by Sean Ellis
“Shit,” blurted one of Leeds’ gunmen, stepping forward and racking a round into the chamber of his pump-action shotgun. “I'll do him.”
“No.” Leeds didn’t raise his voice; he didn’t have to. The man quickly relented, backing away as Leeds continued. “No, I’ve had my little joke. You didn’t think I’d hand you a loaded gun, and take the chance that you would shoot me with it?”
Higgins sagged a little.
“When your end comes, Kismet,” Leeds continued, his voice still dripping with menace, “it will be far more...imaginative...than the swift release of a bullet in the brain.” He turned to his subordinates. “Tie them up.”
“Wait,” protested Higgins, recovering a little of his nerve. “I meant what I said. You have to believe me.”
“I don’t have to do anything,” countered Leeds. “As it happens, I haven’t figured out what to do with you. I’ll admit; your change of heart, if sincere, surprised me. Right now, I haven’t the time to figure out where your loyalties really lie, but soon...Well, I’ll have an eternity.”
One of Leeds’ men produced a roll of silver duct tape and commenced wrapping several thicknesses around Kismet’s wrists—joined behind his back—and ankles. He repeated the process with a scowling but quiet Annie, but then, following a gesture from Dr. Leeds, allowed Higgins to remain free. The former Gurkha chose not to look Kismet or his daughter in the eye, but sank to the ground, and sat with his head resting against his knees as if exhausted or perhaps nauseous.
Kismet still wasn’t sure what to make of the earlier scene. He still couldn’t believe that Higgins had betrayed them; there had to be some other explanation, and yet, he had pulled that trigger. If not for Leeds’ sleight-of-hand, rendering the weapon harmless, Higgins would have taken his life.
Kismet drew comfort from a single fact: he and Annie were still alive; anything was possible.
As soon as Annie was bound fast, Leeds waved his men off and knelt in front of Kismet. “Now, where is it?”
“Where is what?” Kismet replied with mock innocence.
Leeds calmly extended his maimed right arm and placed the tip of the hook in Kismet’s left nostril. Despite his determination not to give the occultist the satisfaction of a reaction, Kismet instinctively tried to lever his body up and away from the pinpoint of pain that radiated across his face.
“It’s out there,” Higgins said, pointing the lake. “Just offshore. That’s all he knows.”
Leeds stared at Higgins for a moment, weighing the veracity of the admission, or perhaps just trying to decide whether or not to continue tormenting his prisoner, then gave the hook a twist and let Kismet’s head fall away. The occultist rose disdainfully and began snapping orders to his confederates. When he finished, all but two of the men vanished back into the woods. Leeds and Elisabeth remained behind, as did his two newest recruits—Russell and Higgins.
Kismet could taste blood in his mouth, trickling down the back of his throat from the scrape in his nostril,minor though it was, the fresh wound somehow hurt more than the dull throbbing in his leg where the alligator had grabbed him. He spat a bright red gobbet in Leeds’ direction, not quite close enough to invite a reprisal, but nevertheless a gesture of contempt.
“I’m curious about something, Leeds. How exactly do you plan to keep control of the Fountain once you find it? I don’t care how persuasive Lizzy there is, I don’t think the government is going to put you in charge. Or are you and the ‘white power’ boys going to launch the next Civil War from here?”
Leeds cocked his head sideways thoughtfully. “The Fountain? You disappoint me Kismet. I would have thought you’d have figured it out already. The Fountain of Youth is nothing more than an intermediate goal; a means to an end. I thought I explained all this. The Fountain is just a by-product of something far more important.”
“You want the source,” Kismet said, thinking out loud. “A Seed from the original Tree of Life. Take that and you can make a Fountain of Youth anywhere you like.”
“Yes. But it is so much more than that. It is the source of...of everything. Unlimited power.”
“Oh my God,” Annie whispered.
Leeds licked his lips hungrily. “Indeed.”
She blinked at him and then seemed to regain a little of her steel. “I meant, ‘oh my God, he’s a nutter.’”
Leeds just laughed.
* * *
Kismet and Annie, still bound, were bodily carried along the top of the serpent mound to an idling pontoon boat. The craft, a commercial model used for chartered fishing trips, could comfortably seat a dozen passengers and crew, but as they were dropped unceremoniously on the deck, Kismet saw that much of the available space was filled with bright yellow air tanks and other pieces of SCUBA equipment. Four of Leeds’ hirelings crowded aboard; the rest melted back into the woods.
Kismet mentally arranged the boat’s occupants like pieces on a chessboard, testing different strategies for escape. Leeds’ thugs were pawns, but deadly ones, who would probably kill without hesitation. But what about the rest? What about Russell, could he be turned with an appeal to reason? Was Higgins beyond redemption, or would he choose to put his daughter’s safety above all else, even as he had apparently done when deciding to surrender in the face of overwhelming odds? With Russell and Higgins on his side, they might be able to overpower the four hired guns; Leeds and Elisabeth didn’t pose much of a physical threat. If Kismet tried to escape with Annie, would the two men try to stop him, or would they throw in their lot with he and Annie?
When the last of the group had crowded onto the boat, the skipper—one of Leeds’ men—nudged the throttle on the outboard and steered toward the spot where they deduced the entrance to the cavern would be found. The boat had been equipped with a very sophisticated sonar DownScan Imaging Fishfinder; the video screen painted an image of the bottom—and what lay beneath the soft accretion of sediment—in stunning hues of color. But as amazing as the technology was, it only served to verify that Kismet’s earlier conclusion about the site was dead-on; at the exact spot where the serpent mound’s tale and head would have met, the sonar identified a large round hole in the limestone of the lake bottom—a submerged cenote.
There were probably dozens just like it in the lake. Northern Florida was shot through with limestone caves like the holes in a wheel of Swiss cheese. Nevertheless, Kismet knew that this was the one; this was the entrance to the cavern described in Fortune’s letter, the place where Hernando Fontaneda had discovered the Fountain of Youth.
Leeds seemed to recognize it as well. He ordered his man to keep the boat directly above the opening. As they circled the site, Russell took off his uniform, unselfconsciously stripping down to his underwear, and then pulled on a “shorty” wetsuit. Meanwhile, Leeds addressed Kismet.
“Do you know why I didn’t just let Mr. Higgins kill you?” Kismet got the sense that it was a rhetorical question, and before he could even begin to formulate an answer, Leeds continued. “I probably should have. Ian said I should kill you—”
“The big guy with the silver tooth?” Kismet replied innocently. “I noticed that he didn’t seem to like me very much. What did I ever do to him?”
“Ah, under different circumstances, your ignorance would be amusing. Whatever happened to Ian anyway?”
“Search me. Maybe he was jealous of the magician’s new assistant and decided to hit the pavement.”
Leeds’ eyes narrowed a little. “You’re alive because you have the devil’s own luck. No, strike that. Luck has nothing to do with it. You have a touch of the divine in you.”
The comment hit Kismet like a slap.
“They never told you, of course,” Leeds continued. “You are their grand experiment. If you knew what you are truly capable of, it would skew the data, so to speak.”
Kismet felt like screaming at him. Who? Who is running this experiment? How do you know all this? Who in the hell is Prometheus? He shrugged, saying nothing.
“Ah, and that’s what I’m doing right now, isn’t it?” The occultist chuckled. “It’s fitting really. They have used you to locate the ancient mysteries so they could hide them, and in so doing, hid your own true nature from you. It’s appropriate, don’t you think, that I should reveal their secret in order to use you for my own ends.”
Russell finished pulling on the SCUBA gear and promptly stepped out over the side of the boat, dropping flippered feet first into the lake. He bobbed there for a few seconds, making final adjustments to his mask and regulator, then swam close to the boat. There was a reel of heavy nylon line attached to his belt and Russell secured the loose end to a grommet on the deck of the boat using a small carabiner.
“’I’m ready,” he announced.
Leeds was still looking at Kismet. He shook his head. “Listen to me, prattling on about irrelevant things. I was talking about why I haven’t killed you. You are still alive because you have a...a talent...yes, that’s the word. You have a talent for delivering the goods.
“We both know it’s down there, so by all rights, I should kill you now just so you don’t queer my plans with that devilish luck of yours. But no, I think it’s better to use your gift to my own advantage.” Leeds clapped him on the shoulder. “Cheer up, Kismet. If you really are what they think you are, then you’ll probably be the first one to see the Fountain of Youth.”
“What does that mean?”
Leeds nodded to his nearest hireling, and the man stepped forward, brandishing a cheap- looking switchblade which he used to slice through the tape holding Kismet’s hands together. Kismet flexed his arms for a moment, trying to restore the circulation to stiff muscles, but also stalling for time—time in which to figure out how to transform Leeds’ reprieve into an opportunity to turn the tables.
“So, you want me to dive down and find the entrance?”
Leeds’ man put away the switchblade and then bent over the pile of diving equipment. A moment later, he produced a weight belt which he buckled in place around Kismet’s waist.
“Something like that.” Leeds smiled his death’s head grin. “Once you are inside the cavern, should you succeed in reaching it, you will be on your own for a few moments. My man will follow behind you, and if he does not signal back promptly, I shall feed Miss Crane to the alligators. Understood?”
Annie seemed confused by the exchange and glanced at Kismet. He was trying to think of something to say, some words of assurance, but before anything came to him, a shove from Leeds’ goon pitched him over the edge of the boat and into the water beside Russell. Unlike Russell, who wore a bib-like buoyancy compensator, Kismet’s only equipment was a twenty-two pound weight belt. He sank like a stone. The last thing he heard was Annie's scream of outrage, before water filled his ears.
The ballast pulled him into the cenote faster than he would have believed. The pressure built in his ears rapidly; his head felt as if it were about to burst. The unexpected shove had caught him completely unprepared. He’d gasped in the instant that he hit the water, but had inhaled almost as much water as air. He flailed uselessly to get control, coughing up great clouds of bubbles from his saturated lungs, as his involuntary descent continued unchecked.
He struggled for the clasp of the weight belt; it was fastened at the small of his back, and try as he might, he could not seem to loosen it.
He saw a blur of illumination floating nearby—Russell, just a few feet away, inverted and kicking with his flippers to match Kismet’s rate of descent into the dark hole. He couldn’t believe that the officer would just let him drown, but Russell made no move toward him. His attention seemed to be fixed on the shadowy recesses of the cenote.
Kismet felt his chest start to convulse, both from the water he had ingested and the need to inhale. His ears popped, briefly relieving the agony of pressure against his skull, and in that moment, he crashed into something.
The sides of the cenote were dark and ominous, and just barely out of reach, but jutting out from the submerged face was an outcropping of slimy limestone. He had slammed into the protrusion, but was now beginning to drift away from it. He stretched out his fingers, touching the stone, but was unable to grip the slippery surface. His fingernails scraped through a layer of algae, then slipped free.
He dropped rapidly again, the pressure building in his ears. His outstretched fingertips scraped against the vertical surface of the sheer rock face, but there was nothing to grab onto, nothing to halt or reverse his descent. He tried paddling with his hands and kicking with his bound feet, to get closer to wall and find some sort of handhold.
The pressure in his head became unbearable. He gave up trying to swim. A primal, instinctive response forced him to grip his ears with either hand. He snorted through his nose, but the air pocket inside his head resisted. Suddenly he had no more breath with which to combat the increasing pressure. His lungs were empty; his diaphragm was quivering in his abdomen with the need to draw breath.
The pressure barrier broke of its own accord. Kismet opened his mouth to cry out as water rushed painfully into his ear canal, but there was nothing with which to form a scream. His head felt as if it had been ripped apart by the sudden release, and his ears were filled with an agonized ringing.
Then, miraculously, his hand caught on another ledge. A horizontal fissure split the rock face directly before him. The lip to which he was clinging was the bottom of that fissure, but he could make out no details as to what lay inside the impenetrable shadows of the recess.
He tried to reach into the fissure, but again the weight belt pulled him away. His handhold failed and he tumbled away from the ledge. The darkness of the lake bottom seemed to rise up to greet him into its eternal embrace.
When he hit the lake bottom, Kismet immediately sank up to his knees in deep muck, while the resulting cloud of silt completely shrouded him in blackness.
Impotent rage consumed him. He wrenched with his legs, trying to free them from the suction of the submerged mud. An involuntary gasp brought a trickle of water into his windpipe, triggering a violent paroxysm, yet there was no air in his lungs with which to cough. In desperation, he plunged his hands into the mud, tearing at his boots, trying to pull his feet free, but his fingers could find no purchase, and he fell backwards into the mud.
The shift in position created just enough of a gap to allow water to flow between his foot and the sucking mud, and just like that, his left foot came free, not only of the mud but also the duct tape that had bound his ankles together. With renewed hope, he wrenched his right leg. The boot stayed fixed in place, but the laces relented and his right foot was free as well.
Yet he was still a prisoner of the bottom. The mud surrounded him; everywhere he put a hand or foot, it threatened to hold him fast. It would do no good to extricate himself from the mud if he could not swim to the surface, yet even with his feet free to kick, he just wasn’t strong enough to swim to the surface with the added ballast of the weight belt. He tore at it, felt it slip around until the clasp was in the front. It came apart with astonishing ease and he kicked up, away from the mud.
He started to sink immediately. There was no air left in his lungs to buoy him up. He fought and thrashed, trying to climb through the water to the surface, but to no avail. Because he was immersed in darkness, he couldn’t tell that his vision was tunneling as his brain started to shut down. There was nothing at all to mark his slide into unconsciousness or that moment when his need to breathe became absolute and he took a deep, involuntary breath.
* * *
Through the crystalline waters of the lake, Russell’s bright dive light, illuminated every detail of Kismet' struggle for the passengers on the boat. When Kismet’s grip on the ledge failed, Annie cried aloud, “Pull him up!”
She turned to Leeds, pleading. “He's no good to you dead.”
The occult scholar watched without expression as Kismet disappeared in a cloud of silt upon touching down at the bottom. “It would seem I overestimated him.”
“You can still save him,” she cried. “Please!”
“She’s right, Leeds.” It was her father, unexpectedly rising to her defense. “He’s more useful to us alive. Bring him up and let him try again.”
Leeds looked away from the lake and fixed Higgins with an imperious stare. “Why?”
“You wanted him to find the cavern with the Fountain.”
“And he has. The ledge where his hold failed is surely the cave entrance. Major Russell will run a line inside and explore the interior to see if there are dry spaces beyond. We are nearly there!” Leeds seemed positively exultant.
Horrified and helpless, Annie could only stare into the depths and the billowing sediment cloud that concealed Kismet’s fate.
SIXTEEN
Kismet’s next memory was of coughing violently, vomiting up water from his lungs, as he lay on a hard sloped surface. He was vaguely aware of a firm hand on his right arm, but his body continued to be racked with spasms and for a moment, that single imperative was the only thing that mattered. Finally, as the fit began to subside, he began looking around.
He didn’t think about the fact that he could see until his eyes fell on a bright waterproof flashlight dangling above the gray-white stone surface beneath him. In its glow, he could make out the rest of his environment; he was in a low ceilinged tunnel—a mere crack in the limestone—that sloped up and away from the lake water, which still lapped gently at his feet. The light was tethered to the belt of the wet-suited figure leaning over him and still gripping his arm.
“I think you’re going to make it,” Russell announced.
“You saved me,” Kismet said, between coughing fits. “What the hell did you do that for?”
The major eased back on his haunches. “I think we both know that this isn’t going to end the way Leeds has planned. He’s bitten off a lot more than he can chew.”
“So, where does that leave you exactly? You save me, and then when the feds arrive and start arresting everyone, you can claim that you were one of the good guys?”
