Race for the Flash Stone (The Anlon Cully Chronicles Book 2)

by K Patrick Donoghue

  Looking now at Pebbles, Anlon said soothingly, “It’s okay, Pebbles. You go with Hector and Cesar. Jen will come with me.”

  Turning to Cesar, he said, “Look, you’re the archaeologist here. If your instincts tell you it’s worth a look, I’m not going to argue with you. Hector, is this area accessible?”

  “Si. Not too bad. But, many monos,” Hector said.

  Looking at Pebbles, Anlon grinned. “Well, monkeys are better than snakes, don’t you think?”

  Waving his machete, Hector corrected, “Oh, no, señor, plenty of terciopelo there too!”

  “Tele-what?” asked Pebbles.

  “Terciopelo. It’s a viper. It's venom can be deadly,” Cesar said.

  Pebbles frowned. “Perfect!”

  Decision made, they resumed paddling farther upstream. When they neared their intended coordinates, Hector used the motor briefly to guide the craft to shore. They each sloshed into the water to help Hector tug the boat up onto a shallow portion of the bank. Once the watercraft was secured, Anlon opened the dry bags to test the equipment. Satisfied that each was at full power and operational, he divided the gear between the two teams.

  “Everybody’s GPS trackers on?” he asked. After a round of nods, he continued, “Good. Put in these coordinates. Latitude 11.046, longitude -83.91. That’s about dead center of the hill.”

  Once they each entered the coordinates, Anlon used Cesar’s map to outline their exploration. “Jen and I will head due west and then loop north from the southwest side of the rise. You guys make for the southeast side and loop north. Let’s plan to link up at the top unless one of us gets a hit beforehand. Same drill as before. Anyone gets a hit, mark the spot on the tracker and ping the others.”

  “How far is it from here?” Pebbles asked.

  “Mmm, what do you say, Jen? About a mile?” Anlon asked.

  Nodding, Jennifer said, “Looks about right if we get a straight shot, but I’d count on some terrain detours.”

  “Or monkey detours!” exclaimed Pebbles.

  Leading the way through the dense foliage, Hector carved a makeshift path with his machete. Cesar followed behind him, alternately darting glances at the magnetometer and the terrain ahead. Bringing up the rear was Pebbles, machete in hand and whistle clenched between her teeth.

  About a quarter of a mile inland, their intended path turned more challenging. The ground began to rise and they struggled to gain footholds on mud-slicked roots and stones. Cesar nearly dropped the magnetometer on two occasions, but both times he managed to grab hold of nearby branches to steady himself. Pebbles had to sheath her machete, but she still eyed the trees warily.

  Half a mile into their journey, Cesar stopped suddenly. “Now, that’s interesting.”

  Pebbles came up beside him. “Get something?”

  “Yes, I think so. Look.” He showed Pebbles the magnetometer. “Now look what happens when I turn.”

  As Cesar turned to his right, the magnetometer registered a low, steady reading. When he waved the meter in front of him toward his left side, the meter’s digital reading jumped a modest amount. “It’s not much,” he said, “but it’s more than we’ve had.”

  Hector reached behind his gun holster and snagged a canteen clipped to his belt. He uncapped the container, raised it to his mouth and greedily swallowed. Looking back at his companions, he asked, “Which way?”

  “Uh, I’d say we need to shift direction to about ten o’clock,” Cesar said. “That’s where I’m getting the strongest reading.”

  Hector reclipped his canteen to his belt and then reached for the compass dangling from a lanyard draped around his neck. Noting their present position, he turned sixty degrees as Cesar suggested and started off in the new direction. On her own tracker, Pebbles dropped a pin to mark the spot where they got their first hit and then scampered to catch up with Cesar.

  “Shouldn’t we give Anlon a heads-up?” she asked.

  “Not yet,” Cesar said. “The signal’s still weak. Could be a blip.”

  But the signal grew stronger as they trekked farther ahead. They briefly lost the signal when forced to make a circuitous course correction around a swampy depression, but eventually they honed back in on the magnetic trail. Every so often, Pebbles dropped another pin.

  When they halted to rest and take water, Pebbles took advantage of the time to study her tracker more closely. Their course had veered toward the southern side of the hill. She could see Anlon and Jennifer’s progress on the screen and they too had made a distinct turn in their direction. They were closer to the hill than Pebbles’ party, but they hadn’t sent a message either.

  Pebbles was surprised that Anlon and Jen were ahead of them. Anlon had moved very slowly the preceding day, his weaker leg sore from prolonged exertion. Either Anlon had experienced a rebound in energy or their path was less arduous.

  She alerted Cesar and Hector. “Check your trackers. Looks like we’re heading right for Anlon and Jen.”

  Before either could view their devices, three pings rang out. Pebbles looked down at her screen and saw Jennifer’s message: “Found it!!!!!”

  A second later, Anlon messaged: “We’ll wait for you.”

  Pebbles tapped out a response: “Awesome!!!!!”

  While Pebbles and Cesar exchanged high fives, the stoic Hector tapped on his device with one hand while reorienting to Anlon’s position with the compass. A moment later they were on their way to meet them.

  San Juan de Nicaragua (Greytown)

  Nicaragua

  Christian Hunte was enjoying chorizo and eggs with a dash of hot sauce when his phone buzzed. Between chews, he lifted the smartphone and opened the message: “11.0444, -83.9083.” His eyes flickered momentarily as the message sunk in. Thrusting a hand into the backpack on the adjacent chair, he withdrew a GPS tracker. He pressed the power button and scurried from the lodge dining room. Pacing outside on the terra-cotta patio, he grumbled at the device’s slow activation process. First came the company’s animated logo, followed by a stream of pop-up promotional messages and then a tutorial prompt.

  Once he cleared the screen of the annoying fluff, he waited for the tracker’s signal strength meter to indicate a connection. Finally, three of five bars appeared and he entered the coordinates. Seconds later, the tracker zeroed in on the spot. Zooming out from the pulsing dot, Christian said, “How did they get all the way over there?”

  Christian rushed back in the dining room, grabbed his phone and typed a quick reply: “Have they entered?”

  He rattled a fork on the table while awaiting a reply. At one point, a perky waitress stopped by and offered a coffee refill. Christian declined and asked for the check. When she returned with the bill, he quickly paid it and departed.

  Christian’s vision remained glued to the phone as he stalked back to his room. After another thirty restless minutes, there still was no reply. As he paced the room, he considered the potential reasons for the lack of response. The most likely, he reasoned, was a false alarm. They probably just stumbled across a small diamond deposit and mistook it for a Maerlif.

  Alternatively, if they had indeed discovered the vault, they might be having difficulty opening it. Christian recalled his own struggle to find the glyph the first time he visited Dominica with Foucault. Or, perhaps they gained entry and discovered the chamber empty like Navarro in the Amazon.

  The only other explanation was distasteful to consider. Had Hector been lured by the riches hidden in the vault? Did his silence suggest a double cross?

  Unwilling to wait any longer, he typed a message to Foucault: “Received unconfirmed coordinates. Leaving now to validate. Will contact you later.”

  Indio Maiz, Nicaragua

  Anlon maneuvered the small GPS rover over the rock with his hand. “Can you see it?”

  Standing a few paces behind, Cesar peered at the ground-penetrating radar’s display and replied, “Yes, there is definitely a cavity behind the rocks. Where was the strongest magnetic reading?�
��

  Anlon showed Cesar the spot where the magnetometer had gone wild. Meanwhile, Jennifer, Pebbles and Hector prepared to search the hill’s stony face for the Breylofte glyph. For Hector’s benefit, Pebbles bent down and used her finger to draw the Breylofte symbol in the mud and described the glyph. “It will be three wavy, evenly spaced horizontal cuts in the stone, one on top of the other, like this.”

  Cesar overheard Pebbles’ description and called back, “It would surprise me if it’s intact, Pebbles. These rocks have seen thousands of years of rain, mud and wind since the etching was made. It would be very, very rare to find it untouched by nature.” Pointing to the debris scattered around the hill, he added, “Look at how many of the rocks have fallen to the ground. And there, up higher, you can see others have cleaved or shifted. If we do find the glyph, it’s likely to be badly weathered. And we may only find bits. It may look nothing like the original carving.”

  “So, what should we look for?” Pebbles asked.

  “Look for any anomalies. A depression that seems too uniform. A shadow that looks like a pattern or design. Anything that doesn’t appear natural,” he said.

  Anlon waited for Pebbles to nod her understanding, then asked, “Where should we start, Cesar? How would you suggest we conduct the search?”

  “You will not like the answer, my friend. If we do it right, we need to divide the wall and the surrounding ground into manageable grids, I’d say four-by-four-foot squares given the terrain. Then we will need to examine every stone, fallen or not, with painstaking scrutiny. Any time one of us finds an anomaly, we stop, mark its location and examine it. For an area of this size, it could take several days. If the weather interferes, it might take weeks.”

  The others in the group joined Anlon as they listened to Cesar’s explanation. Pebbles shoved her hands into the back pockets of her cargo pants and frowned. “Well, that sucks.” She kicked at a small stone and then piped up, “Why can’t we skip all that and just use the Breylofte to find it? Malinyah said the Stone will jiggle when it interacts with the entry stone.”

  “I would advise against it,” Cesar said. “A lot of the rocks are loose. You could cause them to fall and make it harder to find the doorway.”

  Jennifer chimed in. “He’s right, Pebbles. The whole damn face looks like it could come tumbling down at any moment.”

  “Or the wall might cave in on the chamber and destroy everything inside,” added Cesar.

  Pebbles massaged her wrists and groaned. “But we found the beacon! And you guys just said you can tell there’s a hollow space behind the rocks. Can’t we at least try the Breylofte? Anlon? What do you think?”

  Anlon leaned back on a boulder and crossed his arms. Bowing his head, he considered their options. It was easy to see the merit in Cesar’s proposed approach. A grid search would minimize the risk of damaging the entry and any artifacts inside the chamber. If they had truly located an intact Munuorian archaeological site, it would be irresponsible to just rip through the wall to see what was inside.

  Yet, the time investment to do it right was problematic. Given Navarro’s travel to Brazil and Dominica, Anlon considered it likely Navarro would soon turn his attention toward Indio Maiz. And Navarro was all about plundering, not preservation. Anlon shuddered then as he imagined what might happen if Margaret Corchran showed up while they were excavating, or if the sneaky Navarro slipped in overnight and gutted the site.

  He said, “My head says go by the book, but my heart says try the Breylofte. I’m not sure which to choose.” He looked away from the group and sighed. “I want to do this right. That means methodically cataloging everything and anything. On the flip side, I want to stop Navarro et al. from exploiting the Stones. That argues in favor of speed.

  “It’s honestly maddening. All my training says, ‘Take your time.’ These secrets have been buried for ten thousand years, what’s another few weeks or months? But my conscience is screaming at me to move quickly.”

  No one spoke for several minutes. Finally, Cesar cleared his throat and said, “Anlon, in archaeology, there is often a pull and tug between speed and rigor. I have faced it myself more than once.”

  On one occasion, Cesar said, government officials had called him in when an ancient burial site was discovered during the construction of a road through a mountain pass. He had examined the burial mounds and determined the site was far larger than originally suspected.

  “I met with the transportation minister. I told him it would take months to properly excavate the site and the road would have to move. Further construction would damage the site. He looked at me and said, ‘You have two weeks. Do what you can.’ He said the road was too important to delay. So, I had no choice. We did what we could.”

  He went on to describe another excavation that had been threatened by civil war. The rebel forces swept to the edge of the site. They started to bomb it, intent on its destruction.

  “There were two beautifully preserved statues still half-buried in the central structure,” he recalled. “The bombs missed hitting them directly, but they were damaged. I had a bitter choice: flee, and let the rebels destroy the statues, or dig them out as fast as possible and get them out before the site was overrun. In the end, I felt it was better to save some rather than none. In both cases, a threat caused me to set aside method. If you feel there are real threats lurking, then every second delay raises the risk to this site.”

  Uncrossing his arms, Anlon rose from the boulder where he sat. “Very helpful advice, thank you,” he said. Then he turned to Pebbles and said, “Let’s try the Breylofte. If we don’t find the door, or if the wall starts to crumble, then we step back and go with the grid search.”

  Cesar nodded agreement. Pebbles said, “Thanks for siding with me, A.C. I will be super careful with the Stone.”

  After a brief discussion about where to test the Breylofte, Anlon and Cesar ranged the magnetometers back and forth across the stone face to narrow the potential target zone. Working on the presumption the entry would be somewhere close to the Maerlif beacon, they marked off a twenty-foot area.

  Then, using the GPR, they measured for cavity depth and wall thickness at two-foot intervals. From the ten sections, they selected two for the Breylofte test — one to the far left of the twenty-foot zone where the cavity wall was thinnest and the other near the zone’s center. Here, the magnetic field was strongest but the wall much thicker.

  All the while, Hector sat on a log and watched with mild interest, tracker at his side.

  CHAPTER 20

  A GATHERING OF SNAKES

  San Jose, Costa Rica

  September 5

  While a gentle rain dribbled off the café’s covered patio, Jacques Foucault sipped a dark roast blend and read Christian’s message. He tapped out a quick reply and withdrew a gold case from the inner pocket of his blazer. Selecting a cigarette, he said, “Enfin! It’s all coming together nicely.”

  With Christian moving on Cully, and Margaret poised to deal with Navarro, there was a possibility Foucault might eliminate both competitors by sunset. As a bonus, if Cully had indeed found an intact Maerlif, there would be a chance to snatch the Tuliskaera and foil The Betrayer. Then, it would be a simple matter to lure Muran out of hiding.

  Foucault was surprised Muran remained in the shadows, but then again, she was never one to strike until conditions were perfectly aligned in her favor. She was desperate, however, and soon, very soon, she would have no choice but to step into the light.

  Sipping the coffee, Foucault allowed himself to imagine the look on The Betrayer’s face when confronted with the Tuliskaera. Would she run? Would she try to bargain? Or would she stand and fight?

  Foucault’s musings were cut short when a call from Christian arrived.

  “Allô, Christian, do you have good news for me?”

  On the other end of the line, Christian shouted over the high-pitched whine of a boat engine. “Good morning, Monsieur…I hope so…I believe so…but still no co
nfirmation. I’m headed there now to find out.”

  As Foucault listened, Margaret Corchran crossed the street and entered the café. She was barely recognizable. Her shoulder-length, bleach-blond hair had been replaced by a spiked Mohawk dyed crimson. Around the borders of her eyes, she’d heavily layered a deep purple shade. Two black gauges adorned her earlobes and a studded collar circled her neck. Between her nose and black lips dangled a silver septum ring. To complete the goth-girl look, she was decked out entirely in black: leather jacket, stretch pants and over-the-ankle Doc Marten boots. She slid into a seat across from Foucault and grabbed a menu.

  “Bon, mon ami,” Foucault said to Christian. “When you get there, call me.”

  “Of course,” Christian replied.

  With the call completed, Foucault tapped ashes onto the saucer beneath his coffee and studied Margaret’s transformation. From the corner of his mouth, he ejected a stream of smoke and said, “Magnifique! Klaus will never suspect you.”

  Through the rasp that now passed for her voice, Margaret said, “It only has to work long enough for me to kill the rat bastard!”

  He nodded appreciatively, but then cautioned, “Do not underestimate him, mon chère, he is cunning.”

  Tugging the collar of the jacket to reveal the long scar, she said, “I won’t make the same mistake twice.”

  They discussed the plan one more time. She was to arrive at the Finca 6 museum at two p.m. There she was to proceed to the courtyard and take a position near the museum’s largest “Las Bolas” sphere. Navarro had been instructed to occupy a bench facing the sphere. The assassination would be simple. Once Navarro was seated with the briefcase by his feet, Margaret would sneak behind him and slit his throat.