave way. It swung open.

  Jac had a picture in his mind of the layout of the bedroom’s furniture. He stood up, opened the door, and slowly advanced in the direction of the bed. When he felt his leg touching the mattress, he reached out toward the headboard. As he groped, his hand touched the top of the bed stand, knocking over an empty glass. He reached out to pick the glass up and found his phone lying next to it. He was about to turn on the flashlight app on the phone when he heard a loud scraping sound followed by a thud.

  Someone had entered the house.

  Jac was sure the sounds had come from the upstairs room where Chauncey had found the ships’ logs. The room is full of secrets, so why not a secret passage as well? Jac thought. He wondered whether Chauncey and her aunt knew of a passage behind the walls that opened into the room. But how had they entered the house from outside? There must be other tunnels that the smugglers had dug, Jac surmised. When he heard footsteps coming down the stairs, Jac moved back up the passageway toward the main hallway, staying close to the walls where the floorboards were more solid and made less noise. He heard a door open followed by a chilling laugh, and in a deep voice, a man said that they had found what they had come for. Jac smiled. They had taken the bait—the phony map and other papers he and Peri had left on the dining room table. The next
words the man with the deep voice spoke were clear. He said he was going to look for Jac and kill him. Another man said they should just get out of there. The man with the deep voice said, “Would you rather I use this gun on you? Get moving. We are going to find—and kill—Jac Kidd!”

  Time froze in the suddenly still darkness. Then Jac heard movement. The men were in the main hallway, headed his way. Jac didn’t have a weapon, but as his father had always told him, if someone is hunting you in the darkness, use it as a weapon. It is your ally. Jac reached into his pocket. He found a ballpoint pen. With the pen and the element of surprise he knew he had an advantage. He would use it when the opportunity arose. He should have listened to Peri and left through the tunnel, but since he hadn’t been planning to return to the house, he hadn’t wanted to leave his phone behind.

  The house felt unusually warm. Sweat beads broke out on Jac’s forehead. Then he heard the creaking sound of the boards as the two men moved closer. Jac could see their flashlight beam piercing the darkness. They must have just started down the hall since the light was dim. That gave Jac the opportunity to move up the passageway and duck into a dark alcove where he could lie in wait.

  What seemed like an eternity in reality lasted for only seconds. The brightening flashlight beam cut through the blackness. The men were almost upon him. They stopped. Jac figured there were only two of them, and he thought they must hear his breathing. He held his breath. The man with the gruff voice whispered, telling his partner to follow him down the passageway. They were headed to where Jac was hiding.

  Jac moved back as far as he could into the alcove, and when the light shifted down the passageway toward him, he raised his right hand over his head, the ballpoint pen in his hand, ready to thrust it downward. A shadow—the outline of a hand with a weapon—appeared on the wall. There it is, Jac thought. The man’s hand is starting to move past the alcove. When the hand was next to where Jac hid, he let out his breath and drove the ballpoint pen deep into the man’s arm. It took only a second for the man to fall to his knees, screaming and dropping the gun onto the floor. Jac jumped out of the alcove, grabbed the gun, and pointed it into the darkness seeking the second man. He heard footfalls as the man ran away up the stairs to flee from the house. Jac turned toward the fallen man and hit him hard in the head with the butt of the gun. The man went down flat to the ground. The house was suddenly quiet as Jac made his way to the tunnel. He didn’t want to confront the man. Let him go back to James, Jac thought. He wanted them to use the phony map he and Peri had made for them to find.

  Once the man woke up, he would also flee the house. He hoped he would give up his plan to kill Jac. Jac knew the man was Mulee, James’s partner in crime. James wouldn’t have trusted anyone else.

  CHAPTER 36

  At the end of the tunnel

  Peri huffed and puffed as he reached the end of the tunnel.

  “Are you all right?” Mandrago said. He lit his flashlight and scanned the tunnel behind Peri. “Where’s Jac?”

  “He forgot his cell phone. I think there’s trouble. I heard a loud thud and muffled voices when I got to the basement,” Peri said.

  “Jac won’t deviate from the plan. We’ll wait for him here,” Mandrago said. He turned off the flashlight.

  “Where are the women?” Peri said.

  “I took them to wait for us on board and came back for you and Jac. If Michael sees any sign of danger, he’ll take the Adventurer away from the dock and wait.”

  Worried, both men stared into the darkness of the tunnel.

  “Turn the car around!” The man in the passenger seat pointed. “I saw a light up there in the woods.”

  A quarter mile down the road, the driver of the black Mercedes that had terrorized Chauncey and her party two days before turned the car back toward Auntie Mick’s house while the other man rolled down his window looking for the light. They had been going up and down the road waiting to pick up Mulee and Kincaid.

  “I saw the light about a hundred yards away from the house. It was near here. Slow down.”

  “Are you sure it was a light and not a reflection? We were passing another car going in the other direction.”

  “I know it was a light. There. There! See it? It went out. Let me out here, and you call the boss. It may be Mulee and that pastor.”

  The driver stopped the car in the middle of the road and let his partner out. “What are you going to do?”

  “See that road sign over there? I’ll wait for the boss. Call me.”

  The driver pressed a button on his phone and waited for an answer.

  “Yes?”

  The driver recognized the voice on the other end. He told James what his partner had seen and that he was waiting for instructions.

  “Come pick us up in the front of the hotel, and call your partner and tell him to wait. It’s either Mulee, or my mother and her friends trying to escape,” James said.

  CHAPTER 37

  Kincaid didn’t look back as he ran to get out of the house. He had the map and some other papers he and Mulee had found on the kitchen table. He scaled the steps, climbed the ladder, and scurried through the secret door. What could I have done? he thought. It happened so fast! Mulee screamed and was down on the ground!

  Moments later, Kincaid squeezed out of the tunnel and ran to the road. He crossed it and ran toward the hotel. He opened the side door, avoided the lobby, and boarded the elevator.

  Mulee groaned as his eyes opened. He was lying face down on the floor. It took him a minute to remember what had happened. He pushed himself to his knees and shook his head to clear it. A sudden pain shot up his left arm. It was on fire. He reached over and felt something protruding from his forearm. He tried pulling it but, it was wet, and his hand slipped off. Whatever it was, it had lodged deep into the muscle. His eyes watered as he yelled out in pain. He kept pressing down until he had a good grip on the weapon. He took a deep breath, and pulled. “Ahhhh!” he screamed as the object came out. It felt smooth and it had a button on top. “It’s a God damn ballpoint pen! That son of a bitch Kidd. I’m going to kill him!”

  Blood oozed from the wound. Tie it off or die, he thought. He struggled to get his shirt off over his head. He ripped away the sleeve at the shoulder seam and wrapped and tied it tightly around his arm to cover the wound and stop the bleeding.

  Mulee groaned as tears ran from his eyes. The top of his head ached. He reached up and felt a bump where Kidd had hit him. His head spun as he struggled to his feet. Steadying himself was difficult in the blackness. He put his hand out and groped. He found the wall and leaned against it. He took several breaths, hoping to quell the dizziness. A minute passed, and his head cleared. He had to get his bearings and get out of the house. He suddenly realized he was alone. That son of a bitch phony pastor left me to die, he thought.

  “Kincaid, you bastard,” Mulee hissed, “you will die first!”

  “There!” Mandrago said. “See the light in the tunnel?”

  “Yes. It’s got to be Jac. It looks like he’s using the flashlight on his phone.”

  The two men anxiously waited for Jac to exit the tunnel.

  “Hi, guys,” Jac said. He turned off his flashlight. “They almost got me. They took the bait with the phony map we left on the kitchen table.” He went on to tell them about the encounter with Mulee.

  Suddenly, a sound came from the woods. They heard several voices coming closer.

  “Let’s get the hell out of here,” Jac said. “It sounds like James and his men.

  “Shit! They must have seen the light from my flashlight,” Mandrago said.

  Jac led the way as they quickly moved through the woods, heading up the mountain behind the house. Auntie Mick had told Jac the mountain was covered with motorcycle paths. The locals loved off-road cycling and had cut a series of paths in the mountainside. She said that some of the paths crossed to the other
side of the island. Others led to the nearest towns and continued to the ocean at the far end of the island.

  “We need to find a path and get to the Adventurer,” Mandrago said.

  They stopped when they heard a voice behind them yell out.

  “It will do you no good to run!” someone shouted. “We have men blocking your escape. If you give up now, I promise no one will be hurt!”

  Mandrago whispered, “That’s James.”

  Jac signaled Mandrago and Peri to be quiet. “We need to get to the other side of the island and find a way back. They’ll think we’re trying to go around them. Instead, we’ll cut across the top of the mountain and go down to the other side of the island. I know it’s longer, but it will be safe.”

  They climbed through a jungle of elephant-eared plants and scrub brush that had overgrown the mountain. They crossed several paths and kept climbing.

  Jac reached the top of the mountain first. In the dim light from the three-quarter moon, he saw a narrow path cut through the bushes on the down side that looked promising.

  Mandrago and Peri arrived at the top. Both men were breathing hard.

  Jac was standing next to a cell phone tower when he signaled for them to follow. Now, Jac thought, let’s hope this path takes us down to the other side.

  The path was three feet wide and had been carved by constant use. Brown plant husks littered the ground. Motorcycle tires had chewed into the soft surface of the ground leaving deep ruts.

  In single file, with Jac leading the way, they began a slow trot downward.

  As the distance from the road at the top of the mountain increased they couldn’t hear the voices that had been behind them.