Contest

by David Wood

  “It’s got to be one or the other. Just don’t break it.”

  “Here goes.” Bones grunted as he put all his strength into the effort. Slowly, the handle began to turn. “Help me out, here.”

  Maddock lent his strength and they rotated the crank a full turn.

  There came a series of clicks and bangs from somewhere below them as the gears of some unseen machine began to turn for the first time in centuries. The floor vibrated and a low rumbling filled their ears. Dust floated down from up above and Bones eyed the ceiling nervously.

  “I hope we didn’t just activate a booby trap.”

  “I think we’re good.” Maddock pointed.

  A few feet away, a hole opened in the floor. From somewhere below came the sound of running water. Maddock shone his light in to reveal a narrow stone staircase winding down into the darkness.

  “What did I tell you?” Bones said. “Finding the treasure is what you and I do.”

  Chapter 39

  ––––––––

  At the bottom of the staircase they found themselves at a bridge. It was a narrow affair and spanned a gap of twenty feet. Maddock shone his light down into the gap.

  “I can’t see the bottom,” he said.

  “In that case, we’d better not fall.” Bones folded his arms and inspected the odd bridge. There were no railings, only a narrow bridge, two tiles wide. “I’m guessing it won’t be as easy as just walking across.”

  “Doubtful. Maybe we should come back with a rope or two.” He put up a hand when Bones rounded on him. “I’m joking. Besides, even if we had a rope, there’s nothing to secure it to.”

  “We’ll just have to get it right the first time,” Bones said.

  Maddock knelt and inspected the first row of tiles. One was carved with the image of a whale, the other a dolphin.

  “Walk with the luck of the saints,” Maddock said, echoing Iturbe’s message.

  “They were sailors, so if this whale symbolizes Jonah...”

  “Then it’s bad luck,” Bones said. To a sailor, a ‘Jonah’ was a passenger who, like their biblical namesake, carried bad luck with them on a voyage.

  “How certain are we about this?” Maddock asked.

  “Sure enough that I think you should test your theory. I’ll hold on to you in case the whole thing comes crashing down.”

  “That’s comforting.” With Bones gripping his belt in both hands, Maddock put one foot onto the tile where the aquatic mammal was carved. It seemed solid, so he put his entire weight on it. It held.

  Bones let out a sigh of relief. “One down, six to go.”

  The next choice was cat versus dog. A cat on board a ship was considered good luck, so Maddock made that his next choice.

  “Two for two,” he said.

  “Don’t get cocky,” Bones warned.

  Maddock didn’t. He next chose the lucky cormorant over an eagle, and an apple over an unlucky banana. Each step held, but he couldn’t escape the uneasy feeling that crept over him. He didn’t know how the bridge was constructed or what condition it might be in. What he did know was that it would be a relief to reach the other side.

  The next choice gave him a moment’s pause. Two beautiful women, each sitting on a rock in the water, gazed up at him. At first glance they appeared to be identical, but it only took a moment to realize that one of them had the tail of a fish. That made her a lucky mermaid. The other women, the one with human legs, was obviously a siren—one of the mythical creatures whose beautiful singing voices lured sailors to their deaths against the rocks.

  “What’s next?” Bones called.

  “Two birds. One is flying. The other is just standing there.” He paused, gave it a closer look. The eyes were closed, the legs uneven, and a wing out of place.

  “Scratch that. It’s not standing; it’s dead.”

  “Got to be an albatross.”

  “I think you’re right,” Maddock said. The seabirds were thought to carry the souls of dead sailors. Seeing one was a good omen, but to kill a cormorant was to invite bad luck of the worst sort.

  He stepped onto the flying seabird.

  “One more to go,” Bones said. “Unless you want to jump from there.”

  “I’d rather not.” Maddock still didn’t trust the bridge. “Besides, the last one’s simple.”

  The tile on the left was engraved with a mariner’s cross—an amalgam of a Christian cross and a boat anchor. To the right was a compact, stylized version of the mariner’s cross. This one had long, curved arms with sharp flukes. The stock was set low on the shank, its arms wider at the ends than in the middle, similar to a Coptic cross.

  “Saint Clement’s Cross,” Maddock said. “The patron saint of mariners.”

  He realized his mistake just as his foot touched the tile. The stone crumbled and he lurched forward.

  “Maddock!” Bones hopscotched across the bridge as Maddock clung to the ledge in front of him. His grip was slipping, his strength waning. And then Bones was there. He hauled Maddock out of the gaping hole and up onto solid ground.

  “I don’t get it,” Bones said. “Why would the patron saint of mariners be bad luck?”

  “It wasn’t him who was bad luck. I should have remembered that the Erasmus cross is sort of an ironic symbol. After all, he was executed by being tied to an anchor and thrown into the sea.”

  “Ouch. So, what would your ironic personal symbol be?” Bones scratched his chin. “I suppose it could be your very small organ, but then we’d need to include something else for scale. Like an M&M.”

  “I’ve already designed your symbol,” Maddock said.

  “Really, what does it look like?”

  “A lot like this.” Maddock held up his middle finger, then turned and headed down the corridor.

  “That hurt, dude.”

  They came to another deep chasm. This one was spanned by what looked like a section of culvert ten feet wide. A lip at the end fitted into a deep groove that ran along the edge of the precipice.

  “What the hell is this?” Bones asked.

  “I think it rolls back and forth,” Maddock said. “This keeps it on its track.”

  “I can see why.” Bones shone his light across the chasm. They faced a blank wall. About thirty feet to the right, a single passageway was the only opening. “So, we get inside this thing and roll it to the side?”

  “Beats getting on top of it and riding it like a log.”

  Maddock inspected the interior of the giant stone pipe. It was carved to resemble the skeleton of a fish, with a spine running down the top and parallel rows of bones running along its length.

  “I hope it’s not a whale,” Bones said.

  “We’re about to find out.” Like Jonah, Maddock stepped into the belly of the fish. He set his feet wide apart and shifted his weight to the right. The pipe barely budged.

  Bones climbed inside. “Do we cross first and then roll it?”

  “Let’s try moving it first and see what happens.” Maddock eyed the carved bones. He didn’t trust them. “Back up. I want to try something.” He scooted back until the pair were barely standing inside the pipe.

  “You get any closer to me, we’re going to have to get married,” Bones said.

  “Just shut up and roll the pipe.”

  They set to, putting all their weight into it. It wobbled and then slowly it began to roll. Slowly, slowly. A quarter of a turn and then...

  A spike suddenly jutted out from the first of the stone vertebrae. It hung there, gleaming, its tip inches from Maddock’s nose. He stepped back, knocking Bones out of the tube.

  “What the hell was that?” Bones asked.

  “I was afraid of that. It’s booby-trapped.”

  “Because of the whale bones?”

  Maddock shook his head. “One of the trials endured by Saint Erasmus was to be rolled down the hill in a spiked barrel.”

  “The entrails-on-a-stick dude? I hope in his next life he got to come back as something
awesome, like a rich playboy or a bonobo.”

  Maddock closed his eyes and took a moment to clear that image from his mind. “Have you ever wondered what you’re going to come back as, Bones?”

  Bones shrugged. “Awesome begets awesome. I’ll be fine.”

  “The good news,” Maddock continued, “is Saint Erasmus survived.”

  Bones arched an eyebrow. “Unharmed?”

  “Well, he was healed afterward. I assume that if we continue to roll the pipe, we’ll trigger more traps. So, if we’re careful, we should be able to work our way through.”

  “Screw that. We’ll roll the freaking thing into place from out here. That will trigger the traps. Then we can make our way through.”

  Maddock blinked twice. “Makes a hell of a lot more sense than doing it my way.”

  The two weary men but their shoulders into it, heaved at the great pipe and, with a deep grinding sound, it began to roll. Each quarter turn another spike shot out until all the traps had been triggered. They formed a spiral pattern running down to the other end.

  “I think we can navigate that fairly easily,” Maddock said once they had the tube set in place. “Just keep your eyes open in case there are more nasty tricks waiting for us.”

  They picked their way around the spikes without much difficulty. At the other end lay a dark tunnel. The sounds of running water surrounded them. Water dripped from cracks in the ceiling and trickled down the walls and ran in rivulets down the sloping passageway.

  “That would have made for a much more interesting adventure race,” Bones said. “Imagine B-list celebrities, one-hit wonder musicians, and a few aging ex-athletes running through a spiked barrel that’s rolling down the hill.”

  “Are you describing a television show or a public execution?”

  Bones made a noncommittal bob of the head. “A little of this, a little of that.”

  The sound of running water grew louder. Maddock let his light play across the ceiling. Moisture clung to the stones, droplets sparkling like gems in the artificial light.

  “I think there’s an underground river above us,” Maddock said.

  Bones eyed the leaky ceiling. “As long as it stays up there, we’re good.”

  Drops of ice-cold water rained down on them as they walked. To Maddock’s weary body, each was a stinging pinprick. It almost felt like a warning. The passageway leveled out. Up ahead stood an arched doorway. It was flanked by a pair of tridents mounted to the wall. One pointed up, the other down.

  “Tridents. That’s a promising sign.” The trident was the Special Warfare symbol of the Navy SEALs, and both men felt a certain attachment to it.

  “Unless they’re like the trident we found a few years ago,” Maddock said.

  “Don’t remind me.”

  The floor of the chamber was covered in water. The walls were carved with rolling waves and sea birds, but Maddock and Bones found themselves captivated by what stood before them. Atop a pedestal stood a twelve foot-tall statue of a powerfully built man. He wore only a cloak draped over his shoulder and wrapped around his pelvis. He stood atop the waves, guarded by a dolphin and a hippocampus, the mythological horse that could ride the sea. A crack had formed in the ceiling and water tumbled down onto the figure. Over the years, it had worn away the crown of his head all the way down to the simple band of celery that held back his hair. But his bearded face was still handsome. In his right hand he held a trident.

  “Poseidon,” Maddock said. “God of the sea, rivers, and horses.” He ran his light up and down the length of the statue. “Something bothered me about the main caverns. There were signs that people had lived there, but no trappings of religion.”

  “Good point,” Bones said. “No crosses. No place of worship.”

  “I think that’s because they had to keep their true religion a secret.”

  “Which was?” Bones asked.

  “The Cult of Poseidon. These men loved the sea above all else. The only Christian icons they memorialized were those directly associated with sailors. Everything else was about the sea itself.”

  “They got stranded in the desert, found the caverns, and moved in,” Bones said. “I can buy that. But why did they come all the way down here to build this temple?”

  “Not a temple, a vault. They knew they might not live to see a rescue. The treasure needed to be in a place no one could accidentally stumble across it, and it needed to be secured in a way that the uninitiated couldn’t access it. Finally, they had to consider that it might never be found. In which case, such a magnificent treasure of the sea needed a final resting place. I’ll bet when they found their way down into these deep caverns and found water flowing from stone, it seemed like a fitting place to make a tribute to Poseidon.”

  “That’s awesome,” Bones said. “But what about the treasure?”

  Maddock shone his light around. Down at the base of the statue, along the lip of the pedestal, lay the broken remains of wooden chests. Here and there he saw the sparkle of a gemstone or the gleam of a pearl.

  “I think I might know. But you’re not going to like it.”

  “What the hell are you saying to me, Maddock?”

  “It looks like they laid the treasure at the feet of their god. Sometime after they were gone, the ceiling started leaking. Over time, I guess the chests rotted and fell apart.”

  “Holy crap,” Bones grumbled, then he brightened up. “Could the treasure be here, under the water?” He made a sweeping gesture. “Just waiting for us to pick it up?”

  “Maybe,” Maddock said.

  “What do you mean, maybe?” Bones had descended the steps into Poseidon’s chamber and now waded toward the statue. “We can at least collect the stuff that’s up here on the pedestal. Come help me.” Bones began sifting through the detritus, pocketing any valuables he found.

  Maddock moved slowly through the water. It was all he could manage. He could feel a gentle flow of water. There was an outflow somewhere. His toe came down on something solid. He reached down into the dark water and his fingers close around a gemstone. When he shone his light on it, he whistled. It was the largest, purest sapphire he’d ever seen. It refracted the beam of his Maglite, splitting it into a myriad of blue beams that shone upon the form of Poseidon.

  And in the god’s left hand, something began to glow a deep red.

  “What did you just do?” Bones eyed the object nervously.

  “I need to see what that is.”

  Maddock heaved his bulk up onto the pedestal, then clambered on top of a hippocampus so that he was eye level with the object in Poseidon’s hand.

  It was a baseball-sized sphere, its surface black and crusty. Fossils were embedded in its surface—tiny crabs, crayfish, and seashells. Red light streamed from invisible cracks in its surface.

  “In some works of art, Poseidon carries a stone encrusted with sea creatures,”

  Maddock said.

  “What’s up with that red light?”

  “I don’t know,” Maddock said, watching the flickering red light. “The sapphire seemed to turn it on.”

  “Must be female, then.”

  Maddock rolled his eyes. The strange object continued to glow. He reached for it, hesitated. Was it as benign as it appeared?

  “I just wish I knew what this was.”

  “Oh, I can tell you exactly what it is,” a voice said from behind them. Maddock turned to see a man carrying an automatic rifle standing in the doorway. Smiling, he raised the weapon.

  “Please get down from there. And if either of you makes a move for a weapon,

  I’ll turn you into hamburger.”

  “Orry Rockwell,” Bones said. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

  Chapter 40

  ––––––––

  “That is a pôhaku o ka hekili. Thunderstone for short.” Rockwell stood in the doorway, made no move to come closer. His expression was relaxed, but he still held the rifle trained on them, finger on the trigger.


  “Never heard of it,” Maddock said. He had climbed down from the pedestal and stood beside Bones, knee deep in frigid water. His only remaining pistol was in his backpack. He’d secured it there when they began their search for the vault.

  Even if it were within easy reach, he had only two bullets left. He’d need a golden opportunity to take Rockwell down.

  “A Mormon missionary in the Pacific gathered accounts of them during his travels. If the legends are true, they form in submerged volcanoes and are exceedingly rare and incredibly powerful. In the hands of someone who knows how to wield it, it can cause earthquakes, even volcanic eruptions.”

  “Did Poseidon have one?” Bones asked.

  Rockwell pursed his lips, narrowed his eyes in thought. “If he actually existed, I suppose he could have wielded one.”

  And then Maddock remembered something. “Poseidon was also the god of earthquakes.”

  “In which case, one of these thunderstones would come in handy,” Bones said.

  “If Iturbe and his crew heard the legends, obviously they’d concluded that it belonged to Poseidon. It matches the artwork and legends perfectly.”

  Rockwell’s eyes flitted to the stone, but only for a split-second. Not nearly enough time for Maddock and Bones to make a move. “The missionary claimed he once witnessed a shaman use one of these to protect a village from a lava flow.”

  “I’m surprised the LDS church allowed that story to get out, considering it suggests pagans can wield godlike powers.”

  “Oh, the church absolutely suppressed his story,” Rockwell said. “But the Dominion has ways of finding things out.”

  Maddock twitched at the mention of the name. The Dominion was a pseudo-Christian clandestine organization who sought world domination and a return to what they considered “traditional” values. A few years earlier, the Dominion had been exposed in the United States thanks to the work of Maddock, Bones, and Tam Broderick’s Myrmidon Squad, and many of their leaders rooted out. But the organization continued to operate in the shadows, primarily in the United States and Western Europe.

  “You’re one of the Dominion?” Bones said.