“How can we find them?” the history expert asked.
“How did they find us?” Cassidy asked, scowling with pain.
Heidi tested her ribcage tenderly. “I already sent a local team after the van, so don’t worry. They have full agency capabilities.” She flinched as she moved. “Satellite. CCTV coverage. They’ll find the van and grab Alessandro back.”
“Tell ’em to be careful,” Bodie cautioned. “Those guys redefined ‘good.’”
“They were better than the norm,” Cassidy said. “Beyond special ops? At least, that’s what I’m hoping. If they’re training them that well these days it’s time to friggin’ retire.”
“Not a lot’s known about the Chinese Special Forces and their training methods, but these men would have been trained to an incredibly high standard by the faction controlling them,” Heidi said, still cringing. “Sorry I was taken out so quickly.”
Bodie stared at her and then laughed. It was crazily funny to hear their CIA boss apologizing for being thrown against a window. “Don’t worry about it,” he said. “Happens to the best of us.”
Gunn had slithered to the ground the moment they stopped. Jemma had already checked and found a large swelling on the top of his head. The team required medical attention and somewhere safe to lick their wounds. “Gunn and I,” she said, “aren’t cut out for this. Heidi, we’re helping as you insist we do, but we’re not friggin’ warriors.”
Heidi nodded in silence, accepting the rebuke.
“I hope you called an agency Uber too,” Gunn said, “’cause I don’t think I can walk another step.”
Bodie listened to the noise that pervaded the city, chiefly sirens at that moment. It went without saying that Heidi would have called for an extraction. It was just a matter of waiting. He thought once more of the Chinese and the Moroccans.
“Quick patch-up,” he said. “And then back at it.”
Only deep groans met his words.
“C’mon,” he cajoled them. “The doc’s only gonna tell you to keep moving, don’t let those aches stiffen up too much.”
“Says our resident expert,” Cross mumbled, still largely uncommunicative.
A black van came around the corner, stopped, and picked them up. Ten minutes later they were back inside their hotel rooms, taking turns being thoroughly checked over. The questions the doctor faced in each room were typical—Bodie asking how the rest of the team was, Gunn wanting a second opinion, Jemma clamming up completely, and Cassidy asking if he’d like to go dancing.
Later, they reconvened in Heidi’s room.
“Alessandro?” Bodie asked first.
Heidi was seated at a table, sheets of paper scattered across its surface, folders in a large pile, a hot coffee mug steaming, and a bar of chocolate half eaten. “They never found the van, but they did find a badly beaten body. Must have left him for dead. He’s in surgery right now.”
Bodie closed his eyes as Lucie’s face tightened, the neat exterior she presented to the world threatening to crack. Bodie saw her fists clench around the glass she held before she spoke softly.
“Will he be okay?”
“Too early to tell,” Heidi admitted. “But they’re hopeful.”
“How did the Moroccans find us?” Gunn asked from over by the window. “I get the Chinese. Unlimited resources. Only a few people like Alessandro in the whole world. But how did they find us?”
Heidi cut in. “I can confirm that four other ancient-language experts were abducted and tortured today.”
“And for what?” Jemma whispered. “‘Go to the temple of Poseidon in the mountains of Atlantis.’ Really?”
Cross cleared his throat. “We should also look at saving Yasmine. She can’t be with the Bratva of her own free will, right? Not the Yasmine I knew. Those guys won’t let her go easy.”
Cassidy glared. “Are you kidding? She’s running with them. Leading them now. She’d rather kill you than kiss you, Eli, and I gotta say, I’m feeling the same way right now.”
“Me?” Cross looked over. “Why? What else can I do? I can’t leave it at that. I need . . . closure.”
Bodie held up a hand, saving that tussle for later. “Right now,” he said, “we’re on the clock. We know at least two other big players are trying to figure this out. Let’s not be last.”
“Figure what out?” Jemma asked, now trying to bind her hair back into its bun and wincing with every stretch of a muscle. “There’s nothing to figure. Not forgetting the fact that both these players just kicked our collective ass. Do we really wanna face them again?”
“She’s right,” Gunn said. “Maybe you should call SEAL Team Delta or something.”
Heidi regarded the room. “That’s it? You’re backing out? One rough thrashing and you’re all quivering like babies? Where’s your spine, people?”
“Hey,” Cassidy growled. “We don’t deserve that, and you can’t motivate us with abuse. We don’t play that way.”
Heidi visibly caught hold of her emotions. “Yeah, yeah, I’m sorry. Been a rough day. Look, Danel’s clues have brought us this far. I can’t accept that it’s a dead end.”
Lucie used the desk to rise to her feet and steady herself as the bruises from her struggle to escape the van complained. All eyes turned to her.
“Alessandro wasn’t done,” she told them. “When we were inside the van, just for a few seconds, he whispered something to me. He said, ‘Look at the ancient coordinates on the rose.’ He knew what was going to happen to him and wanted to pass it on. Then Cassidy saved me and he . . . he was gone.”
“You think he was about to push you out of the door?” Cassidy asked.
“Maybe, I don’t know. But Alessandro was lying across from me and then you were there. He spoke the second you appeared.”
“‘Look at the ancient coordinates on the rose’?” Heidi mused. “I wonder what that means.”
“Well, isn’t it obvious?” Lucie regained a bit of fire in her voice. “Alessandro only saw one object and it was a direction finder, which essentially is the same as coordinates.”
“The compass.” Bodie nodded. “And the rose?”
“Every compass has a rose,” Lucie said. “The diagram that shows north, east, south, and west. You align the rose to go in the direction you need. The compass has far more relevance than we first thought. As it should, I guess, being one of the Four Great Inventions. The others, according to the Chinese, were gunpowder, paper, and printing. Make of that what you will.”
Heidi shuffled through the papers on the table. “So you’re saying there may be a set of coordinates on the compass rose?” She squinted.
Lucie walked across the room to her side. “I certainly hope so.”
Bodie pushed out of his chair, trying not to groan as bruised muscles protested. He found himself shuffling and then leaned over Heidi’s shoulder. “Not the best photo ever taken.”
“You try snapping a good picture,” Jemma complained, “bent over in some billionaire’s weird little trophy room.”
“Good point,” Cassidy said. “And well put.”
Bodie squinted at the photo that Heidi must have printed out and blown up. The compass and the runes were easily recognizable, as were the directional figures and arrows around the compass rose. Whatever letters and symbols lay at the center, though, were blurred and seemed to blend with the arrow lines.
“Crap,” Heidi said.
“Not a problem,” Lucie said. “Jemma’s original photo should still be on her phone. We can zoom in on that.”
Every pair of eyes turned toward their chief organizer. Jemma laughed nervously. “Of course I still have it.”
A few moments later they were studying the clearer symbols.
“Alessandro called them ancient coordinates,” Lucie said. “But, essentially, they’re simple compass coordinates.” She shrugged. “Seafaring people, like the Atlanteans, used celestial bodies to navigate and combined that with dead reckoning. The ancient Greeks invented a co
ordinate system in a book called Geography that was lost at the Library of Alexandria in the third century BC. And, as we now know, the Greek gods were actually the kings of Atlantis, all our forefathers. The fact to bear in mind is that the Greeks never pretended to invent their gods or their mythology, rather saying that it passed from ancient peoples into the flutes of the Greeks. But, I digress. The greatest seafarers used a geocentric ecliptic system centered on the earth for their astronomy, and thus we can follow the paths they took.”
She sat beside Heidi and asked for a laptop. “This will take a while,” she said.
Dismissed, Bodie didn’t complain but took the opportunity to pour coffee and wash down painkillers. Cassidy was already supplementing those with copious amounts of alcohol. He saw Cross with that faraway look on his face, and Jemma, battered and bruised. Gunn huddled alone with his comfort tablet clutched in one hand, a bandage wrapped around his head. Cassidy appeared shell-shocked, but still managed a smile.
“Been a while since I was taken down,” she said.
“I have a special ops team preparing to join us,” Heidi told them then, hoping to assuage their concerns. “Loaned to the CIA. All they need is a destination.”
“Well, tell them to mount up,” Lucie said with satisfaction, “because I know exactly where the Temple of Poseidon is.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Another plane journey, but more time to rest up. The team tried everything to dull the aches and pains. As relic hunters, they’d only needed their individual skills, but ever since Heidi and the CIA took control, they had found themselves being pushed more and more into mortal danger. So far, their injuries hadn’t been serious, but it was only a matter of time before one of them received a harsh wound . . . or worse. Injury would lead to later complications, problems, or impediments that could hinder their effectiveness as relic hunters. A vicious circle. In the end, Bodie found the best plan to alleviate his pains was to stretch out along the leather seats, close his eyes, and listen to Lucie. He decided to table their issues with the CIA.
“The mountains of Atlantis,” she said from her seat facing them at the front of the plane. “I should have guessed it. The most accepted theory is that the Azores—peaks that rise just above the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Portugal and Morocco, and of course the Strait of Gibraltar—are the highest mountains of Atlantis and all that remains of the sunken continent. These coordinates”—she raised the printed photo of the compass—“point us to the correct Azores island and, hopefully, the very mountain where the temple will be.”
“The Azores?” Heidi said. “Aren’t they a semipopular tourist destination? I mean, if there was a temple out there, wouldn’t a curious explorer have stumbled across it by now?”
Lucie nodded. “That is a worrying factor,” she admitted.
The plane droned on. Heidi mentioned that they would be landing in Morocco first, before boarding a plane to the Azores islands. Bodie yawned and fell asleep. When he woke hours later, they were descending toward the Moroccan airfield. He stretched, disorientated, and immediately wished he hadn’t. Cassidy wafted fresh, hot coffee under his nose and he rose gratefully, still wincing.
“We here?”
“Yeah. Thought you needed your beauty sleep.”
“Amen to that.” He grinned at her and it was in moments like this where he felt content that, after all this time, he’d finally found a new family. Oddly enough, he’d been thinking more and more about the old one recently. Not his parents, that was still too painful, but the Forever Gang, and how good it used to be.
If he stared into the middle distance he could still see their faces. They were long gone, but somehow still here too. He’d already realized he saw Brian in Cassidy’s gregarious extrovert qualities. In Cross’s slow, easygoing attitude he saw Scott. Was there a correlation between the past and the present? Between his past and present? Surely it couldn’t be a coincidence that he’d gravitated toward similar personalities. He’d tried to hold on to them his entire life. Thinking even harder, was Jim similar to Gunn—the studious intelligence? And little Darcey—such a trier. Such a spirit. Did she remind him of Jemma? It couldn’t possibly be so clear-cut—surely he was making it work to his own ends—but the reflections were there.
As if seen in a dream, misty memories continued to come back to him.
Maybe it was the rise and fall of the plane, the sudden turbulence, but something had resurfaced in his sleep and he contemplated it now. Out of the five of them, only Brian and Scott had been scared of theme-park rides. Jim, Darcey, and he had loved them, thrill seekers since birth, always up and ready for the next daring thing. They had come to accept that Brian and Scott wouldn’t ever come with them, and that was the one experience their tight-knit little gang would never enjoy together.
But one day they came upon a new water ride called the Grand Rapids. Three tried it first and pronounced it good. Bodie fancied maybe it was the joy on their faces when they left the rides. Maybe it was the excitement and laughter displayed by others, or perhaps just the bonds of friendship. But Brian and Scott, out of nowhere, articulated an interest and they shared the experience together, their incredible connection cemented forevermore—the laughs and shouts of glee, the soakings they braved; the sudden drops that made them squeal; the pure exhilaration and moments of utter happiness; every second a delightful capture of youthful glory, of immortality, of unforgettable bliss.
Except he had forgotten it. Bodie made himself forget once it all changed, and the worst part was that forgetting was the only way he made it through the rest of his life.
Until now.
Grand Rapids was long gone, a distant memory. He lamented forgetting it all, but maybe only because he could.
Go back there one day.
Remember the best times you ever had.
It was a promise to himself.
The plane jolted hard, bouncing up off its tires and then slamming back down. Bodie spilled coffee and Cassidy banged an elbow. Gunn dropped his tablet. They changed planes quickly and were then once more in the air, speeding toward the Azores. The second flight was a short one and soon they were landing again.
Heidi regarded them all.
“You poor ragtag bunch of beat-up, broken-down oddballs. C’mon, I dragged you all this far, I can get you a step farther.”
“Excuse me,” Cassidy piped up. “You dragged us here? I think you got that backward, girl.”
Bodie braced as the door opened and they got their first look at the Azores. Oddly, it wasn’t at all what he was expecting.
An exquisite deep blue sky oversaw a stunning green land primarily made up of lush, verdant mountains. Bodie viewed it from a wide stretch of tarmac where the plane had landed, but Heidi soon steered them away from the tiny terminal building.
Vehicles awaited, and also the promised special ops team, a poker-faced unit of Navy SEALs. Bodie saw them wedged into the lead car and immediately walked toward the second. Through the years of his clandestine travels he’d happened upon several elite American and British soldiers and didn’t want anyone to recognize him. A glance at his friends told him they felt the same.
Heidi climbed in alongside Bodie and the rest of the team. “Don’t worry. They won’t bother you. Unlike some people, they follow orders.”
Guiltily, because of the Pantera episode, Bodie and Cassidy looked at the SEAL team before realizing Heidi shouldn’t have any cause for complaint. They were right here in the thick of it now, weren’t they? Only Cross seemed remote, lost in his recollections of Yasmine.
The scenery grew more spectacular as they climbed out of the flatland and up among the peaks. They passed an impressive mountain with a circular crater, the center hollowed out and now full of sparkling blue water. Dusty trails meandered by the side of the road and off into the wilderness, hiked by tourists. At every turn there stood another splendid vista designed to take their breath away.
Heidi followed a GPS device preprogrammed with the coord
inates Lucie had provided. Sometime after leaving the airfield, they stopped and exited the cars, leaving them parked in a fenced area. The SEALs ignored them and ranged out to the surrounding fields, leaving just two to walk with the team of relic hunters, who stuck together. After their skirmishes in the Alps and Milan, Bodie felt relieved to have a group of soldiers whose main mission was to protect them. A beaten trail marked by a fence led them along the side of a mountain, wind whipping their hair and the scent of the sea all around. Bodie took in the great span of the Mediterranean Sea ahead and to the left and reveled in the trek, feeling the aches and pains already washing out. To make matters better, Heidi took a call that confirmed Alessandro’s recovery.
Lucie beamed for the first time. Bodie considered it a huge improvement.
The trail ascended for a while and then dipped, taking them around the edge of another mountain and allowing them to marvel at a lake below. Thick trees bordered every shore so that there was no beach and no easy way to enter the water. The entire area looked untouched, glittering, but then Bodie spied a couple of pale bodies frolicking in the water and smiled with a hint of sadness.
“I guess there’s no place left where man’s not been.”
Cassidy raised a pair of field glasses to spy on the couple. “Skinny-dippers going at it. But you’re wrong, Bodie. I know of at least one place where man’s not been.”
She looked sidelong at Jemma. The other woman colored and then squawked out a retort. “How the hell would you know? I’ve known you what, five years?”
“Four,” Gunn said. “I know, it feels longer.”
“Still getting to know each other,” Bodie said and then saw Cross looking back at him. Some more than others, I guess.
The SEALs had been assessing what lay ahead and declared the all clear. They moved on. An hour passed with nobody in sight. The trail wound around another mountain and headed toward the east coast. At last they came to a place where Heidi’s GPS let out a little beep.
She slowed. “We’re close.”
Bodie scanned the landscape hopefully. He didn’t really expect to see anything and wasn’t disappointed.
The Atlantis Cipher (The Relic Hunters Book 2) Page 16
