The Golden Chair

by A J Fontenot

  The main trailer was used mostly for storage — all of the equipment was put up each night, which explained why after months it still looked like they just arrived — and for cooking. Erin hadn’t noticed until Paul pointed it out, but on the far end of the big trailer, there was another overhang with a large plate window. There were a few chairs set up outside. Paul took her inside the trailer. On one end she saw empty storage space where all the equipment was stored each night. On the other end was a fully stocked kitchen. “Kwami takes one of the trucks down to Accra about once a week to stock up on supplies,” Paul told her. Erin was starting to see how they could live like this for months and months at a time.

  As they walked back outside, Paul pointed upward. “All three trailers are retrofitted with extra solar panels on top. We also have generators, but this time of year, with our load, we usually don’t need them. We have enough panels and batteries to work on solar power almost exclusively.”

  “These,” he said, pointing to the other two trailers, “are for sleeping. Ben, Gavin, Kwami, and I have that one,” he pointed to the far trailer. “Marisol — and now you — are in the other. You can put your stuff in there and shower. They have hot water. Sometimes. We’ll probably be eating in the next hour.”

  Erin left him and opened the door to her trailer. She stepped up and walked in, looking around. She was surprised at how comfortable it looked. The outside looked military, with its large knobby tires and external metal bracing. But inside, it seemed to be built for comfort. To her right, it had a bathroom that took up the entire end. In the middle was a table, and on her left were beds. The door opened again behind her and Marisol walked in.

  “We’re lucky,” she said.

  “Lucky?”

  “These things sleep four people,” she pointed to a spot under the table. “That folds up and more beds come out. The guys have to use all four of them. Well, Paul’s not here half of the time, but still. A lot of them all in one can. Just us in this one, so we’ve got more room. And when you get used to roughing it like this,” she held up her hands, motioning to the trailer, “is actually pretty nice. Especially since we have it to ourselves.”

  Erin was surprised at how much she was already agreeing with this girl. As she looked around, she had to admit, it really didn’t feel cramped on the inside.

  “Plus,” Marisol went on, “the bathroom used to be a shower and kitchenette. Paul had them modified to make the bathroom much bigger. Gives you an extra layer of privacy. Or normalcy. Or whatever. Then, on the outside, there’s a little washing machine. No dryer, though.”

  Marisol was talking a lot, and Erin wasn’t sure she was catching it all.

  “Anyway,” Marisol said, as she laid down on her bed, “feel free to make yourself at home.”

  Marisol pulled out a set of earbuds and put them in, closing her eyes. “Kwami’s going to make us food soon,” she said, closing her eyes. “In a strange way,” she kept talking, even with the earbuds, “if you can get past all the living-in-the-middle-of-nowhere parts, it’s kind of better than normal living. People cooking for you, do what you want…”

  Erin thought about that for a moment. Marisol might have been partially right. They weren’t in tents. But this was a far cry from ‘better than normal’ living. Erin walked into the bathroom and shut the door behind her. She peeled off her clothes and turned on the shower. The water was mercifully hot. She stood in it for a moment, resting her head against the side of the shower. Letting the water and steam flow over her.

  She was tired. She’d left home in D.C. several hours before it was light. Was that this morning, she wondered. Standing here, now, that seemed so long ago. She tried to calculate what time it was back home. What time was it here? Her plane landed mid-afternoon. It was a three-hour drive from the airport. Maybe six? Then, that would make it around midnight at home. She quit trying to calculate.

  From the other side of the trailer, she heard Marisol still talking. She caught some of it. Marisol was from somewhere in Europe. She somehow got connected with Paul. Erin drifted in and out of listening as the steam built up.

  As she stepped out of the shower, she sunk her face deep into her towel, holding it there for a moment. When she pulled it away, she felt different. Refreshed. Though, it was probably just a second, or third wind. But for the moment, she felt new, and better.

  Erin pulled on a pair of jeans from her bag and a fresh shirt. She opened the door to rejoined Marisol, who, she realized, was still talking.

  Erin towel-dried her hair.

  “How long did you say you’ve been with SERA?” Erin said.

  “Just a few months,” she said, as Erin sat at the table, brushing her hair back.

  “I had long hair when I got here,” Marisol said. “But I cut it short. Well, Ben did. He’s handy in a lot of unexpected ways.”

  “Really? He cut your hair?”

  “Mm-hm. Like it?” She asked, turning to the side and immediately turning back.

  “Yeah.” And she did. Marisol had a round face. Her close-ish cropped dirty-blonde hair suited it. Erin’s hair was longer, but not long.

  “Do you ride?” Marisol asked, shifting the conversation again.

  “Ride?” Erin asked.

  “Yeah, motorcycles.”

  “Oh, uh, no. I mean — why?”

  “No reason. SERA has three main vehicles. But there’s a motorcycle on the back of the equipment trailer,” she pointed a thumb over her shoulder. “It’s strapped on with an electric motor, so you just push a button and it comes down. But we just keep it for emergencies.”

  “Okay,” Erin said.

  “Wow,” Marisol said, pausing and looked at Erin.

  “What?”

  “I just realized I’ve talked to you more or less constantly for the last thirty minutes.”

  “Yeah,” Erin said with a laugh, “that’s okay.”

  “I’ve just been with all-guys for a while now. And, you know…it’s not the same,” she said. “It’s nice to have a girl here, is all.”

  Erin smiled. She didn’t really have any girl friends. At least not for the last few years. She’s spent so much time in her work, the friends she did have were mostly colleagues. Sitting here, like this, reminded her of when she was younger. When she did have friends. When life was…simpler.

  “I’m glad to be here, too,” she told Marisol, even if she wasn’t yet sure if it was true. “Just a little jet-lagged.”

  Erin hears a tinging noise outside. She looked to the sound, then heard it again. Ting.

  “That’s Kwami’s dinner bell. It’s an actual triangle he brought and hung up.”

  Erin hadn’t realized how hungry she was. She hadn’t eaten a real meal since D.C.

  “Good,” she said, “I’m starving.”

  19

  Lake Volta, Ghana

  The only light in the room came from a bank of monitors on the wall.

  Bryan Milson from Nebraska sat in the operator’s chair, in the middle of nowhere in West Africa, carefully guiding an underwater machine. He was moving the joystick with one hand, while keeping his other on the toggle, constantly adjusting the amount of green phosphorus that showed up on the screen. His eyes were trained on the center monitor, hardly blinking.

  He’d done security for the last five years. Mostly low-level stuff. So when a job paying three times the going rate (and including all room and board) came up, he jumped on it. He’d never heard of ROM Defense, and the job was somewhere in Africa. He’d also never been to Africa. Or out of the country, for that matter. But it was only a six-month contract.

  Not to mention, this would get Marie off his back. For Bryan, life was generally pretty good. For Marie, his girlfriend, life was missing one critical thing. Marriage. Bryan liked Marie. And he didn’t mind the idea of marrying her. What he did mind was the cost. When Marie told him the average wedding in Nebraska was around twenty grand, he didn’t care. When she told him it was really more of a minimum, he started havi
ng what his doctor was calling ‘mild panic attacks.’

  That’s when this job from ROM Defense showed up, out of the blue.

  There weren’t many specifics, but ROM ran had already run a background check on him. Checks were standard. Doing them before you applied wasn’t. That was the first of many slightly-off things he began to notice. They hired him through email, no interview. But, he told himself, the money was good. Really good. A week after that, a plain white envelope showed up. It was a ticket to Africa. Leaving in two weeks.

  Doing security wasn’t like in the movies. In real life, you prepare and train…and then it’s a whole lot of nothing. There’s almost never any real action. And that’s how this job started, too. His boss, an ex-military guy called Keeler, seemed like a bit of a loose cannon. But those types were pretty common in this field. Ex-military or ex-cops, getting paid to carry around guns without the public scrutiny of working for the government. That was all pretty standard.

  What wasn’t standard is what happened a few days ago.

  They’d been at this particular site for a couple months. Hired regular locals to do the grunt work, like always. Some stayed on. Some would come and go. But honestly, he wasn’t even sure why he was there. They had big, expensive machinery. But it was all way out in the middle of nowhere.

  And none of the locals ever got rowdy. He made friends with a British guy working for a charity or something. The nightlife out here was pretty low key. On the whole, it was all pretty uneventful.

  Or, at least, it was.

  While walking down a standard perimeter check the other day, his radio crackled. It was his boss, Keeler. “Report to the conference room, ASAP.”

  When he arrived a few minutes later, he walked up to the second-floor and opened the conference room door. What he saw actually took him a few seconds to process.

  It was a blood bath.

  If he didn’t know where they were, he’d have thought it was a scene from a movie.

  There were bodies…scattered everywhere…laying on top of each other. Blood was everywhere.

  As he entered, he just looked. No reaction, just shock.

  Keeler was standing on the other side of the room.

  His mind still didn’t believe his eyes until one of them started to move. One of the men on the floor actually started to move.

  It had to be some kind of trick, or show, or…there had to be some explanation to what he was seeing.

  KACK.

  The sound shook him. It was from Keeler, who was resting his boot on the man, pointing his rifle at him. Bryan saw the body under Keeler’s boot shake with the sound. And then the man didn’t move anymore.

  Keeler, for his part, stood calmly, like a vampire, before speaking.

  “Clean it up,” he said. “One out there, too,” he motioned to the second-floor balcony outside behind him.

  Bryan spent all afternoon and well into the night digging, having to pull out portable lights just to finish. There were fourteen of them. Twelve bodies. He buried all of them. He’d recognized almost all the faces. Some he’d talked too. Bryan didn’t normally get into politics. What his employers wanted to do was their business. He was there for the paycheck. But this was over the line. Way over the line.

  This was how Bryan found himself operating this unmanned underwater machine in the middle of the night. The last guy who did this was in a hole in the ground outside.

  He closed his eyes tight, breathing in slowly, making himself focus.

  Two men stood over his shoulder — neither of which he trusted. And they were watching each move he made.

  One was Keeler, his boss.

  The other guy, the blonde mane, he was different. If Keeler and his extra-itchy trigger finger stood out in a place like this, this other guy stood out even more. He looked like a model or something. Though…it wasn’t because handsome, he wasn’t. Maybe it was just because he felt so…dangerous. Keeler had a kind of evil that was obvious. But this other man, he was more subtle. Like an animal that would catch you before you even know it was hunting you.

  “Is this it?” the blonde man said.

  “Yes, sir,” Bryan said,

  “What’s that?” the blond man pointed to the screen.

  Bryan moved the controls, adjusting the view.

  “This is the target area we’ve isolated,” Bryan said.

  We…, he thought.

  There was no ‘we.’ After Keeler unloaded a backpack full of ammo on the staff, and after Bryan had finished ‘cleaning up,’ Keeler shoved a stack of files in his hand telling him, “Promotion. Learn this.” Bryan began reading through the paperwork. It was mostly status reports about the underwater exploration. Stuff he’d only vaguely guessed at before…and a lot more. It was the work a few of the hired men had been doing. As he looked through the reports, Bryan began to understand why they were so concerned with security. The whole logging operation was a cover. A cover to find something. An object, or artifact, that had been buried. It was seriously like Indiana Jones stuff. Except, he’d just realized, he was working for the Nazis.

  But, at this point, what choice did he have if he wanted to stay alive? So here he sat, learning on the go how to operate this underwater machine.

  “How sure are you?” the blonde man said.

  “They — we,” Bryan corrected, “used a combination of sonar and ground-penetrating radar.” He was pretty sure he’d read that in one of the reports.

  “I know that,” snapped the blonde-haired man. “How far in have you gone?”

  “In, sir?”

  “Yes, how do you know it” — he stressed that word — “is really in there? Have you had a direct visual on it?”

  Bryan’s mind was racing. He hadn’t seen anything in the reports that actually confirmed the thing they were searching for, whatever it was, was actually in there.

  “Sir,” Brian said, “everything in the reports indicates this is the spot we’ve been looking for.” He was doing his best to make his voice level. And confident. Like this was all normal. And like he was competent. Competent enough to live.

  Keeler spoke for the first time.

  “How far is it beyond this point?”

  “It’s close,” Bryan said. “We believe there’s a small hill and then, based on the soundings, it’s about four yards after that.” Bryan surprised himself, saying that. He knew it was true. He’d read the description in one of the reports Keeler handed him. He just had a sinking feeling his performance was beginning to falter. He reached up and wiped a line of sweat off his forehead.

  “Is it completely submerged?” the blonde man said.

  “Yes, we believe so.” This was a complete guess. A felt a slight bolster of confidence from the success of his last answer. Underwater, after all, is usually submerged. He felt pretty good about that one.

  “Move in,” the blonde man said.

  Bryan tilted the joystick forward, and the screen changed. The robot was moving. He toggled the dial to get a better contrast on the screen. Most of what he was looking at was a smattering of green and black lines, because there was no natural light in the cave at the bottom of the lake. He kept an eye on the progress data, telling him how far forward and up and down the machine had moved. That was more helpful than the video feed. The underwater robot crept forward, passed the small hill and entering the underwater cave.

  “Stop,” the blonde man said in a tight, controlled voice. He leaned in, putting a firm hand on Bryan’s shoulder. He could smell the faintest whiff of cologne. A smell that might be pleasant in any other circumstance.

  “Do you see that?” he said, to no one in particular.

  Bryan saw more squiggly lines. Something curved, maybe. It could be something. Or it could be more rocks.

  “Backup. Move lateral. Approach it from the side.”

  Bryan shifted as the pressure on his shoulder changed. It’s like the hand on his shoulder had turned him into a joystick.

  “Stop,” the blonde man sai
d abruptly.

  He removed his hand from Bryan’s shoulder, stepping back. Bryan could feel the shift in the room. It wasn’t any less tense. If anything, it was now tenser. But it was a different kind of tension.

  Bryan didn’t turn his head. “Should I—” he started

  “Shh,” the blonde hair hissed.

  Bryan stayed still.

  In the reflection of the monitor, he could Keeler and the blonde man, staring at the screen. Then Keeler looked at the blonde man. The man returned the look. But neither of them spoke. It was too dark for Bryan to read their faces.

  “Leave,” the blonde man said, finally.

  Bryan didn’t hesitate. He stood up and left the small control room, making no eye contact as he did. Walking out of the room, he heard the blonde man tell Keeler, “Get your team ready.”

  20

  The Ashanti Legend

  Erin sat near the fire, watching as the light made strange shadows on the new faces of the SERA team sitting around the fire.

  Ben dragged a case of cold beers and set it next to the circle, sitting down next Erin. He pulled open the container and handed her one.

  “See, we have standards,” he said.

  “Thanks,” she smiled.

  Paul sat a few yards outside the circle, his feet propped on an empty plastic equipment shell, pointing away from the fire. Kwami, Marisol, and Gavin sat lazily around the fire.

  Kwami opened his bottle and kicked a log into the fire. “Have you heard,” he said, to the group, “they’ve found the lost Ashanti treasure?”

  Paul huffed out a laugh, not turning around.

  Kwami didn’t seem to hear him.

  “Ashanti…” Gavin said, “as in, one of the local tribes?”

  “Not just ‘a local tribe,’” Kwami said, leaning forward in his chair. “The Ashanti once ruled Ghana.” He spread his arms as he said this, spilling a little bit of his beer in the process.

  “There you go…,” Paul said.

  “Once they were one of the most powerful empires in all of Africa,” Kwami said. “This was before Ghana was the Ghana we know today. Back then, the Ashanti Empire extended throughout most of West Africa.”