“Let’s make it quick,” Daedalus said to his dive team, and with that, he stepped off the shallow edge of the lake and into deep water. He placed his regulator mouthpiece between his teeth and pressed the button on his BC inflator hose to let the air out of his vest. He maintained a vertical posture as he began sinking beneath the surface of the lake. His brother and their other team member followed suit, and a minute later all three of them were descending into the lake.
The campsite was not as organized as Carter had hoped for. There was no central location other than the mess tent where he could find all the gear piled together. He found one backpack leaned against a tree by itself, and searched through it exhaustively, but found no paper maps, and zero electronic devices such as a laptop, phone, camera or flash drive. Looking around some more, he located a second pack. The only difference between this one and the first was that it contained a smartphone. Carter frowned as he started at the modern device. A photo of the map could be on a phone, he thought, and yet this presented a new problem, since most phones were locked by default for security purposes. He powered it on, and sure enough, was met with a passcode screen.
He clenched his teeth and powered down the phone while considering available options. He could steal the phone and try to electronically unlock it later — hack into it, basically — or else he could see if it had a removable memory card and take that out of it. But for now he put the phone back in the pack where it was and decided to keep looking for something more definitive. He was pretty sure that only Daedalus himself would have a copy of the map, after all, so the chances that this one phone would have anything were one out of four. At least he thought their team consisted of four.
Carter moved around the site some more until he found another backpack, this one simply lying on the ground on a light snow drift. They must have been in a hurry to unload and get the operations set up, he thought. He rummaged through this pack, which he noted was a top name brand, moderately used. He felt something flat and slim right away and removed it to reveal an iPad. Again, it could have useful info on it, but it was likely passworded. He kept looking through the pack. He recognized a slim compartment on the back of the pack as being for firearm concealed carry, and paused. It felt like something was in there… he unzipped it and pulled out a 1911 pistol. Checking the magazine, he saw that it was full.
Carter got up from his kneeling position and checked his surroundings as he popped the magazine back in. This was an interesting turn of events, he thought. But now he had a major decision to face. He saw three options: One, keep it. Could come in handy if they were discovered by Treasure, Inc. He could discard it once they got near the bottom of the mountain so as not to risk being seen with it in town and detained. Two, hide it, toss it down the mountain into a snow bank so that Daedalus — he was pretty sure that’s whose pack this was — would never find it. Or three, just put it back like nothing ever happened.
He heard footsteps treading lightly and reflexively raised the loaded gun, pointing it in that general direction, but then lowered it when he saw that it was Jayden. Carter lowered the gun and saw Jayden’s gaze travel right to it.
“Bonus!” he said in an exaggerated whisper. “The map?”
Carter shook his head. “Not yet.”
“You gonna keep it? I think you should keep it, and find one for me if you can. Toss theirs.” Carter nodded. “I’m inclined to agree. What are they up to down there?”
“That’s what I came to tell you while I have a little time. Three out of four of them just went for a dive in the lake!”
“Dive?” Carter was confused. “You mean, like they took a swim?”
“No, SCUBA dive! They dragged a bunch of tanks down there with those ropes, used a chainsaw to cut an opening in the ice, and now three of them are underwater.”
Carter pondered this for a moment. “Wow. And what’s the fourth guy doing?”
Jayden glanced back to the edge of the slope as if that man might appear at any moment. “He’s the posted lookout, I guess. When I left my post he was just standing on the shore where the divers entered, and looking around a bit, but not too much. He never looked up in my direction.”
“All right. Sounds like I have some time to work with. You re-take your post.” He turned back to the pack and began unzipping one of the small “admin pouches” on the front, which usually contained smaller non-weapon or survival items such as flashlights, documentation, keys, perhaps a multitool, pens, notepads, extra batteries and the like. This compartment contained a pair of fleece gloves and a ski mask, as well as a small penlight and a candy bar. He continued to rummage through the backpack, tossing items obviously not of interest out of the pack, then putting them back in after the space they had occupied had been “cleared.” He was about to declare the entire pack as having been searched when he shoved some items of clothing back down into the bottom of the main compartment — and felt it shift. He thought maybe it had a zipper or tie on the bottom that had come undone to allow the pack to be accessed from both ends, but a quick glance at the outer bottom of the pack told him this was not the case. Which left only one explanation.
The backpack had a false bottom!
Carter snaked his fingers down inside the pack and felt for the edges of it. He was able to slip a finger against the side and then pry it up, removing the black canvas-covered piece of fiberboard from the pack. His heart rate sped up as he felt a layer of thin plastic at the very bottom — the true bottom — of the bag. He pulled the item out and immediately held his breath as he recognized the map he and Jayden had so painstakingly brought up from the Titanic. It had been placed inside clear plastic cover to protect it somewhat against the rigors of travel.
Carter eyed the document ravenously, drinking in its details as if it could be snatched away from him again at any moment. Which is not far from the truth, he thought, taking his phone from his pocket and powering it on in order to use the camera. He placed the map on the ground and snapped off a few close-up photographs of it. After checking to see that the resulting images were in fact readable, he then powered his phone off and pocketed it.
He glanced over toward the edge of the slope and saw Jayden hunched down low, monitoring the lake divers, his back to him. Carter put the rest of the items back in the backpack, and did his best to organize it the way it was, minus the gun and the map, of course, and then to leave the pack in the same position on the snow-packed ground as he had found it. He had a major decision to make now: should he steal the original map back from Daedalus or put it back in his pack so that he never knew they were here. If he put the map back, though, he’d really need to put the gun back, too. Unless….perhaps he would blame the missing items on one of his own expedition mates and think they did it? That could cause a nice row between them, Carter mused. But on the other hand, the map itself was valuable and technically belonged to his client. He saw himself as duty-bound to bring it to her.
There was something else, too, he was aware as he stood. The lake. What was down there? Treasure, Inc. had obviously gone to great lengths to probe its depths, with an extensive, tricky dive operation. They must have either seen something compelling down there or else the map told them where to look…
The map! He held it up again and began to study it, but then realized he hadn’t even told Jayden the news yet. He should let him know, before—but wait, what’s that? His gaze bored into the map where a solid black “X” seemed to indicate something important. Literally an X-marks-the-spot? Carter wondered. He mentally pictured the satellite photos and modern maps of the Mt. Ararat region he had briefly perused before beginning the trek. As far as he could tell from his hurried examination of the map, which indicated clearly the mountains of Ararat, though not the country of Turkey or any nation by name, it could be their current location. So this map is what led them here, Carter thought. And so close to the known ark site. Then he had the same thought process as Daedalus had, that maybe the old map pointed to the timber wreckage that had been discovered in the latter 20th century…