He wasn’t going to need anywhere near that length of time today. Instead, Sam planned a simple half an hour trip to see how far he could get. He’d already seen the sonar images of the tunnels — now he wanted to see it with his own eyes. Searching for the Mahogany Ship, which had managed to remain hidden for so many years, required something more along the lines of as well as science.
Once the timer on his scooter read 30 minutes, he dutifully brought it to a stop and examined his surroundings. The landscape of the tunnel had change little throughout the time. It was a combination of more than a hundred limestone caves, joined together and eaten away from eons of erosion by the water through the soft rock.
This one was no different.
Around him, he noted that the tunnel, although reasonably wide, would never have permitted a ship as enormous as the Mahogany Ship to travel down its path. He thought about it for a minute or two, and then took a sample from the limestone silt, placing it in a tube marked ‘Tunnel Three.’ If a ship had ever passed through this place, he was going to find some evidence of it through a detailed analysis of the microscopic particles found inside that tube.
Finding a shipwreck is an art, but that’s no reason to ignore science…
Over the next few hours Sam proceeded to make the same investigations of each of the five tunnels. The water was cold, but it wasn’t freezing. His dry suit had an inbuilt heating device, which had maintained his core body temperature at a comfortable 98 degrees Fahrenheit.
When he returned to the dive platform, Michael and Frank were already waiting for him.
“You all right Sam?” Frank asked, helping take some of the heavy weight of his dive equipment off him as he climbed the ladder.
“I’m fine. Why do you ask?”
“You were down there longer than I was expecting.”
“I was just getting a feel for these caverns. You’d be surprised by how much you can learn by watching the flow of water through tunnels such as these. The old gold miners who panned for gold used to understand the river systems better than we do today. A good gold prospector would watch the river for days and days before digging his spade into a single chip of soil. By doing so, he could ascertain where the heavier, gold filled, sumps might be.”
“And what did these rivers tell you?” Frank sounded interested.
“I don’t know yet. I’ve taken core samples where any man-made products might become lodged. Still, it’s been hundreds of years since the Mahogany Ship disappeared, so who knows what could possibly remain? As for the river system herself?” Sam’s intense, steel blue eyes, stared at the man, before he said, “Despite two of the five tunnels being large enough for her to come down, there’s only one in which she could actually have made it down without tearing herself apart on the rapids.”
“So then we only have to explore the largest of the tunnels?”
“No, the reality is, it could be somewhere upstream of all five of the tunnels. Just because the coin made it down doesn’t mean that the Mahogany Ship ever made it this far. Your boss isn’t going to be impressed, but there’s a very high probability that, if the ship ever entered this river system, she’s resting hundreds of miles further upstream.”
“Which means…”
“It might take months, if not years, to explore all of the tunnels.”
“Okay, let’s get the gear,” Billie said. A wry smile over her beautiful face told him that she wasn’t going to talk about them.
Tom decided that he’d had enough of the cloak and dagger story. He was running this show. Whatever involvement the Master Builders may have in this, he had a right to know. He said, gently touching her shoulder to stop her, “Who were they?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“No more lies, Billie. Sam brought you here for a very specific reason, didn’t he? And I have an idea it had something to do with the Master Builders.”
She shrugged her shoulders.
“Tell me. Or you can go back to whatever it was you were doing in Antarctica before Sam dragged you out here.”
Billie looked like she was seriously considering abandoning the site. Then she turned to face him. Her almond-shaped brown eyes stared at his and then conceded. “These markings here,” she whispered. “They were made by them. Only, there’s never been any evidence that they ever made it across the Atlantic, until now…”
“But who were they?”
“They were builders — engineers to be exact, and very good ones. Think of the ancient wonders of the world.”
“I’m not an archeologist, but I thought the Egyptians built the Pyramids?”
“That’s what we thought until recently, but since then new evidence has shown that a superior race, known as the Master Builders, built them all…”
“So why wasn’t the information published?”
“That, my friend, is an interesting question. I’m sure your friend Sam Reilly is probably one of the few people on this planet who know the real answer.”
“Afghanistan, 2003?” Tom knew exactly what she was referring too, but didn’t know why.
“Come on… you never believed for an instant that your friend was honorably discharged after three weeks in the Sandpit?”
“No, and he never told me what happened, so I didn’t ask.”
She sighed. “Yeah, well he broke a code, and opened the doors to an otherwise unreachable research path. And the existence of the Master Builders came to the attention of the National Security Agency.”
“The NSA?” Tom looked confused. “What would they care about some ancient civilization?”
“Okay Tom, have you been to Egypt and stood at the base of the Pyramid of Giza?”
“Yeah, many years ago. Sam and I went there on our summer break.”
“Do you honestly think a four-thousand-year old civilization could have built something like that using technologies that predated the invention of the wheel?”
“Yeah, yeah, I’ve heard all the stories before. It’s an amazing feat, but somehow they managed it. I read a theory once about using really big whips or something.”
“It doesn’t matter. Have you ever wondered if we could build the same structure using modern technologies?” Billie asked.
“The thought’s never entered my mind. Why?”
“The answer is, we’re still not capable of it. Each of those blocks weighs as much as 15 tons. To place one at the top of the 481-foot pyramid would be impossible. Each block is so perfectly positioned that not even a hair could be slid through it.”
“Okay, so how did they do it?”
“They didn’t.”
“Who did then?”
“The Master Builders.”
“What, like aliens?” Tom laughed, and then noticing she was serious, said, “Okay, so how did they do it?”
“No one knows, but if a civilization that lived more than 4000 years ago had technologies superior to ours today, we want to know about it. And if their knowledge is still out there, then the U.S. military perceives that as a threat.”
“And that’s what Sam got himself involved in?”
“Yes,” she whispered, as though someone could somehow be listening to them at this depth, inside a granite vault. “Only, they were watching him. He never told me what he was involved in, specifically. He brought me the information he needed analyzed and that was it. But I knew he was being watched. Eventually, he couldn’t take it anymore, and that was when he returned to the ocean, and to working for his dad.”
“Or did he get a lead he knew was going to get him killed?”
“Like what?” She asked.
“Maybe he discovered something and knew his only hope would be to find it when others weren’t looking?”