“Then let’s cross our fingers that this priest was on this side of the island.” Willis actually crossed his fingers and held them up, but Fabi’s face was downcast.
“What’s wrong?” Willis asked. He looked at his fingers. “This some kind of taboo gesture in Haiti or something?”
She shook her head. “No, it’s just that I haven’t had the best luck with priests lately.”
Chapter 9
They rode the dinghy up to the rickety dock and cut the engine. They secured their craft and climbed out, Bones going first to make sure the dock was sound. He tested the boards, then bounced on the balls of his feet a few times before giving them the thumbs-up.
“It’ll hold me, so Maddock and Fabi should be good to go. Willis looks like he’s been eating too much pizza lately, so he can go last.”
Willis shook his head and gestured for the others to lead the way.
“Fort Des Oliviers is up this way and to the right,” Fabi directed. They walked at a leisurely pace through the town, passing locals and tourists alike strolling on the sidewalks. Before long they found a sign to the fort. Maddock followed it until they spotted a crumbling stone facade on the edge of the Caribbean.
The four explorers approached the ruins. Stone walls, crumbling in spots, surrounded a flat, grassy area on which rusty cannons were spaced at regular intervals. Bones looked around. It wasn’t exactly crowded, but a few people looked around or snapped photos.
Maddock stood still for a few moments and surveyed the scene. “I don’t see anywhere up top that looks like somewhere a prisoner would be held. Is there a below ground section?”
“I haven’t been here before so I’m not familiar with it myself,” Fabi admitted. Some of the forts on the island do have subterranean chambers, but I don’t know if this one does.”
“Let’s have a look.” Bones took off toward the main grounds. The others fell into step behind him. As they walked they passed tourists having a look around, but the fact that many people had been here over the years, decades and centuries didn’t dampen their spirits. Maddock and Bones knew from experience that simply because a place had lots of traffic, even heavy traffic, over time, did not mean that its secrets had been divulged.
They walked to the crumbling structure, had a look through one broken section to the coral beach just outside, then began to move along the perimeter wall, which was itself nothing noteworthy. They came to a junction between two walls where a gap between them left an opening in the earth. A stone stairway led down. Maddock suggested that they check it out, as the rest of the ground level appeared, at first glance, anyway, to be much the same as they had already seen.
Voices echoed below them down wherever the steps led, so Maddock knew this wasn’t some secret passage, but it would help to get the lay of the land, so to speak. And who knew, he thought, producing a pocket flashlight, perhaps they could find something others had overlooked? They were, after all, looking for something specific as opposed to simply wandering around for the general experience.
Maddock stopped on the steps to closely examine the composition of the walls; as expected, they were fashioned of the same stone used on the fort’s ground level. Bones passed Maddock and was the first to reach the bottom.
“One way up ahead.” Bones waved an arm and started down a level corridor that left precious little clearance for his head. Willis and Fabi fell into step behind him and Maddock brought up the rear, pausing occasionally to examine a portion of floor, wall or ceiling with his mini-torch. After a hundred feet or so the passage jogged right.
Fabi’s voice echoed off the walls. “So far it appears to be mirroring the same pattern as the wall above ground.” The group continued along the passageway, which offered no branches or forks. At one point they had to squeeze by a couple standing in one spot fussing with a digital camera. Then they saw a flood of sunlight from above and came to what would be a dead end were it not for another stone staircase leading up.
Maddock scrutinized the walls and floor carefully before admitting that he saw nothing promising here, and then the group ascended the steps. They emerged back on the grassy quad area inside the perimeter walls.
“That was fun. Now what?” Willis wanted to know.
Maddock studied the grass area, nodding toward it. “With all this space here, you’d think there could be something underneath it, but from what we just saw the only digging they did here was on the perimeter tunnels.”
Fabi nodded and pointed to a couple of toppled rock slabs here and there on the grass. “It looks like there may once have been structures on the quad area, but they were above ground only.”
“It doesn’t seem like we’re missing anything here,” Maddock concurred. Fabi pointed to a local man wearing a uniform of some sort with a lanyard and ID card around his neck. “He’s a tour guide. Maybe he can fill in some blanks for us, make sure we haven’t overlooked anything.” She registered the nervous looks from the three ex-SEALs and then hastily added, “Without letting on what we’re looking for, of course.”
Maddock nodded and the four of them sauntered over to the guide, as if they were a casual group out for a lazy day trip. When they reached him, he was standing next to the perimeter wall with his hands behind his back, making himself available for questions but currently not helping anyone. They opted to let Fabi do the talking for them. She spoke to the guide in Creole, and he replied in the same.
“Good morning, sir. We’re wondering if you can tell us a little about a story we’ve heard connected to an old fort somewhere on Hispaniola. We thought it might be this one, but we’re not sure.”
The guide prompted her to tell him the story and so she relayed a simplified version of a stark raving mad sailor held prisoner in a fort. After listening attentively, the guide replied.
“To my knowledge, Fort Des Oliviers is not associated with any such prisoner. It was used more as a defensible installation against approaching ships.” He pointed out to the sea visible beyond the perimeter walls. “It featured heavy arms, lots of cannons, but was not used for holding prisoners.”
Fabi’s face fell upon hearing this, although Maddock and his fellow ex-SEALs remained impassive. The guide, seeming to sense Fabi’s disappointment, added, “But you might pay a visit to Fort des Anglais, on the little island out in the bay.” He pointed across the water, although the island could not be seen from their vantage point. “I believe that, due to its remote location, some prisoners were kept there, though I do not know about the sailor of which you speak.”
Fabi thanked the guide and they ambled away as a group, not wanting to appear so eager as to bolt right off to the other fort. When they were some distance away from the man, Maddock said to the others, “Let’s check it out.”
Chapter 10
The Sea Foam settled back into the water as Maddock eased back on the throttle. Willis occupied the co-pilot seat while Fabi and Bones caught up on old times on the rear deck. Maddock had decided it was worth making the drive back to Petit-Trou-de-Nippes in order to take their own boat to the island instead of looking for a rental, which would raise their profile, not necessarily a desirable thing to do when looking for treasure in this part of the world.
The island loomed before them, a forbidding hunk of rock overgrown with vegetation in the middle of a deep bay. Maddock eyed the boat’s depth finder cautiously. They didn’t need to run aground while hunting for treasure clues, but plenty of water lay beneath the hull even though they were close to shore. He gave the order as captain for Willis to drop anchor and Bones and Fabi to ready the dinghy. He expressed concern about leaving the boat unattended but Fabi said they should be okay for a while this far out in the bay.