“Protect the world?” Sam asked. “From what?”
“From them!”
Sam asked. “Who?”
“Those who would like to see an end to all that the Master Builders have created.”
Sam’s heart raced. What did this man know? “What do you know about the Master Builders?”
Terror filled the man’s dark eyes. “They’ll kill me for speaking!”
Sam said, “Just wait… we can protect you!”
The man’s eyes darted toward the handgun at its holster on his hip.
“No, don’t!” Sam yelled. “We can protect you.”
The man shook his head, his eyes wide and possessed with fear. “You can’t even save yourselves anymore. No one can!”
The rider reached for his pistol.
Sam fired first.
Two shots.
They hit the man in his chest.
The rider fell backward. Then, seemingly uninjured behind a bulletproof vest, sat up, gripped his own handgun, pointed the barrel to the bottom of his throat and pulled the trigger.
The bullet took off his jaw, ripping a hole through the man’s brainstem, killing him instantly.
Sam stood up. He pocketed the man’s weapon — a Sig Sauer P226 — and started the motorcycle.
“Now we can go!”
Sandi opened her mouth to speak, but words didn’t come out.
Sam said, “What?”
Her eyes widened, “You’ve been shot!”
Sam looked down.
Blood flowed freely from what appeared to be a single gunshot wound.
Chapter Nineteen
“Relax!” Sam said. “I’m not shot.”
Sandi shook her head. “That’s shock answering there. No. You’ve been hit.”
Sam grinned. His words, emphatic, “No, I haven’t.”
“You haven’t?”
“Not today anyway. I just tore open an old wound.”
“How old?”
“Three weeks.”
“You were shot three weeks ago?”
Sam nodded, giving a little shrug. “Like I said, sometimes my work can be a touch dangerous.”
“One day you’ll have to explain to me why people like to keep shooting at an oceanographer.”
“Hey, I’d like to know the answer to that, too.” Sam helped Sandi pick up the motorcycle. “You can ride?”
She climbed on and started the engine, revving the throttle a little. “Of course I can ride a bike!”
“Good, because there’s no way Jesse’s in any position to ride on his own. He can ride pillion with me.”
A minute later, Sandi followed after Sam as he drove first along the tunnel.
Up ahead, another man on a dirt bike slowed to meet them. In the blinding beam of his headlight, the rider hadn’t realized it was Sam.
The biker yelled, “Any sign of them?”
Sam aimed the Sig Sauer and squeezed the trigger. At six feet away, the man didn’t have a chance. The single shot went right through the center of the guy’s chest, killing him.
Sam said, “That’s for running me off the road!”
He kicked the bike into gear, released the clutch and continued riding.
The horizontal mine tunnel opened up into the inside back of an old dilapidated building in St. Elmo’s. It looked like the place was being used by gold prospectors to illegally access the old mine site.
He aimed the bike toward the front door and revved the throttle, which lifted the front wheel up just a notch, and rode through the door — sending it splintering into a thousand shards of broken wood.
An hour later they were at the sheriff’s department back at Nathrop. Betty was already there, and so was an ambulance to take Jesse to the hospital. The paramedics wanted to look at Sam’s head injury, but he brushed it aside. After all, it had been nearly twelve hours since he’d had the accident.
One of the sheriff’s deputies asked Sam and Sandi to wait there for a few hours while their officers searched the mine site for their attackers.
They agreed.
Sandi said to Sam, “You know there’s going to be hell to pay because of the high body count that we racked up.”
Sam shrugged. “Better them than us.”
Chapter Twenty
By that evening a man in his early forties turned up in a sheriff’s uniform.
The man said, “My name’s Jeff Mills. I’m in charge in this neck of the woods.”
Sam stood up to shake the man’s hand. “Sam Reilly. Pleased to meet you, sir. This is Professor Sandi Larson.”
Jeff glanced at them both. He smiled apologetically. “I’m really sorry you’ve had such a lousy time out here. But I’m glad you pulled through.”
“Did you find the riders who attacked us?”
“Afraid not.”
“What about the driver of the Porsche? Sandi gave his description to one of your deputies earlier.”
“No luck there, I’m afraid.”
Sam leveled his eyes at the sheriff. “What do you know?”
Jeff met his eye. “I don’t know what to tell you. We’ve sent a team into the mine shaft that ran through the old post office at St. Elmo’s. It looks like the tunnel had been in existence since the 1920s when the gold mine was in full swing. But we haven’t found any evidence of a group of riders searching for some mask.”
Sandi asked, “What about the bodies?”
“I don’t know what to say, ma’am. We didn’t find any bodies.”
Her eyes narrowed. “You searched the mine?”
“Yeah, we searched the mine. All the way to the end. There’s nothing there.”
“Can you get surveillance of the area?”
“I’ve tried. There’s nothing on it. So what do you suggest I do?”
Sam grinned. “Well, sir. You’ve had someone attempt to commit the murder of three people by intentionally detonating the entrance to the Queen Maggie mine shaft in order to conceal an old artifact. Rick Rodier, an archeologist from the University of Chicago, was shot and killed. In addition to that, I shot three people in self-defense and now those bodies have been removed — professionally and quickly by the sound of it.”
The sheriff nodded. “Again, what do you suggest I do?”
Sam sighed. “Well, sir. I’d put your report together, making sure you dot your I’s and cross your T’s. Then I’d contact the FBI, because one thing’s for certain, this extends well out of your local jurisdiction.”
The sheriff crossed his arms. “Without any bodies, what do you expect me to do?”
“Open an investigation?”
“Without any bodies, why should I go chasing ghosts in a disused mine?”
Chapter Twenty-One
Sam waited at the airport for a flight to Washington, D.C.
Tom Bower, his best friend, and diving companion, had driven up from Colorado Springs to meet him there, along with his girlfriend, Genevieve Callaghan. Sam put Sandi Larson on a flight to Heathrow, London, with the strange mask. She said that she could have a better explanation for what the mask was within a day or two, as well as providing a reasonable estimate of its age. Sam insisted on sending Genevieve to protect her and guard the mask until they knew better what it was they were dealing with. When Sandi complained that she’d feel safer with him around, Sam pointed out that Genevieve was one of the most lethal persons alive. In the end, Sandi had acquiesced.
After leaving the two girls at the gate, Sam and Tom sat down to eat a late dinner. It was a takeaway burger joint. Nothing special, but it hit the spot.
Tom said, “Some vacation?”
Sam nodded. “Yeah. I’m calling it about par for the course.”
Tom grimaced. “That bad, huh…”
“Yeah.”
“How was the Lamborghini?”
Sam’s lips curled with joy. “It’s beautiful. I mean. It’s a Lamborghini… so what am I supposed to say, it sucks? But really, it was a work of art in its day. They took a risk to produce the most formidable bomb-proof four-wheel drive cum race car, back in a time well before the SUV market had begun.”