“Nicely done,” said Gabby, laughing as she used Bones’ thigh for leverage to pull herself upright.
“Just call me the Big Kahuna,” Bones said with a grin.
She took her seat again, this time facing him, but said nothing more until they were past the incoming surf. The subsequent waves hadn’t yet begun to crest and crossing them was considerably less dramatic, but even a momentary lapse in focus might result in them taking a dunk. Only when Bones had eased off the throttle a little, cruising through considerably smoother water toward the waiting Jacinta, did she speak again.
“Your boss seems like a smart guy.”
“Maddock?” He grinned to hide a twinge of jealousy. “Well, he’s what you’d call ‘book smart.’ But yeah, he’s definitely the brains of the outfit.”
“Do you think he can find this medallion you’re looking for?”
Bones shrugged. “If it can be found, Maddock will find it. He seems to have a sixth sense when it comes to stuff like this.”
She nodded as if that was sufficient reassurance and swung her gaze around to watch the final approach to the larger craft. When the inflatable bumped against the dive platform, she nimbly hopped over and secured a mooring line to a cleat. She waited for Bones to join her, then ascended the stairs to the deck where Baby was stored, along with the cable spool that connected it to the operating console on the bridge.
The little yellow submersible looked like the offspring of a spacesuit helmet and an air compressor, to which someone had added a robot claw hand and something that resembled the circular base of a floor lamp. The latter item was the business end of a Fisher underwater metal detector. Bones used his Leatherman multi-tool to cut the plastic zip-ties that secured the device to the ROV while Gabby went to work unscrewing the water-tight cable connector that joined the metal detector to the remote’s cable hub. Both finished their respective tasks in less than a minute. Bones casually propped the treasure finder over one shoulder as if carrying a rifle in a parade and started for the boat.
Gabby called after him. “Hey, I’m gonna pay a visit to the head before we go back.”
“Good thought. The island isn’t exactly equipped with modern facilities.”
Gabby waited until Bones was on the stairs to the dive platform before ducking inside, but she did not go immediately to the lavatory. Instead, she entered the crew’s quarters and with the same economy of motion she’d employed to disconnect the metal detector, opened her duffel bag and took out an Iridium satellite phone identical to the one she’d seen Bones using two days earlier. She moved swiftly to the bridge, from which vantage she could see Bones, lashing the metal detector to the boat with bungee cords.
Without looking away, she extended the phone’s antenna and punched in a number. There was an electronic click as the connection was made, followed by a brief lag as the signal traveled from its source, to a satellite orbiting in space, and back down to her handset.
“Report.”
“Be ready,” she said. “He’s very close to finding it.”
The wait was interminable. She saw Bones glance impatiently up the stairs and drew back, away from the bridge window, even though there was no way he could see inside. The seconds seemed to stretch out into minutes. This is taking too long, she thought, and was about to sever the connection when she heard the voice again.
“We’re on our way. Here’s what you need to do….”
From even a short distance away, it was impossible to see the outline of a human skeleton. Fifty years of tropical rain and scorching sun had leached away minerals, partially dissolving the bones so that, from more than a few steps away, they looked like part of the landscape. Further obscuring the picture was the fact that the skeleton had no head. Where the skull should have been, there was a small pool, about two feet across, filled with water.
Dane knelt beside the skeleton, trying to imagine how this man’s life had ended. He dipped a finger in the pool and tasted it. “Brackish. This was his catch basin, but it got contaminated. Or maybe he was waiting for it to rain, but it never did.”
“So where’s his head?”
“I think there are still headhunters in this part of the world. Maybe one of them visited and took a souvenir.”
Alex shuddered.
“Kidding.”
Dane dragged a hand through the sediment at the bottom of the pool. He felt something hard, closed his fingers around it, drew his hand out. The sand fell away to reveal a piece of crab shell. He went in again, raking the sand until he found something hard and crusty, held in place by the weight of sand and the suction of the muck beneath. He bent over the pool and stuck his other hand in as well, working his fingers underneath it until he felt water flooding into the space underneath. With an audible, sucking noise it came free and he lifted his prize out of the pool.
A slurry of wet sand dripped away to reveal a spherical object, half-encrusted with barnacles, but nevertheless easily recognizable as a completely intact human skull. Dane dunked it in the water to clear away the rest of the sediment, and when he took it out again, something flashed in the sunlight. Affixed to the parietal bone, just above and behind where the man’s right ear would have been, was a triangle of yellow metal, slightly larger than the identification disks the man had carried as a soldier. Dane noticed that it wasn’t perfectly symmetrical, but was an obtuse scalene triangle, with one angle slightly wider than ninety degrees.
Dane immediately noticed two things about the medallion. “There’s no oxidation or corrosion. I think this thing is gold. It’s too hard to be twenty-four karat, but definitely a gold alloy.”
“There’s something on it.”
That was the second thing Dane had noticed. Adorning the triangle was a simple but unique symboclass="underline" a Templar Cross.
The cross was centered in the triangle, its vertical axis bisecting the medallion through the wide angle. A tiny nail had been driven through the intersection of the cross-arms to secure it in place, but this popped out with the slightest pressure from Dane’s thumbnail. The medallion itself took a little more effort, as if, even in death, Trevor Hancock was reluctant to part with the item that had been entrusted to him as a boy.
Dane gently pried it loose and then set the skull next to the rest of the skeleton. “I’ll take it from here, Lord Hancock. Rest in peace.”
Alex crossed herself, and then stuck out an eager hand. “Let me see.”
She flipped it over, inspected the obverse, then rotated it in her fingers. “I think this was made to fit into one of the sigils on the map in the Templar chapel at Lord Hancock’s estate. Each of those sigils marks a Templar fortress. Whichever one it fits is where they hid the treasure.”
“I don’t suppose you remember where this one goes.”
She closed her eyes, as if trying to visualize the map, but then shook her head. “I wish I had that kind of memory.”
“Then I guess we’ll have to pay him another visit. Think he’ll be happy to see us?”
She raised a skeptical eyebrow.
“Yeah,” he went on. “I don’t think so either.”