“Amen, brother.”
“Even if we get off this island,” said Alex, “we don’t have the medallion anymore. How are we going to find the Templar treasure without the key?”
“We have this.” Dane held up his hand, palm facing her. There, stamped deep into his skin, etched in blood, was a perfect outline of Trevor Hancock’s medallion.
CHAPTER 16
Professor didn’t feel good about leaving Maddock and Bones in the middle of the mission, but he agreed with Maddock’s decision to break radio silence and contact Maxie. Professor didn’t necessarily believe in a centuries old Templar conspiracy, but he knew that the people who did believe — the fanatics who were desperate to wrap themselves in something mysterious and powerful — were capable of anything and were very, very dangerous.
That potential for danger made every mile, every minute of this race for port, pass with excruciating slowness. Four hours after parting company with Maddock and Bones, they were less than a fourth of the way back to Manila. It would be at least another day before they could call Maxie, and of course, let the world know that they had found the wreck of the hell ship Nagata Maru.
After that, he and Willis would move purposefully back to rendezvous with their comrades.
Professor was on the open-air flying bridge of the Sea Sprite, one hand resting on the wheel, keeping the boat on course. He was mentally calculating the length of the return trip — again — to pass the time when he heard Willis call out to him. “Hey, Professor. Check our six.”
Professor craned his head around and stared out across the cabin cruiser’s frothy wake. He expected to see a very familiar motor yacht closing on them, but there were no other vessels to be seen. Instead, there was a black speck in the sky, coming out of the west, and getting larger with each passing second.
Willis climbed halfway up the ladder to the flying bridge, so that only his head and shoulders were visible. He held out a pair of binoculars.
Professor trained the field glasses on the speck and confirmed his worst fears; it was a helicopter and it was chasing their wake. By the time he lowered the binoculars, the aircraft was close enough that he didn’t need them to confirm his identification. Five seconds later, the noise of its rotors was audible over Sea Sprite’s chugging engine, and five seconds after that, the bird passed overhead.
“Think it’s our old friends?”
Professor nodded. “Checking to see if we’re who they think we are.”
The helicopter banked to the right and turned a broad circle to come up once more from the boat’s rear.
“And now they know,” sighed Professor.
“Don’t sweat it, Prof,” declared Willis. “My daddy always used to say, ‘Fool me once, shame on you, and I’ll be a damned fool if you fool me again.’”
“Uh, can you translate that from redneck to English for me?”
“It means, I remembered to pack the cutlasses.” Willis slid down the ladder rails and vanished from sight.
“Impetuous youth,” muttered Professor, though in fact Willis was two months his senior. He trained the binoculars on the approaching helicopter. The pilot had turned the craft so that is was traveling sideways toward them, which presented a poor aerodynamic profile, but gave the men in the rear of the craft a clear shot at the boat…literally. One man appeared to be looking directly at him, over a gun with a very large bore barrel.
Looks like a Milkor MGL, thought Professor. The weapon fired 40-millimeter grenades from a six-round revolver-style cylinder. There was one just like it in their team room back at Coronado.
The MGL let out a puff of smoke.
Professor dropped the glasses and hauled the wheel to starboard. The boat had only just begun to move when a geyser of water erupted to port. Professor felt the energy of the explosion ripple through the hull.
“Hold it steady, Prof!” shouted Willis from the lower deck.
“Are you insane?” He assumed that his counterpart was going to shoot back and needed a steady firing platform, but if he kept the boat on a straight course, the next grenade would land in his lap.
“I just need five seconds.”
Professor muttered a curse under his breath. A straight line was a definite no-go, but a sweeping turn might give Willis those precious moments of stability he’d asked for. He doubted the grenadier would be fooled for a full five seconds, but if Willis didn’t accomplish something by then—
There was a boom — like a mortar round being fired — from the lower deck, and as heat and smoke washed over Professor, his first thought was that they’d taken a direct hit. Then he saw a finger of orange fire, with a tail of white smoke, streak toward the aircraft and impact right behind the open rear compartment.
The helicopter came apart in mid-air.
Willis’ whoop of triumph was mostly drowned out by the explosion. A few seconds later he appeared, holding the spent launch tube of an M72 light anti-tank weapon.
“How do you like that for a cutlass?” Willis said, grinning.
Dane plunged headfirst into the rising wave and felt it tug at him as its energy passed by. He kicked furiously to the surface, and kept going until the waves were behind him.
The saltwater had a faintly oily taste to it, and Dane could feel the thin sheen of diesel on the surface as he drew closer to the place where the Jacinta had gone down. Pieces of debris — fiberglass, wood and foam — were already washing ashore, but what Dane needed was too big and too heavy to be carried in on the tide.
Bones had offered to make the journey out, but one look at the pain in the big man’s eyes had been enough for Dane to give him a pass. Bones never showed much emotion; he usually hid his feelings behind a mask of sarcasm, or drowned them in drink. This was different. Dane didn’t know what sort relationship his teammate had with Gabby, but despite her betrayal, this tragedy had hit Bones hard. Dane wasn’t about to send him out to investigate the place where she had died.
He trod water in the center of the spreading oil slick, breathing deep for nearly a full minute to saturate his blood with oxygen. Then, after filling his lungs with one last breath, he dipped beneath the water and dove for the bottom.
For just a moment, he felt the familiar peace of the water’s embrace. True, he was doing it on a single breath — which under the best of circumstances, he could make last about three and a half minutes — but even with its time limitations, free diving — unencumbered by bulky equipment, artifice and technology — just felt more natural than SCUBA. Then, through the dark blurry water, he saw the shattered remains of the Jacinta, and his joy dissolved.
The bow end of the vessel looked no different than it had when on the surface, but twenty feet back, the familiarity ended. The boat looked as if a giant had stomped his foot down amidships. The destruction was bad enough, but Dane knew that the tangle of broken bulkheads and fractured fiberglass was also the final resting place of a young woman who’d been guilty of nothing more than a bad decision.
He kicked harder, feeling the faint excess carbon dioxide in his extremities and the impulse to exhale and suck in fresh air. He pushed that urge out of his mind. According to his watch, he’d only been under for forty seconds. He had plenty of time.
A flash of yellow drew his eye. It was Baby. The little ROV was intact, lashed to the foredeck and still connected to its 500 meter long spool of reinforced coaxial cable which served as both a tether and a control link. The control unit had no doubt been destroyed in the blast, but Dane reckoned the cable might have its uses. He swam to the device and loosened the bungee cords restraining it. The ROV’s ballast tanks had been purged during its last ascent, so it was already buoyant, but the cable kept it from drifting away. He left it there and continued searching the wreck for anything else that might facilitate their escape.