The Dane Maddock Adventures Boxed Set Volume 2

by David Wood

  Fighting back tears, she scrabbled up the shaft, her feet finding purchase on the sides and forcing her upward. Why had Mister Bishop done this? Behind her, she heard Patrick’s voice.

  “Mister Bishop, what happened out there?” His voice quaked with every word.

  “Nothing you need concern yourself with.” Bishop’s deep voice echoed in the shaft. “Where is Doctor Perez?”

  His words chilled Sofia to the bone. She had no doubt he planned on killing her and Patrick once he’d extracted whatever information he sought. She didn’t know why he wanted to find Atlantis, but now that she’d discovered it, she, and her people, were expendable.

  “She’s out on the dig site. Inspecting one of the outer canals on the south side, I think.”

  “There are two sets of footprints.” His voice was cold.

  “One of the assistants took some pictures and then I sent her back out.”

  If she hadn’t been deathly afraid for her life, Sofia would have admired Patrick’s ability to invent on the fly. The fear was gone from his voice. She wished he could have escaped along with her but, should the worst happen, she was determined not to let his sacrifice be in vain. She continued her climb, now almost halfway to the top.

  An unfamiliar voice, rough like sandpaper, spoke up. “What’s that opening behind you?”

  “We think it’s an air shaft like the ones in the Great Pyramids.” Patrick reply came out fast and unnatural. Sofia could hear it, and she was sure Bishop and his cronies could too. “We got lucky. It was capped up at the top. Otherwise, it and this whole chamber would have filled with silt. We’d have had a heck of a time uncovering this thing, not that we know what it is.” He was clearly trying to divert their attention to the strange contraption.

  “Oh, we know exactly what it is.” Bishop cleared his throat. “To be more precise, we know what it does.”

  Don’t say anything else, Patrick. The more you know, the worse it is for you. Just run away.

  Perhaps if Sofia were a telepath, Patrick would have heard her plea and clammed up. Instead, he rambled on. “Really? What does it do? It looks like…”

  A gunshot rang out and Sofia muffled a cry of grief and fear. She looked up at the square of light at the end of the shaft. It was no more than ten meters away, but at the rate she was going it might as well be a thousand. If Mister Bishop, or one of his men, looked into the shaft, she was dead. She tried to quicken her pace, reaching out as far as she could, and her hand closed on cold metal.

  “Pack up the machine.” Bishop was all business. His voice carried no hint that he had just witnessed the slaughter of innocent people. “Carefully, now, and be certain to crate it up before you take it out.”

  “Yes, Bishop,” the man with the rough voice replied.

  “I wonder.” Mister Bishop now sounded thoughtful. “Could a person fit inside that shaft?”

  Sofia’s pulse roared in her ears, and panic dulled her senses. She realized she was gripping a metal handle of some sort. She scooted closer and saw two brass handles embedded in a block of stone. It was a plug like the one archaeologists found in the Great Pyramid! She grabbed hold of the handles and yanked with all her might.

  It didn’t budge.

  “I’ll check it out, Bishop.”

  With renewed strength born of abject terror, she heaved at the plug, and it came free in a cloud of dust and stale air. There was a chamber there! It was pitch black, but instincts honed from years of experience told her there was a large, open space inside. She slithered through the opening and took the plug along with her. Moments later, she heard the rattle of gunfire. Bullets pinged up the shaft, inches from where she squatted.

  “Did you see someone?” Mister Bishop asked.

  “Just being thorough. It’s not like there’s anyone left out there for me to hit.” The man’s guttural laugh echoed through the chamber.

  “Doctor Perez is still unaccounted for. Find and dispatch her with all due haste. I’ll meet you back on the ship.”

  “Yes, Bishop. We’ll have the machine out of here in ten.”

  Sofia bit her lip, thinking hard. If they were looking for her, it would be too dangerous to try and climb out right now. She’d have to wait them out. She hefted the plug and pushed it back in the hole, handles facing inward, and then took out her small LED flashlight and flicked it on. Through a curtain of dust that tickled her nose and made her eyes burn, she followed its beam.

  The space was no more than three meters square, its walls smooth and unadorned. She directed her light down onto the floor and her heart skipped a beat as it fell on a skeleton. It lay on its side in a pool of dust that might have once been clothing or a blanket. Near its hand lay a thin wooden rod with a pointed end—a stylus, and a jumble of rectangular tablets not much bigger than index cards. She knelt down for a closer look and saw they were all covered in tiny hieroglyphs. Many she recognized as identical to their Egyptian counterparts, but most were either slight variations on the Egyptian writing, or were unfamiliar.

  “A codex.” Depending on what was written here, this could be the single most important find of the dig. After first checking to make sure the opening to the chamber was sealed, she photographed each one, moving them about as if handling a newborn baby. They were made of clay, and she feared they would crumble at her touch, but they held together. When she’d made a photographic record, she took another set of pictures with her phone, vowing to text them to… she didn’t know… someone she could trust, the moment she got out of this temple and into cell phone range. If she and the tablets should fall into Bishop’s hands, she didn’t want the secret to die with her.

  The absurdity of her thoughts struck her in a flash. Here she was, hiding from men who had apparently just murdered her crew, and now were after her, and her paramount concern was preserving a codex. She would have laughed, had the situation not been so dire. This was her life’s work, and she wasn’t going to let a crazy man stop her. With great caution, she stacked the tablets and wrapped and bound them in a bandanna. It was the best she could do for now.

  She checked her watch. Nearly twenty minutes had passed since she first entered the adyton. Were the men gone? As carefully and quietly as she could, she shifted the plug aside and strained to listen.

  “We can’t find Doctor Perez, Bishop. If we’d kept Patrick alive we might have extracted her whereabouts from him.”

  “The Guardia Civil will put her on our list.” The speaker’s voice was deep with a Spanish accent.

  “Thank you,” Mister Bishop said. “Are we certain she is not among the dead?”

  “I can’t be sure. My men like to aim for the head. It’s good for target practice but bad for identification purposes.”

  Bishop let out a long, slow breath. “In that case, she is most likely dead. If not, it won’t matter for long. We will cleanse the site, as planned.”

  She froze. What did he mean by that? She knew what it meant for her—she had better find a way out of here sooner rather than later. She listened for more sounds, but Bishop and the others seemed to have gone. She performed some quick mental calculations, and decided she should wait ten minutes to make certain the men were well clear of the temple before she climbed out. She watched the minutes pass by with agonizing slowness until, finally, it was time.

  She tucked the codex into her shirt, listened again for a few seconds, and heard nothing. Heart pounding and dizzy from fear, she took a deep breath and clambered out into the shaft. The ascent seemed to take hours. Every second she expected to hear the gunshot that would end her life. Her breath came in ragged gasps and cold sweat soaked her clothes, but she labored on until she reached the top.

  She peeked her head out and scanned up and down the trench her workers had dug in order to reach this part of the temple. The trench was empty and all was quiet, save the rush of distant waves. Of course, she had no idea who might be waiting up above. It didn’t matter. Her gut told her she needed to get as far away from here as possib
le, and fast. She hurried to a nearby ladder, ascended in silence, and paused at the top to peer over the edge.

  A small whimper escaped her lips as her eyes fell on the bodies of two crew members. Bullets to the head rendered them unrecognizable, but she grieved for them all the same. She wondered again at the reason for this senseless slaughter. Furthermore, how had Bishop gotten the local authorities on his side? Money, she supposed. There would be time enough to figure that out once she’d gotten clear of the dig.

  She heard the faint roar of an engine in the distance and looked to the south to see a van driving across the flats, escorted by two pickup trucks, their beds packed with men. She couldn’t quite make them out, but the light glinted off of what she presumed to be firearms. Bishop was leaving, which meant it was a good time for her to go, too.

  Not wasting time, she scrambled out onto level ground and sprinted in the opposite direction. It was not until she’d run for an hour, the stabbing pain in her lungs and leaden feeling in her legs reminding her how long it had been since her last 10K road race, that she felt safe enough to stop in the shelter of the tall grass in one of the few remaining marshlands.

  She took out her phone and first used it to pinpoint her location. She would need it when she made her next call. But would he want to hear from her? It didn’t matter. She didn’t have many connections in Spain, and certainly no one else who would be okay taking in a fugitive from the Guardia Civil, perhaps Spain’s most corrupt branch of law enforcement. And then there was the matter of the codex, her taking of which violated all kinds of laws. Of course, he couldn’t possibly take the moral high ground on that score. Besides, he owed her after the way he’d left her in Peru. She punched up the number and held her breath. He picked up on the first ring.

  “Sofia, is that you?”

  So he hadn’t deleted her number from his phone. That made her smile.

  “Hey, Arnau. Long time, no speak.”

  “Oh my God, it is you! Are you all right?” The genuine concern in his voice moved her, but then a different thought chased the good feeling away.

  “Why wouldn’t I be?” Had word of the killings already leaked out?

  “You don’t know?” He sounded befuddled. “Where have you been? There was a tidal wave or something down on the salt flats. Your whole dig is gone.”

  Chapter 3

  “Yeah! I freaking love this thing.” Bones tapped on the transparent ceiling of the small submarine. “It’s sturdier than I expected. I know! Let me try the torpedoes.”

  “No way.” Dane Maddock stifled a grin as he took the craft into a steep dive. “Tam just gave us this new toy. We’re not getting it taken away after our first test run.”

  Down below, the barnacle-encrusted hulk of a sunken ship grew ever larger as they approached. Maddock slowed the craft and drifted toward the gaping tear in its hull. The two former Navy SEALs turned treasure hunters, along with their crew, had recently agreed to work for a clandestine branch of the CIA that sought to root out the Dominion, a powerful group of religious extremists that had given Maddock and his partner, Bones Bonebrake, more trouble than they cared to count. This submarine, which Bones christened Remora after the suckerfish that attached itself to a larger host for transportation, protection, and food, was just one of the benefits.

  “I don’t think we can make it through that gap,” Bones said from his seat behind Maddock. “How about I make that hole bigger?”

  “Fine, but no torpedoes. What do we have in our arsenal?”

  “How about this?”

  Maddock watched as a mechanical arm extended from the sub and, with a flash of white light, began slicing through the hull. A cloud of silt and debris engulfed the sub. When it cleared, Bones had carved out a semicircular section of hull large enough to pass through.

  “Laser cutter, baby!” Bones sounded like a kid on Christmas morning. “Hey, you know that riverboat casino my Uncle Charlie’s all worked up about? With this, we could send that thing to the bottom of the river in no time.”

  “You know something? I was kind of hoping you wouldn’t be able to fit inside here. Being at close quarters with you gets old fast.” It seemed something of a miracle that the hulking Cherokee had managed to squeeze his broad-shouldered, six foot-five frame into the tiny sub.

  “Always hating. I can’t help it if you need a gallon of hair gel to get to six feet tall.”

  Maddock shook his head. It wasn’t only the contrast between the blue-eyed, blond-haired Maddock and the dark-skinned, long-haired Cherokee that made them an odd pair. Bones was brash and aggressive, while Maddock was prone to think twice before taking action. They hadn’t cared for one another in the early stages of SEAL training but, over time, found that their strengths complemented each other. Now, though they still managed to annoy one another, they were closer than brothers.

  Maddock poked Remora’s nose into the ship’s open cargo hold. The hull had collapsed in places, leaving insufficient room for the craft to make it all the way in. He shone the light around, revealing indistinguishable piles of silt and rubble. Nothing to see here. “Why don’t you try out the retrieval arms and then we’ll head back?’

  Two more mechanical arms extended from the bottom of the sub. Maddock followed their progress on a video display. Bones used them to lift and move items of various sizes. Finally, one of the arms came up with a thin chain hooked on its grip. Bones raised the arm so they could examine the object through the transparent bubble that topped the pilot’s area.

  “A necklace. That’ll clean up nice,” Bones said. “Hard to believe it didn’t break. I am good.”

  “What are you going to do with it? Give it to Avery?” Avery Halsey was Maddock’s sister whom his father had kept a secret from him. They’d met a few months before and now she was dating Bones.

  “Yeah, Maddock, I need to talk to you about that.” Bones stowed the necklace in the sub’s tiny hold and retracted the arms while Maddock reversed the craft and turned back toward shore. “She says she’s found a job and is moving down here so she can be closer to us.”

  “From Nova Scotia to the Keys? That’s quite a change, but that’s cool. Wonder why she didn’t tell me.” Maddock paused. “Hold on. Are you two moving in together? If so, you’re moving out of my guest room.”

  “Hell no! I broke up with her. That’s what I wanted to tell you.” Bones hurried on. “I just hope it doesn’t make it weird between us.”

  “Why would that be weird?” Maddock rolled his eyes. He wasn’t entirely surprised that the relationship hadn’t lasted. A few months was actually a long time for Bones, who sometimes referred to himself as “Pollinator in Chief,” considering it his duty to expose as many women to his charms as humanly possible.

  “You know what was weird?” Bones ignored the sarcasm. “Each of us dating the other’s sister. That was messed up.”

  Bones’ sister Angel, a model and professional mixed martial arts fighter, was Maddock’s girlfriend. Unlike Bones and Avery, they were still together. She had joined them on a couple of their adventures, but was currently in North Carolina training for a championship fight. The very thought of her made him smile. After years of forcing himself to think of her as a friend, she’d finally broken through the wall he’d constructed between them.

  “What is this, a pajama party? Cut the relationship talk and take over.” Maddock chuckled at Bones’ triumphant shout as he took control of the craft and they surged forward, climbing up toward the light.

  “Let’s see if we can find a military ship and try out the cloaking on this baby.”

  Maddock’s good-natured groan died in his throat as the power in their sub flickered. When it returned, all the displays went crazy for a split second before returning to normal.

  “Looks like we’ve found our first bug,” Maddock said. “What did you do? Turn on the cloaking?”

  “No, I was kidding about that.” Bones sounded puzzled. “I was taking us in, holding steady, when everything went on th
e fritz for a second, if that long.”

  “Everything looks normal now. Let’s take it back to shore and give Tam our report.”

  “Aye aye. Let’s hope this thing doesn’t crap out on us before we get there.”

  “I hope they’re enjoying themselves.” Willis Sanders cast an angry look at the dancing blue waters of the Gulf of Mexico. “Me and Matt are getting that sub tomorrow. I don’t care what Maddock says.”

  “I’m the boss, not Maddock,” Tam reminded him for what felt like the hundredth time. “I said you two can take it out tomorrow and that’s final. Now shut up before I change my mind.”

  She’d recently brought Maddock and his crew onto her team, and Willis, in particular, found adjusting to the new power structure difficult.

  “Girl, you’re grouchy. Is the Key West humidity getting to you?” He grinned down at her. He was a handsome man, tall, and well-sculpted, with skin just dark enough to lend him a hint of mystery, but even if he wasn’t her subordinate, he got under her skin way too often for her to take an interest in him.

  “What have I told you about calling me girl? I used to think you were too arrogant to stop, but now I think you’re just a slow learner.” She would never admit it, but there was some truth in his words. She felt as if she was in a steam room most of the time, and the humidity played hell with her hair. More and more, she found herself in a foul mood, and she was putting far too many dollar bills into her cussing jar. She mopped the sweat from her damp brow and attempted to maintain her stern expression.

  Willis hung his head and attempted to look chastened, but failed badly. His mischievous grin seemed permanently fixed in place.

  For a moment, Tam considered shoving him off the pier, but he’d probably find that funny, too.

  “It’s your fault for hiring a bunch of SEALs.” Matt Barnaby, a sturdily built man with brown hair and a fresh beard that he couldn’t stop scratching, gazed out at the water. “The Army actually teaches discipline.” He was a former Army ranger, which led to plenty of good natured ribbing amongst the crew members.