The Mountain: An Event Group Thriller (56 page)

There, buried in many thousands of years of ice, was the curved bow of a ship. It rose sixty feet above their heads and vanished into blue-tinted ice. John Henry could make out the wood of its beams, but then again he knew it wasn’t wood, because after all of this time it looked as if the giant bow had been carved from black stone. It was the Confederate colonel who summed it up for the rest of them in an articulate way that only Taylor could accomplish.

“I’ll be a son of a bitch!”

22

John Henry stood atop the glacier after he and the others had been pulled out by Dugan and the men. Word of the find sent a shock wave through the tired troops, North and South. After most had figured the headquarters staff had been killed, they learned the news that made all of those days in Sunday school class as children come into their thoughts.

The large hole had been widened and a sling system was built by the navy riggers. Men and equipment were now below shoring up the large system of caves. After the initial discovery had been made it was learned that the cave had many duplicates, and sections of the great Ark could be seen through many thin or bare spots. The size of the vessel was enormous. Ollafson noted that the Ark was heavily damaged not only by the passage of time, but by the elements that had combined to crush large sections of the ancient ship.

More than a hundred oil lamps assisted the weak and fading light of day to illuminate the most amazing sight the men had ever seen. Even McDonald was in awe of what the Americans had found. His mission had changed somewhat since their thrill ride through hell. The bloody Yanks had proven the myth. Now they would have to get the proof back to civilization, and that was what McDonald had to stop or claim as England’s own. He would have to move fast. He would not tell Madame Claire about his plans. For some reason he could not fathom, she had become distant and she was constantly observing him, and to be frank about it, it made him uneasy.

Jessy was leading the men who were busy shoring up the tighter and more fragile areas of the cave system. They had sacrificed ten of the valuable sleds for the wood needed and they would still be dangerously short if the ceiling of the void came crashing down. For the most part the men had settled into an uneasy silence since their initial viewing of the Ark. Now their eyes were constantly moving to the ice around them, waiting to hear the sound of cracking, indicating they were about to be buried alive.

The latest man down was Daniel Perlmutter. The equipment inside the wooden boxes was handled by him alone as he used the rope sling to carefully maneuver the camera equipment down.

Ollafson, who was walking around the exposed section of the Ark taking notes and making diagrams, saw the young photographer and smiled. He approached him as the boy was unloading the first of his equipment.

“I see you are about to do your magic with that box, eh?” the old man asked as he saw the rope sling heading back to the surface.

Perlmutter looked up and smiled. The young man pushed his wire-rimmed glasses back up his nose and then lowered the hood of his jacket.

“Oh, hello, Professor. Yes,” he said as he looked around at his scattered camera equipment. “I figured I better get my things down here before the navy starts lowering the explosives.”

“Sensible,” Ollafson said.

“Now, Professor, don’t go wandering off. We want to immortalize you and your find,” Perlmutter said with a wink.

“Oh, my. No, there will be plenty of time for that. We have other work we need to do.”

“So I understand. The colonel is getting ready to send down the men who will disassemble some of the Ark after I take my images.”

Ollafson froze with pencil and notebook in hand. He was looking at Perlmutter as if he were deranged. “Excuse me, disassemble?”

“Yes, the colonel said they need a few sections for your proof—well, that and the photographs I take, that is.”

“No, no, no, young man, you must have heard wrong. We must stay and excavate this site properly. There will be no disassembly for samples.”

Perlmutter could see that the news had unhinged the professor somewhat.

“I’m sure I heard right, but you can double-check the orders.”

The notebook and pencil fell from Ollafson’s hand and his eyes went wide just before he lunged at the young man. Perlmutter yelped when the professor grabbed him by the throat and both men went down over the scattered equipment. Ollafson had lost control and was trying his best to kill the messenger.

Taylor heard the boy call out and he turned to see two men rolling on the ice floor of the cave. He thought for sure it must have been one of his men and one of John Henry’s. He ran over and was surprised when he pulled Professor Ollafson off the learned student of Mathew Brady. He had to shake Ollafson to get him to stop trying to claw his way back to Perlmutter.

“What in the hell has gotten into you, Doc?” Jessy said as he shook the man, trying to shock some sense back into those crazed eyes. Taylor shook him so hard that Ollafson’s glasses went flying. Then the man went semi-limp in Jessy’s hands. He looked down at Daniel Perlmutter, who was rubbing his neck and trying to stand up. A few of the marines and Rebs gathered around to see what the ruckus was about. “What did you do?” he asked the still-shaken Perlmutter.

“Nothing. I just told him that the colonel had ordered samples of the Ark and its images recorded.”

“We can’t just leave it here,” Ollafson said as his eyes stared off into the distance as though Taylor was not even there.

“Professor, the find is yours. You have proven that it exists. No one can ever take that away from you. You’ll be back. Lincoln will surely support a more legal expedition now.”

The Rebs who had gathered around exchanged looks when Taylor mentioned Lincoln. It was if he was conceding Lincoln would always be there, meaning the war was lost in his opinion.

Ollafson continued to stare at nothing.

“All right, you men get the professor hooked into that harness and get him out of here. I don’t want him anywhere near that dynamite when it gets down here.”

The men didn’t move at first, and then the professor lowered his head in defeat. The men moved to follow the command of Taylor.

*   *   *

It had taken Claire two full hours to get Ollafson to sleep, and it also took several sleeping aids prescribed by the marine corpsman at that. The sun had set and the snow was falling at a brisk pace, the winds were picking up, and it looked as though the camp was in for rough night. The rest of the late afternoon had been taken up by Captain Jackson and John Henry as they pondered the communication problems that had arisen along with the bad weather. They needed to signal Lieutenant Parnell on the plain below by rocket fire that they had made their goal of the summit. The cloud cover was so thick they couldn’t see the slope of the mountain, much less the plain below. They would have to await a clearing of the skies before contact could be established.

“I think that part of our plan could have been thought out better,” Jackson said as he scanned the skies above.

“Well, we didn’t have the time to lay a telegraph line from Talise all the way up here. We’ll have to make do. Maybe in a day or two we can send a messenger back.” The two men knew that without the signal rockets they would be blind as to what was approaching them from the west.

*   *   *

Four hours later John Henry stared up at the raked and curved bow of the Ark and shook his head. Jessy and Claire stood next to him as they examined the giant’s bow under lamplight for the first time. The men were above trying to bed down as best they could with the storm intensifying.

“It kind of makes you wonder what else you’ve been mistaken about all your life, doesn’t it?” Thomas said as he saw the tool markings that had been carved in the wood more than thirteen thousand years before. He saw the wooden pegs that held the massive vessel together, all turned to stone.

“I don’t take well to reflection,” Jessy said as he gave John Henry a sorrowful look. “Hell, I’ve been wrong so much it’s become a career objective.”

For the first time since the mission began all three of them laughed at the same time. They stopped when they heard the men who were assigned the task of shoring up a small cave that extended halfway to the middle of the Ark. Jenks, several Confederate prisoners, a few marines, and Grandee and his off-duty mess crew were assisting.

The laughter died and then John Henry handed Claire the lamp and shocked her by starting to climb the rope ladder that had been placed on the large bow for work crews to enter in the morning when the Ark was examined.

“Hey, your own orders were to await the naval engineers in the morning,” Claire called up.

“I have a history of not following orders. That’s why I’m here,” he said as he made the top of the curving prow of the Ark and then vanished over the ancient gunwale.

Claire looked at Taylor. He just half-bowed and then gestured toward the rope. “You’re the one that climbs like a ring-tailed lemur. After you,” he said, smiling.

Claire lowered the hood of her coat, gave Taylor a smug look, and then smiled and took hold of the rope. Jessy had to grin as Claire shot up the rope ladder almost as fast as Thomas had done. When she made it over the top, a small piece of ice was thrown over and struck Jessy on the head. He looked back up and saw Claire smiling down on him.

“I think you’ve been spending too much time with that Indian boy,” he joked and then blew out the lamp and attached it to his coat before he started climbing—intentionally faster than Claire.

*   *   *

McDonald watched Taylor vanish over the side wall of the Ark. His eyes remained watching for the time being. Then his gaze shifted to Captain Jackson as he stood and supervised the unloading of the dynamite. He wanted to make sure his navy demolition team handled it right because Thomas had men working not far from them inside a small cave where they were using the last of their wood to shore up that area.

The British agent watched as a tarpaulin was placed over the six cases of dynamite and tied down. They made sure the area was well roped off before they started the climb back to the surface.

McDonald watched the great cavern empty. All was quiet except for the distant sound of hammering and talking from the men in the smaller cave. He heard the voices of Thomas, Taylor, and Claire as they moved about on the deck of the Ark.

Then he went over to the stored dynamite and started to remove the tarpaulin.

*   *   *

When John Henry hit the frozen-over deck, the bow was curved to such an extreme rake that he slipped and fell onto his back. It seemed he slid for a hundred feet before his boot heels hit a higher object that arrested his sliding fall.

Then he heard a cry for help and before he knew it Claire smashed into him. She had done the same thing as he had just done.

“That first step is kind of tricky,” Thomas said as he gained his feet and then assisted Claire to hers. She brushed off her backside with as much dignity as she could and then was about to say something when an accursed shout came to her ears. Before she knew it she was back down on her butt and John Henry was sprawled on top of her. Taylor was laughing as he tried to pick himself up, fell on top of Thomas, and then was laughing so hard he was close to losing control. Meanwhile, John Henry and Claire were nose to nose.

“Now you know why I hate him.”

“Understandable, Colonel. Now, if you don’t wish rumors to start swirling about, may I suggest you move that pistol from my pelvic region and get the hell off of me?”

John Henry smiled widely and his old self emerged, a man he hadn’t seen or heard from in more than five years.

“Who said I was armed?”

With that, Claire pushed him off and he went flying backward into a laughing Taylor and they both fell once again.

Claire stood and started brushing the ice from herself once more, and then she stopped and saw the open doorway. It was partially covered by a thin sheet of ice, but there was a hole in that ice about as wide as a barrel.

Taylor and Thomas finally gained a little control and saw that Claire was standing rigid. They walked up and saw the portal into blackness. Taylor unhooked the oil lamp and then struck a match. The lamp flared to life and they saw what looked like a way to enter the Ark. All of a sudden the humor they felt a moment before had vanished as if it had never been.

John Henry moved Claire aside and struck out with his boot and caught the ice center mass. The thin sheet shattered like fine crystal and they were left staring into a darkness that none of them had ever experienced before. He reached over and took the lamp from Jessy and held it just inside the well of blackness.

“Any lions, tigers, or elephants in there, maybe a lost unicorn?” Taylor joked and both Thomas and Claire turned and looked at him in silence, finding the humor a little droll.

John Henry came back to reality and stepped inside the interior of the Ark.

*   *   *

Ollafson awoke from a nightmare that had shaken him to the core. He sat up from his bedroll and saw that he had been placed there after being drugged. He rubbed his eyes and thought about what had awakened him. He didn’t know and couldn’t remember anything other than the cold, icy hands of death as it caressed him and the others.

He shoved the thick blankets off him and in a panic he rummaged through the tent, tossing the last of McDonald’s personal property about. He finally found the satchel and hugged it to his chest. He fell back with the artifacts and took a deep breath as he felt inside for the strangely warm petrified wood of the planks. He started to doze off again after he knew his artifacts were secure, the drugs still affecting him.

After the professor’s eyes closed, the satchel started to smolder in his gloved hands. Soon it died down and then the tent’s front flap blew outward. A dark shadow shot from the tent and made for the excavation site.

*   *   *

“I’m just saying, my accounting would have been better, but that ship was moving so much I could hardly stand,” Jenks said in defense of his performance aboard the
Yorktown
when he and Grandee had put on their little show. Now it was his own brothers-in-arms giving him a hard time about the whooping he’d taken at the hands of the mess steward. Grandee heard the joking way in which they teased Jenks but continued to place the last of the wood over the small cave opening. When a particularly harsh barb was landed by another Reb, Grandee turned and confronted the men. The other mess stewards stopped working to watch, as did the six marines.