Текст книги "Corsair"

Автор книги: Clive Cussler

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Текущая страница: 23 (всего у книги 27 страниц)

THIRTY-ONE

TARIQ ASSAD THANKED HIS PILOT FRIEND AND STEPPED from the helicopter. He closed the flimsy door, gave it a tap, and scurried from under the whirling blades. The small service chopper lifted off the desert floor in a dust storm of its own creation. Assad had to turn his back to it and keep his eyes tightly closed.

As soon as the helo had lifted clear, he strode toward the team commander. The seething anger he had felt in the wake of the police raid back in Tripoli had been replaced with unmitigated joy. He embraced the terrorist leader, kissing him on both cheeks effusively.

“Ali, this is going to be a great day.” Assad grinned.

He’d radioed ahead that he was coming and saw with satisfaction that his orders had been carried out. The men were waiting at the rear cargo ramp of their Mi-8. When Assad waved, they gave him a rousing cheer. Their prisoner was bound to one of the bench seats, a rag tied over his mouth.

Ali noticed Assad’s look. “When we do not gag him, he shrieks like a woman. If he wasn’t such a supposed expert on Suleiman Al-Jama, blessings be upon him, I would put a bullet through that fat lout’s head and be done with it.”

“What a remarkable turn of events,” Assad said, Emile Bumford’s treatment all but forgotten. “A few hours ago, I was moments from being grabbed by the police, and now we will shortly discover the lost tomb.”

“Tell me again how you found it,” Ali invited. They strode to the waiting chopper, whose blades started to beat the superheated air.

“Coming in on the helicopter, I had the pilot swing south when we crossed the border into Tunisia, and as we came down the old riverbed, flying just above it, I spotted an area where it appeared that a section of the bank had been blasted into the river. Had I known about the waterfall a little farther downstream, I wouldn’t have paid it any attention, for surely a sailing ship couldn’t have navigated it. But I didn’t know, so I had the pilot set down so I could investigate.”

“When was this?”

“Moments before I radioed you. What, a half hour ago? And when we landed, I saw evidence that people had been there recently. There were four distinct sets of shoe prints. Two are women, or maybe small men, but I think one might be the American archaeologist who worked with our guest there.” He pointed across the cargo bay to Bumford.

The turbines’ whine made it so Assad had to shout to be heard by the man sitting to his left. “The prints all disappeared into a cave located behind a hill along the river. They must all still be inside. We have them, Ali, the Americans who have disrupted our plans for the last time, and Suleiman’s tomb.”

JUAN ACCEPTED A CUP of coffee from Maurice, the Oregon’s chief steward.

“How are you feeling, Captain?” the dour Englishman asked.

“I think the expression is ‘rode hard and put away wet,’ ” Juan said, taking a sip of the strong brew.

“An equine reference, I believe. Filthy creatures, only good for glue factories and betting at Ascot.”

Cabrillo chuckled. “Dr. Huxley juiced my leg so it’s feeling pretty good, and the handful of ibuprofen I scarfed down are kicking in. All in all, I’m not doing too badly.”

The one secret about pain Juan had never shared with anyone other than Julia Huxley, as medical officer, was that he felt it constantly. Doctors call it phantom pain, but to him it was real enough. His missing leg, the one shot off by a Chinese gunboat all those years ago, ached every minute of every day. And on the good days it only ached. Sometimes he’d be hit with lances of agony that took all his self-control not to react to.

So when it came to dealing with the discomfort from where he’d cut out his tracking chip, it wasn’t bravado that made him ignore it. It was practice.

Around them, the op center buzzed with activity. Max Hanley and a pair of technicians had an access panel removed under one of the consoles to replace a faulty computer monitor. The duty weapons officer was talking with teams working throughout the ship to make certain her suite of armaments was operating exactly to standards, while the helmsman maintained a steady course well beyond Libya’s twelve-mile territorial limit.

The ship and crew were ready, only, for the time being, Cabrillo had nothing for them to do.

They still hadn’t received an updated list of Libyan naval assets capable of landing a helicopter, and until they did there was nothing for Oregonto do but wait.

Juan hated to wait. Especially when he had people on the ground. His feelings toward them made it as though everything they went through exacted a physical price on him, too.

“Call coming through,” the radio operator said over her shoulder.

Juan hit a switch on the arm of his chair, and from hidden speakers came the sound of heavy breathing, almost panting.

“You’ve picked a bad time for an obscene phone call,” he said to the unknown person.

“Chairman, it’s Linc,” Franklin gasped. “We got trouble.”

“What’s happened?”

“You can forget your theories about Ali Ghami being Al-Jama.” Lincoln continued to wheeze. It was obvious he was running. “Our old buddy Tariq Assad just showed up, and after a little Arab-style kissy face with the leader of the group searching for the tomb they beat it southward in that old Mi-8 of theirs. He’s Al-Jama, Juan. I tried calling Linda but they’re still underground. I’m now hightailing it after them, but I figure I got four or five miles to go.”

“That confirms it.” Agitated, Juan stood and began pacing the deck. “A couple hours ago, we got suspicious because Hali Kasim hadn’t checked in, and his GPS chip hadn’t moved in a while. I sent Eddie to find him. Hali’d been shot at such close range, there was GSR all over him. The last person with him was none other than Tariq Assad.”

“Jesus, is Hali okay?”

“We don’t know yet. Eddie said it was bad. All he could do was stabilize him and call for an ambulance. He stuck around long enough to follow it to a hospital, but he can’t exactly barge in and start demanding answers.”

A fax machine built into the communications center started whirring.

“For Assad to bug out like he did,” Linc panted, “he must have seen something he liked in the same area as Linda and the others.”

“I can get a backup team to you by chopper, but it’s going to take a couple of hours,” Juan offered lamely, for he knew it would be over long before then.

The communications officer handed him the fax. He glanced at it quickly. It was the report on Libya’s Navy he’d been expecting for hours now.

“Nah. I’ll be okay. I’m doing eight-minute miles so I’ll have something in the tank when I get there. A dozen tangos in a cave when I have the element of surprise shouldn’t be too difficult.”

Juan was barely paying attention. He crossed to the navigation computer to punch in the GPS numbers and plot the vessels’ coordinates and recent movements.

One leapt out at him immediately. His instincts screamed at him that they had found it. The ship would have been within helicopter range of the terrorist training camp, and, while all the others were converging on Tripoli for a military review as part of the peace conference, this particular vessel was loitering near the Tunisian border.

“Linc, call me back when you reach the cave. I’ve got to go.”

“Roger that.”

“Helm, plot me a course for that ship.” He pointed at the blinking light on the overhead display. The edge in his voice caused those around him to stop their work and look. A wave of expectant energy swept the op center crew.

“Course laid in, Chairman.”

“What’s our ETA at best possible speed?”

“A little over three hours.”

“Okay, hit it.”

An alarm the crew was all too familiar with began to wail. When the ship was pushing near her maximum speed, the ride was usually rough, and every loose item from the saucers in the galley to the makeup pots in Kevin Nixon’s Magic Shop had to be secured.

The acceleration was smooth as the Oregon’s revolutionary engines came online, the cryopumps whining a high-pitched tone that became inaudible to humans but would have sent a dog into paroxysms.

Juan returned to his central seat and called up the specifications for the Libyan vessel. She was a modified Russian frigate, purchased in 1999, weighing in at fourteen hundred tons. She was two-thirds the length of the Oregon—three hundred and thirteen feet—and the Corporation’s ship outclassed the Libyan when it came to weapons systems. But the frigate Khalij Surtstill packed a powerful punch, with four three-inch deck guns, multiple launchers for the SS-N-2c Styx ship-to-ship missiles, as well as an umbrella of Gecko rockets and rapid-fire 30mm cannons to ward off an air assault. The Khalij Surt, or Gulf of Sidra, could also fire torpedoes from deck launchers and lay mines from her stern.

Juan studied a picture of the vessel from Jane’s Defence Review’s website. She was a lethal-looking craft, with a tall, flaring bow, and a radio mast festooned with antennae for her upgraded sensor systems behind her single funnel. The big cannons were paired in armored turrets fore and aft, and just behind the lead gun sat her antiship missile launchers.

Cabrillo had no doubt he could take her in an engagement. The Oregon’s ship-to-ship missiles had twice the range of the Sidra’s Styx system, but blowing the Libyan frigate out of the water with a missile shot from over the horizon wasn’t the point.

He needed to board the Sidra, rescue Fiona Katamora if his hunch was right, and get her to safety.

“That her?” Max asked. He’d moved to Juan’s side silently and was pointing at the computer monitor.

“Yup. What do you think?”

“Judging by the radar specs, they’ll see a chopper coming fifty miles off. And it looks like she’s loaded for bear, with triple-A and SAMs.”

“Which means we’re going to have to lay in alongside her and do this old-school.”

“You mean go toe to toe with her, don’t you?”

“We’ll need a distraction to get in close, but, yeah, that’s what I’m thinking.”

Max was silent for a moment. Naval war-fighting doctrine had changed dramatically in the years since missiles had been perfected. No longer did heavily armored battleships pound at each other with their big guns, hoping for a hit. Sea battles now oftentimes were fought with the combatants hundreds of miles apart. The power of high-explosive-tipped missiles made thick plates of protective steel superfluous, so modern navies rarely bothered.

The Oregonhad built-in protection, but not against the Sidra’s three-inch cannons, and certainly not if she managed to slam a couple of Styx missiles into Oregon’s side. Juan was proposing to get close enough to the Libyan frigate to send across a boarding party under the full onslaught of the Sidra’s guns and missiles.

“When was the last time two capital ships dueled it out like this?” Hanley finally asked.

“I’m thinking March ninth, 1862, at Hampton Roads, Virginia.”

“The Monitorand the Merrimack?” Juan nodded. Max added, “They fought to a draw. We don’t have that option. And you do realize that unless we sink her as soon as we have the Secretary, we’re going to have just as tough a time getting clear again. We might get lucky sneaking up on their ship, but don’t think the Libyans are gonna let us just sail away, you know?”

“Already thought about that.”

“You have an idea?”

“No,” Juan said airily. “But I havethought about it.”

“And your distraction? Any ideas on that front?”

“Don’t have the foggiest. But since we’ll attack under the cover of darkness, we’ve got until dusk to come up with one. One thing, though . . .”

“Yeah?”

“A ship the size of the Sidrais going to take twenty minutes or more to sink, no matter how we do it. That’s more than enough time to give the Oregona missile enema.”

Max put on a long-suffering expression. “Oh, you are just full of cheery news, aren’t you?”

“I’ll add insult to injury. Before we face the Sidra, we’re loading our new Libyan friends into our lifeboats. I don’t want them aboard when we go into battle. So if something goes wrong, we’ve got no way off the Oregon.”

“Why did I ever take that first phone call from you all those years ago?” Max cried theatrically to the ceiling.

“Chairman,” the comm officer said, “you have another call coming through.”

“Linc?”

“No, sir. Langston Overholt.”

“Thanks, Monica.” Juan donned a headset and keyed his computer to accept the call. “Lang, it’s Cabrillo.”

“How are you feeling?”

“Good. Tired, but good.”

“And your guests?”

“Grateful and ravenous. They’ve gone through half our stores in a single day.”

“I’m calling for an update and to give you some news.”

“Tariq Assad just showed up near where my people are looking for Suleiman’s tomb.”

“He’s the official who Qaddafi’s government said is Al-Jama?”

“And it would appear they were right, and we helped him escape and nearly lost a man doing so.”

“Lost someone. Who?”

“Hali Kasim, my head communications officer, was shot in the chest. Eddie Seng got him to a hospital, but we have no idea yet on his condition.”

“I’ll get word to Ambassador Moon so he’ll look into it.”

“I’d appreciate that, thank you.”

“Does this clear Minister Ghami from your list of suspects?”

“Not in the slightest. Terrorists might have taken down the Secretary’s plane without government help, but there was a cover-up afterward. It could have easily been orchestrated from the top or manipulated from the shadows. If Al-Jama’s people have infiltrated the Libyan government the way we suspect, then the tangos could have been tipped off early enough to put the cover-up in place.”

“Or Ghami is high in Al-Jama’s organization, and he ordered the destruction of the plane’s wreckage as well as the convenient timing of its discovery.”

“Exactly. And let’s not forget that the person who Ghami replaced, plus most of his senior staff, were arrested and left to rot. That could have come from Ghami, or Qaddafi himself could have ordered a purge.”

“What a mess.” The CIA veteran sighed. “Despite our warnings, the Vice President is insisting on going to a scheduled reception tonight at Ghami’s home for many of the conference’s senior attendees.”

“Bad idea,” Juan snapped.

“I concur, but there isn’t anything I can do about it. The Secret Service detail has been informed there may be an assault, but the VP is adamant he attend.”

“The guy’s a moron.”

“I concur with that, too. However, it doesn’t change the facts. On the plus side, Ghami’s house is totally isolated, and the security personnel are the same people being used for the conference in Tripoli tomorrow morning. They’ve all been vetted. Even if Ghami is somehow connected to the terrorists, I think this dinner should be okay.”

“Really? Why?”

“Would you stage a massive attack on your own home? Especially when you’ll have the same people gathered together the next day with the world’s press watching every move they make. You must remember the impact of Anwar Sadat’s assassination being broadcast nearly live. If there’s going to be an attack—”

“Not if, Lang,” Juan said.

“ Ifthere’s going to be an attack,” Overholt persisted, “it’ll be tomorrow, or sometime during the conference.”

“I don’t like this.”

“Nobody does, but there isn’t any other way. All of these leaders know they’re putting their lives at risk by attending the conference, either there in Tripoli or back home when their own fundamentalists rouse themselves into a frenzy. In these troubled times, being the president of a Middle Eastern country is a dangerous occupation, especially for those willing to work on a peace deal. They all know it and are still willing to go ahead. That says something.” Overholt then changed tack as his way of saying that was the end of the discussion, and he asked, “How are you coming with finding Secretary Katamora?”

“I think we have a lead.” Juan had already explained to Overholt about the radar blip they’d seen and his theory that she was being taken to a ship offshore. “She may be on a frigate called the Gulf of Sidra, or Khalij Surt, and we’re on our way to her now.”

“What are you planning to do?”

“Board her, rescue the Secretary, and put the Sidraon the bottom.”

“Absolutely not!” Overholt roared. Juan winced. “You will not sink a naval vessel belonging to a sovereign nation. I can’t even condone you boarding her.”

“I’m not asking for permission, Lang,” Juan retorted hotly.

“Juan, as God is my witness, if you sink that ship I will see to it that you are charged for piracy. I can authorize you to discover if she is aboard. After that, it falls on our diplomats, and possibly our military, to resolve the situation.”

“Diplomats?” Juan scoffed. “These are terrorists. Murderers. You can’t negotiate with them.”

“Then our Navy will handle an assault, if it comes to that. Am I clear?”

“Might as well pack it in now, Lang, because if you follow that plan she’s as good as dead.”

“You don’t think I know what’s at stake?” Overholt shouted. “I know her life is probably forfeit, but I also have rules, and when Ihave them so do you. You were hired to find her, and if she’s on the Gulf of Sidrayou’ve done your job. Take your money and go.”

“Damn it.” Juan’s anger spilled into his voice. He had no idea why the conversation had veered in this direction, but he wasn’t going to take an insult. “This isn’t about money, and you know it.”

“Christ. I’m sorry,” Lang replied contritely. “That was a low blow. It’s just this whole situation.”

“I understand. Marquis of Queensbury.”

“What’s that?”

“Just something Max said a while back. Don’t worry. I won’t destroy their ship, you have my promise. But if there’s a chance I can get her back, I’m going for it. Okay?”

“All right. It’s just that we can’t handle another diplomatic incident with Libya right now. On the heels of the plane crash, they’ll see the destruction of one of their frigates as retaliation no matter who was responsible, and they’ll treat it as an act of war. You’ll scuttle the conference before it even starts.”

“We’re on the same page, Lang. Relax, and I’ll call you later.” Juan killed the connection and turned to Max. “Good thing that wasn’t a video call.”

“Why’s that?”

“He would have seen my fingers crossed.”

THIRTY-TWO

WITH SO MUCH SAND POURING THROUGH THE CEILING, THE air in the subterranean chamber was becoming unbreathable, even though they had rags tied across their mouths. Their lights cast meager, murky beams through the choking pall. The glow was closer to burnt umber than the halogen’s normal silver.

Doggedly, Linda, Alana, Eric, and Mark dug their way upward to stay atop the growing pile. The sand was coming so fast that even a few seconds’ rest would see a limb buried. They moved on pure survival instinct, buying themselves a little more time before they were buried alive under the hissing onslaught. The mound was so deep now that they could no longer stand upright but had to stoop slightly against the ceiling.

Whoever had designed the trap those hundreds of years ago would find comfort in heaven or hell that it still worked after centuries.

The women were faring better than the men because their bodies were lighter and they helped Eric and Mark dig themselves free whenever they got into trouble.

Alana had just yanked Stoney’s foot clear when a realization hit him. He shouted over to Murph, “Are you sure this room’s below the old river level?”

“Pretty sure. Why?”

“We’re idiots. One-point-six.”

“One-point-six?”

“One-point-six,” Eric confirmed. “And figure a fifty percent over-engineering factor.

“Of course. Why didn’t I see that?”

“Do you mind explaining what’s so important about one-point-six,” Linda called over the sound of falling sand.

“Because this part of the tunnel is below the river, the trap was most likely designed to fill with water and drown its victims. Over the years, sand filled the reservoir.”

“So?”

“Sand is one-point-six times heavier than water by volume.”

Linda didn’t see his point, and made an impatient gesture for him to continue.

“The brick wall was constructed to withstand the pressure of a certain amount of water. But now that this room is filling with sand, it’s holding back one-point-six times more weight than its builders intended. Any good engineer will factor in an additional fifty percent safety margin to be certain. Even if they overbuilt the wall, the sand is still ten percent heavier than it can withstand. It’s only a matter of time before it fails.”

Skeptically, Linda looked from Eric to Mark. Both still struggled to stay ahead of the rising tide of sand, but the grim fatalism that had been etched on their faces moments before was gone. The two of them were certain they were getting out of the trap alive. That was good enough for her.

Moments later, the wall still hadn’t collapsed, and the four were forced to their hands and knees. It was much more difficult to keep ahead of the sand in this position. Linda and Alana struggled right along with the men now. With their backs pressed to the ceiling, there was only twenty inches of space remaining before the chamber was completely full. Those last seconds would go fast.

Linda’s brief elation that they were going to survive ebbed, though she would fight until the bitter end. Mark and Eric contorted themselves, digging frantically to keep above the rising tide of sand, but Alana Shepard had given up. They could hear her sobs over the cascade’s din.

“Damn,” was all Eric said. His cheek was mashed to the roof, and he had created a tiny air pocket around his mouth a moment before a wave of dirt buried his face.

Twenty feet below them, the multiple courses of brick at the wall’s base bowed under the hundreds of tons of sand, the mortar cracked in places, and wispy trickles of grit dribbled through the crevasses.

All at once the entire ten-foot width of the wall gave way. The wall failed completely, collapsing and falling outward into another chamber beyond like a burst dam. A tidal wave of sand swept through the breach, pushing the wall’s remnants like so much flotsam.

The four people who moments earlier were muttering their final prayers were borne along the tsunami and deposited unceremoniously in a tangle of limbs, the very sand that had been seconds from killing them cushioning their wild ride.

Mark was the first to recover, his booming whoop of joy bouncing from wall to wall in the large chamber. He reached across and held out a fist to Eric so they could tap knuckles. “Good call, my friend. Damned good call.”

Eric was a little pale. “I wasn’t so sure at the end.”

“Never a doubt.” Mark hoisted Stone to his feet, and they then helped Alana and Linda to theirs.

Alana threw her arms around Eric’s neck and kissed him as if predicting the wall’s collapse had made it happen. “Thank you,” she breathed into his ear.

“You’re welcome,” he replied awkwardly.

It took a few minutes to find their weapons and clean the sand from the barrels and receivers. The assault rifles weren’t designed to take this kind of punishment, so they had to be thorough.

They found themselves in another cave, still part of the same complex of limestone caverns riddling the hill above them. There was only one exit, a narrow cleft ten feet up the far wall and accessible by steps carved into the living rock.

“Now that we know this place is booby-trapped,” Linda said at the base of the stairs, “I’m taking point. Eric, you’re behind me, then Alana, then Mark. And from now on, we stick together, no exploring on your own. Everyone stay on your toes, and look for anything unusual—an odd rock, writing on the walls, anything.”

They climbed into the tight cave. Headroom wasn’t a problem, but the tunnel was so narrow it was difficult to walk without scraping their shoulders. The cave climbed steeply, and, with space so tight, their footing was uneven. A wrong step could twist an ankle. Linda was concentrating on her movements yet still aware of danger, and she spotted the trip wire well before she was going to trigger it.

It was a thin filament of copper that stretched across the tunnel at the level of her shins, with one end secured to the wall with an iron screw and the other vanishing up into the gloom ahead. She pointed it out to the others and cautiously stepped over it.

The sharply ascending tunnel ended another hundred feet from the trip wire in a small room with a low ceiling. They had to crawl under a wooden trestle built at the tunnel’s exit. The wire wrapped around a metal lever built into a device that would fall back when it was tripped. This in turn would release a carved-stone ball sitting on the angled cradle. The ball was about three feet around and weighed in at half a ton. A direct hit, after rolling and bouncing down the shaft, would crush a man flat, while a glancing blow would surely break bone.

“We should trigger it,” Mark said, mostly because the kid in him wanted to watch the stone hurtle down the tunnel.

“Leave it,” Alana said. The archaeologist in her hated the idea of disturbing what was the find of her career.

“We’ll compromise,” Linda said. She plucked a stone from the ground and wedged it under the boulder. Even if someone hit the trip wire and the lever were released, the rock would prevent it from moving.

There were a few other man-made items in the room—a battered wooden chest missing its lid, an empty sword scabbard for one of the Barbary pirate’s wicked scimitars made of beaten brass, a couple lengths of rope, and a half dozen thin metal shafts Mark identified as ramrods. They took the opportunity to change out their flashlight batteries, and started exploring further.

Three different tunnels branched off from what they called “the boulder room.” They explored one tunnel without incident and were halfway down the second one when Linda placed a foot on a hidden trigger. There was just the tiniest give under her foot, but she knew they were in trouble.

Just under the surface of the sandy passage, a wooden board had been buried and cleverly concealed. Her weight rasped a piece of steel against flint under the plank to produce enough sparks to ignite a fuse. The cask of gunpowder was secreted farther in the hole, and contained enough explosive to kill all four of them.

Linda jumped back instantly and, in a tackle that would have done a pro football player proud, pushed her three companions back until the whole pile of them went down. But the blast never came. Instead, the powder ignited and burned unevenly, a flaring, sputtering cauldron of fire that filled the tunnel with noxious white smoke. In the two hundred years since the trap had been set, the powder’s acidity had eaten through the wooden cask, so when it lit there was nothing to contain the fire and cause an explosive detonation.

“Everybody all right?” Linda asked when the last of the powder had burned itself out.

“I think so,” Alana answered, stifling a cough.

“I feel like I just went three rounds with Eddie in his dojo,” Eric replied, rubbing his ribs where Linda’s shoulder had hit him. “I never knew someone so small could hit so hard.”

“Amazing what a little adrenaline can do.” She stood and brushed herself off. “The fact that this tunnel’s booby-trapped tells me we’re on the right path.”

They kept going, and the tunnel started climbing. There was no way of knowing how deep they had gone or where they were in relation to the riverbank, but all of them felt they had to be getting close.

There was more evidence that people had spent a greater amount of time in this part of the cavern. There were marks in the sand coating the ground where men had walked, men who had constructed the elaborate traps they had already passed. Twice more, Linda stopped the party to check the ground, but they found no additional hidden bombs.

The tunnel turned sharply. Linda peered around the corner before committing herself and came up short. Around the bend stood an iron door embedded in the rock. The metal had a reddish hue, a tracery of rust having formed from exposure to damp air when the river still flowed. There was no lock or keyhole. The door was a featureless slab of metal, so they knew the hinges must be on the other side.

Linda dropped to one knee to dig through her pack.

Mark moved until he was directly in front of the door, spread his arms wide in a theatrical pose. “Open sesame,” he intoned. The door didn’t budge. He glanced over at Alana. “You know, I kind of thought that would work.”

“This will.” Linda straightened, holding a block of plastic explosives.

She used a piece of cardboard torn from a box in her first-aid kit to slip between the door and jamb to determine which side it hinged from and set her charges over the hinges. She selected a pair of two-minute timing pencils and rammed them home.

“Coming?” she called sweetly, and the four of them retreated fifty yards back down the tunnel. The distance muted the blast, but the pressure wave hit with enough force to ripple their clothes.

When they returned, the door had been blown from its hinges and tossed ten feet into the next section of the tunnel.

Unlike the claustrophobic nature of much of the cave, the chamber they found themselves standing in was vast. It was longer than the reach of their flashlights and equally broad. The ceiling lofted forty or more feet over their heads. Much of the cave was limestone like they’d been seeing since entering the earth, but the wall to their right was a vast mound of rubble, the debris blasted over the cave’s entrance when Henry Lafayette started his long journey home.

On the left side of the cavern ran an elevated platform that looked like it had once served as Suleiman Al-Jama’s pier. And tied to it, canted slightly because its keel rested on the ground and wasn’t floating as it should, was the infamous pirate’s ship, the Saqr.

Her mast had been lowered and her rigging stowed in order to enter the cave, but otherwise she looked fully capable of sailing once again. The dry air had perfectly preserved her wooden hull. She was facing away from them, so the mouths of her stern long guns looked like enormous black holes.

On closer inspection, as they peered down on her from the quay, they could see where she had sustained damage during her running battle with the American ketch Siren.