Atlantis Gold

Chapter 34

Hunt found the seaplane to be eerily silent as he guided it through the air as an overweight, cumbersome glider. He couldn’t help but glance back through his window as he passed over the empty beach and a thick stand of jungle. The patrol boats cut power as they entered the shallow water fronting the beach, with no way to pursue their prey. Hunt knew they had radios, though, and cursed himself for not at least incapactitating the one on board the boat they had taken over.

A question from Jayden interrupted his thoughts. “This is a pretty lonely stretch of coast. What are the chances those police just happened to come across us?”

Hunt pulled up slightly on the stick before answering. “I put them conservatively at slim to none.”

“So Daedalus called the Cuban authorities?” Maddy asked from the back seat.

Hunt nodded. “I think so. They probably knew they could cause more trouble for us that way without having to do hardly anything themselves. But there’s something else, something about Atlantis.”

“There’s always something about Atlantis, isn’t there?” Jayden quipped.

Hunt went on. “Like Maddy showed us, this area does fit the raw physical description, when sea levels were lower. But there are no remnants of it left. So maybe Treasure, Inc. knew that already and that’s why they didn’t want to bother coming down here.”

“That would put them a step ahead of us in the search, though,” Maddy said, “and yet they didn’t know about the Bimini Road pyramid.”

“It’s not a linear search,” Maddy said. “It’s more like a tangled web, with dead-ends and loops all interconnected in a sprawling maze.”

Hunt eyed the jungle through the windshield, not seeing any break in the greenery. “Not to put a damper on the discussion, but this hunk of steel is not going to stay aloft forever with no gas, and so we need to figure out how to land this thing.”

“Not liking the landing options,” Jayden said, not mincing words as usual. Indeed, there was nothing but unbroken greenery in all directions except for behind them, where the ocean was rapidly receding from view.

“There’s something else I don’t like, even if we spotted a road we could land on.”

“A road we could land on sounds pretty good to me right about now,” Jayden said. “What wouldn’t you like about that?”

“Attracts too much attention. A candy apple red seaplane landing on the street in some small town? They’d know exactly where we landed.”

Jayden again turned to look out the window. “It’s all just jungle, except for the ocean behind us. And in front of us, as you can see a couple of miles or so away, there’s what I would call a big hill or a small mountain, also covered in jungle.”

“Mountain…” Maddy said, trailing off as if in thought. Then she mumbled something unintelligible and took the rolled-up Critias scroll from her backpack, hastily removing it from its plastic bag and unfurling it. “Wait a minute…”

“We don’t have a minute,” Hunt said glancing at the altimeter. They now flew at 250 feet and were losing altitude. “We’re losing the coastal updrafts that kept us aloft over the beach. I’m afraid it’s all downhill from here.”

Jayden looked out the window to his right, then behind them out Maddy’s window, then back through the windshield. Then he turned around again and saw the crumpled up parachute lying on the floor. “Hey Carter, you think that ‘chute will hold all three of us?”

Hunt pursed his lips in a grim line before replying, “Looks like it’s going to have to since I left my wingsuit at home. Get it ready.”

Jayden moved to the rear of the plane and began untangling the parachute. “Maddy, you gotta pack up your novel there, it’s time to go.”

“There should be another pyramid. That’s what I was missing! That’s what this is saying. Another big one.” She looked ahead through the windshield while Jayden shook his head as he fumbled with the unwieldly parachute in the confines of the plane.

Hunt turned the plane sharply to the left to avoid the looming mountain now filling the plane’s windshield. “150 feet and dropping,” he called out, eyeing the tops of the jungle canopy below. He could see the occasional tall palm tree poking out of the more ubiquitous leafy trees that made up the bulk of the canopy. It was a thick, wild forest, with absolutely no gaps through which the ground was visible; there was no possibility of landing the plane here.

And yet gravity was taking it down. There was no avoiding that. It was like a bad dream, Hunt thought, where you kept hoping you would wake up, except that it was all too real.

“Need that parachute, Jayden!”

“I got it sorted as ready as it can be. It’s going to be a little weird because I had to cut some of the cords to make the sea snchor, but it is what it is. We’ll need to bail out this door back here.”

“Is it ready?” Hunt glanced out the window at the treetops below, then to his altimeter: 100 feet. He pulled back on the stick and was relieved to see and feel the nose of the beleaguered aircraft incline slightly, buying them a bit more altitude. He was well aware that a parachute needed some height for it to be effective, and that it would be triple overloaded as it was.

“Ready!” Jayden called form the back.

“Maddy ready?” Hunt confirmed. He didn’t want to leave the controls of the plane a second earlier than he had to. But when she replied in the affirmative, he knew it was time. He turned the plane slightly to the left, away from the base of the mountain so that it would coast as long as possible over the jungle, hopefully crashing some distance away from where they landed. Then he clicked out of his seatbelt and jumped into the back with the others.

Jayden was sitting next to the open door, trees visible rushing by outside of it. The ‘chute was bunched up on the seat next to him, the paracord neatly laid out so as not to get tangled. He held the single harness in his hands and handed it off to Hunt. “You take the actual harness, and Maddy will hold on to you. I figure you two lovebirds would appreciate it.”

“What, in case we don’t make it!” Maddy nearly screamed, panic more than evident in her voice.

“We’ll make it if we go now.” Hunt fought to keep his voice level while gawking at the rapidly approaching forest outside the window. Jayden got into makeshift web of paracord fashioned into a crude harness while Hunt stepped into the original harness,

“I know it doesn’t inspire confidence, but it’s the best I could do for—”

“Great, let’s go!” Hunt said, grabbing the bundle of cord. Then he pulled Maddy to him and wrapped her arms around his midsection. “Hold on to me, Maddy, hard. Squeeze.” Then, to Jayden: “Go, go, go!”

Jayden dove head-long from the gliding airplane, keeping the parachute bundled until he cleared the wing. Then he let go of it and the fabric billowed out into shape, like a blooming flower in time-lapse. Hunt and Maddy bailed out next, with Hunt orienting his body to dive beneath the wing after Jayden. He was surprised to see himself falling below Jayden, and for a split second he wondered if the paracord harness Jayden had rigged had come loose, that he and Maddy were going to fall to their deaths.

But then he felt a sharp pain under his shoulders as the resistance of the open parachute took hold and he, the piggybacked Maddy and Jayden above them were jerked skyward with sudden and violent force. The entire jump was strangely silent since there was no airplane motor. The only sound was the wind through their ears, until Jayden started screaming, that is. No sooner did Hunt feel himself and Maddy begin to descend than he felt the treetops against his feet and ankles. Barely enough time, his inner voice screamed. Yet there was nothing more he could do about it now. He had played his hand and now it was time to see the results.

Hunt watched the seaplane crash into the jungle perhaps a half-mile away, watching as the left wingtip hit a tree branch stout enough to cause the plane to spin in a circle like an out of control boomerang. The cracking of branches was heard as the earthbound vehicle shattered tree limbs on its way to the ground.

And then they were in the sky alone. But not for long.

Maddy’s screaming brought Hunt’s attention back to his immediate plight: they were dropping through the jungle canopy, right now. He felt Maddy press her face into his chest, shielding it from the whipping leaves and branches as they plummeted at breakneck speed through the trees. It’s a controlled fall, Hunt thought — the ‘chute was producing drag — but it would be just barely enough. He tried not to think about how fast they were moving as they crashed through the understory.

Hunt saw dirt coming up from below and braced for the impact…

…but it never came. A few feet above him, Jayden swore like a sailor who just found out shore leave was cancelled. “The ‘chute’s hung up! Tangled up good.”

Hunt looked up and saw Jayden dangling there with the parachute’s white fabric snared across two or three trees a few feet higher. “We’ll just have to cut ourselves free and drop.”

“Easy for you to say, you’re only ten feet over the ground. I’m more like twenty.”

“Be glad it’s only twenty. We Jumped from the plane around 100.”

“Can’t argue with that.”

Hunt told Maddy to hold on while he untied part of the makeshift harness until he could slip out of it. “Three, two, one…drop!” The two of them landed on the forest floor in a heap, their fall thankfully cushioned by a bed of fallen leaves.

“Clear the drop zone,” Jayden called down, and Hunt and Maddy pushed up to their feet and moved out of the way. Jayden faced a twenty-foot fall, but was able to dangle down from part of the rigging Hunt and Maddy had left behind. Still, his fall was a potentially ankle-breaking fifteen feet, but realizing it wasn’t going to get any more favorable, Jayden let himself drop.

He landed on his feet, but leaning too far backwards. To his credit, he transitioned into a smooth backward roll, ending up on his knees in an upright position.

“Wow, it’s nice and cool in here, not so sunny. Great day for a nature walk!”

Hunt wasted no time. They had illegally entered a foreign country run by a communist dictator, and were already on the run from police after damaging at least one boat, and crashing a plane into the jungle. At least it hadn’t started a fire, Hunt thought; that was the plus side of running out of gas, he supposed. He was also aware that none of them had any food or water, and barely any gear. He pointed toward the mountain.

“Let’s get to that, climb up as high as we can — it didn’t look all that steep — so we can get a view of what’s down on the other side. Then we’ll make a plan.”

Jayden and Maddy agreed, and without further delay the trio set out across the forest. The ground was level and solid, with only the occasional rock or exposed tree root to watch out for. To take their minds off their predicament, Hunt engaged Maddy in conversation as they trekked. “So you were saying something about there being another pyramid?”

“That’s right,” Maddy said, falling into step with Hunt while Jayden walked point a few yards up ahead. “They refer to it in Plato’s lost Critias pages as ‘the distant pyramid’.”

“How do we know that’s not the one we already found under the Bimini Road that had nothing in it?” Hunt asked.

“Because it mentions the distant pyramid being in the ‘southerly manifestation’ of Atlantis, which, due to the mirror image similarities with the island of Crete, as well as topographic contours of the islands and surrounding seabed, I took to mean Cuba, even though Cuba is many times larger than Crete.”

“But that would have been a plus for the Atlanteans, right?”

“Yes, more land, and it’s an island protected by an ocean on all sides, with high mountains from which to observe approaching ships.” She nodded up at the looming green mountain they were at the base of.

Hunt pointed up at the mountain, which sloped gradually upward for the first one-third of its height, but then became steeper. “It still looks to me like we can basically walk our way up to the summit without any climbing gear, which is a good thing, since we don’t have any.”

Jayden removed a balled up wad of paracord from a pocket. “I did manage to salvage this. Paracord always comes in handy. Hopefully we won’t need it, though. I’m ready when you two are.” He looked to Maddy as he said the last sentence.

“I’m ready, too.”

Hunt nodded emphatically. “Up we go.”

The going was easy enough until abut one-third of the way up the mountain, where the incline became substantially steeper. Hunt suggested they take a short break to rest, and the three of them sat on a grouping of boulders. Jayden found some water cupped in the bulb of a tropical plant, and drank from it. Assuring the others it was good, they also availed themselves of the hydration.

That done, the group continued their ascent. Although it was steeper, they could still walk on two feet most of the time, here and there needing to use their hands to maintain balance. The tall trees became less frequent and shorter, while the understory of ferns, mosses and other smaller plants became thicker. Jayden remained point man while Hunt and Maddy ascended side by side. Hunt remarked at one point that at least they had heard no aircraft in the area.

“I guess that means they’re not pulling out all the stops to find our plane,” Jayden said.

“Or they’re looking in the wrong place,” Hunt offered.

“Speaking of looking in the right place,” Jayden said as he slipped on a mossy rock and regained his footing by gripping the trunk of a small tree, “when we get out of here, maybe we should get back to the Bimini Road before our friend Daedalus claims that golden pyramid for himself. Or just takes it apart to sell the gold.”

“Definitely,” Hunt returned. “When we get out of here.”

They continued working their way up the mountain, which became wetter the higher up they progressed. About three-quarters of the way up it became even steeper still and Hunt had to stop frequently to assist Maddy when she slipped. He told her he would stay with her while Jayden made the rest of the ascent to check the view if she wanted, but she insisted she could make it and that they go on as a group.

On they went, their clothes now sticking to their skin with sweat, faces and hands scratched from passing through thick foliage. Numerous biting insects plagued them as well, but these became somewhat less in number the higher they went. Jayden remarked more than once that he was simply glad to be alive at all at this point, whatever happened from here on out.

Near the top of the mountain Hunt noticed a terraced formation, sort of like wide steps had been cut into it, like pictures he had seen of Asian rice paddies. He figured it was some sort of erosion pattern caused by rains sluicing down from the top of the mountain peak. Finally, Jayden reached the summit with a quiet whoop and a holler that he made sure wouldn’t carry too far in case anyone could hear somewhere down below. But a few steps before Hunt and Maddy got to the apex with him, he said, “Bad news, guys. It’s still forested as far as the eye can see.”

Hunt and Maddy clawed their way the remainder of the distance to the summit, with Hunt giving Maddy a final shove to make sure she got there safely. Then Hunt stood and took a look around. Jayden was right. Behind them, in the direction from which they had come, they could see the jungle with the ocean in the distance. In front of them, a vast expanse of jungle extended to the horizon.

Jayden put a voice to Hunt’s thoughts. “And to think I thought of Cuba like Havana, with city streets and ‘50s cars and nightclubs and stuff.”

“Yep. Doesn’t look that way from here, does it? On the bright side, there’s a lot of police and military presence in Havana, so that’s probably not a good place for us to be, either.”

Maddy sat on the ground and put her head in her hands. Hunt was afraid she was going to cry. He was about to move to comfort her when an outcropping of rock a little ways down the opposite slope from the one they had ascended caught his eye. Without a word, he walked down to it. Again, he noticed the odd terraced layout to the ground, which he thought was strange since there was no reason to do any kind of agriculture way up here. As he stepped down the terraces, Maddy’s prior words came to him: “There’s another pyramid…” and then it hit him.

This mountain. The broad base and pointy top. The terracing. The proximity to the supposed southerly location of Atlantis mentioned in the lost Critias pages. Hunt’s skin prickled with awareness.

We’re standing on a pyramid!

Easy now, Hunt told himself, leaning on the rocky outcropping. Just because it has some superficial characteristics of a pyramid doesn’t mean it is one. If it is a pyramid, though, he reasoned, that means there should be some way to get inside. He recalled no caves or anything like that at the base where they had walked up. Of course they hadn’t walked all around the base of it. He eyed the way down the opposite face, noting that they would be able to walk down it easily enough. Maybe we should look for entrances at the base on this side, he thought. He was turning around to convey this line of reasoning to Jayden and Maddy when he spotted a cleft in the rocky outcropping.

A dark space lay between two rocks, itself shrouded by a clump of scraggly ferns. Hunt moved to it and parted the plant life to have a look. A rift wide enough to accommodate a man extended down into darkness.

He called up to Jayden and told him to bring Maddy down here. By the time they slid down to the opening, Hunt had already dropped inside. “Come on down. There’s a vertical shaft here with cutouts in the rock we can use as ladder rungs.”

Jayden and Maddy also entered the chute. “What is this, a cave?” Maddy asked, her voice echoing in the enclosed space.

“Not really. I think it’s your missing pyramid.”