Dwayne and Caroline watched in silence from the shade of the hide, Dwayne through the 30x on Jimbo’s rifle and Caroline from the high-power binoculars set on a tripod. Caroline made inarticulate noises that made Dwayne look over at her.
“This is so awesome,” she whispered with eyes glued to the binoculars.
“Geek,” he said.
“Isn’t this exciting? Aren’t you excited?”
“Just remember we’re not watching the History Channel. We’re on the History Channel.”
“Yeah. I know.” She put her eyes to the binoculars again.
The temperature had fallen overnight. Caroline was in a set of Jimbo’s desert camos, with the cuffs rolled up and the waist cinched tight. The shirttail of her bulky Manchester United jersey hung almost to mid-thigh. Dwayne was in a black t-shirt with the NRA symbol on it and baggy swim trunks.
Shouts and calls reached them over the water. The boat was too far away to make out words which neither of them could understand anyway. It sounded like any other navy crew to Dwayne. Their SEAL buddy Boats would have been right at home down there bellowing in Amharic and obscenities.
Through the scope, Dwayne could see the crew aboard the bireme setting up a block and tackle off the shoreward bulkhead. Men leaped into the azure water and paddled about. They were dark men with either shaved heads or manes of long braided hair. And all the swimmers were buck naked. Dwayne was struck by how skinny they were. There wasn’t an ounce of body fat visible on them, and their arms and shoulders were covered in skeins of stringy muscle. Many of them were marked with black tattoos on their arms and torsos. They were too far away for Dwayne to make out any details. Some of the swimmers were children—rail-thin young boys.
The crew lowered a raft from davits set into the thick planking along the gunwale of the upper oar deck. The raft had some kind of cargo tied down with lines and netting. Dwayne could see that it was a box of some kind. It was the size of a chest of drawers and banded in broad iron straps. A large gang of men gripped the lines that ran through the blocks. From their strained effort, he could guess that the box was a heavy one. It was the treasure they came for. It had to be. He heard Caroline catch her breath.
The men in the water steadied the raft as it settled in the water and climbed aboard to let loose the hauling lines. They used their hands as paddles while others remained in the water and kicked their feet with hands clinging to the seaward end of the raft. The incoming waves carried them toward shore, and they were soon out of sight around a brow of rock that jutted from the spire of rock at the foot of the peninsula.
“We can’t see them,” Caroline said.
“We know they’re taking the goodies to that beach,” Dwayne said.
“Which is a good ten acres in area and will be under fifty feet of water two thousand years from now.”
“I know. We’ll need a more accurate fix. We can go down after they’ve left.”
“And who knows how long that will be? We need to see them bury it.”
“I’ll get a better view,” Dwayne said. “But you have to stay put.”
“I will,” she said.
“I mean it,” he said.
“What did I say?” she said.
“All right,” Dwayne said. He snapped on a belt with his combat knife sheathed on it. He slung the digital camera around his neck and shoved his long-slide .45 auto into his waistband.
“Don’t lose the camera or the gun,” she said. “We’re risking enough eco-chronal compromise here as it is.”
“Eco-what? Did you make up that word or is it one of Morris’?” Dwayne said as he slipped from beneath the tarp.
“It’s a good word,” she said and turned her eyes back to watch the action on the beach.
Dwayne climbed down the rear of the slope. Near the base he crept behind a high dune, keeping the ridge and scrub pines between him and the bireme out in the water three football fields away. He found a dip in the dune wall and lay prone in the seagrass, using the telescoping lens of the camera to watch the beach. From his new angle, he could see around that spine of rock and had most of the beach in view.
The box lay up on the sand where the swimmers dumped it. The netting still lay atop it. Some of the swimmers were wading back into the surf, dragging the empty raft bouncing high on the rollers. The water rose around them, and they piloted the raft back toward the anchored vessel, kicking up the foam with their legs.
At the bireme, some men climbed down from the main deck and boarded the raft. These guys wore more clothes than the others but not by much. There were belted singlets like the kind Caroline thought he and Jimbo should wear. Some wore loincloths twisted around to barely cover their asses. A few had on sandals, and a couple wore girdles with weapons buckled on. Just daggers, from the look of them.
The tallest guy had a wicked-looking ax resting over his shoulder on a long handle. Another had a short sword in a shiny brass sheath on his waist. The guy with the sword was remarkable because he wasn’t as thin as the others. A braided beard dappled with gray hung down to his round belly. He wore some kind, of wristlets studded with metal or stones that caught the sunlight. Dwayne assumed the gut, the sword, and the accessories made him the captain, or maybe the boat’s owner.
