"There it is, just as the colonel described it," said Gunn.
"One of us is supposed to shout 'Eureka,' " exclaimed Giordino, happy at last to get out of the wind and rain.
"I don't know about you, but I'm getting rid of my rain gear and backpack so I can be comfortable."
"I'm with you."
Within minutes, their backpacks were removed and their foul-weather gear laid out inside the tunnel for the return trip to the aircraft. They removed flashlights from their backpacks, took a final swig of coffee, and stepped deeper into the subterranean vault. The walls were smoothly carved without bumps or indentations. There was a strangeness about the place, heightened by the eerie darkness and cavernous howl of the wind from outside the entrance.
They walked on, half curious, half uneasy, following the beams of their lights, wondering what they were going to find. The tunnel suddenly opened into a square chamber. Giordino tensed and his eyes hardened as his light traced out the skeletal bones of a foot, femur, hip, and then ribs and spinal column, attached to a skull with traces of red hair still visible. The remains of tattered and moldy clothing still clung to the bones.
"I wonder how this poor devil came to be here," said Gunn, feeling numbed.
Giordino swung his flashlight around the room, illuminating a small fire pit and various tools and furniture-- all of them looked handmade from wood and lava rock. There were also the remains of seal hides and a pile of bones in the opposite corner.
"Judging from the cut of what's left of his clothes, I'd say he was a marooned sailor, a castaway on the island for God only knows how long before he died."
"Odd the colonel didn't mention him," said Gunn.
"The Madras made an unscheduled stop for water after being blown far off the normal sailing track in 1779. This lost soul must have arrived later. No other ship called on the island for probably another fifty or hundred years."
"I can't begin to imagine how terrible it must have been for him, alone on an ugly rain-cold pile of volcanic rock with no prospects of rescue and the threat of a lonely death hovering over him."
"He made a fire pit," said Giordino. "What do you think he used for wood? There's little but scrub brush on the island."
"He must have burned what brush he could scrounge. . ." Gunn paused, knelt on one knee, and moved his hand through the ashes until he found something. He held up what looked like the remains of a toy chariot with two badly fire-scarred horses. "The artifacts," he said gloomily. "He must have burned the artifacts that contained wood to stay warm." Then Gunn shone his light in Giordino's direction and saw the beginnings of a smile arc across his face. "What do you find so funny?"
"I was just thinking," mused Giordino. "How many of those awful cabbages do you think the poor fellow must have eaten?"
"You won't know how they taste until you've tried one."
Giordino probed his beam on the walls, revealing the same type of inscriptions that he'd briefly seen in the Telluride chamber. A black obsidian pedestal rose from the center of the floor where the black skull had sat until removed by the British colonel. The lights also picked out a cave-in of fallen rocks that spilled down, covering the far wall of the chamber.
"I wonder what's on the other side of this rock pile."
"Another wall?"
"Maybe, maybe not." There was a vague certainty in Gunn's voice.
Giordino had learned many years before to trust the intelligence and intuitive genius of little Rudi Gunn.
He looked at him. "You thinking there's another tunnel on the other side?"
"I am."
"Damn!" Giordino hissed under his breath. "Our friends from Telluride must have gotten here first."
"What makes you think that?"
Giordino played his beam over the rockfall. "Their modus operandi. They have a fetish for blowing up tunnels."
"I don't think so. This fall looks old, very old, considering the dust that has filled in among the rocks. I'll bet my Christmas bonus that this fall occurred centuries before the colonel or the old castaway stepped in here, and neither was curious and bothered to dig through and see what was on the other side." Then Gunn crawled up on the spread of rocks and played his light over the pile. "This looks natural to me. Not really a heavy fall. I think we might have a chance at getting through."
"I'm not sure my testosterone is up to this."
"Shut up and dig."
Gunn, as it turned out, was right. The rockfall was not massive. Despite his grumblings, Giordino worked like a mule. By far the stronger of the two, he tackled the heavier rocks, while Gunn worked at casting aside the smaller ones. There was a ruthless determination in his movements as he picked up and heaved hundred-pound rocks as if they were made of cork. In less than an hour, they had excavated a passage large enough for them to crawl beyond.
Because he was the smallest, Gunn went first. He paused to shine his light inside.
"What do you see?" asked Giordino.
"A short corridor leading to another chamber less than twenty feet away" Then he squirmed through.
He stood up, brushed himself off, and removed several more rocks from the opposite side so Giordino, with his broad shoulders, would have an easier passage. They hesitated for a moment, beaming their combined lights into the chamber ahead, seeing strange reflections.
"I'm glad I listened to you," said Giordino, as he walked slowly forward.
"I have positive vibes. I'll bet you ten bucks nobody beat us to it."
"Skeptic that I am, you're on."
Feeling a little apprehensive now, and with a growing sense of trepidation, they stepped into the second chamber and swept their lights around the walls and floor. There were no inscriptions in here, but they froze at the astonishing sight revealed under the yellow-white beams of their flashlights, staring in almost religious awe at the twenty mummified figures that sat upright in stone chairs hewn from the rock.
The two that faced the entrance sat on a raised platform. The rest were grouped to the sides in the shape of a square horseshoe.
"What is this place?" Giordino whispered, half expecting to see ghosts lurking in the shadows.
"We're in a tomb," Gunn muttered unsteadily. "Very ancient, by the look of the clothing."
The mummies and the black hair on their skulls were in a remarkable state of preservation. Their facial features were perfectly intact and their garments were complete, with red, blue, and green dyes still discernible in the fabric. The two mummies at the end sat on stone chairs elaborately carved with various species of sea life. Their finery appeared more intricately woven and colorful than the others. Copper bands with exquisite engraved designs inlaid with what Gunn recognized as gemstones of turquoise and black opal circled their foreheads. High conical caps rested on their heads. They wore long elaborate tunics with delicate seashells mixed with polished obsidian and copper disks sewn in exotic patterns from collar to hem. All the feet were encased in tooled-leather, loose-fitting boots that came halfway up the calf.
The two were obviously of higher rank and importance than the others. The skeleton on the left was larger than the one on the right. Though all the mummies had worn their hair long in life, it was a matter of simple deduction to tell the males from the females. Males have more prominent mandibles and ridges above the eyes than do females. Interestingly, their headbands or crowns were the same size, as if they had equal power. All the males sat to the right hand of the central figure in a row at an angle. All were dressed similarly, but the weaving of their garments was not as elegant. The turquoise and black opal were not as prevalent. The same configuration was represented by the females who sat to the left of the more richly adorned mummy.
A line of beautifully polished spears with obsidian heads was stacked against one wall. At the feet of each skeleton were copper bowls with drinking cups and matching spoons. Both bowls and spoons had holes with leather thongs, as if they could be slung around the neck or shoulder, indicating that these people had always ca
rried their individual and personalized dinnerware with them. Handsome pottery, well-polished with delightful hand-painted delicate geometric designs on their surfaces, were laid out next to the stone chairs, along with large copper urns filled with withered leaves and flowers that must have been aromatic at the time the dead were interred. They looked handmade by artisans of great skill.
Gunn studied the mummies closely. He was amazed at the art of mummification. It looked technically superior to that of the Egyptians. "No sign of violent deaths. They all looked like they died in their sleep. I can't believe they all came to this place to die together, alone and forgotten."
"Somebody had to be alive to prop them up in the chairs," observed Giordino.
"That's true." Gunn made a sweeping motion around the chamber with one hand. "Notice that none are in quite the same position. Some have hands in the lap, others have hands on the arms of their chairs. The king and queen, or whatever their station in life, have their heads resting on one upraised hand as if contemplating their destiny."
"You're going theatrical on me," Giordino muttered.
"Don't you feel like Howard Carter when he first looked inside King Tut's tomb?"
"Howard was lucky. He found something we didn't."
"What's that?"
"Look around you. No gold. No silver. If these people were related to Tut, they must have been his poor relations. It looks as if copper was their prized metal."
"I wonder when they took eternal refuge here," Gunn reflected quietly.
"Better you should ask why," stated Giordino. "I'll get the camera out of my backpack so we can record this place and go home. Fooling around in sepulchral crypts upsets my delicate stomach."
For the next five hours, while Giordino recorded every square inch of the chamber with his camera, Gunn described what he saw in accurate detail into a small tape recorder. He also catalogued every artifact in a notebook. Nothing was touched, and everything was left in its place. Their effort wasn't perhaps as scientific as that of a team of archaeologists might have been, but for rank amateurs working under difficult conditions, they did a commendable job. It would be left for others, the historical experts, to solve the mysteries and identify the tomb's occupants.
When they finished, it was late afternoon. After crawling back through the opening at the cave-in and entering the room with the bones of the castaway, Gunn noticed Giordino wasn't with him. He returned to where the ceiling of the tunnel had collapsed and found Giordino furiously lifting rocks back into the hole, effectively sealing it.
"What are you doing that for?" he asked.
Giordino paused to stare at him, sweat-streaked with dust running down his face. "I'm not about to give the next guy a free ticket. Whoever wants to get into the tomb next will have to work for it the same as we did."
The two men made surprisingly good time on the return trip to the aircraft. Although the rain and wind had eased considerably and most of the trip was downhill, only the final fifty yards dictated a climb. They were only a short distance from the tilt-rotor, negotiating a narrow ledge, when suddenly an orange column of flame blossomed and streaked up into the damp air. There was no great thunderclap or earsplitting crack. The sound of the explosion sounded more like a firecracker exploding inside a tin can.
Then, as quickly as it burst, the ball of flame blinked out, leaving a pillar of smoke spiraling toward the dark clouds.
Giordino and Gunn watched helplessly and in shock as the tilt-rotor burst open like a cantaloupe dropped from a great height onto a sidewalk. Debris was hurled into the air, as the shattered and smoldering remains of the aircraft toppled over the ledge and crumpled down the slope, scattering a trail of metal scraps before plunging past the cliffs and splashing into the breakers that crashed against the island.
The tearing grind of metal being shredded against rocks died away, and the two men stood rooted, neither talking for nearly a minute. Gunn was stricken, his eyes staring in disbelief. Giordino's reaction was just the opposite. He was mad, damned mad, his hands clenched, his face white with fury.
"Impossible," Gunn mumbled at last. "There is no boat in sight, no place for another aircraft to land. It's impossible for someone to have put a bomb in the plane and escaped without us knowing."
"The bomb was placed inside the plane before we took off from Cape Town," said Giordino, his tone like ice. "Set and timed to detonate on our return trip."
Gunn stared at him blankly. "Those hours we spent examining the crypt. . ."
"Saved our lives. Whoever the killers are, they didn't count on us finding anything of great interest or spending more than an hour or two looking around, so they set their detonator four hours early."
"I can't believe anyone else has seen the chamber since the castaway."
"Certainly not our friends from Telluride, or they'd have destroyed the first chamber. Somebody leaked our flight to St. Paul Island, and we showed them the way. Now it's only a matter of time before they arrive to study the inscriptions in the first chamber."
Gunn's mind struggled to adjust to a new set of circumstances. "We've got to apprise the admiral of our predicament."
"Do it in code," Giordino suggested. "These guys are good. Ten to one they have a facility for listening in on satellite conversations. It's best that we let them think we're being eaten by fish on the bottom of the Indian Ocean."
Gunn raised his Globalstar phone and was about to dial, when a thought occurred to him. "Suppose the killers get here before the admiral's rescue party?"
"Then we'd better practice throwing rocks, because that's the only defense we have."
Almost forlornly, Gunn gazed around the rocky landscape. "Well," he said woodenly, "at least we don't have to worry about running out of ammunition."
<<16>>
The Polar Storm with her scientists and ship's crew had worked its way around the Antarctic Peninsula and across the Weddell Sea when Sandecker's message came in, ordering Captain Gillespie to shelve the expedition temporarily. He was to leave the ice pack immediately and sail at full speed to the Prince Olav Coast. There he was to heave to and wait off the Syowa Japanese research station until further orders. Gillespie called on his chief engineer and the engineer room crew to push the big icebreaker research ship to her maximum. They nearly achieved the impossible by gaining twenty knots out of her. Quite impressive, when Gillespie recalled that her top speed as specified by her builders twenty-two years before was eighteen knots.
He was pleased that his old ship had reached the rendezvous area eight hours earlier than expected.
The water was too deep to drop anchor, so he ran the ship onto the outer edge of the ice pack before he ordered the engines shut down. Gillespie then notified Sandecker that his ship had arrived on station and was awaiting further orders.
The only reply was a succinct "Stand by to receive a passenger."
The respite gave everyone time to catch up on unfinished work. The scientists busied themselves analyzing and recording their findings into computers, while the crew went about making routine repairs to the ship.
They did not have long to wait.
On the morning of the fifth day since leaving the Weddell Sea, Gillespie was studying the sea ice through his binoculars when he saw a helicopter slowly emerge from an early-morning ice mist. It flew on a direct line toward the Polar Storm. He ordered his second officer to receive the aircraft at the landing pad on the stern of the ship.
The helicopter hovered for a few seconds, then descended onto the pad. A man carrying a briefcase and a small duffel bag jumped from an open cargo door and spoke to Gillespie's second officer. Then he turned and waved to the pilot who had flown him to the ship. The rotor blades increased their beat and the helicopter rose into the cold air and was heading for home when Pitt stepped onto the Polar Storm's bridge.
"Hello, Dan," he greeted the captain warmly. "Good to see you."
"Dirk! Where did you drop from?"
"I was flown from Punta Arenas
on the Strait of Magellan by Air Force jet to the airstrip at the nearby Japanese research station. They were kind enough to give me a lift on their helicopter to the ship."
"What brings you to the Antarctic?"
"A little search project farther down the coast."
"I knew the admiral had something up his sleeve. He was damned secretive about it. He gave me no idea you were coming."
"He has his reasons." Pitt set his briefcase on the chart table, opened it, and handed Gillespie a paper with a set of coordinates. "This is our destination."
The captain looked at the coordinates and studied the appropriate nautical chart. "Stefansson Bay," he said quietly. "It's near, on the Kemp Coast not far from the Hobbs Islands. Nothing there of interest. It's as barren a piece of property as I've ever seen. What are we looking for?"
"A shipwreck."
"A wreck under the ice?"
"No," said Pitt with a half grin. "A wreck in the ice."
Stefansson Bay looked even more desolate and remote than Gillespie had described it, especially under a sky filled with clouds as dark as charcoal and a sea sullen with menacing ice. The wind bit like the needle teeth of an eel, and Pitt began to think of the physical effort required in crossing the ice pack to reach the continent's shore. Then the adrenaline began to pump as he thought of discovering a ship whose decks hadn't been trod since 1858.
Could it still be there, he wondered, just as Roxanna Mender and her husband had found it nearly a century and a half before? Or had it been eventually crushed by the ice or bulldozed out to sea where it finally sank deep in icy waters?
Pitt found Gillespie standing on a bridge wing, peering through binoculars at an unseen object far back in the spreading wake of the icebreaker. "Looking for whales?" he asked.
"U-boats," Gillespie answered, matter-of-factly.
Pitt thought the captain was joking. "Not many wolf packs in this part of the sea."
"Just one." Gillespie kept the glasses pressed against his eyes. "The U-2015. She's been following our wake ever since we almost collided with her ten days ago."