They walked up to the pod, not surprised to see the hatch was open. Dane stuck his head briefly.
“Empty?” Sin Fen asked.
“You know it is,” Dane said.
Sin Fen was looking about at the craft closest to them. “Where do you want to start?”
“I don’t even know what we’re looking for,” Dane said.
“There should be captain’s logs in most of these ships,” Sin Fen said. “That’s a maritime tradition almost as long as there has been writing.”
“Let’s go clock-wise,” Dane suggested.
They walked around the pleasure yacht. There were a group of a dozen large rafts, long logs tied together with vines. A long rudder made of a single log carefully carved extended back. There was pole in the center of each which held a drooping sail.
“Who do you think was on the ocean using those?” Dane asked as they went past them.
Sin Fen picked up a piece of cloth off one of the rafts. It was stained red, with stick like figures drawn on it. “Looks Central American. But very old.”
Beyond the rafts was a freighter. Something about it struck Dane. He angled toward it so he could see the faded name painted on the bow. “The USS Cyclops.” He looked up at the ship. “A manganese ore freighter. Disappeared in March of 1918 with all hands while sailing near the Bermuda Triangle. The best guess of the naval investigative board is that she turned turtle in heavy seas, trapping all hands, before eventually sinking. The Poseidon Adventure was based on that finding.”
“Well, now we know they were wrong,” Sin Fen said as they walked around the bow of the ship.
A row of five Spanish galleons lay in front of them, evenly spaced from the edge of the water to the rock wall to their left. “A historian would give his right arm to be here,” Dane said as the walked between two of the ships.
“A treasure convey from the New World that never made it back to Spain,” Sin Fen said. “There’s probably billions of dollars worth of treasure here.”
“Probably,” Dane agreed. He paused. “Look at that.”
A small, single-masted ship was in front of them. It was less than fifty feet long by ten wide. There were holes in the upper sides where oars poked through. Dane walked up and placed his hand on the wood.
“This is very old.”
There were some marking carved into the prow that Sin Fen was studying. “Phoenician,” she finally said. “I don’t know what it says, but I recognize the writing.”
“And how do you know that?” Dane asked. “Seems strange that a woman from the slums of PhnomPhen would recognize Phoenician writing.”
“I spent many years in school after meeting Mister Foreman,” Sin Fen said. “Because we knew the gates were very old, one of my areas of study was ancient cultures.”
“How would a Phoenician ship got caught in the Bermuda Triangle?” Dane asked. “I thought they didn’t navigate outside of the Mediterranean.”
“Actually, it’s speculated the Phoenicians sailed out of the Mediterranean and all the way around Africa. Remember we’ve determined that something came out of the gate- we have no idea how far that thing might have gone to grab these craft.”
Dane was already looking past the Phoenician ship. “Flight 19.”
Five TBM Avengers were lined up wingtip to wingtip. Dane climbed up the wing of one and looked in the cockpit. The windshield was pulled back. The name LT PRESSON was stenciled on the side, just below the cockpit.
“Foreman saw these planes disappear on radar in 1945,” Sin Fen joined him, standing on the wing.
“You can tell him where they went,” Dane said. He reached into the cockpit and pulled out a map. It was folded open showing southern Florida. Radio frequencies were written in pencil on it. He looked at the compass. It pointed north. Reaching further in, he flipped a switch on the control panel. There was a crackle of static.
“The radio works,” he said. “That means the batteries still have juice. Normally that would mean either someone’s recharging the battery or this plane has been flown recently. Neither of which I think has happened.”
He straightened and looked about. He felt no sense of danger like he had when he went into the Angkor gate. The absolute silence, the size of the cavern and all these abandoned planes and ships filled him with a sense of awe, not fear. He looked out onto the water. Deepflight was sitting still, DeAngelo on the top of the forward sphere, a pair of binoculars in hand, taking in all the ships.
“We’ve solved the mystery of all the disappearances around the Bermuda Triangle,” Sin Fen said as they climbed down of the wing of the Avenger.
“We solved one mystery by uncovering another,” Dane said. Two freighters, probably from the early age of steam were side by side in front of them. They walked around.
“These look like craft that were lost in the Atlantic,” Dane said. “What about the ships and planes lost in the Devil’s Triangle gate? And in the other gates?”
“Perhaps there is a place like this near all the gates,” Sin Fen said.
“Then the Shadow has been studying us for a long time,” Dane said.
“We already knew that,” Sin Fen said.
“We didn’t know they were doing this much studying,” Dane waved his hand, taking in the cavern.
“What makes you so sure it’s the Shadow that’s behind all this?” Sin Fen said. “I don’t sense any danger here, do you?”
“Not immediate danger. But there was fear on these ships and planes when they were taken and brought here.” He turned toward the center and scanned. “I see several submarines but no Ohio Class- you couldn’t miss one of those if it was here. That means the Wyoming is still missing.”
“Let’s keep looking,” Sin Fen said. “Maybe a more modern ship will have a recording or even video of what happened to it.”
“I wouldn’t count on it given the electro-magnetic interference around the gates,” Dane said. “That looks pretty modern,” he added, indicating a black hulled catamaran whose decks were completely encased in flat planed sections, joined at angles. It looked like a stealth fighter attached to twin hulls, about eighty feet long by thirty wide.
“The Nightfarer,” Sin Fen said.
“You know that ship?”
“A prototype for a stealth ship the navy was considering.”
“Let me guess,” Dane said. “Foreman sent it into the Bermuda Triangle gate on a recon mission.”
“Send is too strong of a word- that is what Foreman would say,” Sin Fen said. “Let’s say he gave it a nudge in the direction of the gate when the navy was doing some testing.”
“How long ago was that?” Dane asked.
“Two years.”
“And it went into the gate and just disappeared?”
“Yes.”
“So he learned the same thing he learned with the Scorpion three decades earlier,” Dane said. “Great logic.”
“I believe Mister Foreman was hoping the stealth capability of the ship might help it evade detection.”
“Wrong guess,” Dane said, “and the crew paid for it.”
They were at the side of the Nightfarer. The skin of the ship was not metal, but rather some sort of hard rubber.
“Special radar absorbing material,” Sin Fen saw him feeling the hull. “Even when at full speed, this ship only gave off the radar signature of a sea-gull.”
“It didn’t help them.” As Dane climbed up the side of the ship, he halted and looked down at Sin Fen. “Anything else you’ve forgotten to mention to me? Any other craft Foreman sent in here we might come across?”
“Not that I know of.” Sin Fen said.