Atlantis Gold

Chapter 27

“It’s still there!” Jayden pointed to their seaplane, floating at anchor where they’d left it. Daedalus’ massive yacht lay sedately at anchor about a hundred yards away.

“Not for long, by the looks of things,” Hunt said. He pointed to a small boat tied up to the plane. One man was affixing an object to the side of it.

“Looks like they’re preparing to blow it!” Jayden said.

“We need to scare them off.” Hunt looked to the boat captain. “Do you have any guns aboard?”

The captain gave Hunt a serious stare, but nodded slowly. “If you want, I’ll fire a warning shot for an additional hundred dollars. But if they shoot back, we’re leaving.”

“How about you drive the boat, and I shoot?” Hunt asked.

But the captain shook his head. “The only one using my gun is me. Sorry, but you’ve got a whole lot of trouble around you, buddy. My gun, my rules.”

“Fair enough,” Hunt said. “We just want to hop in our plane and get out of here. You get us a little closer to the plane, provide us with a little distraction, and we’ll do the rest.”

“Including the money transfer? I am trusting you.”

“Deal.” Hunt shook the fisherman’s hand on it, and the captain then retreated into the boat’s small wheelhouse, emerging a few seconds later with a rifle, which he cocked. “You get one pass on this,” he reminded them. “I drive by once, you do what you do, and that’s it, I’m out.”

“Understood.” Hunt heard the men shout something by the plane and for a second he thought they had been outed and were about to be under attack. But whatever it was had to do with their own activities, for neither of Daedalus’ operatives on the small boat looked away from the seaplane.

The captain got behind the wheel. Hunt stepped over and offered a hand. “What’s your name, anyway? I’m Carter Hunt — those are my friends Jayden Takada and Madison Chambers.”

The captain leaned his rifle against the control panel. “Call me Darcy. Here we go. Remember, she’s not all that fast but she can go for a long time.” He grinned broadly and throttled up the old boat’s diesel engine. “Almost forgot.” He reached out and opened a side window in the cockpit, and then picked up the rifle and stuck the barrel through it. “All better now!”

Hunt nodded with a mischievous twinkle in his eye. “Be safe, Darcy. And thanks again!” Then he turned and stepped out on deck, where Jayden and Maddy hunkered down while peering over the rail. He ducked down also, thinking they might be about to be fired upon, but Jayden filled him in.

“We saw them about to turn around so we hid. I’m sure they see the boat, but they haven’t seen us yet, I’m pretty sure.”

“Pretty sure?” Hunt clarified.

The ping of a bullet ricocheted off Darcy’s wheelhouse. “Actually I’m not very sure,” Jayden added.

Suddenly the fishing boat accelerated, not as fast as a speedboat would, but fast enough to cause all three of them to put their hands on the deck to keep their balance.

“Be ready to jump!” Hunt yelled.

“What about this? I can’t jump with it!” Maddy clutched the hexagon.

Hunt glanced at it quickly. “Take the scroll out and leave the hexagon. It served its purpose. Just try not to get it wet. Wait hold on…” Hunt crawled into the cabin. He was gone for a minute during which the boat picked up additional speed. Then he returned with a gallon-size Ziploc bag. “Stick it in here.”

“Maddy gave him a wide smile, removed the scroll from the hexagon and sealed it inside the plastic bag.

And then they heard the shot. Hunt looked left and saw the wisp of smoke escape the rifle barrel protruding from Darcy’s window. He didn’t know exactly what he was expecting, but to his mind it came too early. Now the Treasure, Inc. saboteurs on the small boat by the seaplane trained their full attention on the old fishing scow. Hunt saw one of them raise a handheld radio to his mouth and gesture excitedly toward Darcy’s vessel.

Then the outboard motor of the small inflatable boat Daedalus’ operatives used whined to life and the tender vessel sped away from the plane toward the fishing boat. Hunt didn’t see them raise any weapons yet, but they had surely heard Darcy’s shot and they didn’t seem worried. Darcy angled his boat toward the seaplane, straight at it.

“Get ready!” Hunt warned. He gripped Maddy’s shoulder. “You have the scroll?”

“It’s good!” She patted her chest, where she had stuffed the plastic bag down her wetsuit top.

“Let’s go. Jump!” Hunt stood up as he felt the big vessel began to turn. He saw the rental plane bobbing in the water. It looked operational, but he could only hope, since he didn’t know what they had done to it. He was glad he’d taken the keys with him and put them in the little wetsuit pocket up by his neck, an old surfing habit from when he’d park his car on the Pacific Coast Highway in Southern California and then catch waves for hours out in the ocean.

Jayden went overboard first. Maddy hesitated on the rail, staring down at the fast-moving water below the boat. Hunt grabbed her and took her over the side with him. They were sitting ducks on the rail, easy targets for a shooter. In the water they would be slower, but also harder to see.

Now unencumbered by the heavy hexagon, Hunt was able to swim fast. He left Maddy behind since he knew she could swim, and that Jayden could look after her if need be. But he needed to reach the cockpit and start up the plane. It had a certain warmup period and was not like a car where it could be immediately driven off. He swam a fast, efficient, fast crawl stroke that had once been the envy of his high school swim team. He even passed Jayden on the way to the plane, all the while listening to the sounds of outboard motors carrying underwater — the low rumble of the fishing boat versus the high-pitched, waspy drone of the Treasure, Inc. inflatable boat.

He had to give Darcy credit — his erratic boat driving was leading the Treasure, Inc. boatmen away from the plane — as well as Hunt, Jayden and Maddy. There was now nothing but a few feet of open water between them and the aircraft. Hunt reached the plane and crawled up onto a pontoon. He flung the pilot-side door open and climbed into the cockpit dripping wet. He fumbled for the key in his wetsuit, pulled it out and dropped it, but it landed on the pontoon.

Hunt muttered a silent prayer that the key hadn’t fallen into the water, and quickly but carefully climbed back out of the plane and snatched up the key. Jayden was almost to the plane now, not even looking to see what Hunt was doing, just kicking like mad. Hunt pulled himself back into the plane and jammed the key into the ignition. He turned it and the motor cranked to life. He then went through the hastiest pre-flight check of his life, confirming the bare minimum he knew was needed to get the plane aloft. Then he began to rev the engine, giving it the RPMs it would need to take off.

Jayden reached the plane next. Hunt looked out his window to see where Maddy was and pleased to see her not far behind Jayden at all. Then beyond her, he saw Darcy’s fishing boat heading away from the scene. His job was done. He had done all anyone could ask for, Hunt thought.

But now the Treasure, Inc. criminals were speeding back toward the plane in their inflatable boat, waves of spray pushing out from under the sides as it bounced over the waves. But the real adrenaline struck when Hunt looked behind them, for there, a helicopter was lifting off from the deck of Daedalus’ mega-yacht. Hunt leaned out leaned out the window.

“Gotta go, come on. Hang onto the pontoon, they’ve got a chopper coming for us.”

Jayden hauled himself up onto the pontoon as Hunt had done, and while Hunt put the plane into slow forward motion. Jayden encouraged Maddy to swim the remaining distance faster, and then assisted her up onto the pontoon.

The first bullet ricocheted off of one of the seaplane’s metal struts as soon as Jayden opened the rear door. “You go first, go ahead.” He pulled Maddy toward the door and shoved her inside to the plane’s backseat. Jayden wished he had another coconut; the only weapon he had at his disposal was the dive knife on his calf.

“Hunt, we need weapons, what do you got besides a knife?”

The plane was moving fast now, bounding along the waves, and Jayden almost fell off after they went over the inflatable boat’s wake. The little boat zipped in front of them and swept into an arcing turn that was no doubt designed to give its occupants the best possible shooting angle. Hunt tried veering slightly to the right — he couldn’t turn too sharply without losing all of the plane’s momentum needed for takeoff — but the nimble boat tracked them easily.

Hunt saw a muzzle flash and then a crack appeared in the plane’s windshield, fortunately on the passenger-side. The bullet glanced off, but Hunt knew their luck wouldn’t hold out for long. He reached into a storage compartment and pulled out a package.

“Jayden — here, take this!” He held the object out the window and felt Jayden’s hand grab it from his.

“Flare gun, nice! Let’s light this candle!”

“Hurry up about it, we’re taking hits!”

While Hunt steered the plane and Maddy laid low in the back, Jayden balanced on the pontoon while trying to load the flare gun. The first flare bounced out of his hand and into the water as he tried to force it into the gun when the plane launched off of a swell and smacked back down into the water. He looked at the bag — there were four of them. He got the second one loaded and then took aim with the gun at the pesky inflatable boat as it zoomed past them, no doubt intending to circle back around for another strafing pass. Then a line of bullets stitched across the water, kicking up little fountains of spray until Jayden heard the ping of lead on aluminum and holes appeared in the pontoon that was supporting him.

He aimed the flare at the small boat and pulled the trigger. He heard the familiar whooshing sound as the incendiary device lit and was then launched out of the device. A red streak cut the air until it landed in the ocean a couple of feet behind the boat’s motor.

Missed!

He steadied himself again on one of the pontoon struts and repeated the loading process with another flare. But this time Hunt changed the plane’s course erratically, nearly throwing Jayden from the pontoon and dumping the new flare into the water in the process.

One flare left!

Jayden felt the tingle of fear grip his body and pushed it away by concentrating on the task at hand. He eyed the boat, which was now circling around behind them as he had expected. He glanced to the right, saw no large waves that might bounce him around, and went ahead with loading his last remaining flare. He slid the flare into the chamber and locked it.

He couldn’t take aim yet because the boat was now on the other side of the plane. He could see it if he crouched down low and put his head sideways to look beneath the plane, while seawater splashed his face. But he had no clear shot.

Inside the plane, Hunt knew Jayden hadn’t scored a hit yet with the flares, and that he was now on the wrong side of the aircraft to take a shot. He looked back and to his right to check the boat’s position, but he couldn’t help but notice Maddy hunched down on the floor of the backseat. She had the scroll out, unrolled, staring at it while moving her lips as though reading aloud.

“Maddy, what are you doing?”

She looked up as if in a daze. “Reading the scroll. I had an idea and wanted to see if it makes sense…” She looked back down at her work, and Hunt decided to let her be. Everyone had different ways of coping with stress, he knew from experience after serving in the Navy in the middle east.

He turned his attention back to driving a plane. Seaplanes were not as maneuverable as boats when on the water; they were made mostly to go in a straight like to land and take-off, not to turn on a dime or have rapid acceleration. But he wanted to put Jayden on the same side as the boat to give him a shot. He banked the aircraft — watercraft at the moment — to the left as sharply s he dared, creating a wall of spray that washed over the plane.

That should give Jayden something to work with. But no sooner had he completed the thought than a new sound registered. Deeper, more powerful-sounding. And then Hunt flashed on the helicopter he’d seen taking off from Daedalus’ mega-yacht. It was getting closer. He wondered what its purpose was — he doubted it could be an actual gunship, but he supposed people could shoot out of it with regular guns. Or simply drop men onto the small boat and plane to fight, he thought grimly.

He heard the whoosh of one of Jayden’s flares, and then caught sight of a flaming inflatable boat fish-tailing across the plane’s nose, totally out of control.

Hit!

Hunt didn’t allow the flare-up of hope in his chest to distract him from minding the new and more formidable incoming threat, the helicopter. Where was it now? He twisted around in the pilot’s seat to see its blue undercarriage swooping in low over the water, on Jayden’s side.

Damn! They were going to catch them. Hunt nudged the throttle up, more to change their speed than to think he could outrun the helo. But then the seaplane skipped over a swell and went airborne, and Hunt remembered that besides trying not to be shot, he was also flying a plane.

The airplane returned to the water like a skipped stone, but this was to be expected. Hunt knew he just needed to control the “bounce” and make sure he didn’t dig a wingtip into the water, which would send them cartwheeling. The erratic motion also served to give the helicopter pilot pause, since the chopper dropped back a little bit out of fear of colliding, but it was enough to let Hunt concentrate.

Until Jayden climbed back into the plane, that is. “Outta flares! Any more?”

Hunt shook his head without turning around. “Negative. Shut the door, we’re going airborne.”

Jayden pulled the door shut. “The ‘copter has a gunner standing on the skids. I flipped him the bird but that didn’t seem to convince them to leave us alone.”

“If they only knew you,” Hunt called back.

Jayden looked over at Maddy, who was still on the floor. “Is she okay?” he asked Hunt.

“Yeah, she’s reading the scroll. Hold on!” The plane ramped off a wave and took to the sky for the first time, actually flying. It dipped back toward the water but this time stayed above the ocean. Hunt grinned broadly. They were flying.

As Hunt wrestled with the controls, Jayden gazed down from the window. “The helicopter is not stopping to pick up their guys who jumped off the burning boat.”

“What a surprise,” Hunt called back. “Daedalus probably told them they’re fired if they stop chasing us.”

“Planes are faster than helicopters, and we have longer range, too. Not worried about them, unless they start shoot—”

They heard the ping off a bullet bouncing somewhere off the plane’s metal. “If this thing’s got more speed to give, Carter, now’s the time,” Jayden said.

“Speed is increasing. Hang tight for a little evasive maneuvering.” Hunt suddenly banked left, and then right again before resuming an upward altitude-gaining trajectory.

Jayden looked back at the helo, nodding. “Threw them off a bit. Keep it up.”

Hunt repeated his actions on the controls, and the ‘copter dropped back a little further. “We’re pulling away from them now. Only one question…” He interrupted himself to pull back on the stick and tweak the rudder.

“What’s that?” Jayden asked.

“Where to?”

Jayden thought about it for a few seconds. “Daedalus probably looked up where we rented it from by now, so going back there is out.”

“Agreed. So where do we go? Florida?”

“No!” They were surprised to hear Maddy’s voice. Jayden looked over at her. She was staring at the unrolled manuscript.

“Why not?”

Maddy looked up from the old writing. “I know where we should go! Head due south.”