A waiter came by and they ordered another round of Margaritas. “It’s getting easier,” Nicole said lazily.
“What’s getting easier?”
“It’s getting easier to sit here naked and order drinks from a waiter. I have to tell you, I had a little concern whether I could do this. I wondered if the waiter would look me over while I placed my order. And sure enough, he does! But I think it’s the most exhilarating thing I’ve ever experienced. I feel free! It’s so much fun not to have any clothes on!”
“And you can get a tan with no tan lines.”
“Yep. That too. So can you. Don’t burn anything I might need later.” She smiled at him mischievously.
“Dinner’s at seven. What are you wearing? The black outfit or the blue one?”
Nicole smiled and thought for a moment. “I think I’ll wear the fleshtone outfit. I know you’ve seen me in it a lot the last couple of days but I like it.”
“Damn right. I like it too. It’s the best outfit you have!”
“This old thing? It’s been around awhile.” She lay back in the lounge chair and ran her hand up and down her leg.
“Not nearly long enough for me.” Brian leaned over and kissed her. Her nipple brushed against his arm and he kissed her again, more deeply.
She glanced at him. “Better be careful raising that flagpole out here on the beach, Mister Sadler!”
So they decided to take a break and run back up to their suite. That interlude lasted all afternoon and ended with a dip in the Jacuzzi situated in their bedroom by the front door. They opened the curtains and the sliding doors so they could lounge in the tub and watch the ocean. People walked by on the sidewalk ten feet in front of their room but took no notice of their nudity. Of course they didn’t – this was Manana Beach, after all.
Later they sat in the dining room and sipped martinis as they perused the menu. They laughed at how different it felt to be in traditional social settings such as a dining room full of other couples with no one wearing anything at all.
During their vacation they spent long hours talking through their situation. Nothing long-term was worked out. Brian couldn’t move and neither could Nicole. When they were together they were as close as two people could be. And they vowed to keep the spark alive when they were apart. Even though the “see other people” plan was still in place, Brian just wanted to see more of this one.
Epilogue
Sixty-five million years ago an asteroid six miles in diameter, the size of a small town, slammed into what is now the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico. Travelling tens of thousands of miles an hour, it was possibly the most catastrophic impact the earth ever experienced and it left a crater over a hundred miles wide. The force of the collision caused dramatic changes on our planet.
Massive volumes of ash and smoke erupted into the atmosphere of the earth and mega-tsunamis engulfed much of the land. Scientists theorize that the abrupt extinction of the dinosaurs happened because of this event. Most of those creatures, the remains of which were often found with food still in their stomachs, died suddenly. Many experts believe this asteroid impact is the reason.
For perhaps a decade the skies of the entire planet were covered with a blanket of ash. Almost no plants or animals survived. Evolutionists think the ones that did, the smallest of species, arose from the ashes and ultimately repopulated Earth, resulting in the plethora of living things we know today.
There was one other species on our planet when the asteroid struck. Fifteen of these creatures were here –close to the Yucatan, less than three hundred miles from the impact site. They were the most intelligent things on Earth at the time the cataclysm occurred. Others of their type watched helplessly from ten thousand miles above the planet as their compatriots calmly gathered in the pod that had brought them to Earth. They had no emotions – there was no sorrow, no grief. They merely registered the loss of their fellow beings when the catastrophe happened.
For years these creatures had struggled in vain to restart the propulsion device on the craft that might have taken them off the planet. But they had crash-landed only a few hundred years ago in Earth-time. After numerous attempts the creatures had failed to get the oval spacecraft repaired. One of the struts had been ripped off the vehicle and severely damaged in the crash and the beings could not reattach it. Without the fourth strut the propulsion mechanism would not generate power because the craft had to be level for its sophisticated systems to start.
The strut was made from the strongest, densest metal in the universe. Similar to iridium, it had not previously been seen on Earth. Due to its density the eight-foot-long strut weighed nearly ten thousand pounds.
Once they gave up trying to reattach the strut, the tiny capsule-like beings moved it out of their way to a stone altar they constructed using the technique of levitation. Multi-ton rocks moved where the beings directed them, without the use of tools. Same for the strut itself. They merely raised it into the air and shifted it over to the altar.
The creatures also created two glyphs in the walls of a passageway leading from the large area where their craft lay. One glyph depicted the fifteen beings and their spacecraft. The other was intended to tell others in the future where they had come from – a binary star system four light years, or twenty-four trillion miles, away from Earth.
The twenty-foot long egg-shaped vehicle, which had reliably brought these small beings to our solar system and the third planet from the sun, had started its journey on a planet orbiting the double star Alpha Centauri. Its system had fifteen planets and theirs was fourth from their binary sun. Their craft had traveled for nearly two thousand years. The goal was to reach our solar system and to investigate whether it had a planet that could support their form of life. Nothing was wrong with the place from which they had come. It was merely logic that required the creatures to plan for every possible outcome. Their requirements for a new home were few – primarily they required a temperate climate free from poisons and caustic chemicals in the atmosphere. Earth turned out to be the perfect place.
The creatures were far different from the plants and animals that would eventually populate Earth. They were alive in one sense of the word but they were not living things. They were eight-inch long sophisticated machines with artificial intelligence – they were computers that looked like little capsules. Each one had four antennae with knobs on the ends – those resembled hands and feet but they had a different use – they mined data for the beings.
After Earth’s impact with the asteroid the creatures that had watched the scene from space returned to the Alpha Centauri system. They knew it would be a very long time before this green planet could again be of use to them. The atmosphere had to clear. The climate had to warm up.
This advanced civilization of machines had no measure of time – they simply had no use for the concept. Therefore they waited to revisit Earth until it was necessary. At last their planet began to lose its mild climate. The huge double suns pulsated from time to time. As the fluctuations became more frequent the planet these robotic creatures inhabited began to warm. Soon it would be too hot for their sophisticated circuitry. These machines sent another mission to Earth. The goal was to determine if the planet was ready for them.
Sixty-five million years had passed since the previous group of these beings had lain dormant on the earth during the asteroid cataclysm. The second mission arrived around 5000 B.C. as people on Earth measured time. It returned to the site of the previous crash and hovered several miles above the planet.
The place where the ship had crashed was now covered. Ash and debris from the asteroid impact had solidified to form caves. The ruined spacecraft that held fifteen of their fellow creatures was now in an underground cavern.
The beings noted much activity on the planet. It was different than their last visit when enormous dinosaurs roamed the forests. Their imaging systems showed that a variety of things lived here – plants, animals, even humans. Although they had never previously encoun
tered the species homo sapiens, they quickly determined these creatures that walked upright on two appendages were apparently the most intelligent things on the planet. That wasn’t saying much – the level of logical thinking of which these machine creatures were capable was exponentially greater than that of the human beings.
Egyptians, the Aztec, Maya and Incas, and others around the world – the people who built massive structures – pyramids, temples, multi-story buildings, virtual skyscrapers – learned those techniques from these interplanetary travelers. They were taught principles of construction, basic physics and geometry and mathematics. They mastered astronomy and strange things like levitation, hypnotism and mummification.
The beings spent over six thousand years on Earth during their second visit. Their time here stretched from the building of the pyramids in Egypt to the middle of the sixteenth century A.D. Then it was time to return to their solar system, to advise their people that Earth was ready for colonization. Around 1550 as humans measure time, they left for the four thousand year round trip to Alpha Centauri.
The craft that had crashed sixty-five million years ago remained hidden in the jungles of what is now southern Mexico. It contained fifteen beings – fifteen little capsules.
Until Thomas Newton Torrance fell into the pod, that is. Now there were sixteen.
The Bones in the Pit
A Brian Sadler Archaeological Mystery
Book Four in the series
Acknowledgements
Thanks to three people who always proof my work and offer significant comments and feedback. I appreciate my sons Jeff and Ryan for taking time from busy schedules to read every word. Your help is invaluable.
Marjorie, thanks for listening through an important step: reading the entire book aloud. Thanks for tolerating the many hours when I’m writing, and thanks for your opinions and suggestions to make my books better.
I love you all.
Historical Prelude
Oak Island is a strange, mysterious place. It’s been that way for a very long time. On the surface there isn’t much to see. The 150-acre island forty miles southwest of Halifax, Nova Scotia, is covered with the oak trees that gave the place its name. Less than a thousand feet from the mainland, it’s just like three hundred other tiny islands that lie in Mahone Bay. Except for one significant difference. The Money Pit.
The following information is true. In the summer of 1795 a teenager named Daniel McGinnis took a rowboat to the uninhabited island, wandered around and saw a depression in the ground. A huge oak tree with an outstretched limb stood in a clearing. Hanging from the limb was an ancient block and tackle, some people say, the kind used on sailing ships. Directly below the end of the limb was the depression. The place looked to the boy as though someone had purposely cleared some trees and dug a hole, probably a long, long time ago.
Locals frequently told stories of pirates and the area is well known to have been visited by buccaneers. Captain William Kidd was rumored to have buried a fortune in treasure somewhere in the area. People also talked of strange lights seen on uninhabited Oak Island over the years. Maybe it was a crew of pirates swinging lanterns as they hauled a chest to be hidden. Maybe they were lights caused by someone, or something, else. It is likely young Daniel McGinnis thought of those stories as he returned home, very excited at the possibilities of what he had seen.
The teenager brought two friends back the next day along with some tools. They began to dig in the middle of the saucer-like depression. The digging wasn’t difficult; the ground was loosely packed, indicating someone had filled it in at a time in the past. As they dug the boys discovered other evidence that men had been here. Two feet down there was a layer of flat stones not indigenous to Oak Island. It soon became obvious they were clearing a round hole about twelve or thirteen feet in diameter. Pickaxes had been used to build it; their marks clearly became visible as the boys removed the fill dirt.
At around ten feet the boys hit logs that formed a floor. They were firmly inserted into the surrounding wall to create a platform. At this point they must have rushed to remove the logs, thinking they were close to recovering a treasure hidden below. Instead they found more loose dirt and, ten feet further down, another platform of logs.
The job was too big for three teenagers. They left the island, returned home and told a few people about their discovery, hoping to enlist help. For whatever reason they got nowhere. The townspeople weren’t interested, or perhaps they feared the ghost stories and the mysterious lights on Oak Island. For years nothing further happened to the mysterious pit.
Many fascinating books have been written about what became known as the Money Pit. Between 1800 and today several syndicates were formed to excavate the hole.
At ninety feet workmen discovered a two-hundred pound flat stone with mysterious symbols carved into it. It’s enticing – the code is a straightforward one and the translation is generally considered to say “Forty feet below two million pounds are buried.”
Most researchers believe it to be a hoax, probably put at the ninety-foot level in the mid-1800s by men seeking to raise money for yet another treasure syndicate. Regardless of its authenticity it can play no part in answering the riddle of Oak Island – it disappeared around 1920 and no one knows where it is today.
Through boring, some reported finding evidence of a “chest” containing metal at a level around 100 feet below the surface. There also appears to be a concrete vault of some type, lined with wood or filled with wooden chests, below 150 feet.
The hole was expertly engineered to keep would-be treasure hunters confused. Much earlier than 1795, whoever built the Money Pit engineered sophisticated booby-traps in the form of at least two tunnels running into the pit from the nearby shoreline. These tunnels cause the pit to flood to sea level, around thirty feet below the surface of the island. Even in recent times when modern, expensive techniques have been employed to drain the pit, close off the flood tunnels or pump it out, nothing has worked. Lives have been lost and millions of dollars spent. So far all the work that’s been done has generated no answers. Even today nobody knows anything more than the teenaged Daniel McGinnis did about what exists deep in the Money Pit. All people know is that someone went to an incredible amount of time and expense to create an engineering enigma. What does the Money Pit on Oak Island hide? No one knows.
This book builds on one of the many theories that have been postulated over the centuries since this mysterious pit was discovered.
Part One
Chapter One
New York City
The Ford pickup easily made its way down Fifth Avenue, weaving in and out of traffic as New Yorkers habitually do. Hassan Palavi knew the route well – he had practiced it every day since he received this assignment. Hassan was a descendant of a long-ago shah of Iran but he was one hundred eighty degrees opposed to the pro-USA ideals that regime had embraced. He had aligned himself politically, religiously and in every other respect with whichever terror group was in power at the moment. He was a dedicated, committed, well-trained American terrorist.
Hassan’s dream was to see America crushed, on its knees and begging Muslims everywhere for forgiveness. He was willing to give anything to further that dream. And today he would be called upon to make the ultimate sacrifice. Hassan couldn’t have been happier.
During a carefully timed visit that had been arranged by his Al Qaeda handlers, Hassan had been born in the United States to Iranian parents who were in America supposedly visiting relatives. He was therefore a U.S. citizen and carried an American passport. Young men this dedicated to jihad who also were full-fledged Yankees were rare – almost nonexistent. His handlers had cultivated Hassan carefully as he grew from childhood, preparing him for some critical mission down the road. Today had become the time for this American-born terrorist to perform.
Although a rarity such as Hassan was worth his weight in gold to the terrorists who had carefully molded him, his destiny today wouldn’t further
the cause of jihad. He had been sold like a prized stallion. Two million dollars had changed hands. The Al Qaeda group now had money to buy weapons and foment hatred and one man, in exchange, had the talents of a suicide bomber.
Without a care in the world, twenty-three year old Hassan listened to music on the radio of the stolen pickup, smoked one cigarette after another and enjoyed the breeze coming through the open window as he maneuvered down the crowded avenue. He didn’t speed. With the mission he had been given it would be foolish beyond belief to be stopped by the police. Hassan was on a strict timeframe. He had places to be and timing was everything. This job had been planned down to the last second.
He stopped for a red light at 59th Street and checked his watch. He had eleven minutes to go and only five blocks left. He wanted to get past the busy two-way cross street at 57th before stopping. He pulled the pickup all the way to the left lane, passed 57th Street then pulled over to the curb. He had three blocks to go and needed to kill a little time. Hassan glanced in his mirrors and out his front windshield. There were no policemen walking on the sidewalk to create a problem for him – only the hustle and bustle of pedestrian traffic like always during the noon hour in New York City.
In the bed of the pickup truck sat ten ten-gallon canisters filled with gasoline. They were securely tethered to the wall of the truck and wired together, ready for the job ahead. Hassan gave them a quick glance probably for the fiftieth time today, making sure everything was still good to go. And it was.
Brian Sadler Archaeological Mysteries BoxSet Page 67
