Pirate

Thirteen

Sam skyped Selma on Remi’s tablet when they returned to their hotel.

“Good morning, Mr. Fargo,” she said from her desk. “You’ll be pleased to know that Bree is safely on her flight and will be landing in just a few hours.”

“Good,” Sam replied.

Remi took a seat on the sofa next to him, asking, “What fascinating theories have you discovered so far?”

“Lazlo believes the cipher wheel is for a simple substitution code.”

Lazlo’s face appeared on the screen behind Selma. “Good show, you two,” he said, his British accent evident. “Miss Marshall informed us of your timely rescue. That must have been frightful.”

“It was,” Sam said. “About the cipher…?”

“Right-o. Actually, what I believe is that you’re looking for a shipwreck off the southern tip of the island, according to the hidden map.” He shuffled through some papers, then held up the photo of the map Professor Hopkins had found behind the endpaper. “I was able to translate part of the text,” he said, “but not all of it. To do that, I need to have the key. Unfortunately, the drawing of the cipher wheel on the map the professor found is merely an illustration of what we’re looking for. If I had to guess, an actual instrument. One hopes it wasn’t on paper because that supposedly was lost in said shipwreck.”

Remi sighed. “Never easy, is it?”

Sam asked, “Do we have this shipwreck narrowed down?”

“I’m assuming the map of the island is either where it was buried or perhaps even where the ship was wrecked. There is one word that has popped up twice — assuming I have translated it properly. Serpens. Being that it’s Latin, it could be snake, dragon, or serpent.”

“That narrows it down,” Sam said.

“Quite.” Lazlo turned Selma’s tablet so that he was once again in the frame. “One other thing that has popped up is a reference that whatever it is will be found on or near the southern tip of the island.”

Remi and Sam exchanged glances, Remi saying, “That has to be why they were digging there.”

“Who?” Lazlo asked her.

“Avery’s men. We spotted them on the island across from Oak Island.” She gave a brief description of what they’d witnessed.

“Ah,” Lazlo said. “It appears they’re one step ahead of us in the translation of the ciphers. Let’s hope they haven’t found the actual cipher wheel. I certainly haven’t found any specific location. But if they’re digging there, at least we know we’re on the right track.”

Selma poked her head into view. “We’ll update you as soon as we know more.”

Remi said, “We have every confidence.”

“In the meantime,” Sam told Selma, “we’re going to need a motorboat for this evening. Something small enough to maneuver ourselves.”

“On it,” she said. “Any other equipment?”

“I don’t think so,” Sam replied. “We have wetsuits and dive gear. I think that’s about it.”

Sam was about to end the call when Remi added, “Don’t forget insurance.”

Selma’s brows raised slightly. “As hard as you two are on equipment? That goes without saying. Along with detailed plans so we know where to find you in case anything happens.”

Sam gave her a mock look of offense. “I’m shocked you’d have so little confidence in us.”

“Not you, Mr. Fargo. It’s the type of people you tend to run into on these ventures of yours. Greed brings out all sorts of evil.”

Two hours before sunrise, Sam and Remi donned their wetsuits, then set out for Frog Island from the Gold River Marina at the north end of Mahone Bay in their seventeen-foot Boston Whaler. It wasn’t the fastest of vessels, but it would blend in with any other boats that left before dawn.

Even though the Oak Island guide had made mention of an underwater passage between there and Frog Island, neither Sam nor Remi believed anyone from the seventeenth or eighteenth century had the skills to build something of that nature.

Then again, the attention to Frog Island intrigued Sam for a different reason. In past centuries, the area surrounding Nova Scotia had certainly been frequented by seamen, from French and English warships to pirates. The rumors of buried treasure in the area had always been bandied about — Oak Island happened to be the most popular location.

But Frog Island? Like many of these small islands in the area, it was privately owned. This one boasted a large house on the southeast side, probably a vacation home, and one Sam hoped wasn’t occupied at the moment — not that they expected to be there for that long.

He cruised toward the small cove at the southernmost tip of the island. They wanted to see the area where Avery’s men had been seen. What they were doing there was anyone’s guess, but the way they were digging made Sam wonder if they weren’t looking for this cipher wheel that Lazlo had mentioned.

“Look,” Remi said, pointing to the sky. “The aurora borealis.”

Sam glanced up. Through a parting of the clouds, he saw a faint greenish glow that seemed to pulsate. “Too bad it’s not a clearer night.”

“A glimpse is better than nothing. Right now, the cloud cover’s a good thing. No moon to give us away.”

“Pragmatically said.” He slowed as they approached the cove.

Remi shined a light along the shoreline. “That looks like the area they were poking around,” she said. “I remember that heart-shaped boulder.”

“That’s a heart?” he said, eyeing the massive boulder near the water’s edge. He let up on the throttle. The boat slowed and bobbed in the surf. “It looks more like a two-humped camelback.”

“No sense of romance, Fargo.”

“What if I said I ordered the aurora borealis just for you?”

“It seems someone lost their line.”

“I thought it was a pretty good line.”

“Not you. Fishing line.” She aimed the beam of her flashlight near the base of the boulder.

Sam saw nothing other than rocks and water lapping against them in the growing wake of their boat. “Where?”

“About a foot to the left of the, uh, camel-humped boulder. A bit of moss or something stuck on it.”

There it was, the wisp of moss or seaweed hanging from a nylon line about six inches above the waterline, possibly secured to something on the land behind the boulder. His gaze followed the glint of light on the line before it disappeared into the dark to his left, and the same to the right.

Whatever that line was caught on, it was tight. Their boat moved up and down with the current, but the line remained still.

“Call me paranoid,” he said, maneuvering the boat to one side of the boulder for a better view, careful not to move in too close, “but that has all the markings of a trip wire.”

“Do you really think they wired explosives?”

“They certainly had enough time. An even better question is, if they wired them because they knew we’d be coming here to investigate?”

“You think they set us up?” Remi aimed the beam near the boulder and a pile of small rocks behind it.

Sam saw the light reflecting off copper wiring disappearing into the midst of the pile.

“We’re idiots,” she said. “Of course they did. Otherwise, why make such a big show? That boat engine was the loudest in the bay. Making sure we would hear them and see them. Knowing we’d probably investigate…”

“How far does it go?” he asked, his gaze following Remi’s light.

She pointed the beam to the left of the cove where a dead fir had fallen into the water, the fishing line barely visible wrapped around a branch of the tree. “I seem to remember them getting out there.”

He turned the boat south, passing the boulder to the right. The fishing line continued on past it, swept across the water onto the shoreline, and was secured to a stump. If anyone tripped that line trying to get to shore… “Investigation over. We go back, notify the authorities. Let the experts deal with the explosives.”

“Agreed,” Remi said, shutting off the light.

Sam turned the boat, heading northwest. As he neared the northern tip of Oak Island, he noticed another craft heading right for them.

“Sam…”

“I see it.” He turned the boat south at full throttle only to see a second vessel coming toward them from the south side of Oak Island.

He glanced over at the Money Pit’s brightly lit visitor center, then back at the approaching boats, trying to decide if they should make a run for it.

The rapid muzzle flash from an automatic weapon changed his mind.

They’d never make it in time. Not against that sort of firepower, and certainly not in a fishing boat.

Remi gripped the side of their craft. “This is where you’re supposed to tell me you have a brilliant plan in the works.”

“Sorry.”

“Not what I was hoping to hear.”

He glanced back toward the boats, then at Frog Island, realizing they were meant to be herded right toward the cove and the explosives. So be it, he thought, turning the Whaler that direction.

“Remi, get the boat hook,” Sam said as he turned the wheel, aiming the vessel in the direction of the boulder.

“Sam—”

“I’m going to send this boat right through that trip wire.”

“The pressure wave…”

If the bomb was in the water with them, the pressure wave would kill them. In this case, he was hoping the bomb was planted out of the water and behind the boulder to hide it from view, since the fishing line disappeared there. That way, any explosion was going up, back, and out the sides. A gamble, since there was always the possibility that there were more explosives hidden.

Only one way to find out — not that he was about to voice his concerns to Remi. If they were going to die, better to go fast and not know it. “You think you can hold your breath until we get to that fallen tree?”

She looked over and nodded.

Sam jammed the handle of the boat hook through the wheel to keep it on course.

“Get ready to jump.”