“There are a dozen passages. Most of them are meaningless, but Matthew 6:21and Genesis 31:21, when used in conjunction with the other clues Fahimah found, give the precise location for the treasure.”
“It’s been a while since I was in Sunday school,” said O’Reilly. “Care to share with us the meaning of the two passages?”
“Sorry, sir. Mathew 6:21 says, ‘For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.’ Clearly, this is a reference to the bittacle, which Fahimah said guided Thomas’ heart. The next passage, Genesis 31:21 reads, ‘So he fled with all that he had; so he arose and crossed the Euphrates River, and set his face toward the hill country of Gilead’. Now obviously, they never crossed the Euphrates and walked among the hills of Gilead, but they did have to cross the Lofa River, and now I present to you the hills of Gilead—or at the very least, some hills in Liberia.” With that, Donaldson brought up the image of rolling, tree-covered hills about three hundred meters back from the river.
“So they buried the bulk of their treasure long before they were massacred,” said Jen, looking up at the screen.
“I guess they intended to come back and pick it up after they had made it out of the jungle,” said Fahimah.
“Why didn’t Thomas ever come back for the fortune?” pondered Jen.
“He was rich already, and was probably so riddled with disease from his time in the jungle that he realized that to go back would be pointless,” said Donaldson.
O’Reilly had heard enough. “Mike, get the GPS coordinates of those hills to Ryan and Yuri right away. This changes everything on the ground. I’m going to make a few calls to some old friends and see what they can do for us.”
“General, if it’s all right with you, I’d like to stay here until everyone is back safely across the border in Sierra Leone,” said Jen to O’Reilly.
“I can set up a spare cot in my office,” said Fahimah, “as I’m not going anywhere either.”
“Of course, you’re more than welcome to stay here with us,” replied O’Reilly. With that, he left the room and headed to his office to make his calls.
“Thanks,” said Jen to Fahimah. “After all that has happened in the past day or so, I don’t think I could have gone home to an empty apartment and felt safe.”
Fahimah reached over and patted Jen’s arm. “Come on, let’s find us both something to sleep on while Mike calls Yuri and Ryan.”
32
Dig site
Lofa River, Liberia
The news that the Liberians were looking in the wrong spot came as a surprise to Mitchell. He, like everyone else, had assumed that Lucifer’s men in their long boats would have carried the treasure right up until the day they were massacred. Mitchell checked the GPS coordinates provided by Donaldson and saw that the hills where the treasure was hidden were about sixty kilometers south of his present position. A plan slowly began to form in his mind. He thanked Donaldson for the information and asked about Jen and Fahimah and was relieved to hear that they were all right and were waiting with him at Polaris headquarters until the mission was over.
Mitchell ended the call and looked over at the horizon. The first signs of dawn were already visible. A pinkish light slowly edged up in the east. He drummed his fingers on his leg, lost in thought. With a grin from ear to ear, he had it. He knew precisely what he had to do. He called Yuri and found him wide-awake, already doing his pre-flight checks. It was as if Yuri had read his mind. He gave the coordinates for a pick-up point and directions for some equipment that he wanted Yuri to bring. He made it clear that he wanted Yuri to meet him at the pick-up point in precisely ninety minutes’ time.
He looked over at Sam and Cardinal. “Folks, I’m going to leave you for a few hours,” said Mitchell, wishing that it wasn’t so. With Jackson held prisoner, he would have preferred to stick around, but he had no choice—not if he wanted to free everyone unhurt.
“What gives?” asked Sam, knowing the Mitchell wouldn’t just take off without a good reason.
He glanced over and saw that Emily and Trang were still asleep. Mitchell told his friends what he knew about the true location of the treasure and what he intended to do about it.
“So what do you want us to do while you’re gone?” asked Cardinal.
“Protect Emily and Mister Trang from any more harm and keep an eye on the Liberians. I don’t want them getting up to anything stupid while I’m away.”
Mitchell grabbed his AK and climbed into their jeep. Starting it, he quickly turned it around, changed gears, and sped down the narrow jungle path. He had a timeline to keep, and nothing was going to stop him, not now, not when he had a chance to save his friend and everyone else being held hostage in the Liberian camp.
He arrived at the designated pick-up point with less than five minutes to spare. Mitchell dug out a yellow smoke grenade and prepared it. A minute later, he heard the dull thud of an approaching helicopter’s rotor blades. He tossed the smoke grenade out into the open field. Mitchell waited for Yuri to radio him that he saw yellow smoke. If any other color had been reported, it would have been someone else trying to lure Yuri in. Mitchell would have waved off Yuri and tried at another location.
Using the yellow smoke to guide him in, Yuri expertly brought the aged MI-8 helicopter into land. The instant the helicopter’s wheels touched down, Mitchell was on the move. He dashed under the rapidly spinning rotor blades, ran over to the side door, opened it, and rushed inside. He made his way up to the cockpit and sat down in the co-pilot’s seat. Even before he had buckled in, Yuri had the helicopter moving. In seconds, they were airborne and on their way to their next destination, a set of rolling hills with a fortune of diamonds buried somewhere inside it.
Flying nap-of-the-earth to avoid radar, Yuri skillfully snaked the helicopter through a range of tree-covered hills. They were flying so low that Mitchell was sure that he could have opened his window, reached out, and grabbed the leaves off the passing trees.
Yuri glanced over and saw the look of frustration on Mitchell’s face. “So, Ryan, how are things going?”
“We only have two of the hostages. However, Nate has been taken prisoner. I intend to bargain for their freedom with Lucifer’s treasure . . . if it exists.”
“Don’t worry,” said Yuri. “I brought everything I could find. No one is going to screw with us anymore. If the treasure is where Donaldson believes it is, we have everyone by the balls now.”
Mitchell chuckled. He liked the sound of that.
Ten minutes later, Yuri flew around the hills marked on his map. He looked out his window for a safe place to land. Yuri brought the MI-8 down in a grassy field about one hundred meters from the base of the nearest hill.
Even before the engine was switched off, Mitchell was out the door and running toward the hills, his AK held tight in his hands. He stopped at the bottom of the nearest hill. Mitchell looked up and guessed that it stood about one hundred meters tall and ran for about four hundred along its length, before joining another two hills that resembled a three-humped camel. He shook his head. He realized that it would take a miracle to find the exact spot where they buried the treasure centuries ago. Donaldson hadn’t provided him with a specific point on the hills from where he could begin his search. He was about to give Polaris a call to see if there was something they could give him to help him when Yuri walked past him, carrying a hand-held, ground-penetrating radar in his hands.
“You forgot to ask for this when you sent me your shopping list,” said Yuri as he turned it on and then began to walk around the base of the hill. “After our time on that island off Japan looking for those buried tunnels, I never go anywhere without one of these, or a really good metal detector.”
Mitchell grinned. Yuri had just saved them countless hours, if not days, of fruitless searching.
“While you do that, I’m going to walk ahead of you and look for any caves or natural depressions in the ground that could indicate that there is something underneath,” said Mitchell.
“Da, take these,” said Yuri, handing Mitchell a handful of bright-pink marker flags. “If you think that you have something, mark it with one of these.”
Mitchell thanked Yuri, took the markers, and jogged slightly ahead to start his search. He glanced at his watch and saw that time was already slipping away on them. He began to worry that once the Liberians realized they were in the wrong spot, they might decide to cut their losses and kill everyone at the dig site and start fresh somewhere else.
With the sun climbing higher in the cloudless sky, the humidity in the jungle quickly rose with it. Before too long, Mitchell was covered in sweat, his soaked uniform clinging to him like a second skin. Wiping the sweat from his face, Mitchell looked over his shoulder. He had placed four flags in the ground behind him. As Yuri came along, he quickly scanned them with his radar and dismissed each one in turn. Mitchell was about to stop and take a drink of water when his foot caught on something hidden in the tall grass. With his arms flailing out in front of him, Mitchell fell face-first onto the ground. He shook his head at his inattention. He got up on his knees, brushed the dirt from his clothes, and looked over at what had tripped him. Sticking out of the ground was a rock. Something about it caught Mitchell’s eye. Carefully clearing away the brush from the stone, he saw that the stone was sitting straight up in the ground. It wasn’t a natural rock; even with centuries of erosion on it, Mitchell could tell that the rock had been hand carved at some time in the past. His heart began to beat faster in his chest. He took his water bottle and poured it over the stone, washing away the dirt. Slowly, the muck from hundreds of years slid away, revealing, chiseled into the rock, a large letter L along with the date, 1715.
Mitchell felt his spirits soar.
They were in the right spot.
“Yuri, hurry up and get over here,” called out Mitchell.
Covered in sweat, Yuri, huffing and puffing, jogged over to Mitchell. “What is it? Have you found something?”
“Here,” said Mitchell, pointing triumphantly down at the marker stone.
Moving to one side, Yuri pushed some of the foliage aside and then ran the radar over the ground around the stone. “Ryan, look!” said Yuri excitedly.
“What is it?” asked Mitchell, not sure what Yuri was reading on the scope.
“There is something under the ground. It looks like a tunnel, not a very big one, but there is something that leads under the hill.”
“Great,” said Mitchell. Hurriedly stripping off his tac-vest and laying his AK down on top, he pondered what to do next.
“I’ll head back to the chopper and get us some shovels,” announced Yuri.
“Screw that. We don’t have the time for that; there could be tons of rocks blocking the entrance to the tunnel. Get a couple of shovels and a ton of C4. We’re going to blow our way inside.”
“Your call, Ryan,” said Yuri, handing Mitchell the radar. Jogging back to the helicopter, Yuri grabbed two collapsible shovels and then jammed several kilos of C4 explosives into his small pack.
When he got back, Mitchell had already begun to clear the brush away from the spot where Yuri had indicated there was a hidden tunnel. Mitchell took one of the shovels and began to dig up the soft soil, trying to find the outline of the stone blocking the entrance to the tunnel. Yuri laid his pack down and joined in.
Ten minutes later, Mitchell and Yuri, covered in dirt and sweat, stood back and looked down at the large rectangular stone blocking their way underground. It was over two meters long and at least a meter and a half across. Mitchell guessed that it easily weighed several tons. Mitchell took the C4 from Yuri and carefully placed the explosives so he could blast the stone out of the way without collapsing the tunnel underneath. When he was satisfied that his scheme would work, Mitchell lit the fuse and then calmly walked away from the explosives and took cover with Yuri behind a dirt mound. Mitchell glanced down at the timer on his watch as it counted down to zero.
With a loud, thunderous boom, the C4 exploded, sending a tall plume of dirt and rocks flying up into the air. A few seconds later, hundreds of jagged rocks began to fall back to the ground. Most were small, while one the size of a refrigerator landed right beside Yuri’s head.
Swearing up a storm in Russian at Mitchell’s crazy plan, Yuri slowly lifted his head and saw a dust cloud hanging around the entrance to the tunnel.
Mitchell jumped up and dashed over to the crater blasted into the side of the hill. His plan had worked perfectly. He dug out a small flashlight from his pocket, bent down, and stuck his head inside the smoked-filled hole. As the dust settled, Mitchell could see a tunnel making its way down into the earth. Shining his light around, he could see that the tunnel was narrow. It was barely large enough for him to crawl down on all fours. After clearing a few large rocks away from the tunnel entrance, Mitchell told Yuri to guard the entrance while he went down into the tunnel.
The smell of dust, dirt, and explosives hung heavy in the air. After a few meters, Mitchell could see that the tunnel began to slope downwards. With his flashlight jammed between his teeth, Mitchell turned about and then dug his hands and feet against the tunnel walls. Carefully, he crawled down on his back. It may have been cool inside the tunnel, but Mitchell wouldn’t have known it, as rivers of sweat poured down his face. A second later, the tunnel straightened out. Mitchell could see that the tunnel went on for about another fifty meters. Carefully edging forward on all fours, Mitchell soon found that he could stand, albeit hunched over. As he moved along, he became aware of a new noise.
Mitchell could hear running water. There was an underground river nearby. A few seconds later, he pushed on and then emerged into a large cavern that stretched back for hundreds of meters.
He stopped for a moment to catch his breath.
Mitchell took his flashlight and shone it around the cave. He was surprised to see a fast-flowing river running straight through the middle of the darkened cavern. On the other side of the river, no more than fifteen meters away from Mitchell, was James Lucifer’s legendary treasure. With a wide grin on his face, he walked over to the edge of the river, shone his light over, and saw that there were at least two dozen wooden chests spread out on the far bank. Lying on the ground beside them were twice as many canvas sacks. He bent down and dipped his hand in the water.
It was surprisingly cool.
As he watched the water speed by, Mitchell doubted that he could swim across before the current caught him and carried him away into the darkness and certain death somewhere underground. He needed some rope if he was ever going to get across the river safely. Mitchell turned about and quickly made his way back to the surface.
Outside, Yuri was beginning to grow restless; he had expected Mitchell back by now. He thought about going in after him when he heard Mitchell crawling out of the tunnel. A second later, his dirt-covered head popped up.
“Did you find it?” asked Yuri.
“I sure did. I bet we could all retire on our own islands in the Caribbean with millions left over,” replied Mitchell, brushing the dirt and sand from his face.
“What do you want to do?”
“Let’s get back to the helicopter and get the rest of the gear.”
“Are you sure you want to go with your plan? After all, we could probably bribe our way out of this one.”
“Not with these fanatics. They want it all or nothing, and that’s precisely what they are going to get. Now, quit flapping your gums and let’s fetch the rest of the gear.”
Ten minutes later, with a long coil of rope in his hands and a headlamp provided by Yuri, Mitchell crawled back inside the tunnel entrance. He made his way back down to the cavern.
Mitchell uncoiled the rope and then made a lasso with one end. Moving over to the river’s edge, he looked for a thick and sturdy-looking stalagmite on the far side. After he chose a suitable candidate, Mitchell swung his lasso over his head for a few seconds, gaining momentum before throwing it over onto his target. Like a cowboy at the r
odeo trying for a bull, Mitchell’s lasso landed perfectly, wrapping itself around the top of the stalagmite.
With a grin on his face, Mitchell said to himself, “Well, there’s something to be said for growing up on a farm in Minnesota.”
He pulled the rope tight and looped it around a robust stalagmite on his side of the river; placing his right leg on the rock, he pulled as tight as he could on the rope before tying it off. Mitchell was pleased to see that it was tight. He took a deep breath and then warily edged out onto the rope. Even with his weight, it barely buckled. Quickly pulling himself hand over hand, Mitchell soon had his feet on the far side of the river.
After checking that his lasso was going to hold, Mitchell moved over to the nearest chest. He bent down and brushed the centuries of dust off the closed chest. With his heart racing in anticipation, Mitchell flipped open the lid. Like stars in the night sky, hundreds of gems and diamonds shone brilliantly under the light of Mitchell’s flashlight. Moving along, he opened all the chests. Each time, an untold fortune in precious stones shone back at him. He kicked one of the leather sacks lying on the floor of the cave, and watched as golden coins spilled out, gleaming brightly.
Mitchell said to himself, “Time to play Let’s Make a Deal.”
Quickly crawling back over the rope, Mitchell made his way back to Yuri. Pulling himself out of the hole, Mitchell wiped the sweat from his brow, made his way over to his tac-vest, and retrieved his satphone. A few seconds later, Mike Donaldson answered the call. He filled him in on what he had found. Aside from wishing him luck, Donaldson said nothing. Mitchell ended the call and dug out his canteen. He took a long swig of water while he looked at the hole he had blasted into the side of the hill.
With a feeling of foreboding deep in his soul, he knew it was far from over. One deviation from his plan and everything had the potential to end badly. Shaking such thoughts from his mind, Mitchell reached over, dug out an energy bar from his pack, and hungrily wolfed it down. When he was done, he picked up a machete, walked into the jungle, selected a couple of short, slender trees, and then quickly chopped them down. He dragged them over to the tunnel entrance and was about to head back down below when he saw Yuri carrying everything he could from the helicopter. Mitchell dropped what he had in his hands, ran over, and gave him a hand. He hadn’t expected Yuri to bring as many explosives as he had. Still if you want to do something right, there’s nothing wrong with a few extra kilos of C4, thought Mitchell.
Lucifer's Fire Page 20
