Gonzalez was looking back up, “Quinn! Thank God! We’re fine. Stuck, but fine.” It was good to see her beautiful face and hear her exotic voice again.
Stonewood pushed his way into view, elaborating, “We have reached a dead end. This vertical shaft is the only way out but the opening is twenty feet over our heads.”
He paused, allowing Pierre to add, “The surface is like polished glass. It’s too smooth, even for the great Pierre.”
Lewis was already working. “Give us a few minutes and we will get a rope down to you. Do you have the gear?”
Gonzalez was back. “Yeah, we’ve got it all here. Unfortunately, there wasn’t anything we could use.” As she finished speaking, Lewis lowered the rope to the ground at her feet.
Craig was the first one up. Under Samantha’s supervision, he and Miller worked to widen the gap through the cave-in rubble while Lewis worked with the others, getting the gear hauled up before assisting the remaining team members up as well. He watched for any signs pointing to a possible saboteur, but nothing stood out. Gonzalez was last up the rope. She and Lewis shared a long hug, both surprised at how close they had become in such a short time.
“Thank you, Quinn,” she whispered in his ear, a slight tremble still in her voice.
“I didn’t want you to miss our dinner date,” Lewis replied with a grin.
Gonzalez smiled back. “I don’t remember accepting any such date.”
“I was waiting for the right time to ask. I figured it would be hard for you to say no at this point,” he said, raising his eyebrows expectantly.
The gorgeous cave diver tapped her lips, pretending to be deep in thought. “Tell you what, if we survive this mess, I’ll cook you dinner on a friend’s yacht in the Bahamas.”
“Deal!”
Chapter 7 — VICTORY
Once the hole through the caved-in area was large enough for Stonewood, it was fairly easy for the others to slip through as well. Everyone, even the billionaire boss, worked together, shuffling their remaining equipment to the room with the crevasse running through its center.
While everyone was taking a break along the wall, Gonzalez carefully walked to the edge and looked down into the large crack. Lewis moved up beside her and said, “Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that I emptied another of our tanks.”
Her eyes lit up as she asked, “You found somewhere to dive?”
“Not exactly,” Lewis began cryptically. “I think I was closer to an astronaut than a scuba diver with that one.” His expression quickly turned serious as he quietly whispered, “Did you notice anything unusual about anyone’s behavior while we were separated?”
Gonzalez had a puzzled look on her face, “Well, they are a rather unusual bunch…”
Lewis shook his head, then quickly went through the highlights of Samantha’s theory, ending with, “Let’s keep our eyes open.” Lewis trusted Gonzalez, but really wasn’t sure about anybody else. Perhaps Samantha or Miller had set the explosives to seal off the others. Perhaps it wasn’t actually an explosion at all, just a freak accident. Perhaps a lot of things; Lewis reminded himself to stick to the facts.
Gonzalez and Lewis turned to find the others gathered around Samantha as she retold the story of their group’s adventures from the past few hours, referring to the “freak cave-in” without any hint of suspicion. Pierre turned to Lewis with a wide grin upon hearing about his wild trip over the crevasse. Gonzalez stared at him, slowly shaking her head as she muttered a single word. “Loco.”
Stonewood was clearly impatient but listened intently to the entire story, possibly out of respect for the people who had saved his life, once again. The moment Samantha was done, the man who started this whole endeavor cleared his throat loudly, getting everyone’s attention. Before he could say anything, Lewis interrupted, asking, “How did the four of you end up at the bottom of that pit?”
Gonzalez was quick to answer, further agitating the already-upset Stonewood as she replied. “The bottom of that pit is actually only 100 yards from the intersection where Mr. Stonewood led us away from you. We ended up there because there was nowhere else to go.”
Pierre took over from there, adding, “I saw the shaft leading upward but couldn’t find a way to climb into it. We started back to meet up with you when we heard the rockslide that blocked your tunnel.”
“We were thinking about building a human pyramid with help from the three of you,” Gonzalez cut back in. She did not sound pleased when she added, “We spent most of the rest of the time searching for more of Stonewood’s symbols instead of figuring out how to save ourselves.”
Stonewood raised his hands and cleared his throat once again before taking over the conversation. His initial focus was on Miller. “Just after leaving you, we found another symbol — this one etched into the wall. It looked like a slithering serpent, and there was a Roman numeral IX under it, along with what looked like Chinese writing. I was sure the treasure lay just ahead, but then we hit the dead end, and soon heard the collapse of your tunnel. Ultimately, we found no more clues to the treasure.”
Miller asked, “Did the serpent have some sort of key tied around its neck?”
“Actually, it had a key for a tail,” Stonewood replied after a quick glance at Craig.
Miller seemed a little shocked by this. He stared off into the distance, eventually saying only, “The tail; now that is interesting.”
This appeared to be enough to make Stonewood happy. He smiled and nodded quickly before pointing to the upper exit on this side of the room and issuing a new order. “We will explore that way together.”
It took some pushing and pulling to get everyone up and into the top passage. Stonewood and Miller led the way with the others following close behind. Only Stonewood’s headlamp was on so Lewis, who was last, occasionally stumbled but found the going relatively easy thanks to the large passage. After angling up for the first hundred feet or so, the tunnel leveled off before beginning a gradual decent. The downhill continued for almost a mile before the passage opened into another huge room. Again, this one was about the size of a football field. The major difference was that this time, the room was filled with row after row of well-organized treasure.
Everyone switched on their headlamps and gazed around the room in wonder at what lay before them. Lewis started from the left, noting that the first row appeared to contain thousands of ancient scrolls neatly organized on a series of dusty, wooden shelves. The scrolls would undoubtedly prove invaluable to historians, but it was the remaining items that really caught Lewis’s eye.
The next few rows housed a variety of ancient weaponry and items of battle. There were easily recognizable items like swords, crossbows, and shields; as well as more complex systems of destruction that involved spring-loaded launching devices and tightly-coiled ropes. Lewis gazed at close to a hundred suits of armor, standing shoulder to shoulder; each suit was of a distinct design, some encrusted with decorative jewels, others strictly utilitarian.
Facing the suits of armor stood an army of terracotta statues, seemingly depicting a variety of oriental figures from all walks of life. The largest statue was that of a life-sized samurai warrior on a horse. A royal procession of the figures was organized along the far end, the apparent emperor standing before his bowing disciples, many of whom were adorned in beautiful silk clothes.
As far as sheer item count, the main part of the treasure was displayed in another set of large wooden shelves laid out in ten rows. These shelves were laden with a wide variety of relics, neatly grouped so that items with a similar function could be found in the same section. Much like the weaponry section, items here ranged from utilitarian cooking utensils made from wood and stone to golden crowns decorated with sparkling jewels. There were shelves containing goblets, knives, jewelry, everything — items spanning thousands of years.