by JC Ryan
“Wrong again. My wife happens to be brilliant. I have them, Sean has them, and soon they’ll be saving the lives of hundreds of thousands of people with respiratory illnesses. But that’s beside the point. Tell me how you got the children in here, and you’ll live to stand trial for the murders you’ve committed.”
Bashar must have thought he could beat the murder charges, or perhaps he thought he could escape somehow, or that a few more months or years of life were worth hoping for. He explained the makeshift dive equipment he’d used for the children as well as the drugs he’d used to slow their respiration, so their tanks would last.
It was all Carter could do to stop himself from choking the life out of the man who’d put his kids at such risk. But he knew he’d have to do the same to get them out. There was just one problem. The tanks were empty, and there were no more drugs. He thanked God that Sean hadn’t waited for the full five hours. Someone was going to have to go out to resupply the tanks and get a safe dose of something to put the kids to sleep during the return trip.
And the SeaDoo would have to be recharged at least once, to get the kids and the dolphin out safely.
“Kids, if I stay here with you, are you okay to wait until our dolphin friend, Carmen, gets out? She’s really sick.”
“I’m hungry,” Beth said. “But I will eat the yucky food if Carmen needs to go first.”
Liam agreed.
“Tell us how you rigged the dolphin’s air, and I won’t break your other leg,” Carter said to Bashar.
“It doesn’t matter. There isn’t enough left to get her back out,” Bashar said. His indifferent delivery made Carter want to go back on his promise and kill the bastard right then.
“I have an idea,” Sean said. “We’ve got extra oxygen in our lungs, right? I’ll give her some of mine, and I’ll tow her out with this thing.” He gestured to the SeaDoo.
“Mouth to mouth?” Carter asked.
“Mouth to blowhole,” Sean said. “It looks to me like her only chance. I don’t see her lasting another eight hours, do you?
“No, you’re right. Go for it.”
They had to ‘persuade’ Bashar to reveal where he’d hidden more rope, water, and food. But in short order, Sean had Carmen turned in the right direction, fastened to him by a rope, and he’d breathed into her blowhole to test the theory. She moved a bit better, though she was still in bad shape. Carter had explained to her what they were going to do, and she hadn’t fought them. It was now up to Sean to get her out as fast as he could, and then return with the SeaDoo and full tanks for the kids.
Carter didn’t give a second thought to what would happen to them if Sean failed to return. He knew his friend, and he knew his wife. Someone would be back, and then the ordeal would be over.
41
SEAN MADE IT back in a little over seven hours. He’d used the SeaDoo going out, and he reported it had been a harrowing experience when the charge ran out before the last long stretch of flooded tunnel. But the mouth-to-blowhole scheme had worked well, and he was happy to report that Carmen was expected to survive her ordeal.
“You know, I didn’t think about it before,” Carter said. “I knew she’d fit through, because he got her in here. But what about that first, short stretch, where Franklin didn’t fit? How’d you get her through there?”
“Oh, she’s quite a bit smaller than Franklin. Her dorsal fin got a bit scraped again, but we got her through.”
“I’ll bet Merrybeth was happy,” Carter remarked.
“Was she ever! I never saw her jump so high out of the water. And you’d better brace yourself when you come out. I think she’s standing by to give you a big kiss.”
Beth giggled. She’d been awakened by the men talking, though it was after midnight. Liam woke up then, too, so Carter decided they might as well start back. But first, the kids had to go back to sleep, this time under sedation.
“Bethie,” Carter said. “Can you be a brave girl? I need to give you a shot, so you can sleep through the trip back out to the surface.”
“I don’t want a shot, Daddy,” she answered.
“Let me try, Dad,” Liam urged.
“Okay.”
“Beth, if you let Dad give you a shot, I’ll bet Mom will never make you eat broccoli again.”
“Okay!!! But Daddy, I don’t want it to hurt.”
“I’ll do my best not to hurt you, sweetheart. Tell you what. I’ll give Liam his shot first. He can tell you if it hurts.” Carter hoped his son would get the message. He had no idea if the shot would hurt, but he didn’t want to force his daughter to submit to it. She’d had enough trauma for one little girl’s lifetime. More at his hands was not acceptable.
Liam took his shot like a man, not even a grunt of pain. Then he said, “Beth, it didn’t hurt. It was a piece of cake.”
“Can I have some cake, too, Daddy?” she asked.
“All the cake you can eat, once we get out.”
She bravely held out her little arm, and to Carter’s surprise, she didn’t even say ‘ouch’. A few minutes later, both kids were unconscious.
“Okay, get going. I’ll deal with this piece of trash,” Sean said, indicating Bashar. His leg had swollen to twice its normal size.
“I can’t swim like this,” Bashar complained.
“I’ll tow you, but the least bit of funny business, and I’ll cut you loose to fend for yourself,” Sean said, showing Bashar his knife.
Carter had gently carried each child to the shoreline while Sean and Bashar were talking and was now quickly rigging their makeshift dive equipment and putting on the harness he’d fashioned from the rest of the rope. He called out to Sean that they were ready. Sean went to help get the kids in the water behind Carter and wished them Godspeed. Carter gave a hasty salute and then started the SeaDoo.
Bashar would not have a comfortable journey to the water’s edge, nor a safe one through the cave system. Carter didn’t much care. The man would be sentenced to life in prison for his crimes, since Great Britain didn’t have capital punishment anymore. As far as Carter was concerned, death was too good for him. If he drowned being towed out, Carter wouldn’t mourn his passing.
A little less than three hours later, he carefully handed each sleeping child up to their mother, who passed them to the clinician. She was standing by to bring them out of the deep sedation she’d calculated would give them their best chance to survive the trip through the flooded tunnels Sean had described.
After examining them, she pronounced them slightly dehydrated and in need of nutrition, but otherwise in great shape considering their ordeal. Liam told his mother what he’d promised Beth, and Mackenzie solemnly swore not to make Beth eat broccoli ever again.
Carter also underwent a physical exam. His respiratory capacity had already expanded to double its previous measurement, and he felt as fresh after his three-hour swim towing the children as if he’d just awoken from eight hours’ sleep.
He had just one regret, he told Mackenzie. He hadn’t asked Bashar if there’d been any evidence anywhere that Minotaurs had ever really existed.
Everyone aboard waited anxiously for Sean to appear. He’d been due to set out as soon as he could rig up a harness for Bashar. But to do so, he was going to have to untie the man. All the other rope had been used for Carmen and the children. It was a calculated risk. Sean was certainly as capable of defending himself as Carter, and Bashar was injured. But Sean was overdue. It was nearly dawn.
Carter was preparing to go back in after them, when Sean’s head finally broke the surface. Bashar was not with him.
“Don’t tell me the bastard got away,” Carter called.
“He’s still in there. I had to cut him loose. What do you want to do?” Sean called back.
“We can’t take the risk that he makes it out of there. You up to go back in?”
“Hell, yes. I feel like I could swim around the world,” Sean answered.
Carter gave Mackenzie a swift kiss, then dropped one on
each of his precious children’s heads. “I’ll be right there. I have a question for him, anyway.”
He dropped into the water and together the two friends swam to the point where they needed to dive to get to the opening. “Where did you lose him?”
“He attacked me in the last big cave before the one where he was holding the kids. Pulled the rope I was towing him with around my neck and was trying to choke me. I managed to cut the rope like I told him I would. That must have been his goal. My headlamp failed before I found him in there. He could be anywhere by now, except out. That leg has to be slowing him down.”
“Okay,” Carter replied. “How are you thinking we do this?”
“I say we go as far as that cave, then one of us guards the passage on this end of it, while the other searches the cave. I doubt he’ll go back in any farther.”
“Sounds like a plan. But wait, your headlamp is out of juice, right? Let’s get you some fresh batteries, and I’m thinking we need weapons. What do we have?”
“We’ll take the Glocks. Hope we don’t need them, especially underwater. They’re not accurate at any distance underwater, and shooting underwater will probably blow out our eardrums. But better to be prepared.” Sean waited and rested, though he didn’t seem to need the rest, while Carter went back to the side of the boat to get what they needed. When he returned, they set out with strong strokes and reentered the passage to the cave system.
The cave where Sean led was the one Carter had explored before, so when they got there, it was Sean who stayed in the water to guard Bashar’s escape route, and Carter got out to explore the cave again. With his 6000 lumens LED headlamp turned all the way up in all three bulbs, he examined the cave floor for any clues where Bashar had stepped. It was mostly rock, though a few footprints in sand showed up between them. Then Carter caught a break.
Enough sand for Bashar to have taken two steps showed one foot dragging. Carter couldn’t believe the man was walking at all, but he had enough respect for the strength of the big man that he looked up frequently to avoid an ambush. Coming upon a couple of large boulders with a narrow passage between them, Carter cautiously leaned forward just far enough to see around them without losing his balance. Crouched behind one of them, Bashar lunged at him.
Carter had just enough time to jump back and withdraw his weapon before Bashar was within a couple feet of him. “Stop right there,” Carter commanded, leveling the Glock at Bashar.
Bashar stopped, an expression of hate twisting his face.
“You can either come out of there with your hands up, or I’ll shoot you where you stand,” Carter stated calmly. “But before you decide, I have a question for you. Did you ever find any evidence the Minotaur was real?”
“As a matter of fact,” Bashar said, keeping his hands above his shoulders, “I did. It’s back here.”
Carter didn’t trust what he was hearing. “Sean,” he called out. “I’ve got him. Come over here, please.”
Carter and Bashar held their standoff while Sean got out of the river and made his way to where they were standing.
Carter said, “He tells me there’s evidence of the Minotaur’s existence back behind those boulders. I don’t trust him, but I have to know.”
“Okay, that’s easy.” Sean sidled forward, grabbed Bashar by one upraised wrist and snatched him out from between the boulders. Bashar landed on his face with a snarl. Before he could get up, Sean put his foot on Bashar’s back and pulled his own Glock. “I’ve got him. Go see if he was telling the truth.”
Carter moved between the boulders and looked around. In an alcove along the side of the back wall of the cave, he could see a pile of large bones. He approached. When his light struck the bones, he recoiled. In the alcove were the bones of a huge skeleton that looked human, except for the head. Long, curved horns stuck out on each side of the skull, and an elongated jaw suggested a bovine head rather than a human. Yet, the spine of the skeleton disappeared into the back of the skull.
“I’ll be tarred and feathered,” he said.
He went back to where Sean and Bashar waited. “What were you going to do with that? he asked. “I assume you put it together. Were you going to claim you’d found the Minotaur? How did you expect to get away with a fraud like that?”
“It’s no fraud,” Bashar grunted. “I didn’t put it together. I only just found it. And if I had to guess, I’d say there’s probably a way to get out of here that leads to the Labyrinth. The real one.”
“You’re lying.”
“I’m not. You can explore for yourself. But you’d better give me credit for the find, or I’ll expose you for an artifact thief.”
“We’ll see about that. For now, we’re going to leave it right there and take you where the families of the people you killed can get some justice. Let’s go.”
As Carter looked down to make sure of his footing, Bashar twisted and grabbed Sean’s foot, making him lose his balance and fall with a heavy grunt onto a small boulder that knocked the wind out of him. Bashar grabbed for his Glock, and Sean held onto it in desperation.
Carter drew his weapon again, but he couldn’t get a clean shot at Bashar without risking the bullet going right through him and wounding Sean. Sean was on the bottom of the fight, and he was having a hard time gaining an advantage. Carter felt he had just one choice. He jumped on Bashar’s back, threading an arm around Bashar’s neck, and grabbed his own wrist with his other hand. Then he squeezed, and kept squeezing as Bashar thrashed, trying to throw him off.
When Bashar slumped, Carter kept the choke hold firm until Sean rolled out from under him. “Thanks, buddy. He almost had me.” Sean picked up his Glock and pointed it at Bashar. “Okay, I’ve got him covered. You can let go.”
Carter let go, and Bashar collapsed to the ground. Carter nudged him with his foot. “Get up, asshole.” There was no response.
Sean raised his eyebrows. Carter bent and put his fingers on Bashar’s pulse point behind his ear. “Uh oh.”
“What?”
“I think he’s dead. Shit,” Carter said.
“That’s exactly what he was, and it’s not your fault. You were trying to defend me. Justifiable in anyone’s book.”
“I know. I don’t regret killing him myself. But his victims’ families won’t get their day in court, now.”
“I’ll bet they won’t care. Come on, we’ve got to get this excrement out of here, before his body pollutes the entire cave system,” Sean said. “Do you think he was telling the truth about the Minotaur?”
“Only if his lips weren’t moving. But there’s only one way to know, really. I’ll have to organize a new expedition. I’m sure it isn’t going anywhere while we get Bashar out and wrap up this business. I’ll think about the new expedition afterward.”
“To quote you, that sounds like a plan,” Sean said. “And don’t blame yourself for what happened to him. He brought it on himself. If you hadn’t killed him, I would have, as soon as I got control of the Glock.”
42
IT WAS STILL early morning on the day after Carter and Sean had rescued Liam, Beth, and Carmen, when the A-Echelon boat entered the town harbor with a dead man on board. Liam and Beth had been sound asleep when Carter and Sean got Bashar to the boat. With as little commotion as possible, the body was brought aboard and covered with tarps, so the kids wouldn’t see him. They’d had enough trauma.
Mackenzie and the doctor hustled them off the boat and back to the hotel for baths, clean clothes, and a big breakfast. Meanwhile, Carter and Sean had the authorities to deal with. It took most of the day to unsnarl the various jurisdictions’ concerns.
Chief among them were MI5 and MI6, who weren’t happy that they couldn’t close their case with anything more than supposition. To everyone’s disgust, Bashar had never admitted the killings in London. The case would grow cold, and the news media would have a field day. But because Bashar’s death hadn’t happened on British soil, there was nothing they could do but grumble. Secretl
y, the MI5 detectives were relieved that a serial killer was gone forever. Some of them still advocated the death penalty for monsters like that, and they resented the expense of keeping them in prison for the rest of their lives.
Carter and Mackenzie debated whether to stay and let the kids enjoy their planned vacation, but finally decided another time would be better, after they’d had a chance to get over their ordeal. Besides, Mackenzie needed to get back to Freydis with the results of their unplanned experiment, and she needed both Sean and Carter there for examination and study.
The wrap-up was going to take several days, as Greek authorities wanted to debrief everyone on both the Athens team and the Crete team. Mackenzie, her parents, and the children took the jet home, with the pilot who’d been pressed into service to fly it before and a few of the Tala-based Executive Advantage team who’d already been debriefed by the time the plane got to Crete. The family members were exhausted and slept the entire way back.
On Crete, Carter and Sean were being grilled by police, who were baffled at their ability to do what they’d done. It was a tricky situation, because Irene had given them a gag order about the respirocytes. Without being able to talk about them, Carter and Sean couldn’t explain their advantage. Carter had also cautioned Sean not to talk about the Minotaur skeleton, if that’s indeed what it was. He wanted to verify it wasn’t a hoax first. So, they both had markers of deception in their debriefing. Fortunately, though, no guilt indicators. Greek authorities were bewildered.
On the evening of the second day of questioning, Carter got a call from Theo and an invitation to dinner that night. He accepted, and at ten p.m., he and Sean met Theo in what turned out to be a popular restaurant. They had to wait for a while to be seated. In the meantime, they chatted idly, but Theo seemed to be barely able to contain his questions.
