A Treasure Deep (2 page)

“No,” Henri said. “You can’t have it. It’s
too important.”

“Settle down,” Perry said softly. Pulling his
cell phone from its belt clip, he called 911. His words were firm,
calm, and to the point. He gave his name and location, then added,
“There’s been an assault. Shots fired. We need an ambulance and
police.” The operator asked a few questions, which he answered
quickly before hanging up.

Now he looked down at the man before him.
Even in the little light that was available, he could see that the
gentleman was in bad shape. His face was screwed into a scowl of
pain and fear. “Did he hurt you?”

“My chest. My heart. My leg.”

The man wore a suit and tie. Perry quickly
loosened the tie and unbuttoned the collar. “Help’s on the
way.”

“They can’t have it,” the old man said. “It’s
too important. Secret . . . until the right . . . time.” He was
struggling to breathe.

“The police will be here in a minute, sir.
I’m sure they can sort things out.”

“No . . . you don’t understand. They won’t
know . . . wrong hands . . . disaster.” He convulsed, and Perry
reached down to support his head. He saw the man clutching what
looked like an old leather attaché case.

“Why don’t you set that down?” Perry
suggested. “You’ll be more comfortable.”

“No. Can’t.”

“I can put it under your head. You can use it
as a pillow, and you’ll know right where it is.”

The man began to sob. “I’ve failed. I’ve
failed the world. I’ve failed God.”

“Take it easy, friend,” Perry said. The man
was working himself into a frenzy—the last thing he needed if he
was having a heart attack.

The seizure eased. “I’m too weak. The strain
. . . too much.”

“Just take a few deep breaths,” Perry said
softly, wishing that he had hit the attacker harder than he had. To
do this to an elderly man was beyond reason, even for a street
thug. Distract him, Perry thought. Get him to think about something
else.

“My name is Perry. What’s yours?”

“Henri. Dr. Jamison . . . Henri.”

“You’re a medical doctor?”

Henri shook his head. “Teacher. North Pacific
Seminary. New Testament . . .” He seized again. A moment later he
took a deep breath and said, “Take it. I have to trust you.” He
released his arms from around the leather case. “Let no one have
it. Trust no one. Learn from it. Promise me. Learn from it. Protect
it.”

“Everything’s going to be fine—”

“More important than . . . everything.
Belongs to world . . . but wait for the right time. More to be
done. Joseph . . .” He convulsed again then went limp in Perry’s
arms. A wet gurgle rose from his throat.

“Stay with me, partner,” Perry said. “Dr.
Henri?” Nothing. Perry lowered the professor’s head to the cold
ground and placed two fingers on the man’s throat. There was no
pulse. Quickly, Perry set aside the leather case, tilted the
professor’s head back, placed his mouth over the old man’s gape,
and blew into his lungs. No response. With the urgency fueled by
desperation, Perry tore the man’s shirt open, ran a finger down his
sternum, noted the aged scar from a previous surgery, found the end
of the sternum, placed his hand a few inches farther up, and began
compressions.

“One, two, three, four,” he counted to
himself. “Come on, buddy, stay with me. You made it his far—don’t
quit now. One, two, three, four.” A cracking sound, like the
breaking of pencils, erupted into the darkness as the man’s ribs
gave way. In the distance, the sharp call of sirens saturated the
wet Seattle night.

“One, two, three . . .”

THE GROUND TWELVE hundred feet below Perry Sachs’s
feet scrolled by in a 110-mile-an-hour blur. He knew it was he who
was moving and not the ground, but the plush interior of the
Augusta A109 Power helicopter and the finely honed skill of the
pilot made it feel otherwise.

The craft, aided by a spring sun directly
overhead, cast a shadow that ran along the supple, green hills like
a child on a bicycle trying to outrace his father’s car. Unlike
many mountainous places he had visited, Perry saw that these hills
lacked sharp angles, deep gouges, and jutting rock faces. Here the
hills looked like ocean swells frozen in place. Where mound met
knoll there was a smooth, sinuous valley. An abnormally wet
Southern California winter had left the towering hills decked in a
deep carpet of green punctuated by the thick trunks and
outstretched limbs of ancient oak trees. The dark leaves of the
trees contrasted with the lighter bottle-green of the wild grass.
To him, the trees looked like monks stretching prayerful hands to
the sky.

Perry was tired, his neck hurt like a bad
tooth, and his eyes burned. He’d slept only a handful of hours over
the last few days. Two nights ago he had “hopped the pond” from
Edinburgh, Scotland, to New York after a weeklong consultation with
the European branch of Sachs Engineering. Travel was one of the
perks of being vice president of the firm and the founder’s son,
but it was also one of the curses. Losing sleep had never been a
problem for him, but now at the age of thirty-eight, it was more
difficult to do and much less fun.

The hopping continued from the Big Apple to
Atlanta then on to San Diego where he arrived at one that
afternoon. He then made his way through the Lindbergh Field
terminals until he found the company’s bright yellow helicopter
warming up on one of the helipads. Sachs Engineering was painted
along the craft’s body in maroon letters. Still dressed in the dark
blue suit he’d worn at his last meeting in Scotland, he boarded the
aircraft and found he was not alone. Five minutes later, everyone
aboard the A109 was airborne and headed north.

“Thinking of jumping?”

Perry turned to look at the only other person
in the six-passenger cabin. John Dyson—Jack to everyone who knew
him—was staring back, his ebony face creased with a subtle smile.
Jack was big, the size of an NFL linebacker, yet there was more to
him than met the eye. Many, to their embarrassment, had made the
mistake of assuming that a large man couldn’t be quick in mind and
wit. Perry knew differently. Both he and Jack had attended MIT,
Perry taking a degree in architecture and Jack graduating at the
top of his class in civil engineering. It was there they’d met and
there where their friendship had been cemented. Jack joined Perry
at his father’s firm immediately after graduation. In five years
his skill and creative approaches earned him the title of project
manager.

Over the years, Henry Sachs, the firm’s
founder, had offered Jack many promotions, but all were declined.
His degrees might be prestigious, but his love was rooted in hard
work. He was his happiest when surrounded by big, noisy equipment,
and it was there he planned on staying.

“I wouldn’t mind taking a little nap under
one of those trees down there. I don’t suppose you thought to bring
a hammock?”

“How can you think of sleep?” Jack said.
“This is what you’ve been looking for since college. Don’t you
remember all those late night lectures you gave me? ‘Building is
great,’ you said, ‘but finding the hidden, that’s where the real
excitement is.’”

“I remember. I also remember you falling
asleep in the middle of my stories. It’s a good thing I’ve got
thick skin.”

“How did things go in Scotland?” Jack asked,
shifting his bulk in a seat made for men two-thirds his size.

“They went. The British government is
excited. The project’s a go. I’m looking forward to it.”

“More underground work?” Jack asked.

“Yup. Military communications complex. Guess
who is going to oversee the project?”

“Let’s see,” Jack said as if contemplating a
math problem. He raised a finger to his chin. “Military in nature,
secret, underground, engineering intensive, why, it can only be a
resident genius and your trusted buddy . . . me.”

“Good thing there are only two of us back
here. Otherwise your ego wouldn’t have enough room to fit in this
cabin.”

“You wound me. I’m not an egotist. Simply
confident.”

“A rose by any other name . . . ,” Perry
began.

“Ooh, Shakespeare. Not bad for a
sleep-deprived mind.”

“Wait until you see how sharp I am after a
meal and a nap.”

“Maybe I should sell tickets,” Jack offered
with a laugh.

“We may have to,” Perry said. “This is
costing the company a pretty penny, and while my father loves his
darling boy, he does want to see some return. I assume the
equipment is on the way?”

“Of course,” Jack replied. He looked out his
window. “In fact, there they are now.” He motioned with his
thumb.

Perry released his lap belt and slid across
the seat to Jack’s side of the passenger compartment. Jack’s long
legs filled the space between the opposing benches so Perry had to
lean over the last seat to see. Below was the black asphalt river
of State Highway 58. On the road was a caravan of two semitrailers,
three flatbed rigs loaded with yellow heavy equipment tractors, a
drilling rig, and a bus.

“I assume the rest of the equipment is coming
later?” Perry asked.

“You’d assume wrong,” Jack answered. “Most of
it’s already there. The porta-potties got there early this morning.
I have the heavier equipment staged in Bakersfield and can have it
on-site in less than two hours if we need it.”

“Gleason is on-site?”

Jack laughed loudly. “Try to get him to
leave. He has his toys, a challenge, and an open-ended budget. He’s
not going home anytime soon.”

“Good, we’ll need him.” Perry slid back to
his spot and re-fastened his lap belt. Gleason Lane was Sachs
Engineering’s “head techie.” An MIT graduate in computer science,
he turned his back on the keyboard-in-cubical environment for
outdoor tech.

“He’s been busy for the last two weeks. Just
about worn out the ground-penetrating radar and fried every
earthworm and squirrel in the area.”

“The results remain consistent?”

“Absolutely. Gleason found something. That
much is for sure.”

Perry settled back in his seat, his fatigue
evaporating under the heat of excitement. He’d built buildings in
Africa and South America; he’d constructed secret military sites
and large industrial complexes in Europe as well as the U.S.A., and
he enjoyed every challenge. By comparison, this was a small
project. But this went beyond all he’d ever done before.

He ran a hand through anthracite-colored
hair. Gray had yet to touch his black mane, but he knew it was just
around the corner. A few more trips like the one he’d just taken
would see to that.

Doubts surfaced like a whale breaching and
spouting. The odds that he was right were astronomical, the
evidence he followed was thin, and the experts who agreed with him
were zero. Still, he thought he was right, and more importantly, he
felt he was right. And if he was, the world would never be the
same.

“We should beat the caravan by twenty
minutes,” Jack said. “Those rigs don’t move up long winding grades
very fast.”

Perry nodded, then slipped on a headset that
would allow him to talk to the two pilots forward of the soundproof
cabin. He asked how long before they would reach the site and was
told five minutes.

“Take us around the area a couple of times,”
Perry said into the microphone. “I want to get the lay of the
land.”

The pilot confirmed the request and started a
gentle turn to the right. Perry removed the headset and placed it
back on the rack. Below him, he saw the terrain change slightly.
Flying from the south, they’d cruised over the cities between San
Diego and the Tehachapi Mountains. The larger urban areas of
Riverside and San Bernardino had given way to the sparse, flat
California high desert. Joshua trees—their conical, viciously
pointed leaves spread out like daggers—punctuated the tan, sandy
ground. The path the pilots took was nearly twice as long, as if
they had flown in a straight line, but Edwards Air Force Base, not
many miles east, was particular about what aircraft passed through
its air space. The pilots had flown farther north before banking
west and were flying over the desert communities of Boron,
California City, and Mojave.

Rising out of the stark dirt of the
twenty-thousand square miles of Mojave Desert grew the round hills
of the Tehachapi Mountains, an oasis of beauty between the desert
and the fertile farm land of California’s central valley.

The helicopter bounced and slid to one side.
Perry and Jack exchanged glances. “Wind,” Jack said. “The region is
known for its wind.”

“Which explains those.” Perry pointed out the
window near Jack’s head. Tall, white towers with gigantic
three-bladed propellers stood in long rows like soldiers on a
parade ground, the blades turning in lazy circles. “Wind-generated
electricity. I read that it’s one of the largest wind farms in the
world.”

“Impressive,” Jack replied. “Think we can
install a few of those in Seattle?”

“Maybe we can just take a few home with us,”
Perry joked.

The twisted oak trees that dotted the
hillsides thinned, revealing clear, sloping grassland. Angus cows
chewed the turf, confined by long stretches of barbed wire fences.
“Looks idyllic,” Perry mused. “Rolling hills, grassland, trees,
small communities. Maybe I’ll retire here.”

“Retire? You?” Jack laughed. “You’ll be
buried with a shovel in one hand and a drafting pencil in the
other.”

“You don’t know me as well as you think you
do.”

“You’d be surprised,” Jack retorted.

Perry wouldn’t be surprised. There were
precious few things that these two men didn’t know about one
another. Perry knew he was fortunate. Most men made many
acquaintances but few friends, at least close friends. Jack was
family. In fact, Perry had been best man at Jack’s wedding.