The Mahogany Ship (Sam Reilly Book 2) (8 page)

“It may have been once, but by the time the first westerners
arrived in Australia and laid their eyes upon it, the treasures were long gone,
or else stolen.”

Tom pushed back from the table. Not a scrap of pizza
remained. “What about the Spanish coin?”

“There may be a treasure chest worth of Spanish gold coins,
but that sort of money isn’t anything worth interesting a man like Rodriguez
about. I mean this guy has personal worth in excess of 25 billion U.S. dollars.
He has no family, making him unencumbered, as well as one of the richest
individuals on the planet.”

Tom wasn’t convinced. “In my meagre experience of treasure
hunting, things that stay missing have a way of making people go crazy with
desire and lust. Have you considered why such a billionaire is even interested
in the damn ship?”

“He already told me. It’s a matter of national pride. He
wants to prove that one of Magellan’s ships was the first to find Australia.”

A concerned frown marred Tom’s face.

“Don’t worry about me, I’ll be fine.”

“Okay, but I’m going to need an archeologist to get a better
idea of what we’ve found,” Tom said.

“I agree, and I’ve already contacted just the right one.”

“Really? Who?”

“Bill – one of the best archeologists alive. I’ve wanted
Bill on board with Deep Sea Expeditions ever since my dad suggested the program
years ago. I’ve already made the call... Bill will be here in the morning.”

“William? What’s his last name?”

“No, it’s just Bill.”

Tom racked his mind to recall where he’d heard that name
before, but he didn’t think he had. Somehow, Sam had never mentioned a man
named Bill.

*

Michael Rodriguez smiled as he examined the list of
requirements for his special project. It was long, detailed, and expensive.
None of which mattered to him. Sam had asked him for the day to think about
what would be required, and if he could leave his crew to help manage their
current project.

Precisely two hours after being returned to the Maria Helena,
he had written back with his demands. He wondered how Sam had procured such an
extensive list in such a short time.

Yes, I’ve found just the right person to serve my needs,
Michael mused.

The massive, purpose built cargo jet landed at Sydney
International Airport with a rough jolt. It was technically an Airbus A380, but
despite the original airframe, it resembled a supersized military cargo jet,
crossed with the extravagant luxuries more often associated with a Columbian drug
lord.

Sam’s eyes caught the sun from outside the window, and he
turned his head to avoid it.

“Is it nice to be home, Mr. Reilly?” Rodriguez asked.

“Home? No, I was born stateside. This is my mother’s
country… but it does feel like home, sometimes,” Sam replied. “Now that we’re
here, are you going to tell me where you discovered that Spanish coin?”

“In some hills, west of a country town called Bendigo. 
Customs will clear us shortly, and then we will be on our way.”

Fifteen minutes later the ship was back in the air.

“You bribed customs?” Sam mused.

The Spaniard smirked. “No, of course not, but men of means
have their ways.”

An hour later, the A380 landed on the small dirt runway,
near Bendigo.  It was a feat Rodriguez had told him cost him millions in
engineering modifications to reduce the landing and takeoff distance for the
monstrous aircraft to less than an average Airbus.

Even so, the massive aircraft used up every inch of the tiny
runway, whose owners could have never predicted that such a mammoth plane would
ever have need of it.

The engines, thrown into reverse to assist in braking, threw
giant plumes of dirt up into the air, before the expert pilots turned her at
the end of the runway. The aircraft then made its way along an open field to
the side of the runway and made its final stop. It would sit in the open for
the next few weeks.

Sam casually strolled down the plane’s automatic stairs.

A rusty sign read ‘
Welcome to Bendigo.
’

At the rear of the aircraft, the giant loading ramp below
the high-mounted tail was retracted. More than ten tons of dive equipment,
cables, and drills were already being loaded onto the five Mercedes-Benz G63
AMG SUV six-wheel drives. Each vehicle was then driven off the aircraft.

Sam walked toward the cars.

This was the sort of flamboyant finesse that his father
would put on such a vehicle. He had requested a robust four-wheel drive SUV for
use on this trip, given the location of the drill site. But only Rodriguez and
his own father would have purchased five million-dollar plus luxury SUVs, which
looked more like military hardware.

Still, he couldn’t help but admire their raw beauty.

“Do you like them?” Rodriguez asked.

“Certainly. What’s not to like? It’s a sports car, built for
a battlefield.”

“And the Australian bush is a battlefield. Come, let me take
you for a drive.”

Sam sat in the driver’s seat of the massive SUV. The
steering wheel was on the left hand side, having been built for Americans, but
that wouldn’t cause any problem where they were headed. The front windscreen
was raw in its vertical beauty, and not only bulletproof, but it was Pilkington
blast resistant glass.

Rodriguez directed Sam out of the town, towards the east.
After ten minutes the blacktop road turned to dirt. Another ten minutes later
and any semblance of road disappeared completely, only to be replaced by the
rugged bushland of his mother’s land.

Sam put his foot down and the brutal 5.5 liter, bi-turbo V8
roared into life.

The bush was dry, and large eucalyptus trees spotted the
otherwise barren horizon. After an hour’s drive, Rodriguez pointed toward a
hill in the distance. 

“It’s up there?” Sam asked.

“I know what you’re thinking. The cave system is obviously
below the height of the mountain, but that’s where we found the Spanish ducat.”

Sam looked around at the barren mountain in the distance.
“Strange place for the Mahogany Ship to finally rest.”

He then drove up the hill.

A large tent had been set up to house the exploratory
equipment. It looked out of place in the dry, barren land.

A single man emerged from the tent and watched them, his
hands in his pockets.

Sam parked the big truck, waited a moment for the red dust
to settle, then he and Michael got out. 

“G’day. My name’s Frank Edwards,” the man said, striding up
to Sam with his hand outstretched. The stranger was noticeably shorter than
average, with thick arms, and a large beard concealing his face. It gave him
the appearance of one of Tolkien’s Dwarven miners.

“Pleased to be working with you,” Frank said, gripping Sam’s
hand firmly. “I read about your exploits with the lost airship, the Magdalena.”

*

Sam Reilly stared down the dark hole in the ground.

It looked unnatural in the otherwise rugged Australian
bushland. Just slightly wider than his shoulders, it was far too deep for Sam’s
gaze to reach its black ending. The entrance had been reinforced with concrete
and steel. Below every foot, a reinforced iron ring supported the earthworks
behind, forming a natural ladder. It looked professionally built, as he would
have expected from the mining operation that built it.

Frank gulped a drink from his water bottle, and then offered
it to Sam. “After our first core sample returned the Spanish coin, we decided
to drill a larger one so that we could reach the cave system below. You can
imagine how excited we were. Particularly after I had contacted Mr. Rodriguez
and he’d brought up the mystery of the Mahogany Ship. We really half expected to
breach the opening and find the ship intact.”

Sam stepped back from the hatch, unable to see any further. “And
once you reached it?”

“Then we found a cavern made out of limestone, which appears
to form the entrance of a maze of underground water systems, so enormous that…”
Frank stopped, failing to find the right description and then said, “You’ll
just have to see it for yourself, mate. I can brief you better once we get down
there.”

“Okay, so how deep is this thing?” Sam asked.

“Five hundred feet, but the cavern opens nearly 50 feet
earlier.”

“And at the bottom of the cavern, is it dry?”

“No, the entire cavern is flooded, approximately halfway up,
but there’s plenty of evidence that the height of the water has risen and
fallen many times before.”

“How can you tell?”

“Byron, our geologist, noted that the rock formations on the
walls have hundreds of lines within them, spreading from the very submerged
ground, through to the surface high above the water line. Most likely
indicating the changing erosion of limestone via the flowing river,” Rodriguez
explained.

“So, it’s safe to say that the Spanish coin didn’t sink
through 450 feet of soil to reach the cavern. Therefore, it must have entered at
a point further upstream, where the difference between the surface and the
underground waterway is smaller.” Sam said out loud, speaking to no one in
particular. “And if that cavern is a hundred feet high, then it’s conceivable
that the Mahogany Ship, if that is indeed where the Spanish coin once
originated, may be further upstream.”

“Let’s go have a look then, shall we?” Frank said, as he pressed
the green button hanging from a cable that dangled inside the mineshaft, “After
you, Sam. It’s only big enough for one person at a time. Byron’s already down
there. He will look after you once you’re at the bottom.”

Sam peered over the side again and spotted it.   

The miner’s elevator – a makeshift, cable driven device, used
to gain vertical access down the narrow shaft. It was a ten-minute journey to
where a team of miners had already constructed a large work platform, from
which to base their expeditions.

Sam stepped onto the steel platform of the miner’s elevator
as it reached the surface, “I’ll see you at the bottom, shortly, shall I?”

“I’ll start loading some of the equipment you brought and meet
you down there soon,” Rodriguez said. “Frank will follow and bring you up to
speed with where the underground operation is progressing.”

The dry heat of the Australian outback disappeared along
with all external light as Sam began the long descent. After several minutes, the
shaft opened up to a massive cavern, and a large grin came across Sam’s face at
what he saw.

Four large spotlights had been bolted into the walls and
were projecting light around the room, allowing the enormity of the cavern to
be fully visualized. Not quite as large as the one that held the Magdalena for
75 years, the cavern commanded a similar interest over his imagination. Below,
the water lapped around the newly constructed work platform, which was
approximately 50 feet in length by 20 feet wide. At the southern end, a small
computer station had been set up, and three laptops displayed geophysical
information.

These people aren’t amateurs… but why then do they need
my help?

The water was flowing, but without any tremendous strength.
It would be easy enough to dive. There were five tunnels through which water
fed into the cavern and only one out of which it drained. Taking a cursory
glance at it, Sam could see that only two tunnels were large enough for a ship
to travel, but that didn’t mean that the ship wasn’t stuck further up one of
the smaller tunnels. On the platform a man prepared dive equipment.

Sam pressed the red button on the lift controller and it
came to an abrupt halt, approximately half a foot from the work platform,
causing him to nearly slip.

“Welcome to the Mahogany Cavern. My name is Byron.”

“Mahogany Cavern?”

“It’s just what Mr. Rodriguez named it when the coin was
found here.”

“He’s quite convinced, isn’t he?” Sam eyed the man in front
of him. He was clean shaven, with thick glasses.

“That we’re going to find the Mahogany Ship? Yes. He says he
had a hunch when we first found the coin, and then metallurgy analysis placed
it around the same time that Magellan’s ship would have been in this vicinity.”
Frank shrugged his shoulders. “In my experience, Mr. Rodriguez’s hunches are
always right. If it came anywhere near here, we’ll find it.”

“Time will tell whether or not it was a myth or something
much more interesting, after all,” Sam replied, with an indifference that he
didn’t feel. “So, there are five entrances and one exit?”

“No, actually, there are five entrances and two exits… one
of them is far below the water line… come around to the computer station and
I’ll bring you up to speed with what we have discovered so far. We’ve had three
men down here including Mr. Rodriguez, who has told me he wants to be involved
every step of the way. You’ve already met Frank – he’s our drilling engineer.
And then there’s me. Senior geologist for Rodriguez Mining Inc. You now make
the fourth person who even knows of its existence.”

“You guys look pretty set up here. All of you must be used
to working in similar environments. Why doesn’t Mr. Rodriguez bring in a full
scale team and mine this ship? Why me?”

“It’s a good question. I’m surprised Mr. Rodriguez didn’t
talk to you about it before you came. The land that we drove through to reach
this shaft is private property. It’s farming land – cattle to be precise. We
haven’t purchased the license to mine here, because with the exception of the
gold coin, our exploratory core samples show no gold deposits. As far as the
government’s concerned, this is still an exploratory expedition. You, my
friend, are the fourth person who even knows of the existence of that Spanish
coin.”

“Couldn’t he get a grant to dig specifically for the
Mahogany Ship? I know that the Victorian government, seeking to find the answer
to the mystery, offered $200,000 to anyone who could locate the remains of the
ship. I’m certain they would offer exploration rights for that purpose.”

“Yes, but it would take months, if not years, to get around
the bureaucracy. Outsiders would come in and take over. Besides, it’s going to
become complex. You see, the land above us is on the corner of three separate
properties. Depending on which tunnel our mysterious ship lies in, we’re going
to have some difficult negotiations. But if we can continue as an exploratory
team, for which we already own the rights, and then come across the Mahogany
Ship in all its remaining glory, then…”

“You’re merely a mining corporation that is now helping
bring a name to the local community.”

“Right, you’ve got it. So, you see, we can’t just go around
blasting our way through these tunnels, pumping out the million plus gallons of
water in the process. We need an expert cave diver, with experience in treasure
hunting.”

“I wouldn’t call myself a treasure hunter, but I’ve been
involved in a few expeditions to find lost wrecks over the years. I would be
lying if I said I wasn’t interested in finding the Mahogany Ship, so here’s to
hoping that your boss’s luck hasn’t run out just yet.” Sam smiled. “All right,
now down to work. Let’s see what you have explored so far.”

Byron slid his hand across his laptop screen four times,
revealing a new system, “This is a geological scan of the cavern and tunnels
that we’ve reached so far. Using ground penetrating radar, the computer has
been able to predict size and shapes of the tunnels. The red arrows show the
direction of water flow.”

Sam looked at the screen, which displayed a map that looked
more like an ant's nest than a cave. There were five tunnels in and two out.
Two of the tunnels looked quite detailed, with the map going nearly a mile down
each of them. The rest of the tunnels stopped for no apparent reason within a
hundred feet.

“You’ve explored the first two tunnels, is that right?”

“Yeah, we can set the SONAR up at the entrance of each new
tunnel, but it only works based on line of sight, so we need to physically move
it further up the tunnel to capture each new section.”

“And the other three tunnels?”