Vehicles awaited, and also the promised special ops team, a poker-faced unit of Navy SEALs. Bodie saw them wedged into the lead car and immediately walked toward the second. Through the years of his clandestine travels he’d happened upon several elite American and British soldiers and didn’t want anyone to recognize him. A glance at his friends told him they felt the same.
Heidi climbed in alongside Bodie and the rest of the team. “Don’t worry. They won’t bother you. Unlike some people, they follow orders.”
Guiltily, because of the Pantera episode, Bodie and Cassidy looked at the SEAL team before realizing Heidi shouldn’t have any cause for complaint. They were right here in the thick of it now, weren’t they? Only Cross seemed remote, lost in his recollections of Yasmine.
The scenery grew more spectacular as they climbed out of the flatland and up among the peaks. They passed an impressive mountain with a circular crater, the center hollowed out and now full of sparkling blue water. Dusty trails meandered by the side of the road and off into the wilderness, hiked by tourists. At every turn there stood another splendid vista designed to take their breath away.
Heidi followed a GPS device preprogrammed with the coordinates Lucie had provided. Sometime after leaving the airfield, they stopped and exited the cars, leaving them parked in a fenced area. The SEALs ignored them and ranged out to the surrounding fields, leaving just two to walk with the team of relic hunters, who stuck together. After their skirmishes in the Alps and Milan, Bodie felt relieved to have a group of soldiers whose main mission was to protect them. A beaten trail marked by a fence led them along the side of a mountain, wind whipping their hair and the scent of the sea all around. Bodie took in the great span of the Mediterranean Sea ahead and to the left and reveled in the trek, feeling the aches and pains already washing out. To make matters better, Heidi took a call that confirmed Alessandro’s recovery.
Lucie beamed for the first time. Bodie considered it a huge improvement.
The trail ascended for a while and then dipped, taking them around the edge of another mountain and allowing them to marvel at a lake below. Thick trees bordered every shore so that there was no beach and no easy way to enter the water. The entire area looked untouched, glittering, but then Bodie spied a couple of pale bodies frolicking in the water and smiled with a hint of sadness.
“I guess there’s no place left where man’s not been.”
Cassidy raised a pair of field glasses to spy on the couple. “Skinny-dippers going at it. But you’re wrong, Bodie. I know of at least one place where man’s not been.”
She looked sidelong at Jemma. The other woman colored and then squawked out a retort. “How the hell would you know? I’ve known you what, five years?”
“Four,” Gunn said. “I know, it feels longer.”
“Still getting to know each other,” Bodie said and then saw Cross looking back at him. Some more than others, I guess.
The SEALs had been assessing what lay ahead and declared the all clear. They moved on. An hour passed with nobody in sight. The trail wound around another mountain and headed toward the east coast. At last they came to a place where Heidi’s GPS let out a little beep.
She slowed. “We’re close.”
Bodie scanned the landscape hopefully. He didn’t really expect to see anything and wasn’t disappointed.
“A few trees over there,” Gunn said dubiously.
“You think those trees mark a ten-thousand-year-old temple to the god of the seas?” Jemma asked sharply, still smarting from Cassidy’s comment.
“Who knows? Maybe they used trees back then. Maybe it’s rudimentary. Maybe—”
“Stop.” Heidi walked across five meters of flat, green grass to the edge of what was the second crater they’d seen that day. Bodie saw straggly bushes and vegetation stretching down to a narrow sandy beach and a large expanse of water — yet another blue lake. Fingers of scrub dotted by a few unkempt trees extended toward each other on both sides of the lake. The SEAL commander signaled them to the ground immediately, radioing that his team needed to do a full reconnaissance before allowing them down.
Bodie understood. They might not be the first team to find this place.
Cassidy stared at the dirt. “So, we’re on the ground again. Didn’t take long.”
Lucie crawled over to Heidi. “Does the GPS pin the location down?”
“Oh, yeah,” the curly-haired American said. “It’s in the middle of that friggin’ lake.”
“How deep is it?” Lucie asked.
“They’re all volcanic lakes,” Heidi said. “Not surprisingly, this was a largely volcanic area many thousands of years ago. So they now shape this tropical paradise, which is, thank God, still spared from mass tourism. We’re lucky it isn’t covered in clouds. The lakes around here range between three hundred to almost a thousand feet deep. I guess, judging by the color of the water, this is one of the deeper ones.”
“You should send back for gear.” Lucie’s thought processes were spinning into overdrive. “Contact the main town and keep it quiet. They will surely have some top-notch diving gear here.”
Bodie understood what she was saying. That those who could were about to take a trip underwater. Before he could inform the others, the SEAL commander crawled in beside them.
“Bad news,” he said. “Your Chinese are already here. Good news? They’re right across the lake and unaware of our presence.”
“Can you take them out?” Gunn asked. “The last thing I want is another fight.”
“That would be unwise. We can’t be sure of the outcome, or how we would fare at this stage. Also, their resources could be as deep as ours. They could have more men here very soon. Best to let them think they’re alone.”
“That’s the plan?” Jemma asked. “Wait and watch? That’s not why we’re here, why we put ourselves in harm’s way. I’d say your plan’s inadequate.”
Bodie stepped in to stop another argument. “Don’t worry,” he said, waving them down. “I have a plan. It needs some work, and it’s risky. It also means the soldiers will have to watch our backs.”
The commander gave no indication of his thoughts. “I hear you. What did you have in mind?”
“First, Heidi rustles up the gear from a trusted local. Then we have to send somebody to collect it. Next… well, I’m sure you know our backgrounds. What do you think we would do?”
The commander pondered it, then nodded with a look of respect. “That just might work. Risky, though.”
Bodie nodded and gestured at his team. “Just the way we like it.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
That evening, the sky turned from blue to deep crimson and gold as the sun died over the horizon. The far waters swallowed it in a matter of minutes, and the black silhouettes of birds flying home at dusk disappeared completely.
Bodie watched the small waves, saw them lose all definition, and spoke into his comms. “Ready here.”
An affirmative came back from Cassidy and Jemma. They had determined from the Azores Diving Academy that the absolute maximum depth of this lake was one hundred and seventy meters — about five hundred and fifty feet — which meant using a rebreather with open-circuit bailout cylinders. They would have to use hypoxic breathing gas to ward off the effects of nitrogen narcosis, and carry a large volume to compensate for decompression stops on the way back up. For somewhere like the Azores — where tourism is more likely than research — the equipment was a rarity and Heidi had managed to source only three pieces.
In the dark, Bodie waited, feeling slightly ridiculous. He was a good diver, reluctant at first, taught by one of Jack Pantera’s marine instructor pals. Initially, he couldn’t see the point, but when Pantera demonstrated the many ways diving would prove useful for egress and ingress to properties all over the world, he quickly saw the light.