Blue Hope: (Book 2) (Red Hope) Page 24

  As he neared the door, he saw the smiling face of Victor.

  “Follow me, please,” Victor said.

  The two men walked around the container to the spot where Adam heard the body fall. The red-vest man lay motionless in the grass with a rifle laying nearby.

  “You grab one leg and I’ll grab the other.”

  The man wiggled and slowly tried to reach for his rifle. Victor pulled his pistol out of his pouch and unloaded it into the red-vest man.

  Adam stood aghast, mouth dropped open.

  Victor looked nonplussed. He shrugged his shoulders.

  “It is just business, Mr. Adam,” Victor said nonchalantly. “Now help me with him.”

  They dragged the man through the grass and past the campfire to an area that was mostly dirt. Victor’s helpers were digging holes. Nearby was a pile of dead green-vested thugs. The red-vest man was the last.

  “What the hell happened?” Adam asked.

  “These poachers were very dangerous men. They would have killed all of us — even you.”

  Victor’s two helpers stood up and smiled at Adam. They each had AR-15 rifles dangling from their backs.

  “You see,” Victor said. “In my line of business, you hire the best. The Lieutenant and Sergeant here are trained in Krav-Maga and they are better marksmen than any you have ever come across. That is why I charge so much.”

  “So they’re mercenaries?” Adam asked.

  “No, they are just very good security,” Victor answered. “Now, Mr. Adam, help me put this man into the grave.”

  Adam had a look of shock on his face.

  “We’re just going to bury them all here? Shouldn’t we call the authorities?”

  Victor furrowed his brow. “You know that man who stopped us in Dunongo and took our money?”

  “Yes.”

  “He is the authority around here. Come and help me,” Victor said. “You act like you’ve never buried a body before!”

  Adam didn’t know what to make of that statement, but Victor laughed and laughed.

  “But what about Jeffrey?” Adam asked.

  Victor stopped laughing.

  “Jeffrey was a good man. I’ve worked with him on a few occasions. We will dig a special grave for him and put a cross made from ironwood on top. When we get back to Zambia, I will inform his father.”

  Adam picked up a shovel.

  “Let me dig Jeffrey’s grave.”

  Victor nodded in agreement. “Okay. And tomorrow we will go find your hidden treasure. I hope it was worth the life of a good man like Jeffrey.”

  CHAPTER 59

  Tonga Trench: The dive

  Pacific Ocean

  Alexis stood on top of the submarine that was about to take her down to the bottom of the Tonga Trench. Her balance was precarious. The main ship heaved in the ocean, making her hyper-reactive to any balance changes.

  “Okay, Alexis, we’re ready for you,” rang a voice from inside the submarine. Alexis looked down into the entry hatch of the DSE2 vehicle. The two men already in the sub summoned for her. She knelt down and swung her legs into the hole, turned around and climbed down the short ladder.

  Thank God I wore jeans today, she thought.

  The inside of the submarine was tiny, barely enough room for the three seats bolted into it. The submarine itself resembled a small classic sub shape, but most of that was just a thin shell to support the drive motors, batteries, electronics and cameras. The part that housed the human passengers was actually a sphere of stainless steel with six-inch thick walls — strong enough to hold back the enormous water pressure at deep ocean depths. The only hole in the sphere was the entry door. It was made from a high-strength acrylic window surrounded by a steel outer shell – it was their only window to the outside word, albeit the window was only five inches wide.

  “Wow, this is a tight space,” Alexis remarked.

  Jim and Roberto, her companions, laughed. Jim was a slender man who wore a yellow baseball hat and a yellow T-shirt. He paid close attention to the knobs and computer screens. Roberto had a polo shirt and a ponytail — he handled all of the vehicle movement controls. Alexis thought they both seemed jovial.

  “Now is your chance to turn back, Alexis,” Jim stated, half smiling.

  “No way.”

  “Like seriously,” Jim said. “Are you claustrophobic at all?”

  “No, I’m fine,” Alexis laughed.

  “Generally speaking,” Roberto added, “we would never consider having a non-subject-matter expert dive with us, but we’ve made an exception here due to Captain Nadino’s insistence.”

  “Thanks, fellas,” she said.

  “I’m sure the captain gave you the rundown on how this works, but let’s repeat the safety lesson. You are inside a steel shell. We will descending to just over twenty nine thousand feet today. Not quite to the deepest part of the Tonga trench, but still dangerously deep. Trust the shell. When in doubt, trust the shell. On the bottom of our submarine is a 500 pound steel weight. Once our dive is complete, we drop the weight and then buoyancy will float us back up to the surface.”

  “That seems very straightforward,” Alexis said.

  “Roberto here will handle all of the movement controls, cameras and grabber arms. My job, I’m Jim…” he reminded her.

  “Yes, I know. Hi Jim.”

  “Well, my job is to handle the life-support systems as well as buoyancy systems. So, I’ll be in control during the descent and ascent. Roberto will handle the maneuvering at depth.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Once we’re on the bottom, we need to travel around,” Roberto said. “So I run the small propellers that help us move along the bottom of the trench.”

  A voice rang out from up above.

  “Gentlemen... and lady, are you good to go?”

  Jim and Roberto gave the thumbs-up signal.

  “And….” the voice above waited.

  Alexis gave a thumbs-up, too.

  “Lock us in, guys!” Jim yelled.

  The heavy hatch was tilted shut briefly, but then opened back up. The man up on top reached in with an envelope.

  “Just got this from the captain,” the technician said. His hand reached into the sphere past Alexis’s face. She saw SECRET stamped on the manila envelope. Jim grabbed it and handed it to Roberto.

  “What’s in that envelope?” Alexis asked.

  Jim gave a blank stare at Roberto, then turned back to Alexis.

  “It’s just some emergency backup plans.”

  Alexis was skeptical, but nodded her head.

  “Wait,” Jim said to the technician up top. “I’m going to do a FOD check on the hatch.”

  He stood up and ran his hand around the conically cut hole in the sphere shell to make sure there was no debris.

  “We’re good,” he said.

  The outside technician closed the hatch and Jim turned the locking lever.

  Clunk.

  “Well, Alexis, now for the fun part. They’re going to throw us over the edge of the Deep SEAK Explorer!” Jim said, breaking into a laugh.

  “Guys, I noticed that this sub is called DSE2,” Alexis said. “Where is the DSE1?”

  The two men frowned at each other, then turned to Alexis. “We’d rather not talk about the DSE1.” At that moment, the sub lurched sideways.

  Several technicians hooked a cradle of cables around the large DSE2 submersible. The crane operator gently moved the controls and the sub lifted up from its protective cage. The research ship heaved from the choppiness of the ocean just a little bit more than the captain liked, but he was anxious to go find valuable treasure on the bottom of the ocean.

  The sound of overly stretched cables permeated the whole area as technicians got out of the way of the swinging submarine.

  “Watch yourselves, people!” the team leader yelled. He was in constant communication with the crane operator. Four ropes emanated from the sub, each one being pulled taut by a technician on the boat.
The crane swung the submarine over the edge of the large ship and dangled it over the Tonga Trench. The heaving of the seas made controlling it at this stage difficult. The men pulled hard on their ropes, but it was awkward at this point.

  A huge swell hit the ship and the DSE2 banged into the side of the it.

  A cacophony of “Whoa!” and “Watch it!” rang out from the guys pulling on the ropes.

  The crane operator extended the boom faster than normal to get the sub away from the ship. At a point where it was thirty feet away from the hull, he lowered the DSE2 into the ocean and retracted the cable. The submarine was floating on its own, held upright by airbags temporarily attached to the outside hull.

  Captain Nadino sat down in the control room on the ship and put on a headset.

  “Gentlemen and lady,” he said with formal tone. “How is the DSE2 performing?”

  “We’ve run the bit checks and all looks good,” Jim replied back through the intercom.

  “Excellent,” the captain said. “You are free to dive when ready.”

  Jim pushed a button and the airbags surrounding the submarine let go. The sub began to sink.

  Jim and Roberto were busy marking off checklists while Alexis sat quietly not wanting to interrupt. She kept her eye on the depth meter. They were dropping fast. She estimated they would reach the bottom in about two hours.

  Jim put down his checklist.

  “Okay, for now we’re done. Nothing to do but monitor the system gages until we’re at about a thousand feet above the bottom.”

  Roberto looked over at Alexis. “What exactly do you expect to find?”

  “We have reason to believe there is a laboratory of some type here – built by the early Martian explorers about two hundred thousand years ago.”

  “That sounds very exciting,” Roberto said. “I sure hope it was built to withstand the pressures. But it is very exciting.”

  “It really is exciting,” Alexis nodded. “But the main goal is to find a very special bit of technology that we need to create a groundbreaking medicine.”

  “Is that the anti-gravity cube?” Jim asked.

  Alexis nodded her head.

  “Yes, we think that is the missing link to finally developing a cure for cancer. It’s a bit of a stretch, but it’s our last hope.”

  Minutes passed by.

  Depth: 2500 feet below sea level

  The silence became uncomfortable.

  “Are you familiar with the first time anybody dove to these great depths?” Jim asked.

  “I remember hearing about a similar dive in the Mariana Trench back in the 1950’s,” Alexis recalled.

  “Close,” Jim corrected. “It was 1960, actually. The sub was called the Trieste.”

  “Okay, yeah, that rings a bell,” Alexis replied.

  “They went down to the bottom and stayed for around twenty minutes.”

  “What did they see?” Alexis asked.

  “Not much. Their propellers churned up a lot of muck. On the way down, though, they heard a loud bang.”

  Alexis furrowed her brows in worry.

  “What was it?”

  “It turned out to be a crack in their window,” Jim answered.

  “Why did they continue?” Alexis asked with extreme curiosity.

  “They figured if they heard a loud bang and they didn’t die immediately, then they were still good.”

  “That’s a bit crazy if you ask me,” Alexis laughed.

  “Well, it was 1960. People were tougher then.”

  Roberto laughed at the idea.

  “They were probably right, though,” Jim said. “At these pressures, if there’s a hull breach and water shoots in, it would cut anything it touched like a knife. If it’s a serious breach, we’d probably die instantly.”

  “Well that’s a pleasant thought,” Alexis said with a frown.

  Depth:5000 feet

  “At this rate, we’ll be there in two hours or so?” Alexis asked.

  “That’s about right, we’re falling as fast as we can,” Jim said.

  Alexis shrugged her shoulders.

  “It’s all right,” she said. “No pressure.”

  James and Roberto smiled at each other and broke out laughing.

  “Oh, lots of pressure. Tons of pressure.”

  CHAPTER 60

  Overlooking Zhuvango Falls

  Africa

  (Daybreak)

  “There it is, gentlemen,” Victor said. The expedition stood atop a sheer cliff overlooking a river, just downstream from a huge waterfall three hundred feet wide. Below them was a one hundred foot drop into the river. A jungle forest bloomed thick and high from the opposite river bank — wide vine-wrapped trees dominated the view.

  “I don’t see any Martian laboratory,” Adam joked.

  “Well,” Leroy explained. “It’s been two hundred thousand years. I’m sure it’s around here somewhere — that’s why we brought the ground-penetrating radar.”

  Adam leaned forward, looking down over the treacherous cliff. “Victor, how often do tourists visit here?”

  Victor acted like he was counting on his fingers, then looked at Adam.

  “Never,” he answered, leaning back and letting out a belly laugh. “It is too dangerous on so many levels. Many years ago, some biologists came to study the fireflies, but that was the only time that I know of.”

  “Do you have ropes for us to climb down this cliff?” Adam asked.

  “We’ve got something better,” Victor replied with a mischievous smile.

  He walked back to the truck and picked up a long black metal case, lugging it back to the cliff edge. Victor opened the box which showed what appeared to be a shoulder-mounted missile launcher. He picked it up and placed it on his shoulder, aiming it at the trees across the river.

  Adam stepped back. “Are you going to blow something up?”

  “No,” Victor answered. “But please cover your ears.”

  He aimed down at one of the lower trees. When he pulled the trigger, a large arrow shot out, propelled by a rocket. It squirreled its way across the river, dragging behind it a thin cable the entire way. Far across the river, the arrow slammed into a tree with explosive force, burying deep in the trunk. Much of the loose cable drooped across the long chasm. Victor walked backwards quickly from the cliff edge and laid the launcher down behind the truck. He grabbed the cable and wrapped it around the trailer hitch, using the ball as a pulley. He started walking away from the truck, pulling the cable tight.

  “I need some help, guys, all this wire is heavy as hell.”

  Roger One and Roger Two helped him pull the wire. The drooping cable rose up out of the river and dangled in a loose curve from the cliff to the tree. When it was tight enough, they wrapped it around the trailer hitch multiple times and then used a C-clamp to keep it fastened.

  “One more thing,” Victor said, raising his index finger into the air.

  He pulled another device out of the box. It was a little trolley with two pulleys on the top and a hook on the bottom. Dangling behind it was a long spool of rope. He set the trolley on the cross-river cable and walked back toward the truck, unwinding the trolley rope.

  “Watch this, guys,” Victor said with excitement. He grabbed one of their duffle bags and hung it from the trolley. Then he slowly fed the rope and the trolley zip-lined down the steel cable until it got to the opposite shore. He yanked on the rope three times quickly and the mechanism on the trolley unhooked the cargo. The duffle bag fell onto the black sand bank of the river.

  “Very impressive,” Leroy said.

  Adam nodded. “Let’s send the rest down there.”

  It took an hour to ship all of their supplies. This included large bags of shovels, food, tents. They put most of the scientific equipment into backpacks that they would wear — too risky to be damaged by the drop at the end of the cable.

  “The only thing left is us,” Leroy said.

  “Don’t we need to leave somebody here?” Ad
am asked. “You know, to pull us back when we’re done?”

  “Sergeant, you stay here and guard the truck,” Victor decided. “If you run into trouble, shoot to kill and then contact me on the walkie-talkie.”

  “Oui, Victor,” Sergeant said. He gathered up the rope and motioned for the first person to cross.

  Victor volunteered. He hooked up a harness to the trolley and sat down in it. Sergeant released the rope and let the trolley cross the river. At the midpoint, Victor hung precariously above the water by at least forty feet. Sergeant fed more rope. When Victor reached the tree, he slipped out of the harness and landed on the soft black sand, feet first. Sergeant pulled the trolley back and repeated the process for Leroy, Roger One, Roger Two, Adam and Lieutenant.

  The group looked upward at Sergeant who saluted to them. They saluted back. The men gathered up as much as they could carry and trudged toward the waterfall. From the top of the cliff, they’d scouted a small clearing just to the side of the waterfall, perfect for a campsite. The beautiful black sand stretched from the river’s edge to the wall of jungle forest about ten feet away. It created a soft black sidewalk, taking them straight to the base of Zhuvango Falls. The roar of the water pounding into the pool at the bottom grew louder as they closed the distance.

  The group wasted no time setting up tents and getting their scientific equipment ready to use, including the portable ground-penetrating radar. It consisted of what looked like a high-tech post-hole digger. Roger One, the geologist, tested it by standing it upright and pushing a button on the top. A beeping sound emanated from it and the LCD screen on the side displayed the density of the ground as a function of depth. It also estimated the material type — if there were significant changes in density. Roger walked along the campsite taking measurements, then further out in radial lines.

  “Nothing so far!” Roger yelled back to the crew.

  Adam stared at Zhuvango Falls. It was enormously wide — much wider than the river.

  “Gentlemen, let’s go for a quick walk,” Adam suggested.

  He and the two Rogers walked along the black sand toward the rightmost edge of the waterfall. The roar was deafening as the water slammed down from a hundred feet above them. The thick mist being thrown off by the waterfall made it look like they were walking into a cloud. The three men put on ponchos and got out their powerful LED flashlights. Adam walked toward the roar of water. The ground turned from loose black sand to slick rock. Adam took careful footsteps — losing his grip here would be fatal. He kept a constant eye on the roiling pool of water to his left, where the full force of the waterfall was hammering away.