A Treasure Deep (33 page)

Perry started to get up, but was forced to
his knees again by a swift kick to the ribs. He doubled over.

“I am not in this work alone. You might have
surmised that, Sachs. The operation I’m engaged in is well planned
and tightly constructed. The lives of your friends rest squarely in
my hands. Do you hear that? My hands, not your hands, not even
God’s hands.

“I must report back to my employer at
specific times. If I call too early, your friends die. If I call
too late, they die. What that means is this: If I’m detained in any
way, either by some stupid exercise of heroics or by police
intervention, I will miss my call-in time. Your friends will die
ten minutes later.

“So if I so much as get stopped for a
speeding ticket, it will be the same as if you pulled the trigger
yourself, or flipped the switch, or injected the poison . . .
whatever way my employer has decided to kill the woman and her son.
Do you understand me so far?”

“I understand,” Perry croaked.

“Smart man. You have twenty-four hours to
finish your work. You will crate it and place it in a truck that I
will provide. You will not interfere in any way. You will be
responsible to make sure the police remain uninvolved.”

“How do I do that?”

“I don’t know, and I don’t care. You will not
follow me. Once I deliver the prize, I will arrange for your
friends’ release. Let me ask again: Do you understand?”

Perry didn’t answer. The man was asking two
impossible things. Perry couldn’t turn over the very thing he and
the others had worked so hard to find; but he couldn’t allow Claire
to be executed. “You’ll kill them anyway,” Perry said. The pain in
his ribs had diminished to barely endurable.

“Maybe. Maybe not. You have no other choice.
Deviate from my directions by an inch, and you can bury your
friends in that big hole over there. Still listening? There are a
couple more details you need to know. Do exactly as I say.”

Perry pushed the pain from his mind and
focused on the orders being given by his attacker. Fury raged
inside him, but he bottled it like a roughneck capped a spurting
oil well. The image of Claire and Joseph as prisoners in some
unknown place forced him into compliance. At least for now.

Jack groaned and rolled to his side. Perry
looked at his friend and knew that he was still out. The attacker
was incredibly strong, Perry reasoned. He had the personal pain to
prove it.

“Twenty-four hours, Mr. Sachs. I suggest you
get busy.” The intruder took a step closer then threw a vicious
punch, his knuckles striking Perry on the right cheekbone. Perry
grunted and dropped forward. He felt blood fill his mouth.

The man strolled back the way he came.

Perry was still in too much pain to stand.
Instead he leaned forward and rested his head on the ground.

Perry began to pray.

PERRY PULLED A lever and the steel bucket of the
backhoe bit the earth with thick metal teeth. A second later the
bucket swung around and dropped its load a few meters away, then
spun back to chew another bite. The device moved with the furious
urgency of its operator.

Fire still burned in Perry’s side where the
intruder had kicked him. His ribs, while unbroken, had been
separated and moved in an unnatural way. Every breath was the same
as being stabbed, every cough, piercing agony, but Perry moved
anyway, pushing himself until the darkness of unconsciousness
threatened from the edges of his vision. Then and only then would
he slow, force himself to inhale as deeply as his injuries would
allow, and then begin work again.

The backhoe he operated was the one liberated
from the sinkhole. Jack worked the recently arrived, larger Komatsu
trackhoe from Bakersfield. The trackhoe looked like a long-necked
yellow Jurassic beast that moved on metal, twenty-eight-inch wide,
tank-like tracks. Unlike the backhoe, which was a hybrid of a
loader and a digging device, the trackhoe was designed to dig holes
in short order.

Jack mirrored Perry’s urgency, digging the
trackhoe’s thirty-inch bucket into the soft soil the moment Perry’s
left with his load. They dug in tandem as men pressed by danger.
All caution was evicted. Before, they had bent every rule of
archaeology; now those rules were shattered by need.

As Perry swung the bucket for another gouging
movement, he looked at his longtime friend. Their eyes met and a
communication was exchanged that was only possible between two who
had trusted each other with their lives. Jack’s eyes were narrowed,
and his swollen jaw was set tight. He’d revived a few minutes after
the brutal visitor left, groaning, sitting up, shaking his head,
then suddenly springing to his feet, looking for the assailant but
finding only Perry doubled over and leaning against the backhoe.
After the painful act of straightening himself, Perry relayed
everything Jack had missed while unconscious.

Discussion was minimal. Both men immediately
applied themselves to restoring the backhoe. When it was cleaned up
and ready to go, they started it and moved it into position to
unearth the final treasure under the earth. Jack served as
observer, standing a few steps from the ever-widening hole Perry
made. The minute the second excavator showed up, Jack was in the
seat.

Gleason, Curtis, and Brent had returned
thirty minutes later. Dr. Curtis was furious at the sight of the
damage being done by the equipment and the dozer parked to one
side, but his anger quickly subsided once the tale had been told.
He and Brent stood to the side as Gleason directed Perry and
Jack.

The five men worked with a single purpose.
The rest of the crew they sent back to the motel with instructions
not to return until further notice. There were questions, but none
were answered.

The buckets dug, raised, swiveled, emptied,
and returned. It was a dance that repeated itself with a determined
precision. The hole deepened and widened. Not even the fear of
another sinkhole could assuage their determination. What was being
done was what had to be done. They were no longer in control of
their circumstances—an undefined evil was.

Another pain swept and swirled in Perry. It
wasn’t physical, not associated with assault; it was harsher. Perry
was unfamiliar with helplessness. Reared in a healthy family, he
had never known what was common to many: need, rejection,
hopelessness. Now he was faced with all those emotions in large
measure. Two people he cared about were in the hands of others who
could—and apparently would—harm them at a moment’s notice. Perry
didn’t know where they were being held or how long they had been
there. Had they been hurt already? Had the vicious visitor done to
Claire and Joseph what he had so effectively done to Jack and him?
Perry couldn’t even be sure they were still alive. A photo was
proof of the past only, but never of the present.

Perry pushed the thoughts away. Those were
questions he couldn’t answer. For the moment all he could do was
follow the instructions he’d been given, and that ate at his
insides.

The hole in the ground widened with
remarkable speed, yielding a gaping opening. The excavators worked
with choreographed precision. Initially they worked on the same
area, but under the direction of Perry, Jack shifted his approach,
turning the hole into a deep trench. The plan was simple: Lay bare
the deep rectangular object revealed by the GPR survey. Penetration
by the radar had been less than they had hoped for, but it had been
enough to locate the right site and reveal the basic size and
shape. Jack dug on the forward edge of the object, Perry directly
overhead.

The fever of desperation pushed the men
forward. There

was no conversation; no unnecessary emotion,
just the work, the pulling and pushing of levers and pedals.
Buckets rising, dipping, digging, dumping, only to start the
process again. Minutes passed with mule-like resistance, but
Perry’s focus remained steady and unshaken.

Finally, with a rapid waving of arms, Gleason
called Perry off. Gleason trotted closer to the hole than to Perry,
leaping onto the steel step. “You’re at your fifteen-foot depth
limit,” Gleason announced. “Jack is still going but he’s going to
max out at twenty-two feet. That’s less than half the depth we
need.”

Perry knew this would happen. He knew the top
of the chamber was fifteen meters below grade. That was over
forty-five feet, the equivalent of a four-story building. Initially
he’d planned to grade out a ramp as the first builders had, but he
no longer had the time. “Tell Jack to keep going until he maxes out
the reach of the trackhoe, then tell him to get it ready to bring
to my side of the dig.”

“He won’t get any more depth on this side
than where he is,” Gleason objected.

“He will when I’m done,” Perry said.

“What are you planning?” Gleason asked with
suspicion.

“If I can’t extend the trackhoe’s reach, then
I’ll just have to lower the trackhoe. Hang on.” Perry pulled the
bucket in and secured it. He then raised the outriggers that kept
the machine from tipping. Dropping the machine in gear, he backed
it away from the large hole in the ground. Gleason stood on the
steel step hanging on to the metal stubs left from where Perry had
cut the canopy off.

“I’m going to doze away some ground from the
side of the target. If I do it right, Jack will be able to drive
the Komatsu down the new grade and clear more dirt. At some point
we’re going to have to use shovels. I want you and Brent to bring
up shovels, crow bars, and anything else you think we might need to
get into the chamber.”

“Jack packed some of the pneumatic tools.
Actually he packed everything.”

“That’s our Jack, and you gotta love ’im for
it,” Perry said as he hopped down from the cab. “Fill Jack in. I
don’t want to waste a minute.”

“To do that, you’re going to have to get
close to the sinkhole edge. That makes me nervous.”

“Good, I didn’t want to be the only one with
butterflies in my stomach.”

Perry jogged to the Case 1150 bulldozer and
fired up its 108 hp diesel engine. Black smoke belched into the
night sky, and its throaty idle rumbled through the hills. Had he
the time, he could bring in major earthmoving equipment, but he had
chosen to use smaller equipment to preserve as much of the property
as possible and lessen the risk of damaging valuable artifacts. It
was a wise decision when time was abundant; now it hamstrung him.
There were earth-moving machines that could have made short work of
the project, but they lacked the finesse he initially needed. Now
he would have given a year’s salary to have a Komatsu PC1000 whose
massive bucket could have plowed up the fifteen meters of depth in
minutes. But wishing was a waste of time and mental energy. This
was the hand he had been dealt, and he planned to play it for all
it was worth.

Pressing his skills beyond anything he ever
thought possible, Perry powered forward until he lined up with the
east side of the hole, lowered the bright yellow blade, and started
forward. Earth came up like water before the prow of a ship. Perry
dug a wide swath, pushing the excavated dirt down the side of the
sinkhole. Jack’s excavator would need more room than the dozer
could provide in a single pass, so Perry repositioned the dozer and
dug in deep again. Back and forth, side to side, a wide and long
slope appeared. Perry knew that he would have to lower the grade by
at least twenty feet for the excavator to have a chance of reaching
the buried chamber.

The night wore on as Perry finished grading a
level area for Jack’s trackhoe. He finally backed his machine out
and watched Jack work his way down the all-too-steep slope, settle
on the dirt pad Perry had created, and begin digging again,
scooping dirt and piling it to the side. Perry could do nothing but
wait, wishing it were he down there at the controls. He had tried
to commandeer the excavator from Jack, citing the danger of taking
such a large machine into a wide pit that hadn’t been properly
shored. Jack had just smiled and said, “Get your own ride, buddy,”
and started down the precipitous path before Perry could
object.

Jack moved the bucket with precision and
determination, and Perry knew that each scoop of dirt moved them
closer to their goal. Gleason stood waiting with Perry. Each man
was eager to add his labor to the task, but nothing more could be
done until Jack had dug to within a few feet of the buried
cavity.

“It has to be close now,” Gleason said. “I
think we should start shoveling.”

“I think you’re right,” Perry said. “If we’re
on target, then we should be right over it.” Perry picked up a
shovel and started down the incline toward Jack’s position. He
noticed that Gleason was following with another shovel in his hand.
“I can’t ask you to do this, Gleason. I don’t know how secure the
walls of the pit are. They could cave in.”

“You and Jack have put a nice angle on the
walls. I don’t think it’ll collapse on us.”

“The base can give way, and dirt can slide in
faster than we can run,” Perry said. “As I understand it, being
buried alive isn’t much fun.”

“That’s why I plan on avoiding it. You’d be
surprised how fast I can run when death is behind me. Now be quiet.
Two shovels will work faster than one, and you know it.”

“Three shovels,” a voice said. Brent
approached from behind. “I didn’t come out here to watch. You made
me part of the team when you told me what you suspect is in the
chamber. I’m not going to sit in the stands.”

Perry started to object, but Brent cut him
off. “Save your breath, Mr. Sachs. I’m in for the duration.”

Brent’s courage was remarkable, and Perry
found himself filled with admiration. “Okay, kid,” Perry said, “but
anyone who risks their life with me gets to call me Perry.”