The Navigators

by Dan Alatorre

  The Navigators

  © This book is licensed for your personal use only. This book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author. © No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author. Copyright © 2016 by Dan Alatorre. All rights reserved.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Cover art by Lynnette Bonner www.lynnettebonner.com

  Edited by Allison Maruska www.AllisonMaruska.com

  If you enjoy this book, please stop by and say a few kind words at Amazon! 5 stars is always appreciated, too!

  Advance Praise for The Navigators

  “Dan Alatorre brilliantly weaves an exciting story of adventure, intrigue, and love. The Navigators will keep you guessing at every turn as you travel through time and evade capture right along with the characters.”

  Allison Maruska, author of The Fourth Descendant

  “An absolutely brilliant book! Dan Alatorre will keep you glued to your seat.”

  Lucy Brazier, author of Secret Diary of Portergirl

  “I loved it! Really good story line and it kept the tension throughout. I couldn't wait to see the outcome and was not disappointed.”

  Suzanne Bowditch, author of Ellen, A Celtic Trilogy

  “It was soooooo good. I loved the characters. The way you wrapped everything up was great.”

  Cindy Dorminy, author of Tuned Into You

  “It's a beautiful story!! Beautiful! There is something in here, something from the spirit of Isaak Asimov and all those days when I started reading science fiction. The writing is so clean, and you kept the magic rolling all the way.”

  Art Jeffries, author of The Collector

  “Dan Alatorre grabs you in chapter one and doesn't let go until the very end. You'll be glad you spent the time to read this book.”

  Larry Rueschhoff, author of Surviving the Fall

  “This story had me hooked from the start, a well thought out complex storyline that has everything. Mystery, intrigue, betrayal and romance. In addition, enough danger and excitement to sink several ships!”

  Anita Dawes, author of Scarlet Ribbons

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Achnowledgements

  About The Author

  Other Books By Dan Alatorre

  Chapter One

  “No way.” Roger shook his head and left the kitchen. “You fuckers are crazy."

  Barry jumped up from behind his desk. “Come on. A paleontology dig at a mine in central Florida is practically like going to the beach.”

  “Only hotter.” I set my plate on the coffee table and leaned back, folding my arms.

  Melissa carried her hamburger to the kitchen. “It’s smellier, too. Yuck.” She leaned on the counter, taking her free hand and sweeping her long brown locks behind her ear.

  Riff sat in the far chair with his elbows on his knees. Even when relaxed, his massive arms looked like they were flexing. He twirled his car keys with his thick fingers. “A mine is a beach without a personality. Digging for fossils in a big open sand pit with a hot little spillway pond in the middle.” He faced me. “I’m not sure that’s where I want to spend my summer.”

  I nodded. Barry seemed oblivious to the protests, though. He made his way toward Roger, whose long, athletic frame leaned against the wall by the window. Barry’s speech would be to the apartment walls, if necessary, but Barry would get his way. He always did. His grand oratory would end up persuading the four of us. “The mines are the best place to dig. Right, Roger?”

  Roger continued to eat his burger while staring out the window.

  “We all know they are.” Barry smiled as he looked around the room at us. “You’ve got the sand and the sun and the water… Bring a cooler and it’ll be like a picnic. We’ll play some tunes…”

  I shook my head. “The mine is nothing like the beach. An open pit mine like you’re talking about is a massively wide hole in the ground. It can present, you know, huge amounts of paleo-treasures. We all get that. But this time of year it will be a nightmare of mud from the daily thunderstorms.” I glanced round the room, eyeing each of them. “The mine workers are scared of the shifting sands. And we should be, too, if we go.”

  I stood and eyed Roger, who continued holding up the wall. “But… all that rain exposes amazing amounts of artifacts.” I sighed. “It’s a tremendous opportunity—if you are digging in the right place. But it’s definitely not the beach.” I looked over at Barry. “And it’s not a picnic.” Then I turned back to Roger, who had remained uncharacteristically quiet this entire time. “And there won’t be any pretty girls at the mine.”

  “Hey.” Melissa swatted me from over the counter.

  “Well, you know what I mean. Pretty girls that I don’t know… that I can ogle.”

  “Why, Tomàs Pequant.” She turned her head in mock indignance. “You're a married man.”

  I shrugged. “Married, not dead.”

  “You little Middle Eastern snake.” She wagged a finger at me, flashing her brilliant smile. “I’m going to have to keep my eye on you.”

  Roger chuckled, finally pushing himself away from the wall. “Go ahead, it would balance things out.” He strode to the kitchen and set his plate in the sink. “Peeky can’t take his eyes off you, Missy.”

  She shook her head. “I know better. Peeky’s a perfect gentleman.”

  “Well, I don’t know about perfect.” I rested an elbow on the kitchen counter. “But… compared to the rest of you vermin, yes.” I leaned forward to Melissa. “And my beloved home country of India is not considered part of the Middle East.”

  Riff sat up. “Peeky’s all talk.” He took a swig of his beer and set it back on the coffee table. “When we go to the beach, he can’t even look at girls he doesn’t know. Too shy.”

  I pretended to bristle. “That is respect, my friend, not shyness.”

  Melissa patted my shoulder. “That's my boy.”

  “But I’m working on it, so I can be just like Roger.”

  “Can we get serious?” Barry moved to the middle of the room. “Let’s decide.”

  Maybe we already had decided. I know I had. What better options were there? I was certain a life-changing opportunity waited for us, buried in the middle of nowhere, if only we had the nerve to go find it. But not everyone was convinc
ed of that quite yet.

  The only graduate students in the whole paleontology department doing summer session, we were talking about going big and working one of the larger mines. Everybody else was smart enough to avoid the heat and rains and search for artifacts in the fall when it is cooler—but potentially less productive.

  Barry worked his magic. Under the pretense of a cookout, he lured us in. When the burgers had been eaten and the charcoal turned to ash out on the balcony, we sat in the living room and he laid out his grand plan. It was a good one.

  “We’ll have the place to ourselves. The erosion from the daily afternoon rains will constantly expose a new surface layer and clues to—who knows what? Woolly mammoths and great white sharks. Maybe the largest ones ever. And they’ll be all ours.”

  Roger got up and stormed back to the window. “I don’t want anything to do with digging at a mine during summer session. Not in our heat and humidity. It’s brutal here. A freaking sauna would need a drink of water if it visited at this time of year.” He glanced over at Barry. “Why’s this such a good idea all of a sudden? Because all these amazing finds are sitting there?”

  “Yes, because they’re just sitting there.” Barry folded his arms over his chest and put a hand to his chin. “Until the next rain, and then they are gone again.”

  “Which is the next day!” Riff looked at me. “Tomàs, it’s such a waste of time!”

  Melissa placed her empty dish in the sink and leaned on the counter, awaiting my input. Maybe I was the deciding vote.

  The bigger, older, more prestigious universities in Florida demanded that their little brother pull his weight. More than his weight, usually. Being a newer school, USF had to build its reputation in the shadow of its three larger and better known siblings, and they always grabbed the best things for themselves: prestigious grants, more desirable professors, you name it.

  Those schools grew their annual budgets. Ours had to combine the paleontology department with the archaeology department to keep both alive. Whether a student hunted for plant and animal fossils or the arrowheads and clay pots from an ancient civilization, diggers were diggers to the budget analysts.

  Barry went back to his desk and sat down in the big chair, slowly spinning around while he waited for my answer.

  They were babies, this group, even though I was not so much older. But when I told them I had a wife and child back in India, I immediately gained years of perspective in their eyes.

  Still, as the newest member of the group, I sometimes felt I had to tread carefully. I had only transferred to USF the prior fall, and this group—literally, the cream of the paleontology student crop—was kind enough to take me in. They were smart and ambitious, a good pairing for an exchange student from India with French roots and big dreams who could have just as easily been an outcast.

  I took a deep breath. “It will be hot.”

  “Hell yes it will!” Roger folded his arms and leaned on the wall. “Damn hot.”

  “Brutally hot. And extremely humid.” I sighed. “Out there at the mine, by noon the air will hurt with each breath you take. The sun will zap your strength before you even reach the dig site. It’s a terrible burden, working like that. And risky. You lose focus.”

  Barry seemed to weigh each word, listening for a hint at my answer.

  “It is too dangerous…”

  “Amen, brother!” Roger roared.

  “… to not have all five of us along.”

  Barry grinned. “You’ll do it?”

  “Yeah.” I nodded. “I’m in.”

  Roger groaned.

  “Aha!” Barry jumped up. “This calls for a toast.” He grabbed Melissa’s arm and swung himself around, dancing. “Do we have any champagne? No? A Coke, then.”

  Roger glared at me. “Why?”

  I shrugged. “Why not? It seems worthwhile. Barry’s right. If we wait until the fall, like everybody else, we’ll be picking over the same minuscule finds. That’s how the department has been doing it for years. It works—but only if you want to find fossilized camel teeth and bits of whale bone.”

  I turned to address the room. “If you want a real find, something significant, you have to do what nobody else is willing to do. Stake out the rough terrain when the rains will wash through and uncover the big stuff.”

  Melissa pulled her hair over her shoulder and ran her fingers through it. “How is that different from any other time we dig there?”

  “It’s tons different.” Roger walked over. “Fewer mine personnel nearby. Weaker phone signals. Flash floods. Mud slides. Lightning…”

  “Sounds dangerous.” Riff got up from the couch.

  Roger nodded. “It is.”

  “Very dangerous,” Barry agreed.

  Riff smiled. “Count me in.”

  Melissa rolled her eyes. “You’re doing it for the wrong reasons, Riff.”

  Riff cocked his head and glared at her. “What’s the reason you’re doing it, Missy?”

  “Well…” She lowered her gaze. “I haven’t said I am doing it.”

  The room fell silent. My calculations were off. We still weren’t decided. All eyes were now on Melissa. Barry was in. So was Riff. And me. Roger would protest, but he wouldn’t dare let us go without him, for fear that we would actually find something substantial out there in the middle of nowhere and he’d miss out. Melissa was often the lone voice of caution and reason in this male dominated clan.

  She stared down at her manicure, a temporary luxury for a paleontology student.

  I knew the reason somebody like Melissa hung out with these boys, though. She had become one of them. From my short time with the group, I saw she’d earned her way in through hard work. I’d seen her be a friend, co-worker, surrogate sister, and more, but she had earned their respect by getting dirty in the field. I couldn’t see this happening without her being a part of it.

  She sighed. “Okay, I’m in.”

  “Fuck!” Roger put his hand to his forehead. “What is wrong with you people?”

  “We want to die rich and famous, man!” Barry lifted Melissa up in his arms and swung her around wildly. Her hair drifted into his face and he closed his eyes, inhaling. “Missy’s gonna help us find a tyrannosaur!”

  “Put me down, you idiot.” She smacked him on the head. “I’m getting dizzy. And there weren’t any tyrannosaurs in Florida.”

  He set her down, and they held onto each other, maybe to regain their balance. She took a breath and slid her hands down his arms, lingering for a moment. He grinned at her. Then he must have remembered where he was.

  “No, no tyrannosaurs in Florida! Not until we find the first one!”

  The celebration was nice, but premature. The safety protocols required a minimum of five, not four. We needed Roger. But it was not my place to ruin things, so instead of stating the fact, I asked a question. “Can we go with only four?”

  The jubilant room quieted again as I focused on the scowling Roger. The most physically gifted among us and a natural athlete, he seemed unlikely to let his precious Melissa venture out there without him. They were no longer an item, but we all knew he felt that she—and the rest of us, really—wanted him along if we were going to come back safely, regardless of where we were digging. Too many things could go wrong without a full team.

  So we waited for his answer.

  Melissa cleared her throat. “You can say ‘no,’ Roger…”

  “The hell I can. You morons will all get killed out there if I don’t go. You know that.”

  Barry smiled. He held all the cards and he knew it, but he wanted a solid crew—team players who were committed.

  “Aw, hell.” Roger shrugged. “If I’m going to be drafted, I might as well volunteer.”

  Cheers went up from the rest of us. Melissa leaned in to him. “You weren’t being drafted, you know.”

  Roger scoffed. “Wasn’t I?”

  Barry found an old bottle of spiced rum in the back of the pantry. He poured it judiciously for
his team. Normally, I wouldn’t drink, but today looked like a special day. One where the regular rules didn’t apply. The start of something big. Besides, traditions and rules are meant to be broken occasionally.

  “A toast!” Barry held up the bottle.

  We raised our assorted plastic mugs.

  “To an eventful summer.” He touched his mug to the others. “One that we’ll never forget.”

  We clinked our cups and drank, then set about making our grand plans to unearth the hidden treasures that awaited us.

  Chapter Two

  The words “Florida Mining and Minerals, Number 32” greeted us on a worn plywood sign at the conclusion of our two hour drive. The elderly gatekeeper waved a wobbly hand at our trucks as we entered the site, barely glancing up from his newspaper.

  There were no big elevators that lowered workers into deep holes here, like the coal mines in movies. We didn’t wear hard hats with little lights on top. Florida mines were immensely wide and mostly flat. The sandy soil couldn’t support a deep hole without falling in on itself.

  We were supposed to stay in a cluster of five for safety, but we never did. Everybody had their preferred dig partner, and we usually split up in twos or threes.

  Riff and Barry would pair up, allowing Barry’s methodicalness to balance with Riff’s eagerness to just dig and go, dig and go. Barry had a good eye. He often unearthed a particularly interesting specimen based on clues in the surrounding soil.

  The other team would usually end up being Melissa and Roger. Even though they had broken up as a couple, the two of them remained friends and usually worked well on a dig. I suspected it might be a case of "friends with benefits" but chose to look the other way. I’m sure I wasn’t the only one.

  Working by myself, I usually “floated,” drifting between the other groups. Our instructors frowned on floating, but we all did it on occasion.

  The miners turned up hundreds of acres of dirt when they extracted the valuable phosphate from a site, but their tailings–the sand and material to be discarded–created a treasure trove for paleontology students. It’s hard to see a fashion model on Miami’s South Beach, or a pale, potbellied Canadian tourist walking around in a Speedo swimsuit in Sarasota, and think of a woolly mammoth strolling along right next to them. But aside from a geological tick of the clock, they’d all be side by side on the beach getting a tan.