by Nick Thacker
Vicente Garza’s team was gone, but Reggie knew better than most that a replacement squad was only a phone call and some training away. There would be some time needed for Garza to train them, but time was something they didn’t have much of.
The longer they waited, the better equipped Ravenshadow would be to fight back. Reggie needed to find them, and bring their leader to justice, before he could rebuild.
And Joshua…
Reggie felt the wave of emotion. He was a good man, a confident and qualified leader, and he had died in vain.
He could still see the black body bag on the gym floor, the bustling crowd of FBI and local SWAT, as well as streams of Philadelphia police, moving around in the cavernous room. The hardwood floor creaked under the weight of the people, and it bled with the real blood that had been shed by both sides.
There would be a funeral, but since Joshua Jefferson had no living relatives, it would be small. Reggie, Ben, Julie, Mr. and Mrs. E, and Roger Derrick. Possibly a few friends he’d made in Brazil.
Reggie didn’t know what religion, if any, Joshua had followed, so their plans for the man’s burial and service were a challenge from the beginning. Mr. E was currently working on it, and he’d informed them all that it would be a simple, easy service that honored the man and his work.
But there was other work to attend to, and Mr. E had sent his wife to Montana to meet up with Reggie and Roger Derrick, who’d also invited along his grandmother. She wouldn’t want to miss this, he’d told Reggie, and Reggie quickly agreed.
They had planned the quick excursion, booked a chartered helicopter to fly them into the same bowl they’d seen the Ravenshadow group land in, and were now standing outside the same small cavern he and Derrick had been led into at gunpoint only two days earlier.
Today, however, they were the only humans in a 20-mile radius. No soldiers, no men trying to kill them, and no hostile helicopter pilots.
“This is it?” Cornelia asked. “I hope you boys are going to carry me inside, ain’t no way I’m crawling in there myself.”
Derrick laughed. “No, Grandma, we had a scan taken of the entire mountainside. There’s a much larger cavern up there.” He pointed up the sloping face of the mountain, almost directly west of where they now stood.
“Well then why in the world didn’t we land up there?” Cornelia asked.
Derrick grabbed her hand and pulled her along, careful to ensure she didn’t lose her balance. The old woman was rugged, easily taking on the moderate hike. Still, at the pace she was going, it was going to take a half-hour to get to the top of the rise and find the cavern’s entrance.
The GPR scan had indeed revealed a large room inside the mountain, hidden beneath the rock. It appeared to be connected to the smaller cavern they had already explored, and if they were lucky, the hole they’d seen would be wide enough to allow them access by descending into the cavern.
Reggie wanted to explore it, and he’d argued that the vein of silver they’d seen in the cave before might just have been hinting at a larger deposit of silver.
Roger Derrick was happy to oblige, considering his FBI team that had finally showed up had no need for his help at this point. They were hard at work trying to locate The Hawk and Morrison, and Derrick’s boss expected him to take some time off and recover for a few weeks.
A spelunking adventure was just the sort of ‘time off’ he’d needed.
They reached the top of the rise in only fifteen minutes, but they stopped there to allow Cornelia Derrick catch their breath.
“So you were in Australia?” Derrick asked Mrs. E.
She nodded. “A reconnaissance mission, really. Had we known what you all would be put through, I never would have flown all the way over there.”
“Did you find anything useful, at least?”
“Not really. I tracked down the pawn broker who’d had her shop vandalized, but she was unaware of the widow’s murder.”
“Did she know what the item was that she bought from the widow?”
“She may have. I do not think she was involved, in the way Daris Johansson was, but simply a close friend of the widow, who felt for the old lady and wanted to make sure she would not go hungry.”
“Which explains why she gave her so much money for the artifact,” Reggie said.
“And why it got Daris’ attention. She must have had The Hawk’s team murder the widow.”
“I believe that was the case, yes,” Mrs. E said. “The widow had ties to the APS, from many years ago, and this item was likely passed down in her family through generations, each of them explaining to the next in line how valuable this little rock was.”
“Unlucky,” Derrick said. “She had no idea how valuable it was. Or that people were willing to kill for it.”
“Do we know what it was?” Reggie asked. “Daris seemed to think it was silver, from the Spanish Treasure Fleet of 1715 that shipwrecked.”
“It is likely,” Mrs. E said, “though we can’t be sure. The silver would indeed be valuable, if from just the historic standpoint. The only treasure found from the wreckage, and it was in Meriwether Lewis’ possession all along.”
“Given to him by Thomas Jefferson.”
Reggie reveled in the historical significance of such a discovery, if it were in fact true. But the piece of silver was gone — Daris’ team had stolen it, and whether they’d ever see it again was something Reggie wouldn't bet on.
They began moving again, this time unimpeded by any hills or difficult bouldering. The path in front of them was flat, easy to move over, and even Cornelia seemed to be enjoying herself. They walked for another ten minutes until Derrick stopped and pointed.
“Over there,” he said. “Look.”
Reggie squinted, but couldn’t see anything. He waited for Derrick to walk over to the location he’d been pointing at, and only when the large man was standing directly in front of it could he see it.
A hole, in the ground, set up on a slight incline. About three feet wide, and only a foot tall.
“That little sliver?” Cornelia said. “Again, I hope you carry me in there.”
“I will, Grandma. But we’re going down by rope.”
Her eyes grew wide. “I’ll tell you what. How about I stay right here, safe on the ground, and play lookout?”
Reggie and Derrick laughed. “Sounds good, Grandma. Don’t want you breaking a nail.”
“Or losing any of your, uh, hairpieces,” Reggie added.
She smiled at him and then sat down right next to the cave. “I can at least hold a rope or something.”
Derrick was already rigging up the climbing rope around a tree opposite the cave entrance. He’d brought plenty of gear, and Reggie grabbed a carabiner and began working on his belay line.
“Last time I was climbing was down in Antarctica.”
“Yeah?” Derrick asked. “You’ll have to tell me about that some time, too.”
“You’ll have to get me drunk first,” Reggie shot back. “And there’s not enough bourbon in the world.”
Derrick laughed, then tossed a rope to Mrs. E. “Here, why don’t you lead? You’ve missed out on all the good stuff so far.”
She grinned, then wrapped the rope around a leg and made a makeshift ‘seat’ from it. She backed up to the sliver, then laid down on the ground and slid backwards to the hole. She went in feet-first, testing the line as Derrick belayed her.
Reggie guided her progress with a flashlight, and he saw that the floor of the cavern was only ten or twelve feet away. She landed, untied herself, and let Derrick pull the rope up for the next spelunker.
Derrick helped Reggie down next, then followed behind by rappelling into the hole using the secured line and a carabiner. Reggie guided him to the floor, and when he’d finished, the three of them safely in the cave, Mrs. E turned on her own flashlight and spun in a slow circle.
Reggie followed her beam, adding to it his own. The cave was nearly a perfect half-circle, cut out of the mountain
by an underground spring-fed river that had dried up long ago. The walls were smooth, and, like the previous cavern they’d explored, there were no stalagmites or stalactites anywhere on the floor or ceiling.
“There,” he said, pointing to the right. The cavern narrowed to a crawl space, then finally to a tiny point, nothing but a black hole in the wall. But from this hole a thin strip of silver and quartz emerged, running the length of the wall and up onto the ceiling.
“That little hole is probably all that connects this cavern with the cave we were in,” he said. “And that’s the little vein of silver we saw. Mostly quartz, I’d guess, but it has some flecks in it.”
“Yeah,” Derrick said. “No wonder the Ravenshadow crew didn’t find anything. There’s no way to get here from there.”
“You boys — and girl — hurry it up down there!” Cornelia shouted, her voice nearly inaudible from outside the cave. “I’m getting hungry, and I didn’t see a Burger King anywhere nearby.”
Reggie smiled, then continued following the strip of sparkling rock to the other side of the cave.
“There’s nothing in here, either,” Derrick said. “But Lewis’ crew could have used it for a good shelter.”
“Sure,” Mrs. E said. “Until it starts raining.”
Reggie realized she was right — even though the water would flow downhill, into the first cave, it would be slowed when it hit the narrow hole connecting the two caverns and start filling up this one, like a downstream lake that had been dammed, filling up until the dam was opened.
“Looks like our sliver goes up and then back down over there,” Reggie said. “Uphill. And there’s another narrow gap, but I think it’s tall enough to crawl through at least.”
The cavern they were in was more of a fattened crescent shape than a bowl, with tapering ends on the east and west sides. He walked up, toward the western side of the cave, and shined a light into the hole.
“Yeah, definitely opens up again back in there,” he said, bouncing the point of his light around on the walls in the room at the other side of the tunnel. “I’m going to push through see if there’s —”
He stopped. Backed up a bit, shined his flashlight back where it was a moment ago.
“What’s up?” Derrick asked.
“I — I think there’s…”
Reggie cut himself short. The flashlight bounced left and right off an object, but he focused on the enlarged shadow it created on the back wall of the next room. He pushed forward on his hands and knees a few more inches, still focusing on the shadow.
Without a doubt, it was an object made by man. The shadow on the wall was of a right angle. The corner of something.
Something that looked like a box.
Chapter SEVENTY-NINE
REGGIE’S HANDS SHOOK AS HE unfastened the clasp on the weathered box. The box itself was in fine condition, as if it had been free of rainfall and spring water the entire time it had been in the cave. But the leather straps that had been tightly fastened around the box were starting to deteriorate, the dried bands nearly pulling apart in some areas.
Reggie could have easily removed the leather straps by simply pulling hard on them, but he was dealing with an antique. An artifact of historic significance, one that would be the talk of the American History community for years.
The Jefferson Treasure is real, he thought. This whole time, Daris was right.
Meriwether Lewis had brought this box here, the single chest making it through a cross-country trek and halfway back before being brought to rest, until this moment, in this cavern.
And Reggie was going to open it.
He had balked at the request, but Derrick told him it was only appropriate for Reggie to do the honors. He’d lost a good man, a teammate, two days earlier, and the memory of Joshua Jefferson deserved to be honored in this way. They’d found it, together, and they deserved to open it together.
Still, Roger Derrick couldn’t stand completely out of the way. He was right next to Reggie, the taller man crouched down and looking over Reggie’s shoulder, a video recording on his phone rolling as Reggie carefully undid the straps.
The first strap fell to the floor, a powdery dust floating up from where it had struck the rock.
“Oops,” Reggie said. “I’ll have to be more careful with the next one. I’d like to open this thing without damaging any of it, so we can at least get it out to the world the way we found it.”
“So we’re not going to loot it, then, and steal the treasure for ourselves?” Derrick asked.
Reggie grinned. “Now that you mention it, sure. How about an 80/20 split?”
Derrick winked. “Sure thing — I did do most of the work, so 80% my way is probably fair.”
Reggie unfastened the second leather strap from the front of the chest and this time carefully rested the leather band on the floor of the cavern.
“Okay,” he said. “Here goes nothing.”
Mrs. E was holding the flashlight for Reggie to see, but she pulled out a phone from her pocket as well and began recording.
He lifted the corners of the box, slowly, ensuring that the chest was structurally sound. Satisfied, he pulled up, allowing the hinges on the back to do their job. The lid creaked, then continued upward in Reggie’s hands.
He opened it fully and Mrs. E moved the flashlight so they could see.
“My God,” Reggie whispered.
Derrick whistled. “Is — is that a human skull?”
Inside the chest, lying in the center of the great box, was a single skull. Worn and faded, the skull seemed to be from a fully grown adult human. It had none of the bleached, clean look of skulls Reggie had seen before, but instead had an almost sullied appearance, as it it had been stripped of its flesh quickly, and thrown into the chest with haste.
Reggie nodded. “Has to be. And look — there’s something written on it.”
Reggie grabbed Mrs. E’s flashlight as they all leaned in for a better look, and sure enough, scrawled on the back side of the cranium, were two words:
Thine Captain.
“Thine Captain?” Reggie asked. “What in the world?”
“No idea,” Derrick answered, “but look at what it’s sitting on.”
Reggie only then noticed that the skull was resting on a thin, sinewy sheet, and that neither the skull nor the sheet were on the floor of the chest.
“It’s… covering something.”
“And I don’t think it’s just a cover,” Reggie said. “Here, hold this guy.”
Without hesitation he reached into the chest and pulled out the skull. Derrick gasped, but cradled the skull in his arms like it was a football and he would be tackled at any moment.
“Look at this,” Reggie said. He had lifted a corner of the thin strip of leathery paper and shined the light onto the underside of it.
“What — what is it?” Derrick asked.
“It’s a map.”
“A map?”
“Yeah, it has drawings and markings on the other side of it, in different colors.”
Derrick whistled again. “And what’s that beneath it? The stuff it’s sitting on?”
Reggie grinned a huge smile that overtook his entire face. He plowed a hand down into the stuff beneath the lifted corner of the sheet and pulled out a few of the items.
Small, roundish coins fell through his fingers. Some were more lumpy, as if they had been poured from a different mold, or just molded poorly, while some had straight sides and had a more polygonal shape.
“Coins. Silver and a few gold,” Reggie said. He dropped all but one and held it up to his face. “From the Spanish Treasure Fleet.”
Chapter EIGHTY
JULIE STOOD OVER BEN’S BED, listening to the sound of the man she loved breathing normally.
Such a small thing, really, she thought. To be enjoying nothing more than the sound of a man’s breathing.
But it was no small thing; Ben had been close to perishing from his gunshot wounds. He had lost so much
blood, so quickly, that the EMTs that had arrived shortly after the FBI men and women had been ready to declare him dead.
But she wouldn’t let them. Neither would Reggie. He was still alive, and he would stay that way. They’d better fix it, or she’d…
She’d passed out after that from her own abdomen wound, and apparently Roger Derrick had caught her before she’d fallen. She woke up in the hospital, three rooms down from Harvey Bennett, a nurse and a doctor standing over her bed. Reggie and Derrick had visited, as well as Mrs. E. Mr. E had even made an appearance on the small TV mounted to the wall above her bed. They’d each recounted the story — the cave with Lewis’ treasure, the skull, the map, and the coins.
Within the silver lies the gold.
And the gold did lie within the silver. Most of the silver coins were, as expected, minted from pure silver, likely from somewhere in South America. But some of the coins weren’t coins at all but some sort of powdery substance that had been dried, fired, and stamped into the circular objects that resembled the rest of the coins.
They were fake, but they weren’t just intended to be counterfeit coins.
Instead, they were intended to be a method of transport for the plant that Daris’ security team had identified: the plant related to the Borrachero found in South America, but this particular strain much more potent — and much more useful as a drug.
Mr. E had the coins sent to a laboratory, which had quickly found the plant’s genus and species and sent back a stern warning about the dangers of its unregulated usage. It was an interesting concept, to be sure: hiding a drug within another treasure. But the team knew the real truth:
The Jefferson Treasure was not the real treasure at all.
It was just the map.
Thomas Jefferson had paid Meriwether Lewis to hide the map, to keep a record of its location but not reveal to the world what the second president had possession of. The secret died with him, relegated to a cave in Montana and a very select few people in his line of succession at the American Philosophical Society.
But Lewis wasn’t comfortable playing the game. He knew that a weapon of this caliber, of this immense power, was not a secret he was willing to keep. So he had traveled back to Washington, DC to document his knowledge with the powers-that-be of the age.
