Spartan Gold - Clive Cussler

The water here, moving in a barely perceptible clockwise rotation, gave off a faint iridescent shimmer, which generally indicated an outflow of fresh water. Sam dug out his dive goggles from the duffel bag at his feet, pressed them to his eyes, and dipped his face into the water, which, despite being warmed by the sun all day, felt cool on his skin. Dozens of fish darted this way and that, squabbling over invisible bits of nutrients being stirred up by the freshwater current.

Sam lifted his head out. He dipped his fingertip into the water and brought it to his lips. It tasted only about a third as salty as true seawater.

“Underground river?” Remi asked.

“Has to be,” Sam replied, shaking the water from his hair.

Though it was an uncommon phenomenon, sea caves in this area did on occasion link up with both solutional and fracture-guided caves, which in turn joined underground inland streams.

“I’ll have to look at a map. I think we’re only a couple miles from Lake George. I wouldn’t be surprised if this system dumps out there. Or even down to Salt Lake.”

“Neither would I, but if you don’t mind I’d prefer we put that adventure on our ‘someday’ list.”

“Deal.” Sam checked his watch. High tide was thirty minutes away. If they were going to explore the cave, they’d have to do it within the next hour lest they find themselves fighting the full force of the outflow. Ideally, they would enter at the end of the inflow, use the forty-five- to sixty-minute window of relatively calm current to explore the cave, then ride the outflow back out. The problem was, this was not a typical closed sea cave. The source of the underground river inside would create volatile currents that could either trap them inside or suck them into fracture tunnels that led into the bowels of the island. Neither option appealed to Sam.

He put the question to Remi, who replied, “I’d rather we wait, but I know that look in your eye: You want to go in.”

“Better we find out now if we’re on the right track. We’ve got seventy-five feet of rope. We tie one end to a banyan root out here, the other end to my weight belt. If I get into trouble, I can haul myself out.”

“And if you bonk your head and are out cold?”

“Every sixty seconds I’ll give the line three tugs. I miss one of those and you haul me out using the dinghy.”

“Time limit?”

“Ten minutes, not a second more.”

Remi considered this for a few moments, narrowed her eyes at him, then sighed. “Okay, Jacques Cousteau. Remember what I said, though: If you die, I’ll never forgive you.”

Sam smiled and gave her a wink. “Deal.”

Ten minutes later he was suited up and sitting in the bow. Remi glided the dinghy to a stop against the cliff. Sam, moving carefully, stood up and tied a bowline knot around a protruding root, then sat down and secured the other end to the D-ring on his weight belt. Remi reversed the dinghy and stopped ten feet from the face, using minute throttle adjustments to keep them stationary.

Sam spit in his mask, rubbed the saliva around the inside, then dipped the mask into the water and slipped it on his head, the lower edge resting just above his eyebrows. Next he slipped on his fins, punched the regulator to test the airflow, then nodded to Remi.

“Luck,” she said.

“I’ll be back.”

He settled the mask over his eyes and rolled backward into the water.

He let himself hang motionless for a moment, enjoying the sudden immersion and the striking clarity of the water that filled his vision. He waited for the bubbles and froth to fully clear, then tipped himself upright and did a pike dive for the bottom, already feeling the tug of the current. He let it take him, rolling onto his side so he could watch the sun-dappled surface for a few fleeting seconds before the lip of the cliff appeared and he slipped into darkness. He clicked on his dive light and cast it around.

The cave’s entrance was a rough half circle, an arch ten to twelve feet wide and twenty feet tall. At low tide, its peak probably rose only a few inches above the lagoon’s surface—that, combined with the foliage blanketing the rock face, rendered it all but invisible. If not for the Goat’s Head clue, they would have never found it.

He finned downward, angling for the bottom, and let his fingers trail in the sand. After twenty or so feet, the bottom suddenly dropped away into darkness. He rolled back onto his side, shined his light upward, and saw the entrance arch had disappeared, replaced by surface reflection. He checked his watch and gave the line at his waist three solid tugs: All okay, Remi.

He was suddenly enveloped by cool water and he felt a new current take hold of him, this one pushing him to the right. He realized he was spinning ever so slightly, as though being pirouetted by an unseen hand. Whirlpool, he thought with a trickle of panic. The currents of the lagoon and the underground river were colliding, the cooler water slipping beneath the warmer water, creating a hydraulic tornado. Right now he was on the outer edge of the vortex, so the current was strong, but just manageable with fins—almost two knots, he estimated—but he knew it would grow stronger toward the center. He pointed himself toward what he hoped was a wall and scissored his fins once, twice, then broke the surface.

His outstretched hand touched rock and he grasped at it, his palm bumping over the surface before his fingers found purchase on an outcropping. He jerked to a stop, his legs trailing in the circular current. He gave the line three hard tugs, then checked his watch: two minutes down, eight to go. Aside from the soft gurgle of water rushing along the walls and some dripping sounds coming from deeper within the cave, it was eerily quiet.

Using his teeth, he pulled the glove from his free hand and held his fingertips up, instantly feeling the rush of cool air on his moist skin. This was a good sign. Though he judged the possibility remote, the cave’s connection to an underground river brought with it the chance of pollutants, and while they would have seen signs of toxicity in the outflow—a lack of fish, discolored rocks, dead sponges—there was also the chance of gas buildup. The brisk airflow made this unlikely. He pulled the regulator from his mouth and took a sniff, then a breath. All okay. He gave the line another all-okay signal, then put his glove back on and shined the light around.

Six feet above his head he got the first indication they were on the right track: A cross-plank catwalk suspended from the ceiling by rusted steel cables spanned the width of the cavern and ended at the opposite wall above a makeshift wooden pier supported by wooden pilings sunk into the sea floor. A second catwalk joined the first at its midpoint and extended to the rear wall at a perpendicular angle. The setup wasn’t sophisticated by any means, but clearly someone had put some effort into the structure, and judging by the rust on the cables and the coating of slime on the wooden planking, it had been quite a while ago.

The cavern was oval in shape, perhaps fifty feet wide with a vaulted, stalactite-covered ceiling that rose twenty feet above Sam’s head. Panning the light along what should have been the back wall, he saw only darkness. He’d imagined the juncture with the underground river would feature a gushing cleft in the wall, but he now realized this cavern was simply an antechamber. Aside from a narrowing of the rear walls to a diameter of thirty feet, there was no discernible separation between this cavern and the adjoining fracture-guided system. Where and how far it went there was no telling.

Was this catwalk and pier system enough to service a mini submarine or two? Sam wondered. It would depend on what kind and how much work was required, he decided. This brought up another question: Why hadn’t the work been done aboard the Lothringen while at sea? A question for Selma.

The line at his waist began jerking violently, and though they’d arranged no emergency signal from Remi’s end, he instinctively knew that was exactly what she was telling him.

He slipped the regulator back between his teeth, flipped over, and dove, then scissored hard into the entrance, pulling himself hand over hand along the line. As the light from the lagoon’s surface appeared, he angled toward the ceiling and rolled onto his back, using his fins to keep himself away from the rock. He slipped past the entrance’s leading edge and broke the surface beneath a curtain of vines.

Suppressing the urge to call Remi’s name, he looked around.

The lagoon was empty.

The dinghy was gone, along with Remi.

CHAPTER 17

His rising fear turned to immediate relief as he saw a hand emerge from the undergrowth along the bank across the lagoon. The hand was pointed toward him, palm out: Wait. A second later Remi’s face emerged from the foliage. She tapped her ear, pointed toward the sky, and made a vertical twirling motion with her index finger. Ten seconds passed, then twenty. A full minute. And then he heard it: the thumping of a helicopter blade, faint and then moving closer. Sam poked his head out from beneath the vines and peered into the sky, trying to localize the sound.

Directly above his head, spinning rotor blades appeared over the edge of the cliff, followed a second later by a curved Plexiglas windscreen glinting in the setting sun. The lagoon’s surface rippled with the downwash, a fine mist filling the air. Sam pulled his head back; Remi wriggled back out of sight.

For what seemed like minutes but was probably less than thirty seconds the helicopter hovered over the lagoon, then banked away and headed south along the coast. Sam waited until the thumping faded away, then ducked beneath the surface and stroked hard across the lagoon until his belly touched sand. He broke the surface to find Remi’s outstretched hand before his face; he grabbed it and she helped him crawl into the underbrush.

“Is it them?” she asked.

“Don’t know, but I’d rather assume so than be surprised. Plus, that’s an expensive bird—a Bell 430, I think. Four million at least.”

“Ideally suited for a Ukrainian mafia kingpin.”

“And with room enough to seat a Russian henchman and eight of his best friends. Did they see you?”

“I’m not sure. The first time it passed over it was moving fast, but it swung around almost immediately, then made two more passes. They’re either curious about this spot, or they know we’re here.”

“Where’s the dinghy?”

Remi pointed off to the left and Sam could see a few inches of gray rubber jutting from the foliage. “I got it under cover as quickly as I could.”

“Good.” Sam thought for a moment. “Let’s get into the cave. If they decide to land and look around, that’s our best hiding spot.” Ears tuned for any sign of the Bell’s return, Sam shed his gear and handed it over to Remi, who started putting it on.

“What’re you going to do?” she asked.

“You cross the lagoon and slip into the cave and wait for me. There’s a clockwise current in there, so watch yourself. Take up the slack on the rope and stay close to the entrance.”

“Three tugs from my end is emergency; two for all okay, stay put.”

“Got it.”

“I’ll bring the dinghy over and try to get it inside. We’ll wait until it’s dark, then see what we can see.”

Remi nodded, finished donning the dive gear, took one last look around, then crawled into the water and slipped beneath the surface. Sam watched her bubble trail cross the lagoon, then slip out of sight into the cave. Next he crawled through the underbrush to where Remi had hidden the dinghy. He went still and closed his eyes, listening, but heard nothing.

After stuffing all their loose gear into their two SealLine dry bags and securing them to the cleats, he tied the dinghy’s eight-foot painter line around his belt, slipped into the water, and started breast-stroking across the lagoon. He was halfway across when suddenly from the direction of the beach he heard the pounding of rotors. Even as he looked over his shoulder, the Bell appeared over the tops of the palms and stopped in a hover above him. The door was open, and a figure in dark coveralls was leaning out and looking down at him. It wasn’t Frobisher’s kidnapper, Arkhipov, Sam realized immediately, but the other one, whose photo Rube had e-mailed to him—Kholkov. Nor was there any mistaking the stubby cylindrical object in Kholkov’s hands: compact submachine gun.

He took a quick gulp of air, flipped over, and dove, his head disappearing beneath the surface just as the dinghy’s side tube exploded with a whoosh. The water rippled above him and in the corners of his eyes he saw bullets arcing through the water leaving trails of froth in their wake. The dinghy trembled with each bullet impact, popping and hissing, then collapsed in on itself and slipped beneath the surface, the trolling motor dragging it down stern first.

Sam kicked his legs hard, arms spread wide as he pushed and pulled himself toward the cave entrance. The firing stopped for two seconds—Sam thought, reloading—then resumed, peppering the surface like hail, the bullets penetrating four feet before their thrust fell off and they fell harmlessly to the bottom. Everything went dark as he slipped beneath the rock arch. The pop-pop-pop of gunfire and the thumping of rotors became muffled.

He rolled over and kicked upward, hand groping for the ceiling. Rope . . . rope . . . come on. . . . He felt something brush his feet: the dinghy. Sinking toward the bottom, it had been caught by the cave’s inflow. He felt a tug on his belt as the painter line went taut, felt himself being dragged along. He was distantly aware of muffled gunfire continuing outside. His fingers touched the rope; he drew his dive knife from its calf sheath and sawed through it. Then he was moving, being sucked inside.

Lungs aching, head pounding from oxygen deprivation, Sam fumbled, trying to knot the rope around the knife’s haft. The knife slipped from his fingers, bumped off his chest. He caught it, tried again, managed to work a square knot, then kicked for the surface and broke into air. To the right, in the corner of his eye, he saw Remi clinging to the rock wall. He felt the vortex seize him, start pulling him along.

“Sam, what—”

“Gimme all the slack you got!”

Sam tossed the knife in a high arc that took it up and over the catwalk. As it plunged into the water he was already kicking that way, hand reaching for the rope. Suddenly he was jerked away from it, toward the wall, as the dinghy was pulled deeper into the circular current.

“Remi, the rope, throw it!”

“Coming!”

He heard splashing, saw her stroking behind him. The dinghy was full deadweight now. He was jerked beneath the surface; water gushed into his mouth and nose.

“Grab it!” Remi called. “Right in front of you!”