She put the thoughts out of her mind. So much had happened, and there was so much more that needed to be done.
And there was the kiss, too.
That, she thought, was a surprise. It was an accident, of course — she’d never mix business and pleasure. But it was unexpectedly nice, too.
In the sleeping bag a few feet away, Tom, despite lying down only minutes before, appeared to be sound asleep.
Figures…
She watched him for a while. She’d never seen someone sleep so soundly. She recalled his face after she’d kissed him. He almost looked hurt that she hadn’t mentioned anything about it afterwards, and then, like a gentleman, he carried on with the pretense that nothing had happened.
And nothing would happen…
It had been a long time since she’d been with a man. She’d accepted long ago that the hunt for the Lost City in the Clouds had taken its toll on her social life. But that was expected for any woman trying to achieve something in the male dominated world of archeology.
She closed her eyes, and imagined herself kissing his boyish lips.
It was unexpectedly pleasant…
It would be nice to accidentally do it again…
What made the matter worse was her knowledge that she was the one who held the power in the relationship. Tom had already given away his hand — he wanted her, that was plain as day, in his pained face. The pained face that I caused him… But she did have the ability to change that. She could have anything she wanted.
And why shouldn’t I?
When she couldn’t find an answer to that question, Billie slid out of her sleeping bag. Being naturally warm blooded, she slept in nothing more than her underwear. Next to her were her cargo shorts, white shirt, and handgun. Her first instinct was to get dressed, but the sight of her weapon stopped her. She still hadn’t told him about it. Carefully, she concealed the weapon with her shirt, leaving all three on the ground, and walked towards Tom.
“You awake Tom?”
He made no response.
She stood up, and approached him, still uncertain what she wanted. It wasn’t until she saw his innocent, sleeping, face that she decided what she really wanted.
A girlish grin crossed her face as she realized what it was.
“That Motherfucker!” she swore loudly, forgetting what she was about to do.
Tom sat up instantly, looking as though he was ready to kill any intruder. “What?”
“Up there on the wall!”
He jumped up, grabbing the hammer next to him as a though it were a deadly weapon — and in his, it probably would be.
“I don’t see anything. What is it?” he whispered.
“It’s right there… the Mahogany Ship!”
Chapter Thirteen
At the entrance to the mine shaft, Sam looked at Frank’s serious face and said, “What if we were wrong about the coin having to come from further upstream?”
“No, that can’t be right. The coin didn’t travel on its own. The river would have been required to move it to where you found it. Therefore, the coin must have entered the river upstream, and then flowed over the centuries until it became imbedded in the soft, limestone sediment.”
“You’re right about the coin having come from further upstream, but what if the Mahogany ship continued sailing downstream, taking with it whatever treasures she was carrying?”
“Shit, you’re right!” Frank replied. “Why didn’t we think of that? Of course, the water level has been changing heights over the centuries. If the Mahogany ship somehow entered the water system, it’s conceivable that it then sailed silently further downstream, until it reached a point where its size precluded it from further movement.”
“It’s hard to imagine a ship of that size moving through a cave system at all, but the tunnel would be large enough.”
“Would it?” Frank asked.
“I’m sure it would.”
Frank opened the computer documents containing known measurements of each of the tunnels. Pointing to the only exit tunnel, he said, “No, it’s only forty feet high. There’s no way anything as large as what the Mahogany Ship was described as could possibly get through there.”
“Unless its masts were destroyed?”
“Even then, would the thought of a forty-foot ship sound like the description that the survivors of the Emily Rose gave of the Mahogany Ship?”
“No, but would you trust the description of a bunch of starving survivors to provide an accurate account of the ship?”
Raising his left eyebrow, Frank countered, “I would have been surprised if they all gave the same inaccurate one.”
Sam paused his speech for just over a moment. He knew he had the right answer, but just didn’t quite know how to prove it.
His eyes then lit up.
“No, I know what happened. It’s so obvious — I can’t believe we didn’t think of it earlier. Come on, we have work to do.”
An hour later, Sam and Frank were standing at the diving platform inside the Mahogany Cavern. Their equipment checked and then rechecked, they were about to put Sam’s theory to the test.
Opening his dive tank to full, Sam said, “A similar thing happened with the Magdalena — a lost airship from World War II, filled with Jewish treasure. The silt had built up over the years until she was sitting high and dry.”
“But the tunnel’s still below the waterline,” Frank replied.
“Yes, but I realized what the movement of silt could do in 75 years, then in the 200 years since the Mahogany Ship was last seen above ground, the size of that tunnel could have changed extensively.”
“You seem pretty certain of yourself.”
“I’ve spent a lot of time trying to make sense of all of this. It’s the only explanation.”
Sam then placed the mask over his face, and pin dived into the water below. The two Seadoos were tied up, just below the work platform. He waited for Frank to follow and start the little electric motor on the Seadoo, and then took off in the direction of the flowing water.
It only took a couple minutes to reach the entrance to the downstream tunnel. For the first time since he arrived, Sam noticed that it appeared to form an incomplete semicircle, imagining just how large it could be if that circle had been allowed to be completed.
He drove his Seadoo to the base of the tunnel’s entrance. The sand was deep. It would take weeks to dig it out to know for sure, but it certainly looked like the depth of the tunnel could be doubled if the sand were removed.
“How far have you traveled down this tunnel?” Sam asked.
“We haven’t. We all thought that the Mahogany Ship could have never gotten this far.”
“All right, here’s to hoping that she lies on the other end of this tunnel.”
Sam then drove his machine into the tunnel, his powerful LED headlight shining on the long passage ahead. The flow of the water was stronger, having been fed by the other five upstream channels. He was glad that he was using his motorized Seadoo and doubted very much that he could swim against the current if he had to. In the back of his mind, something told him that he should have run a safety line, but he was too eager to know the truth.
Nearly an hour later, Frank drove towards him, “Sam, how much further do you want to go?”
“Until we reach the Mahogany Ship,” Sam replied.
“Are you sure? We haven’t set up for a prolonged dive.”
“Yes.”
Sam continued, at full speed.