Atlantis Gold

Chapter 17

“Can you believe this guy knows how to fly?” Jayden called from the backseat of the de Havilland Twin Otter floatplane. “I’m glad Carter’s up front with you, though, Maddy. Seriously, I’d rather sit next to this pile of scuba gear than listen to his crap at this point.”

“I heard that.” Carter turned around in the pilot’s seat.

“Now, now, you two,” Maddy chided from behind mirrored sunglass and a baseball cap. As was customary, she wore her long hair tied back in a ponytail, through the back of the cap. “Aren’t you excited for the dive? I mean, what’s a trip to the Bahamas without scuba diving, am I right? So if we can check out the Bimini Road while we’re at it, so much the better. I love how it all fit together.”

“I love how chipper you are about waking up at five in the morning on vacation!” Jayden said. Once they’d decided to explore the water surrounding Bimini, Hunt had suggested a seaplane rental. The flight itself was a short hop from Nassau, but in order to have a full day of diving and also return the rental plane by that afternoon to the Nassau airport, it meant a bright and early start. “Try not to spill my Starbucks with your wacky flying, Carter.”

Hunt raised a hand to give Jayden a universal hand signal. “You didn’t complain that time over the Persian Gulf.”

“True that.” Jayden had no desire to relive the classified mission that had helped to form a bond between them, but all kidding aside, he had the utmost of faith in Hunt’s flying abilities. Likewise, he knew Hunt could count on him to back him up in the most dicey of situations. This was merely an adventurous vacation outing. Certainly it was made more exciting with the Atlantis connection, but deep down, that was all just an excuse to have a little adventure, wasn’t it? None of them, including the processional archaeologist among them, expected it to pan out into anything real. Even though Treasure, Inc. seemed to think it was real enough. Jayden’s hand slipped off one of the scuba gear bags as Hunt rode them through a pocket of turbulence and he focused his attention back on the dive that was coming up.

Outside the plane’s windows, the day was sunny, the sea calm as they flew at low altitude — a hundred feet or so — above the water. Perfect conditions for diving the Bimini Road. The dive site itself was well visited enough. A shallow water site, only fifteen or twenty feet deep, depending on the tide, it was made somewhat inaccessible only by virtue of the fact that there was no commercial airliner service to Bimini itself, making either a private flight or boat ride from either Nassau or Miami the most convenient modes of access. Even so, Hunt had to wonder how they would find anything that had been overlooked at a site that had been dived so often, including by professional treasure hunters with state-of-the-art equipment such as magnetometers, underwater metal detectors and bottom profiling scanners. And yet the scant finds they had made so far, which had led them here, had come from equally well-trafficked sites.

The coordinates to the site had been entered into the plane’s GPS at the rental airport, and soon Hunt informed them that they were closing in on the location. He coaxed the floatplane down lower until they skimmed only a few feet above the ocean’s surface, reducing speed at the same time. Jayden and Maddy eyed the water for bottom characteristics while Hunt flew.

“White sand bottom,” Jayden said. Then, “Okay, I’m seeing some patch reefs now.” Darker, mottled areas became interspersed with the lighter-colored sand. Then they passed over a sun-dappled, dazzlingly bright white sandy area until Maddy pointed out her window.

“There it is!”

Jayden looked out his window and spotted a dark line that meandered away from them.

“Straight lines, definitely looks manmade, like a wreck, but it’s too big to be a wreck.”

“Must be a lost city!” Maddy suggested.

“Let’s check it out,” Hunt veered the aircraft to the right and then leveled out in preparation for a water landing. First he flew low over the formation, following a course of what appeared to be dark colored stones — large ones — laid out in a line.

“That’s the Bimini Road, all right,” Maddy declared, craning her neck to look out the window.

“And the stones look like giant versions of the gold one from Anubis,” Jayden said.

“Let’s see what the overall pattern is,” Hunt said, veering the plane slightly to the left as he followed the underwater path of stones.

“I see the end up ahead,” Maddy said. “The whole thing is sort of a “J” pattern. Mostly a straight line, but then curving at one end of it.”

They flew on for another minute, until they reached the hook-shaped formation and Hunt began banking the craft into a lazy 180-degree turn.

“Wait a minute, if this is the Bimini Road, then what’s that over there?” Jayden pointed out of his left side window. Hunt took a look in that direction.

“Looks like a parallel track of stones, but much shorter. It’s probably a mile away from the main road.”

“Maybe we should dive that instead?” Jayden suggested.

“Maybe we should fly over it, see what it looks like closer up,” Hunt said. They all agreed and he took the sea plane out of the banking turn and onto a straight course toward the outlying section of the Bimini Road.

“An altitude of fifty feet should let us get a good, close look at the structure,” Hunt said, hands manipulating the plane’s controls. “I’ll slow us down some, too. Here we go…”

All three of them looked down out the windows as Hunt flew just to the right of a linear path of oblong stones, a mile from the main underwater track. Looking down at the stones, it was easy to see their individual shapes and how they fit neatly together, interlocking to form a paved road beneath the waves.

Maddy took photographs as they passed over the structure. They had almost reached the end, with Hunt preparing to bank the plane into a turn, when Jayden called out.

“Wait a minute, can you go back? I see something.”

“What is it?” Hunt asked.

“One of the stones we just passed over. Hold on…where’s the gold piece we got from Anubis? Can I see it?”

Maddy reached into her backpack and then passed him the oblong piece of shiny, gold metal.

“Go back around over the same spot at the same altitude, would you?” Jayden asked Hunt.

“Will do.” Past the end of the structure, out over a featureless plain of white sand, Hunt put the plane into a tight arc and headed back to the end of the parallel, second road. This time, as they passed over, Jayden held the Anubis gold piece up to the window as he looked down on the mysterious stones. “Should be right about on it,” Hunt said, also looking down.

“There it is! Maddy, get a picture!” She clicked off snapshots as Jayden alternated his gaze between the gold piece in his hand and one of the Bimini Road stones below.

“It’s a match! One of the stones down there is the exact same shape as the piece of gold we got from Anubis! What are the odds? I mean, it has that same little hook shape in it and everything!”

Maddy brought up one of the photographs she had just taken of the stone in question and enlarged it on her digital camera’s screen. She reached her hand back over the seat. “Let me see the piece, please?” Jayden handed it to her and then went back to looking down from the window, checking to see if any other stones had the same shape.

“I don’t see any other ones with that same exact shape,” he declared.

“And it is the same shape,” Maddy concluded, looking up from the camera while holding up the gold artifact. “I’d say they’re perfect replicas of each other, except for the scale, of course. Hard to say which came first, though, without some carbon dating on each piece.”

Hunt banked into a turn yet again. “You two up for a dive to check it out more closely?”

They both agreed and Hunt coaxed the plane into a landing pattern, giving himself a wide enough approach that they would end up near the site at the end of their water taxiing. He slowed the plane as he decreased altitude, the tops of the turquoise waves looking closer beneath them with each passing second. Then the plane’s floats bounced off the water’s surface, skipping like stones a few times until they stayed on the water, coasting like a boat. Hunt decreased speed until the plane coasted to a stop under its own momentum. He stuck his head out the rolled-down window, craning his neck to see where they were in relation to the target stone. He saw some blurry stones, fifteen or twenty feet below them, some distance out in front of the seaplane. He pushed on the throttle a little, taxiing the aircraft on the water like a sluggish, ungainly boat until they were right over the stones.

“A little more that way.” Maddy pointed toward the end of the subsea roadway, and Hunt directed the plane accordingly.

“That’s it, we’re right over it,” Jayden called out after a few minutes of sloshing over the waves.

“Should have brought some seasickness pills,” Maddy said. “I’m starting to feel a little queasy already.”

Hunt shut off the plane’s engines and a quiet calm settled over them. “You’ll feel better once you hit the water. Let’s dive!”

They opened the doors to let fresh air inside and began gearing up. Jayden handed Maddy her set of gear first, while Hunt helped her put it on. Then he passed Hunt’s to him, and he and Hunt donned their equipment. Each of them would enter the water from their respective open doors, then they would drop down to the seafloor as a group.

When they were ready, Hunt initiated a countdown. “On three, two, one…splashdown!”

The three divers rolled backwards into the waters of the Bermuda Triangle, the Bimini Road beckoning below.