by K. T. Tomb
The tone of her voice roused Anthony, but it looked toward her with empty eyes.
“Helicopters! Doyle! He’s here!”
She didn’t have to command him to move as she snatched up her SIG.
“Why didn’t someone call us?”
His question lingered in the empty room as Chyna dashed down the corridor of the ship trying to wake up her team. They wouldn’t budge. Nobody would budge.
“They’re all asleep, they’ve been drugged,” she announced as Anthony rushed out the cabin they had been sharing with his pistol at the ready.
“Who? How?” he asked.
“Why not us?”
“The water,” he responded after a moment of thought. “We had wine.”
“So, we’re on our own,” Chyna frowned. She voiced the thoughts running through her head. “Someone on our team or yours had to have drugged our wa… Fariha?”
“That would be my guess,” he said.
The sound of the rotors was much louder. The helicopters had to be about to touch down on the deck.
“They’ll be most vulnerable coming off of those choppers,” she announced. “We better get a move on if we’re going to have a chance.”
They dashed down the corridor and up onto the upper deck. Careful to stay behind cover, they moved to the landing pad just as one chopper was pulling away, having already discharged ten men, who scrambled away from the circle of flares, formed a perimeter and crouched in the darkness. Near the circle of flares, Chyna saw a figure being pulled away from the light by one of the men, she recognized the Greek girl instantly. Not only had she drugged her team, but she had signaled the choppers into the ship using flares.
“To think I trusted…” Chyna cut off the sentence and finished it with another. “I’m going after her.”
“I wouldn’t do that Chy… shit!” Anthony followed behind her as she moved from one cover to another in the darkness. Why the hell does she get me into stuff like this?
A second chopper moved in to the landing pad, but instead of hovering, it sat down on the deck. Two more men with automatic weapons stepped out of the helicopter and took positions on each side of the door. Not expecting anyone to be awake and ready to challenge him, Ethen Doyle took a confident step from the helicopter and paused a moment.
From a covered position which was only 30 yards from Ethan Doyle, Chyna saw Fariha rush from the darkness and into his arms. She froze as she tried to put it all together. But he had attempted to assault… in that instant, she realized that it had been a setup. Fariha had played the part of the victim in order to gain their trust. Ethen had gotten all of the information he had needed and played the role he needed to play in order to be dismissed, while everyone comforted and doted on his alleged victim. She had played her part well, even to the point of flirting and teasing Oscar. The idea that her team had been infiltrated infuriated her. She raised her SIG and started to move forward.
“I wouldn’t do that,” a calm voice advised.
Chyna looked down at three red dots on her chest. She looked back to see if Anthony had her covered. He too, had red dots dancing on his torso.
“Slide that pistol toward me and then get on your knees,” the voice commanded.
Chyna complied, though she was fuming inside as she did so. You won for now, but this shit ain’t over, she vowed. And that little bitch… her words were cut off as she took a sharp blow to the back of her head.
Chapter Five
The morning sun was high in the sky when they were awakened and brought out onto the deck in their handcuffs and made to sit in a single file line.
Ethan Doyle stood over them like an evil cartoon villain with a small army of twelve men smiling. Beside him, wearing a stern expression, was Fariha, the Greek girl. He just couldn’t help feeling immensely proud of himself for having outsmarted them. In all truth, it did seem that he had finally turned the tables on their entire group. He had come prepared, Chyna gave him that much. Doyle had managed to land twelve security enforcers, six divers, a technician, a ship’s captain and himself onboard the vessel, all while they were unconscious. That wretch Fariha had spiked their water at dinner and as it turned out Hans had been the worst affected. James had brought him a bottle before and another with his meal. Even now it seemed he was having trouble sitting up straight.
“It still amazes me that you thought you were smart enough to double cross me!”
Ethan was shouting at Hans, who sat on the pavement trying to cover his ears as best he could with his cuffed hands. He must have had a headache the size of the European Union. Even the sunshine was complete torture to him. He alternated shielding his eyes and covering his ears. Ethan kept berating him and finally swung his right leg and kicked Hans over onto his side.
“Soon, you’re all going to see what this is all about; I’m going to be the one who goes down in history as finding the oldest shipwreck of all time, not you Professor Cartwright or your little band of teenage mutant misfits and certainly not the overinflated Chyna Stone and her vagabonds from Found History. Everyone gets a back to ride on, but when I decided to take my destiny into my own hands you call me a criminal. Cartwright, you would never have gotten where you are if it wasn’t for Sir Evans spoon-feeding you everything you know back at Oxford, you practically lived at Boar’s Hill until the old man died. And you, Miss Stone, your father gave you everything, all you had to do was make the obvious choice to take it and follow in his footsteps. A gleaming reputation and a successful company with its own following and legacy; handed to you on a silver platter while you indulged yourself in luxury and elite para-military training to validate yourself.
“This is all your fault, you know,” he said, pointing at them. “You should have let me do what I needed to do instead of trying to get in my way. It’s your own fault you’re sitting here in handcuffs now as my hostages and when I’ve found what I’m looking for I’m going to push each and every one of you off this ship into the channel and watch you drown.”
Then Ethan turned to Agent Stewart and said, “You should never have gotten yourself involved in this. It has nothing to do with the F.B.I. Now the blood of all these agents will be on your head.”
As dismal as their situation seemed at the moment, Anthony couldn’t help but smirk at Doyle’s comments. He was showing his cards; a rookie mistake and he had just let Anthony know that the Doyles had no idea they were under investigation for money laundering and racketeering. He couldn’t know then that all Anthony’s superiors in Washington and at the Pentagon were fully aware of the operation and they were in constant contact with him to discuss progress and strategy. As soon as he didn’t check in, they would be sure to be checking things out. He also wouldn’t know that the onboard surveillance system had been patched into the F.B.I. satellite system and was streaming live to both the house in Izmir and to the database at the J. Edgar Hoover building twenty-four hours a day since they had boarded the vessel two days before.
“Take them to their cabins and lock them in,” Ethan shouted.
With that, his armed militia men stood them up and walked each of them back to their cabins. They were secured and locked inside. It was clear that their cabins had been searched and every means of communication confiscated. He intended for them to silently bide their time and accept that he had gotten the best of them.
Chyna lay on her bunk smiling to herself.
You think you’re so smart Doyle, she thought to herself, You fancy yourself to be some sort of a badass, a mastermind criminal maybe? Ha!
She jumped from the bed and went to the cabin door. From the porthole she could see that all of Doyle’s men had cleared the corridor. They had probably made it back to the deck by now, but just to be sure she waited five more minutes watching carefully to both the left and right of her door. When she was satisfied, she went to her suitcase and opened it. She threw out all the clothes and pulled on a tab that was sticking up out of one corner in the bottom of the case. When she lifted the top o
f the little compartment and saw its contents were intact, she smiled to herself again.
Back on the bed she sat with the little black tool kit and her tech pouch. Chyna opened the pouch and pulled out another of her military secured Blackberry® devices, pulling off the back cover and laying it to one side. She dug deeper in the case and found what she was looking for, a fresh battery and a pill bottle containing about a dozen SIM cards. She emptied them into the palm of her hand and sorted through them, finally arriving at the card she needed. She lay it on the bed beside her and returned all of its contents to the pouch.
With the SIM card in place and the battery fitted, Chyna put the back cover on the phone and turned it over in her hand. She pressed and held down the little power button and almost instantly the red light came on and the phone started to boot up. She knew that as soon as it did, a distress signal would start being broadcast to the systems back at Found History. For as long as the phone was broadcasting, it would deliver an email every fifteen minutes to their administrators’ inbox containing her coordinates. At the Found History office, they all knew better than to try to call that number. Chyna however, could make any call, to anyone, anywhere in the world she pleased and she decided to call her new friend at the United States Consulate in Izmir.
The guards came for them at noon. They were handcuffed again and shuffled into the galley so they could be more easily monitored as they ate. Doyle didn’t have enough manpower to have food brought to them in their cabins so this was their best alternative.
“They didn’t find my tech kit when they searched my cabin,” Chyna whispered discreetly to Anthony as they lined up at the counter for their meager lunch of pork and beans and bread. “I’ve set it up to send the distress messages to admin back at the office.”
“That’s some good news,” he replied.
“I also got a chance to call Agent Perez at the consulate in Izmir. He’s gone over to your base house to let your team know what happened.”
“You think you can trust him?”
“He’s a young one, but he’s as clean and starry-eyed as they come.”
Anthony smiled.
“I guess we just bide our time then, help is on the way.”
Chyna nodded and moved down the line.
They sat at random tables seeing as there was no need to aggravate the guards any further than they already were. The slightest sound of conversation had them aiming guns at the hostages along with demands for silence, so everyone ate in complete silence. Just as they were finishing their meal, there was a blast from the ships horn and the guards told everyone to stop eating and hustled them up to the main deck. Again, they were placed in a single row to sit in the shade of the ships’ bridge. There was another blast of the horn as a winch started pulling in a set of chains that where running over the side of the platform into the water. In a few minutes a basket broke the surface and was hauled onto the deck.
None of them could believe their eyes. Apparently, Doyle and his diving team had gone ahead and started the search and from the looks of the basket’s contents, not only had they found the ships but they had found a remarkable treasure among their ruins. From where they were sitting, they could see pitchers and other vessels of gold and silver, plates, cups, platters and statues. It was a remarkable, extremely valuable cache. The horn blasted again and another set of chains started moving, pulling something else up from the deep, blue waters. This time it was a very large bag made of netting, fashioned to hold smaller items or fragments that might be found on the ocean floor. Through the spaces in the weave, there was a distinctive glint of gold; the bag was filled to bursting with coins.
Soon after, Doyle and six other divers came to the surface. They climbed into the cage that was set up on the side of the platform and were pulled up to the deck. Several plastic bins on wheels were rolled onto the deck and the divers opened the basket and began to sort the contents. Doyle and one of the guards lifted the heavy bag and poured a river of coins and other fragments of gold into another bucket. Chyna could see from the look on Professor Cartwright’s face that it was particularly hard for him to watch what was going on. The thrill of that discovery was supposed to have been his and he had been brutally robbed of it. The professor looked completely crestfallen.
Chyna made all efforts to distract herself, she was more interested in getting back to the cabin to see if Ricardo had emailed her with some report of progress. Doyle stopped playing in the mountain of coins and walked over to where the other divers were sorting through the contents of the basket. He dipped his hand into one of them and came up holding something in his hands that made the professor groan with disappointment. Chyna looked up, to see what was wrong with Cartwright and she followed his gaze back to Doyle, who was slowly approaching them, holding something behind his back. She watched him intently, determined that if he made one false move she would bring him to his knees, turn him into her own hostage and gain the freedom of the entire group.
Instinctively, he stopped well out of her reach and crouched down in front of her.
“Miss Stone, I think that since this morning I have adequately humbled your friend Cartwright over there but it’s your turn to be humbled as well,” he said, pulling the object he held from behind his back and placing it before his face. “Behold, Miss Stone, the Minoan Mask!”
Chyna was dumbstruck. It was just as the description from the Minoan cuneiform tablet had said. The mask was delicately wrought, clearly by a master craftsman. Its features were smooth and graceful, perfectly rounded. The forehead, the brow, the bridge of the nose and the shape of the nostrils, the apples of its cheek, the jaw line and the chin; all depicted the face of a beautiful, intriguing young woman. Remarkably, the bronze was not darkened by its time beneath the waves. It was the color of dark maple syrup with hardly any evidence of the encrusting that was typical of ocean salvage. Chyna attributed that to the incredible smoothness of it which would hardly have been a suitable surface for such formations.
What was most unbelievable about the piece was the exquisite gold work that almost completely surrounded the circumference of the mask. She could not decide if the intricacy of it was completely atypical of the time period. The Egyptians and Mesopotamians had been renowned for their prowess in the art of working gold but she had never encountered this level of excellence. It’s true that jewelry of this level of intricate craftsmanship had been unearthed in Greece many times before, but not a single piece had been dated earlier than the second century B.C. An entire new course in world history had just been rewritten with the discovery of this mask.
Chyna could only describe the design as filigree, even though the gold appliqué was at least a half inch thick. The band of designed gold ran from the mask’s right cheekbone all the way around the top of the mask to the left side of the face and ended at its chin. Below that there was a layer of embossed gold that had been fused to the bronze of the mask in a sort of overlay and covered most of the left side of the forehead as well as the entire left side of the face. She had never seen anything even remotely like it before.
“Put them back in their cabins,” Doyle commanded the guards and they began to usher the explorers back below decks.
“Call the base house and ask for Agent Watson,” Anthony whispered over Chyna’s shoulder. She nodded slightly to indicate that she had heard him. “Tell him I said to cooperate fully with Perez. Tell him the code is ‘Esperion’.”
Chyna lay on the bunk in her cell looking up at the cabin ceiling; she could not get over how magnificent the mask was. Doyle had put it on and made her stare at it for quite a while as he gloated about having gotten the best of her and Found History once and for all. She listened for the sound of the guards passing her door as they left the corridor to return to the ship’s deck. It took them a while but eventually they did, closing the bulkhead door as they left.
Chyna rolled over and took the phone from the inside her mattress through a slit she had made in the seam. There were t
hree messages: one email from Sirita, a freelance administrative attaché in New Delhi that worked in conjunction with the Found History offices in New York. Chyna had found it useful to hire the freelancer to coordinate correspondence on that side of the world to mitigate against the time differences. Sirita had received her S.O.S. and had alerted Turkish and Greek authorities as well as the consulate in Izmir where she spoke to Agent Perez. He had told her that he knew of the situation and that the C.I.A. and the F.B.I. were both already involved in the investigation. What she did give him, which was news to him, were the coordinates of the ship. Sirita told him that she was forwarding the updated coordinates to Agent Perez as she received them and that she wished them all good luck.
The other two were text messages. One from Perez to tell her things were in action and they were to sit tight and the other from Agent Watson asking simply, “What’s the code?”
Chyna smiled as she responded to Watson’s text with a single word, ‘Esperion’. As an afterthought she sent a second response, “We’re kept locked in our cabins below decks. The Greek girl is compromised. Do what you must.”
The routine at dinner went the same as it had at lunch, they lined up along the counter to be served whatever it was that the guards had managed to rustle up quickly from the pantry and sat randomly to eat in silence. This time Chyna positioned herself behind Anthony.
“Watson got the code,” Chyna said softly.
“Good,” he replied.
“I also told him we were locked in our cabins so he should do whatever he needs to do.”
“Perfect! Do they know where we are?”
“They get the coordinates every half hour.”
Chicken nuggets and French fries were the fare that was served up for dinner that night. Everyone insisted on having something else to drink besides the water, but their request fell on deaf ears and they were told that they were lucky to receive anything at all.
