by Sean Ellis
Russell fired into the water, dangerously close to both the ailing man and Kismet’s raft. One of the squirming shapes exploded in a spray of viscous blood, but the animal continued to thrash violently. Russell fired again and again, emptying the magazine into the water.
Kismet did his best to ignore the tumult outside the raft. With painstaking slowness, he drew his kukri, but even that slight bit of movement caught the viper’s attention. It coiled and struck...
The dripping fangs closed around the steel of Kismet's knife, and as it squeezed down, the razor edge sliced deep into its head.
With a flick of his wrist, Kismet hurled the mortally wounded snake back into the swamp.
While Russell and his men drove off the rest of the snakes, Annie’s boat crew arrived to pulled the wounded soldier into their raft. The man was already clenching his teeth in agony and swearing at his ill luck.
Kismet heard Annie asking: “Will he be all right?”
Actual deaths from snake venom were rare, especially in the United States, but the grim expression of the unit medic as he hastily administered an antihistamine injection filled Kismet with dread.
The man—Specialist Jeremiah Olson—was still alive and conscious when they reached the hastily arranged rendezvous with the rest of the platoon and the Humvee that was waiting to take him to the hospital. There was every reason to believe that the man would survive, but the tragic incident had dealt a savage blow to the morale of the expedition, crushing all hope of finding their goal.
* * *
Russell waited until they were back at the camp, in the tent and more or less out of earshot from his men, to vent his rage. “I am done with this shit, Kismet. You will tell me what in the hell you are looking for, or I will leave you here, right here, right now, orders be damned.”
Kismet sighed. He understood how the major felt; it was a soldier’s job to follow orders, even if those orders didn’t make sense, and it was the commander’s job to send men into harm’s way, without knowing the reason for the sacrifices that would be made. But that didn’t make it any less of a burden.
On the other hand, would learning the truth about the mission—about the mythical nature of the their goal—put Russell at ease, or make the accident on the water seem even more senseless?
“All right, Major. You probably are going to wish I hadn’t told you this, but here goes. You probably know the story of how Florida was discovered, right?”
Russell's eyes narrowed suspiciously. “Spanish explorers, looking for the Fountain of Youth...Wait...is that what you are looking for?”
His tone was incredulous, yet there remained an undercurrent of hope that belied his skepticism.
Kismet gave him a short version of events, starting with the correspondence from the man who had called himself Fortune, and leading up to the discovery of Fontaneda’s diaries. He spoke of Leeds only as a rival explorer, omitting mention of all that had happened on The Star of Muara. Finally, he showed Russell the map, cut from the Spaniard’s own skin.
“You don’t seem crazy,” Russell finally concluded. “But is any of this even possible? Eternal youth?”
Russell’s question, strangely enough, was the one part of the mystery Kismet had not allowed himself to dwell on. From the moment the search had begun, his one thought was to beat Leeds to the prize. He had accepted Fontaneda’s account on faith, focusing on finding the cavern, without indulging in “what if” fantasies about living forever or saving the world. He spread his hands, shrugging. “I’m no biologist, but it seems conceivable that some natural property of the water from this Fountain might stimulate new cell growth.”
“It could heal wounds?”
“According to Fontaneda, almost instantaneously. But I’m sure if it exists, there’s a rational scientific explanation. It’s not magic.”
“I understand now why this Dr. Leeds is willing to risk so much to find it first. And why we have to make sure he doesn’t.” Russell leaned over the map table. “So, where do we go from here?”
Before Kismet could answer, Russell’s radio squawked. Kismet expected to hear a report from the medic who had gone with the injured soldier to the hospital, but instead he heard the voice of the platoon leader—Lieutenant Pierson—who had gone with Higgins in the second search team, eagerly announcing: “Sir, I think we’ve found something.”
* * *
Although there were only a few hours of daylight remaining, Kismet, Annie, and Russell, along with a security detail, set out in the two remaining rafts and paddled for the GPS coordinates Pierson had supplied. About forty-five minutes later, they spied the rafts beached along a low delta that barely protruded from the water’s surface.
Higgins was waiting for them, and anxiously guided them to an elevated clearing surrounded by cypress trees where the rest of the group was waiting. “Well?” Russell asked. “What did you find?’
Pierson almost chortled. “You’re standing on it, sir.”
Kismet looked down, and then let his eyes roam the shadowy edges of the clearing, expecting...no, hoping, to see a marker of some kind, a petroglyph perhaps...the ancient equivalent of a sign that would point the way to their goal. Then he realized that Pierson had been speaking literally. The clearing in which they stood was almost perfectly square, about ten yards on each side, and was a good thirty-six inches higher than the rest of the land mass.
“It’s a mound!” Kismet realized aloud.
Higgins nodded. “Just like your bloody pyramids. Only this one wasn’t marked on the map.”
“No, but Fontaneda spoke of a village near the...” Kismet glanced at the waiting soldiers and censored himself. “Near the entrance to the cavern. He wrote that, after they had exterminated the inhabitants, the village was overgrown. I think this mound was a part of that village. They probably built up the land here to escape the effects of seasonal flooding.”
He clapped Higgins on the shoulder. “This is an important clue, Al. Well done.”
“Can you use this to find the cavern entrance?” Russell asked.
“I won’t make any promises, but I think we just got a lot closer.”
Russell seemed satisfied with that. “Let’s head back while we’ve still got light.”
The officer then took something from his pocket. At first, Kismet thought it was the GPS unit, but a second glance revealed that it was a satellite phone.
Russell caught Kismet’s apprehensive glance. “Orders. I have to check in daily with headquarters. I should have called as soon as we sent Olson to the hospital, but then all of this happened. At least now there’s some good news to go with the bad.”
Kismet nodded, but was still a little disturbed by the revelation that Russell had been maintaining regular contact with his superiors. In hindsight, he should have realized that the major would be required to do so, but now he regretted having revealed the true nature of their quest.
* * *
Later that evening, Russell’s sat phone rang again. He recognized the number on the caller ID display, and answered with a simple, “Hello.”
“You’ve done well, Major.” The voice on the other end belonged to the same person that had spoken to him a few nights earlier, after the abortive attack on the train. Now as then, the caller came directly to the point. “The mission has changed. I have new orders for you.”
FOURTEEN
They resumed the search the next day from the mound Higgins group had discovered.
Using the rafts to shuttle between land masses, they expanded the search outward in concentric circles and found still more evidence of ancient human habitation.
Kismet kept track of the mound locations on the map and soon had a rough plan of what the native village would have looked like in Fontaneda’s day. On paper, it seemed to point like an arrow toward the lake.
“Do you think that’s where we’ll find it?” Russell asked.
Kismet shrugged. “I’m cautiously optimistic.”
The officer conside
red this answer for a moment. “After what you told me last night...” He paused and glanced around to make sure that none of his men could overhear. “About what it is you’re really looking for...”
He stopped again, as if trying to figure out how to broach a very sensitive subject. “Don’t get me wrong. I have absolute trust in my soldiers. I’ve served with a few of them for more years than I can count...But something like this is...well, let’s just say I don’t think they have the security clearance for it.”
Kismet held the other man’s gaze. “I appreciate your help so far, Major. But this is not and has never been a military operation. Your men don’t need security clearance. And if this turns out to be the real deal, then it won’t matter if one of them leaks it to the press or posts it on Facebook. I’ll be telling the world anyway.”
“Until you do, I think the fewer people who know the exact location—when we find it that is—the better. I’m going to have Lieutenant Pierson pull back and establish a perimeter. I’ll stay with the three of you and we’ll keep looking.”
“The search might go faster with more sets of eyes looking.”
“I’m not so sure about that, especially as none of us really knows what to look for anyway.” With that, Russell moved off to brief the platoon leader, and a few minutes later, the soldiers departed.
Kismet climbed into a raft with Russell, Higgins and Annie took another, and they began paddling toward the lake.
Lake George was clear and shallow, averaging only about eight feet in depth. At the south end, where it was fed by the St. Johns River—the channel through which the search party had just entered—there was a fan-like accretion of sediment. Throughout Florida’s history, the river had been an important commercial route, necessitating occasional dredging which altered the natural flow regime. With the decline of steamboat traffic, the river and lake remained popular with recreational boaters. Management practices were now less intrusive, but frequent seasonal storms that hammered into the peninsula, coupled with the steadily rising sea level due to global climate change, meant that Lake George today bore little resemblance to the lake Fontaneda had discovered. That, Kismet believed, was the reason why they hadn’t yet found the cavern; the geography had changed, the entrance to cavern, which had been on dry land when the Spaniard first entered it, was now out there, under the waters of Lake George.
They decided to start close to shore, rowing back and forth, making a visual sweep of the area. Kismet was contemplating ways to expedite the survey—SCUBA gear, or even something as simple as a depth finder—when Annie called out, directing their attention to something on the shore.
It was another mound, a bank, waist-high earth lushly covered in vegetation jutting from between the trees and sloping away into the water. But unlike the other mounds, which had been rectangular, suggesting platforms on which houses might once have been built, this elevated earthwork was narrow and deliberately sinuous, undulating back and forth as it disappeared into the woods.
“Is this it?” Annie whispered, her voice full of nervous tension. “Have we found it?”
Before Kismet could answer, the distinctive crack of a rifle shot echoed across the tops of the trees.
The shift to a defensive stance was immediate, but after a few seconds, when the sound did not repeat, Russell took out his radio and keyed the mic. “Pierson, give me a sitrep.”
The only response was silence. Russell tried again, and with each failed attempt to make contact, the furrow between his eyebrows deepened. Finally, he turned to the others. “I don’t know what’s wrong with the comms. We should still be in range...I’m going to investigate. You three stay here.”
“Is it wise to separate?” Kismet asked.
Russell shrugged, but then managed a wan smile. “Probably not. Don’t worry. I won’t take any chances. And I think you three can take care of yourselves.” He nodded to Higgins and his big Kimber rifle.
Before climbing into the raft, he marked the location on his GPS. “I’ll meet you back here in, say an hour? Any longer than that, and...” He shrugged and then pushed off, paddling in deliberate strokes for the river channel.
Kismet watched for a few minutes before turning to his companions. “Al, what do you think?”
The former Gurkha shook his head. “Something’s wrong.”
Annie folded her arms across her chest. “Do you think it’s Leeds?”
Kismet didn’t want to believe that the occultist had somehow tracked them down once again. Moreover, as ruthless as Leeds was, Kismet had trouble believing that man would go up against the army.
“So what do we do?”
Kismet frowned. They were close; he could feel it.
“This mound is shaped like a serpent, just like the one on Fontaneda’s map. The snake wasn’t just supposed to represent the river; it also showed what to look for.” He pointed into the woods. “The head of the snake is where ‘X’ marks the spot. So, we find it...fast. And then get the hell out of here until we can figure out what’s going on.”
Father and daughter nodded in agreement, and Kismet, borrowed pistol in hand, led the way into the woods on the back of the snake. The trees seemed to fold over them, shutting out the light of day and plunging them into a world of shadow and silence. The ground to either side of the snake mound was saturated, and in some places there were deep, reeking pools of stagnate water, buzzing with mosquito larvae. About twenty yards in, Higgins gestured for an abrupt halt, and then pointed down into the murk. At first, all Kismet saw was the dark water and the browns and greens of the forest floor, but as he stared, he saw the statue still form of an alligator—at least eight feet from tip to tail—patiently waiting for something to come within reach of its powerful jaws. They gave the beast a wide berth and pushed forward, but a few moments later, they emerged from the trees and found themselves staring once more out at the waters of Lake George, about a hundred feet east of where they’d gone into the woods. The mound continued out into the lake and disappeared like the first.
“It’s a loop,” Annie exclaimed.
Something was nagging at Kismet’s subconscious, trying to bubble to the surface. The snake, writhing, but ultimately coiling around in a circle to meet itself—“Of course!” he exclaimed. “It’s an Ouroboros. Like Leeds’ ring, the snake, devouring its own tail.”
“Then the entrance is...where? Out there?” She pointed to the lake, approximating a point midway between the ends of the earthwork serpent.
Kismet was about to answer in the affirmative when a nearby tree branch exploded in a spray of woodchips, followed almost simultaneously by the report of a gun.
In unison, they dove for cover, practically tumbling onto the slope of the mound, even as more shots started to thunder from the woods. Clods of earth and splinters of wood showered down on them, and the air was filled with the smell of fresh cut wood and cordite. The shooters were close.
Too damn close, Kismet thought.
It had to be Leeds’ men, though he couldn’t imagine how they had slipped past the soldiers, or how they thought they were going to escape. It didn’t seem possible that the entire platoon could have been wiped out; they’d only heard a single shot...
The shot had been a signal. As soon as he realized that, the other pieces began falling into place, even as the forest around them continued to explode with violence.
A signal to Russell, letting him know that the trap was laid.
Was it Leeds’ men shooting at them? Or was it the army?
“Al! We can’t stay here.”
“Agreed.” The Gurkha was on his belly, the rifle cradled in his arms as he scanned the top of the mound in all direction, trying to figure out where the fire was coming from. “But I think they’ve got us boxed in.”
“Then we swim.”
Higgins looked at him in astonishment and then glanced at the water. About thirty feet of murky swamp was all that separated them from the open waters of the lake. They would be exposed, but it was t
he only avenue of escape that didn’t require them to run a deadly gauntlet of enemies.
“Give me the rifle,” Kismet shouted. “I’ll cover the two of you.”
“Like hell you will. I’m a much better shot than you, and you’re a better swimmer. Take my daughter and get the hell—”
Suddenly the dark water at their feet erupted, as something long and scaly burst onto the slope. Kismet barely had time to turn his head to look before the beast’s jaws closed on the meaty part of his calf, and then, as quickly as the attack had begun, it ended with the alligator snatching its prize back into the swamp.
As the water closed over him, the spike of pain through his right leg recalled to Kismet’s mind everything he knew about alligators—about their powerful jaws, about how they liked to drown their prey and leave them submerged, sometimes for days, before eating them.
He also recalled watching gator wrestlers subdue the thickly muscled creatures, almost effortlessly holding those powerful jaws because while an alligator’s bite strength was almost unparalleled in the natural world, it had almost no muscles for opening its mouths.
As the scaly black monster thrashed deeper into the swamp, dragging him toward the deeper waters of the lake where the killing would surely occur, Kismet wondered if that bit of trivia would be enough to save his life.
* * *
Annie was still gaping in disbelief at the suddenness of the attack that had snatched Kismet away when more scaly shapes broke from the murk below them. Despite the bullets scorching the air overhead, she instinctively climbed higher, away from the reach of the slavering reptilian jaws. A pair of alligators waited below them, one still half submerged, but the creatures did not advance. The water was their element, and they were nothing if not patient.
Kismet’s pistol had slipped from his grasp during the attack and now lay a few feet away from Annie. She scooped it up and was about to fire down at the nearest gator, when the Kimber boomed in her ear and the top of the beast’s head exploded. It thrashed violently in its death throes, forcing the other alligator to retreat.
