“Wait a minute,” Jayden asked, “How’d you get that field kit stuff?”
“I was wearing my backpack when Daedalus kidnapped me. He had his goons rifle through my stuff to check for weapons or communications devices, but other than that he didn’t care and gave it back to me. Plus, he wanted me to work for him, leading his illicit dig sites.”
“His recruitment policies leave something to be desired,” Hunt said.
Maddy nearly snorted. “You could say that, yeah. I told him where to stick it.”
“So what’s it say?” Jayden asked, leaning in, his impatience getting the better of him
Maddy leaned over the gold piece with her magnifying glass. “It’s just three characters…letters…they look like known Egyptian hieroglyphic symbols that I happen to know translate to letters, hold on…” She picked up her smartphone and used it to access the Internet. “My university pages have the standard hieroglyphics key, here it is…let’s look for a match…”
Maddy enlarged the pictorial key on her phone, then handed it to Jayden while she picked up the magnifying glass again. “This symbol here…” She aimed the point of a pen at the first symbol…”Corresponds to our letter ‘M’. And this one…”Letter ‘i’. And the last…letter ‘N.’”
“Min?” Hunt spelled out for all of them.
Jayden had a blank look on his face, but Maddy appeared thoughtful. “Interesting…” She faded off, lost in thought.
“What’s interesting?” Hunt prodded.
“The Egyptians had a God named Min.”
“Figures,” Jayden said. “They were really into gods.”
“What was he — or she — the god of?” Hunt asked.
“He was the guardian of explorers. And Bimini was a far-off territory for them, so it makes sense that he would be worshipped.”
“Wait a minute,” Hunt said. “Who said anything about Bimini? We’re on Nassau. Bimini’s in the Bahamas, but it’s a whole ‘nother island.”
Maddy gave a knowing nod. “Notice how the word ‘Min’ is contained within ‘Bimini’?”
“You’re hurting my brain,” Jayden said, staring at the gold metal.
“Stay with me. It’s not that complicated. Then we have, ‘ba’ which means soul and ‘ini’ which means reverence. So, all together now…”
Hunt and Jayden looked confused. “Ba?” Hunt faltered.
“The original word was ‘Baminini’,” Maddy explained.
“Another Egyptian connection,” Jayden said.
Hunt pointed to the gold piece. “So this little piece of gold, hidden in the statue of Anubis, was put there to remind…whoever found it…that Bimini is important somehow?”
It was Maddy’s turn to shrug. “That’s the way I see it. As for who or what…I have no idea. But there’s one more thing. The very shape of the gold piece — it’s a well known shape, do you recognize it?”
Jayden furrowed his eyebrows. “I just thought it was because that was the shape that let it fit all snug-like into the figurine.”
Maddy shook her head. “No. Have you heard of the Bimini Road?”
Jayden shook his head but Hunt nodded. “A trail of stones in shallow water off of the island of Bimini. It’s long been associated with both the Atlantis myth as well as the Bermuda Triangle.”
“Right,” Maddy said. “And the stones — although many times larger — are shaped just like this golden representation here.” She picked up the oblong gold piece and held it up to the light, turning it over in her fingers.
“Well then that settles it,” Hunt said, reaching for his smartphone.
“Settles what?” Jayden asked.
“It’s time for a trip to Bimini.”
Chapter 17
“Can you believe this guy knows how to fly?” Jayden called from the backseat of the de Havilland Twin Otter floatplane. “I’m glad Carter’s up front with you, though, Maddy. Seriously, I’d rather sit next to this pile of scuba gear than listen to his crap at this point.”
“I heard that.” Carter turned around in the pilot’s seat.
“Now, now, you two,” Maddy chided from behind mirrored sunglass and a baseball cap. As was customary, she wore her long hair tied back in a ponytail, through the back of the cap. “Aren’t you excited for the dive? I mean, what’s a trip to the Bahamas without scuba diving, am I right? So if we can check out the Bimini Road while we’re at it, so much the better. I love how it all fit together.”
“I love how chipper you are about waking up at five in the morning on vacation!” Jayden said. Once they’d decided to explore the water surrounding Bimini, Hunt had suggested a seaplane rental. The flight itself was a short hop from Nassau, but in order to have a full day of diving and also return the rental plane by that afternoon to the Nassau airport, it meant a bright and early start. “Try not to spill my Starbucks with your wacky flying, Carter.”
Hunt raised a hand to give Jayden a universal hand signal. “You didn’t complain that time over the Persian Gulf.”
“True that.” Jayden had no desire to relive the classified mission that had helped to form a bond between them, but all kidding aside, he had the utmost of faith in Hunt’s flying abilities. Likewise, he knew Hunt could count on him to back him up in the most dicey of situations. This was merely an adventurous vacation outing. Certainly it was made more exciting with the Atlantis connection, but deep down, that was all just an excuse to have a little adventure, wasn’t it? None of them, including the processional archaeologist among them, expected it to pan out into anything real. Even though Treasure, Inc. seemed to think it was real enough. Jayden’s hand slipped off one of the scuba gear bags as Hunt rode them through a pocket of turbulence and he focused his attention back on the dive that was coming up.
Outside the plane’s windows, the day was sunny, the sea calm as they flew at low altitude — a hundred feet or so — above the water. Perfect conditions for diving the Bimini Road. The dive site itself was well visited enough. A shallow water site, only fifteen or twenty feet deep, depending on the tide, it was made somewhat inaccessible only by virtue of the fact that there was no commercial airliner service to Bimini itself, making either a private flight or boat ride from either Nassau or Miami the most convenient modes of access. Even so, Hunt had to wonder how they would find anything that had been overlooked at a site that had been dived so often, including by professional treasure hunters with state-of-the-art equipment such as magnetometers, underwater metal detectors and bottom profiling scanners. And yet the scant finds they had made so far, which had led them here, had come from equally well-trafficked sites.
The coordinates to the site had been entered into the plane’s GPS at the rental airport, and soon Hunt informed them that they were closing in on the location. He coaxed the floatplane down lower until they skimmed only a few feet above the ocean’s surface, reducing speed at the same time. Jayden and Maddy eyed the water for bottom characteristics while Hunt flew.
“White sand bottom,” Jayden said. Then, “Okay, I’m seeing some patch reefs now.” Darker, mottled areas became interspersed with the lighter-colored sand. Then they passed over a sun-dappled, dazzlingly bright white sandy area until Maddy pointed out her window.
“There it is!”
Jayden looked out his window and spotted a dark line that meandered away from them.
“Straight lines, definitely looks manmade, like a wreck, but it’s too big to be a wreck.”