Riptide (31 page)

Above, Wopner mumbled something unintelligible, his back to them as he worked with his palmtop computer. Hatch found that
if he stayed in one place too long, his breath collected into a cloud of fog around his head, making it difficult to see.

“Dr. Magnusen,” Neidelman spoke into his radio. “Status, please.”

“Dr. Rankin is getting a few seismic anomalies on the monitors, Captain, but nothing serious. It could well be the weather.”
As if in response, a low
crump
of thunder echoed faintly down the shaft.

“Understood.” Neidelman turned to Bonterre and Hatch. “Let’s get to the bottom and tag the rest of the shafts.”

Once again, they began their descent. As Hatch moved past the hundred-foot platform toward the base of the Water Pit, he found
his arms and legs beginning to shake from weariness and cold.

“Take a look at this,” Neidelman said, swiveling his light around. “Another well-constructed tunnel, directly below the first.
No doubt this is part of the original workings, as well.” Bonterre placed a sensor into the nearby joist, and they began moving
again.

Suddenly, there was a sharp intake of breath beneath Hatch, and he heard Bonterre mutter a fervent curse. He looked down,
and his heart leaped immediately into his mouth.

Below him, tangled in a massive snarl of junk, lay a partially skeletonized corpse, draped in chains and rusting iron, the
eyeless sockets of its skull flickering crazily in the light of Bonterre’s headlamp. Ribbons of clothing hung from its shoulders
and hips, and its jaw hung open as if laughing at some hilarious joke. Hatch felt a curious feeling of displacement, a detached
sensation, even as part of his brain realized that the skeleton was far too big to be that of his brother. Looking away and
trembling violently, he leaned against the ladder, fighting to get his breath and heartbeat under control, concentrating on
the rush of air into, and out of, his lungs.

“Malin!” came the urgent voice of Bonterre. “
Malin!
This skeleton is very old.
Comprends?
Two hundred years old, at least.”

Hatch waited another long moment, breathing, until he was sure he could answer. “I understand,” he said. Slowly, he unlocked
his arm from the titanium rung. Then, equally slowly, he lowered first one foot, then the other, until he was level with Bonterre
and Neidelman.

The Captain played his light over the skeleton, fascinated, oblivious to Hatch’s reaction. “Look at the design of this shirt,”
he said. “Homespun, raglan seams, a common garment among early nineteenth-century fishermen. I believe we’ve found the body
of Simon Rutter, the Pit’s original victim.” They stared at the skeleton until a distant rumble of thunder broke the spell.

The Captain wordlessly aimed his headlamp beneath his feet. Following the beam with his own, Hatch could now make out their
final destination: the bottom of the Water Pit itself. A huge snarl of broken crosspieces, rusting iron, hoses, gears, rods,
and all manner of machinery poked up out of a pool of mud and silt perhaps twenty feet beneath them. Directly above the snarl,
Hatch could see several large shaftways converge onto the main Pit, damp seaweed and kelp dangling like steaming beards from
their mouths. Neidelman moved his light around the wildly tangled ruin. Then he turned back to Bonterre and Hatch, his slender
form haloed in the chill mist of his own breath.

“Perhaps fifty feet beneath that wreckage,” he said in a low voice, “lies a two-billion-dollar treasure.” Though his eyes
moved between them restlessly, they appeared to be focusing on something far beyond. Then he began to laugh, a low, soft,
curious laugh. “Fifty feet,” he repeated. “And all we have to do now is
dig.
”

Suddenly, the radio crackled. “Captain, this is Streeter.” To Hatch, listening in his headpiece, the dry voice had a note
of urgency in it. “We’ve got a problem here.”

“What?” the Captain said, his voice hard, the dreamlike quality suddenly gone.

There was a pause, then Streeter came on again. “Captain, we—just a minute, please—we recommend that you abort your mission
and return to the surface at once.”

“Why?” Neidelman asked. “Is there some problem with the equipment?”

“No, nothing like that.” Streeter seemed uncertain how to proceed. “Let me patch St. John in to you, he’ll explain.”

Neidelman flashed a quick, questioning look at Bonterre, who shrugged in return.

The clipped tones of the historian came across the radio. “Captain Neidelman, it’s Christopher St. John. I’m on the
Cerberus.
Scylla has just cracked several portions of the journal.”

“Excellent,” the Captain said. “But what’s the emergency?”

“It’s what Macallan wrote in this second part. Let me read it to you.”

As Hatch stood on the ladder array—waiting in clammy darkness at the heart of the Water Pit—the voice of the Englishman reading
Macallan’s journal seemed to be coming from a different world entirely:

I have not been easy this se’ennight past. I feel it a certainty that Ockham has plans to dispatch me, as he hath so easily
dispatched many others, once my usefulness in this vile enterprise has come to an ende. And so, by dint of the harrowing of
my soule in the small hours, I have decided upon a course of action. It is this foul treasure, as much as the pirate Ockham,
that is evil, and hath caused our miserie upon this forsaken island; and the death of so many in its taking. It is the treasure
of the devil himself, and as such shall I treate it…

St. John paused and there was the rustling of a computer printout.

“You want us to abort the mission over
this?
” The exasperation of Neidelman’s voice was plain.

“Captain, there’s more. Here it is:

Now that the Treasure Pitt hath been constructed, I know my time draweth to a close. My soule is at rest. Under my direction
the pirate Ockham and his bande, unbeknownst, have created a permanent Tombe for these unholie gains, got by such suffering
and grief. This hoard shall not be repossessed by mortal means. It is thus that I have labored, by various stratagems and
conceits, to place this treasure in such wise that not Ockham, nor any other man, shall ever retrieve it. The Pitt is unconquerable,
invincible. Ockham believes that he holds the key, and he shall Die for that belief. I tell ye now, ye who decipher these
lines, heed my warning: to descend the Pitt means grave danger to lyfe and limbe; to seize the treasure means certayne Death.
Ye who luste after the key to the Treasure Pitt shall find instead the key to the next world, and your carcase shall rot close
to the Hell where your soule hath gone
”

St. John’s voice stopped, and the group remained silent. Hatch looked at Neidelman: a slight tremor had taken hold of his
jaw, and his eyes were narrow.

“So you see,” St. John began again. “It appears the key to the Water Pit is that there is no key. It must have been Macallan’s
ultimate revenge against the pirate who kidnapped him: to bury his treasure in such a way that it could never be retrieved.
Not by Ockham. Not by anyone.”

“The point is,” Streeter’s voice broke in, “it’s not safe for anyone to remain in the Pit until we’ve deciphered the rest
of the code and analyzed this further. It sounds like Macallan has some kind of trap in store for anyone who—”

“Nonsense,” interrupted Neidelman. “The danger he’s talking about is the booby trap that killed Simon Rutter two hundred years
ago and flooded the Pit.”

There was another long silence. Hatch looked at Bonterre, then at Neidelman. The Captain’s face remained stony, his lips compressed
and set.

“Captain?” Streeter’s voice came again. “St. John doesn’t quite read it that way—”

“This is moot,” the Captain snapped. “We’re almost done here, just another couple of sensors to set and calibrate, and then
we’ll come up.”

“I think St. John has a point,” Hatch said. “We should cut this short, at least until we figure out what Macallan was talking
about.”

“I agree,” said Bonterre.

Neidelman’s glance flitted between them. “Absolutely not,” he said brusquely. He closed his satchel, then looked upward. “Mr.
Wopner?”

The programmer was not on the ladder, and there was no response on the intercom. “He must be down the passage, calibrating
the sensors we placed inside the vault,” Bonterre said.

“Then let’s call him back. Christ, he probably switched off his transmitter.” The Captain began to ascend the ladder, brushing
past them as he climbed. The ladder trembled slightly under his weight.

Just a moment,
Hatch thought.
That isn’t right.
The ladder array had never trembled before.

Then it came again: a slight shudder, barely perceptible beneath his fingertips and under his instep. He looked questioningly
at Bonterre, and in her glance he could see that she felt it, too.

“Dr. Magnusen, report!” Neidelman spoke sharply. “What’s going on?”

“All normal, Captain.”

“Rankin?” Neidelman asked into his radio.

“The scopes show a seismic event, but it’s threshold, way below the danger level. Is there a problem?”

“We’re feeling a—” the Captain began. Suddenly, a violent shudder twisted the ladder, shaking Hatch’s hold. One of his feet
skidded from the rung and he grabbed desperately to maintain his purchase. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Bonterre clinging
tightly to the array. There was another jolt, then another. Above him, Hatch could hear a distant crumbling sound, like earth
collapsing, and a low, barely audible rumble.

“What the hell’s happening?” the Captain shouted.

“Sir!” came Magnusen’s voice. “We’re picking up ground displacement somewhere in your vicinity.”

“Okay, you win. Let’s find Wopner and get the hell out.”

They scrambled up the ladder to the hundred-foot platform, the entrance to the vaulted tunnel opening above them, a yawning
mouth of rotting wood and earth. Neidelman peered inside, lancing his beam into the dampness. “Wopner? Get a move on. We’re
aborting the mission.”

As Hatch listened, only silence and a faint, chill wind emanated from the tunnel.

Neidelman continued looking into the tunnel for a moment. Then he glanced first at Bonterre, then at Hatch, his eyes narrowing.

Suddenly, as if galvanized by the same thought, all three unfastened their karabiners and scrambled toward the mouth of the
shaft, stepping inside and running down the tunnel. Hatch didn’t remember the low passage being this dark, somehow, or this
claustrophobic. The very air felt different.

Then the tunnel opened into a small stone chamber. The two piezoelectric sensors lay on opposite walls of the chamber. Beside
one was Wopner’s palmtop computer, its RF antenna bent at a crazy angle. Tendrils of mist drifted in the chamber, lanced by
their headlamps.

“Wopner?” Neidelman called, swinging his light around. “Where the hell did he go?”

Hatch stepped past Neidelman and saw something that sent a chill through his vitals. One of the massive groined stones of
the ceiling had swung down against the chamber wall. Hatch could see a gap in the ceiling, like a missing tooth, from which
damp brown earth dribbled. At floor level, where the base of the fallen ceiling stone pressed against the wall, he could make
out something black and white. Moving closer, Hatch realized that it was the canvas-and-rubber toe of Wopner’s sneaker, peeping
out between the slabs. In a moment he was beside it, shining his light between the two faces of stone.

“Oh, my God,” Neidelman said behind him.

Hatch could see Wopner, pressed tightly between the two granite faces, one arm pinned to his side, the other canted upward
at a crazy angle. His helmeted head was turned to the side, gazing out at Hatch. His eyes were wide and full of tears.

Wopner’s mouth worked silently as Hatch stared.
Please…

“Kerry, try to stay calm,” Hatch said, running his beam of light up and down the narrow crack while fumbling with his intercom.
My God, it’s amazing he’s still alive.
“Streeter!” he called into the intercom. “We have a man trapped between two slabs of rock. Get some hydraulic jacks down
here. I want oxygen, blood, and saline.”

He turned back to Wopner. “Kerry, we’re going to jack these slabs apart and get you out very, very soon. Right now, I need
to know where you hurt.”

Again the mouth worked. “I don’t know.” The response came as a high-pitched exhalation. “I feel… all broken up inside.” The
voice was oddly slurred, and Hatch realized that the programmer was barely able to move his jaw to speak. Hatch stepped away
from the wall face and tore open his medical kit, pulling out a hypo and sucking up two ccs of morphine. He wormed his hand
between the rough slabs of stone and sank the needle into Wopner’s shoulder. There was no flinching, no reaction, nothing.

“How is he?” Neidelman said, hovering behind him, the air clouding from his breath.

“Get back, for Chrissakes!” Hatch said. “He needs air.” Now he found himself panting, drawing more and more air into his own
lungs, feeling increasingly short of breath.

“Be careful!” Bonterre said from behind him. “There may be more than one trap.”

A trap?
It had not occurred to Hatch that this was a trap. But then, how else could that huge ceiling stone swing down so neatly…
He tried to reach Wopner’s hand to take his pulse, but it was bent too far out of reach.

“Jacks, oxygen, and plasma on their way,” came Streeter’s voice over the intercom.

“Good. Have a collapsible stretcher lowered to the hundred-foot platform, with inflatable splints and a cervical collar—”

“Water…” Wopner breathed.

Bonterre stepped up and handed Hatch a canteen. He reached into the crack, angling a thin stream of water from the canteen
down the side of Wopner’s helmet. As the tongue fluttered out to catch the water, Hatch could see that it was blue-black,
droplets of blood glistening along its length.
Jesus, where the hell are those jacks…

“Help me, please!” Wopner rattled, and coughed quietly. A few flecks of blood appeared on his chin.