The other three watched as he slid a finger into the notch and pulled back. The trap door came up more easily than he’d expected, revealing a wooden staircase, and flooding the area with a musty, salty smell. There must have been a switch connected to the trap door because old lights flickered on along the descending walkway.
“Looks like there might be something here after all,” Sean commented. The woman’s eyes were wide.
She wasted no time, “Move,” she ordered. He raised his hands slowly and obeyed.
The staircase creaked with every step. Sean wondered how old the thing was. From the looks of it, it had been there an awfully long time. The old light fixtures had been drilled into the stone with old wires running from one to the next as they wound their way down the stairs. As the group moved deeper into the island, the smell of ocean water became more pungent.
At the bottom of the stairs, they reached an archway carved from the stone. The portal opened into a vast chamber, at least seventy feet high. At different points in the ceiling, rays of sunlight pour through, illuminating the area in a pale, residual glow. In the center, a giant pool of still water spread across the span of the room. Sean and the others gazed, open-mouthed, at the object that rested in the middle of it.
A 19th century side-steamer, still intact, floated silently in the water. The masts and smokestacks lay on the deck. Sean noted a few of the cannons placed at certain points on the ship. He’d never actually seen a side-steamer before. It was a strange thing, the two monstrous paddle wheels on the side of a vessel. A few time worn ropes were tied to huge spikes along the shore of the cavern.
Sean’s eyes traced the outline of the ship until they stopped at the tip of the bow. Dark letters read CSS Oconee.
The blonde woman pushed her way past Sean, walking quickly towards the vessel. Her two guards urged him forward, poking him again with the gun barrel.
“I’d really appreciate it if you would stop doing that,” Sean said, irritated.
“What are you gonna’ do about it,” the skinny guy asked in his Jersey accent.
Sean didn’t answer. He just shook his head slowly and kept moving along the rocky shore towards the other side of the ship. The woman had already reached the ramp leading onto the ship and was testing out its stability, stepping carefully up and onto the ship. By the time Sean and his escorts arrived at the gangplank, she was on the deck, running her hand across the surface of one of the cannons.
“I can’t believe it,” she said as Sean made his way up the ramp. “It actually exists. And it’s so well preserved.” Her eyes were filled with wonder. The ship’s wooden deck was in remarkable shape, as if someone had been maintaining it through the last century. There were barely any signs of oxidation on the metal parts of the vessel, strange considering the location it had been in for all those years.
The woman turned to the stronger guard. “Stay here while we go below deck.” The man nodded while she turned and headed for a stairwell in the center of the ship. Sean and the skinny guard followed her to the opening and down into the belly of the ship. The little amount of sunlight that illuminated the cavern did nothing to light the interior of the boat. The blonde took a cell phone out of a pocket and held it out, casting a pale-white glow onto the interior of the ship. As she passed the device left and right, they were shown tables, chairs, candles, guns, cannonballs, shelves, and dozens of other items from the Civil War era.
Sean said nothing, admiring the history before him, but also trying to figure out how he was going to get out of there.
The woman grabbed a candelabra from a wooden table and handed it to the guard. He removed a lighter from his pocket, lit the three candles, and handed it back to her. The warm light from the candles radiated across the room as the group moved through the quarters.
They reached end of the ship and entered the captain’s chambers through open doors. Within, a desk and chair sat in the center, facing the doorway. Various papers, maps, and tools of the trade lay around on top of the surface of the old workstation. A simple cot sat in the corner, the musty linens still folded and untouched.
The blonde stepped over to the desk and shuffled through the papers. “Where is the gold?” she asked, urgently. “None of these things says anything about the gold.”
“These shallow draft ships didn’t have a lot of floors like some of the other vessels,” Sean said. “They had enough room for one main floor and then a place for storage below. Maybe it’s down there.” Part of him hoped he was right.
Her eyes narrowed but she nodded and the three left the captain’s chambers and headed to a narrow stairway beneath the one they’d just descended. When they reached the bottom of the steps, the group was met with a vast room that stretched from one end of the ship to the other. The more overwhelming sight was that the entire place was empty.
The blonde walked quickly from one end of the boat to the other, flashing the candlelight in every corner. Sean could tell she was furious from the pace of her footsteps.
“Where is it?” she screamed. “Where is the gold?”
Sean smiled to himself and shrugged. “I guess the captain and his men made off with it after all,” he answered.
She smacked him across the face, sending a sting through his cheek.
His head barely moved. “What do you want me to tell you, Lady? It’s gone. Okay? Game over. There is no gold!” his voice climbed as he tried to emphasize the point.
She smiled, a slight twitch in one of her eyes. Sean had seen that look before. It was a mix between insanity and utter frustration. He figured she’d been heading towards that point. The look on her face confirmed she’d arrived.
“Very well, Mr. Wyatt,” she said, then turned to her guard. “Kill him. Kill him now, please.” She turned towards one of the walls, still not believing the ship was empty. The loud pop of a gun reverberated through the room, followed shortly by the sound of a body hitting the wooden floor.
She turned around and terror washed over her face. Instead of Sean Wyatt’s body, her guard lay on the floor in a crumpled mass, a wound in the center of his back oozed with blood. Halfway down the staircase, a black man in a navy blue polo and jeans held a gun aimed right at her head.
“Drop the weapon, Lady,” the man ordered. “Drop it or I will drop you like I did your friend here.”
Sean turned to see the barkeeper standing on the steps. A smile crept across his face. “Earl?” Sean asked in disbelief. Earl returned the grin but never took his eyes off of the blonde woman. She slowly lowered the gun to the floor and put up both hands.
Sean reached over and picked up the weapon. “If you would be so kind, let’s get back upstairs,” he said cynically. She scowled angrily at him, but obeyed. Up on the main deck, they stopped. “Where’s the other guy?” Sean asked, looking around.
He kept the gun trained on the woman while Earl bound her hands behind her back with some rope he found nearby.
“He went for a swim,” Earl replied cryptically.
Sean looked out in the pool and saw the outline of a body floating face down. “There’s more to you than meets the eye.” Earl smiled with one side of his mouth as he finished his work on the ropes.
“I’ll tell you all about it after we dispose of her,” he said, jerking a thumb at the blonde.
“We’re not going to kill her?” Sean asked. “Are we?”
Earl shook his head slowly. “No, I have a better idea for this one.”
The waves crashed against the side of the black Sea Ray as Earl and Sean pulled away from the sandy beach. The sounds of the engine and wind drowned out the voice of the blonde woman standing on the shore.