“So,” Hunt said, sipping from his beer, “pretending for a second that one believed in the Atlantis myth — a myth that was started by Plato in ancient Greece, does the inscription suppose that the Portuguese, or whoever was to get there first, was looking for the lost city?”
“I’d say it does,” Madison said, and Jayden nodded his agreement.
“So if we visited the Azores,” Hunt continued, we could try to find the site of the statue and see if we come across additional clues there. Or, we follow the pointing statue directly to the Bahamas, where—”
The sound of nearby gunfire drowned out the rest of Hunt’s words. Instantly, he and Jayden dropped to the ground, and Hunt swept an arm out to grab Maddy’s ankle, reminding her to get low also. They heard shouts coming from not too far away, although the words were indistinguishable over the gunfire. Hunt turned his face sideways to the ground and looked over at Maddy. Her eyes were wide with fear.
“Does this mean anything to you? Local police, maybe?”
“No. I’ve been on dozens of digs here over the years, and I’ve never had gunfire.”
“Then we better get ready.” Hunt moved to the tent entrance and zipped it shut. He looked at Jayden. Neither of them carried firearms. He addressed Maddy. “Do you have any guns?”
She laughed and shook her head. “Guns on an archaeology expedition?”
Hunt shrugged. “You’re a female working in some remote locations. They’d come in handy now, that’s for sure.”
“It would make the permitting that much more difficult…” While she elaborated, Jayden moved to the bronze head they’d already risked their lives for. He placed a hand on it where it rested on the table.
“What if they’re coming for this?”
Maddy stopped talking and eyed the artifact.
“Hide it,” Hunt suggested.
“Where?” Jayden looked around the research tent as the sound of gunfire and shouting drew nearer. Maddy pointed to a small wheeled cart used for hauling dig equipment. “We can hide it in there, I guess. Help me clear it out.” She and Jayden ran to the cart while Hunt roved rapidly around the tent.
“Where are your tools? Hammers, prybars, anything like that?”
Maddy pointed through the walls of the tent. “That stuff is in a different tent, or just outside laying around if it’s being used.”
“I guess we’ll just have to improvise.” Hunt stopped at a pile of computer cables and picked through some of them. He quickly unraveled a few of them and selected one. By the time Maddy and Jayden had emptied out the cart, Hunt had wrapped one end of the cable around a support pole at the tent’s entrance. By the time the statue head had been placed in the cart, Hunt had the other end of the cable tied to a pole on the opposite side of the doorway, about a foot off the ground, just inside the flap.
More gunfire erupted and a wall of sand sprayed against the wall of the tent. Hunt backed up and waved Jayden and Maddy to the middle of the space where they knelt among stacks of gear crates. As they hid, Hunt picked up a battery backup unit used to temporarily power the computers in the event the generator lost power. Wordlessly, he hefted it and practiced the motion he would used to throw it as a deadly missile should it come to that. Jayden also rooted through a crate and came up with another unit with which to do the same.
But then the gun blasts ceased and they heard a voice, in English, speaking through a megaphone. “Everyone outside lay down on the ground. Now! Anyone inside the tents: come out now with your hands up. Anyone found inside a tent will be shot on sight.” To prove the statement was not an empty threat, a burst of automatic weapons fire shredded through the upper part of the research tent, opening it to the dry air and bright blue sky.
The megaphone voice boomed again. “You there, slowly get up and begin piling all recovered artifacts on the ground right here. Go! Go now!”
A sharp exhalation escaped Maddy’s mouth as she made eye contact with Hunt, who made a placating gesture with his hands. Stay put. But inwardly, Hunt was worried. He’d seen plenty of artifact theft, especially in Iraq during his service for Operation Bulldog Mammoth, but that was more like looting unattended valuables, not an armed robbery like this. It bothered him because it reminded him of something.
Outside, the amplified voice came again. “This cannot be everything. If you are lying to us you will pay the ultimate price!”
All eyes in the research tent went to the wheeled cart that now contained the bronze head. “That’s what they really want,” Hunt said.
“How do you know?” Maddy whispered back.
“They had divers in the flooded room. They somehow knew there was a flooded chamber there. They’ve done their homework on this site enough to know to bring dive gear. It stands to reason they also looked into whatever it is that might be down there.” Hunt glanced to the cart concealing the bronze head.
Suddenly they heard footsteps approach the tent. Two voice began talking just outside, not through a megaphone but in private conversation. “They say that is everything, yet it is not there.”
Another voice, this one lower and gruffer than the first, responded. “Then we must search the tents.”
A pause, and then: “There are many, it will take time.”
“We have waited eleven thousand years already. What is a few more hours? Tell the men to turn each tent inside out. Orders are to kill anyone hiding inside.”
“Yes, sir!”
The sound of booted feet tromping across the sand away from the research tent indicated that the conversation was over.
Hunt turned to Maddy and whispered. “I suppose there’s no trap door in this tent that leads into the pyramid, is there?” She smiled but shook her head. “Sorry, it’s just a tent over the sand.”
Jayden’s eyes lit up. “Over the sand. Quick, find me something to dig with.” Although not like fine beach sand, the ground beneath their feet was soft and crumbly, essentially hard-packed sand.
Maddy’s reply was urgent. “Like I said, all the digging tools are in another tent. This one just has computers and electronics.”
“We’ll have to improvise.” Hunt began looking around. Seeing nothing obvious from which to fashion a digging implement, he then turned to the crates they hid amongst and began opening the lids, rummaging around inside each one, tossing out items that were of no use. After a few more seconds he withdrew his hands from a crate. In each he held an electrical power strip, an elongated plastic strip with power outlets at the end of a long cord. He took one and began wedging one end of it into the ground, testing its feasibility as a digging implement.
“Poor man’s shovel,” he whispered after wedging out a hole a foot deep without too much effort. He tossed one strip to Jayden, the other to Maddy, before pulling out a third for himself. Then all three of them set to enlarging the hole he had started. He cautioned them to dig quietly, as the sounds of occasional megaphone-shouted commands punctuated with gunshots rent the air outside the tent.
After a few minutes Hunt threw down his power strip. “I think that should do it.” He went to the wheeled cart and removed the bronze head. Carrying it to the hole they had dug, he gently rolled it to the bottom.
“Now we cover it back up.” The three of them used their hands to fill back in the hole, covering the artifact. Then they smoothed out the sandy dirt, making sure it was even with the rest of the ground, and finally walked around on top of the patch of dirt so that it didn’t look too obviously smoothed over.