Echo breakthrough book 6, p.25
Echo (Breakthrough Book 6), page 25
Clay shifted his blue eyes to Goodwin. “Is it possible the island is uninhabited for a reason?”
The Englishman’s eyes were still fixed on the screen. “What’s the name of the island?”
Borger zoomed in. “Says it’s called Tana Almeida.”
“Doesn’t sound familiar.”
Caesare straightened and folded his arms. “You said the headstones in the cemetery being surrounded by the others was a symbol of honor.”
Goodwin nodded. “Or reverence.”
“Maybe it’s the same with the islands.”
Goodwin continued staring at Borger’s satellite picture, a fat elongated island with terrain that appeared rougher than the rest.
Pieces were falling into place again, but this time, the feeling in Goodwin’s stomach was notably different than before, one that was distinctly not jubilation.
“Professor?”
Goodwin blinked and looked at Clay.
“Possible?”
There was something oddly real about what he was looking at, what he was experiencing. It was as though all the layers of excitement or anticipation had suddenly been stripped away, exposing a sensation that felt much more like trepidation. Like raw, uncontrollable truth. As though history itself were in the process of revealing one of its deepest, darkest secrets; a brutal truth so emotional and alarming it now felt intensely unsettling.
It was in that moment Goodwin realized that through it all—the obscure legends, the decades of digging through long-forgotten records, the endless speculation about what had really occurred all those centuries ago—had merely been a means to his own ends, a way for Goodwin to convince himself that he was right, while everyone else was wrong.
Certainty. Vindication. All wrapped within a veil of personal obsession that was not at all what he was feeling now.
Had he contemplated the significance of what it would mean to actually find the Tabot? Yes. But he had still not managed to grasp its full meaning. No one could. Not through hypothetical musing. Not without knowing what reality would genuinely feel like. Not when the sheer unadulterated force of truth was bearing down upon you like the heat of the sun, burning through generations of sweat, toil and death. Echoes of the real sacrifice so many before him had been forced to bear.
Real truth. Bitter, ruthless and unforgiving.
“Professor?”
Goodwin blinked himself out of his trance, realizing he had turned back to the image of the island. When he spoke, his words were clear and unmistakable. “There is someone there.”
69
Negasi stared past the giant dashboard of the Humvee and out through the vehicle’s front windshield, watching absently as trees on either side of the road sped past in a blur, tall and powerful amongst the rest of the darkened landscape beneath the last breath of sunset.
The narrow two-lane road was no longer illuminated by sunlight, but now by the Humvee’s glaringly bright headlights stretching out over the endless and winding rocky asphalt. For what seemed the hundredth time, the first of five military vehicles slowed to take the next tight corner, back and forth, methodically making their way up the endless series of mountain switchbacks.
For Negasi and the Ethiopian President, in mere hours, the situation had changed considerably. Negasi’s mission had been simple before—silence Goodwin and the Americans if necessary before the turmoil embroiling the Tigray region grew out of control, which could happen overnight if the populace discovered the president’s plan of finding and seizing the Tabot in an attempt to solidify power over Ethiopia’s crumbling government, to destroy the wedges driving their ruling parties apart once and for all and dethroning the prime minister in the process.
The situation was now far too volatile to allow such a rumor out. Revolutions had a way of igniting from the inside from the most unexpected places, turning into unruly mobs which history had shown time and time again to be utterly unpredictable.
The safest and most sensible play was to simply kill Graham Goodwin and then decide whether the Americans would have to be silenced, too.
But now, after hearing the latest recording of their conversation from Axum, the stakes had wildly changed.
Was it possible the Tabot truly existed, that it had been hidden near Lake Tana the entire time?
The president was still a believer, even if Negasi wasn’t. But now Negasi wasn’t so sure. The new clues that had been unearthed with the help of the Americans had him doubting everything he’d thought he knew.
Was it truly possible? The ultimate hoax perpetrated by the Falashas? The group his country had spurned and ostracized for decades while in possession of the famed Tabot the entire time—the one artifact that could solidify a man’s claim to Ethiopian royalty, substantiating his power and preeminence not just in the citizens' eyes but in the eyes of the world.
Negasi continued gazing into the darkness, clutching the overhead handle as his driver slowed the giant vehicle for another sharp turn.
The situation had changed, as had the stakes, but not the plan. Goodwin still had to be silenced. And most likely, the Americans, too, after Negasi had extracted every last piece of information from them.
And there was no better place to hide a body, or five bodies, than in one enormous lake.
70
The look on the man’s face upon seeing one thousand American dollars was utter shock, evident in the glow beneath a single overhead lightbulb, the only person remaining at Bahir Dar’s small marina.
The man, Micah, snatched the money as fast as Clay had presented it, glancing about furtively before pulling the American into a surprisingly large maintenance shack.
Speaking just above a whisper, the man’s words were unintelligible to Clay, prompting Goodwin to step in and translate.
“He says he has several boats. You can take any of them.”
The Ethiopian, older and bald and sporting a thin gray beard, smiled broadly, producing a set of white teeth. He then moved to the wall and turned a key on a cabinet, pulling the door open with a squeak. Inside were a dozen or so sets of keys, all on small rings and hanging neatly across two rows of nails.
“My kind of guy,” Clay mused, then turned to find Caesare’s silhouette standing nearby in the darkness. “The bar is open.”
Caesare nodded, and without a word, he stepped out onto the wooden walkway and strolled out toward the small floating dock. One by one, he looked over each of the boats, varying in size from small to large. He stopped at two crafts that appeared to be touring boats. Methodically, he continued on before stopping again to closely examine another craft from bow to stern. Neely spoke up from behind him.
“Isn’t that one a little small?”
“A little.” He nodded. “But this one also has a trolling motor.”
“Planning to do some fishing, are we?”
“I’m a terrible fisherman.”
“Then what’s with the second motor?”
With a wink, he walked past her back toward the marina. “Redundancy.”
After gassing up, they climbed into what proved to be an even tighter squeeze than the monk’s boat, with Clay at the bow and Caesare manning the large outboard. The other four packed in side by side on the two middle benches, leaving Borger uncomfortably close to the edge.
“You did this on purpose,” he said, glowering.
Caesare smiled back at his friend in the darkness, flipped the large idling engine into reverse and backed them away from the dock. “It’s only funny once, Will.”
When far enough away, he switched again and began accelerating forward.
***
The evening tide was calmer than the afternoon, sporting only light ripples that allowed them to zip out into the open lake at nearly full throttle. Ideal conditions, given the several miles they had to travel in the dark with only enough moon overhead to spot something large in front of them.
At the front, Clay navigated using his phone, the screen’s brightness turned down to the lowest setting to avoid being spotted from Bahir Dar or any of the islands.
“You know,” said Neely over the roar of the outboard engine. “They can still hear us.”
Caesare winked again, just as he had on the dock. “If we get close enough.”
She didn’t have time to answer before Clay looked up from his phone and made a slicing motion across his neck, causing Caesare to let off the throttle and power down. He then immediately reached back and killed the engine altogether.
The water from the boat’s wake surged forward and rolled beneath them, lifting Caesare first as he began fiddling with the smaller trolling motor, attaching one of the dangling cables to a post of an insulated car battery at his feet. He studied the controls for a minute and flipped it on.
This time the acceleration was barely noticeable with the boat still coasting forward. Moments later, the rippling around the edge of the boat resumed, confirming they were once again underway.
Neely Lawton stared at Caesare with curiosity. “You said you wanted that for redundancy.”
“I did,” he answered. “It doesn’t hurt that it’s also electric and silent.”
***
When they neared the island, Will Borger gripped the edge of the boat with one hand and reached down to his feet with the other, retrieving the small yellow Geiger counter and placing it on his lap. He turned it on and was immediately met by a wave of loud clicking which gradually increased in pace as they drew closer to the island's outline, dark and silhouetted by the moonlight illuminating the water around it.
Without a word, Caesare steered the boat in the direction of Clay’s outstretched arm while still peering at his phone until a small gravel beach came into view. Caesare eventually eased the throttle back to a crawl upon approach and stopped the propeller altogether when less than twenty feet from the rippling surf. Slow and quiet, but not enough to prevent the gravel-sized pebbles from scraping loudly against the bottom of the hull when they came to a stop.
Immediately, Clay was out, splashing in knee-deep water and steadying the boat from its bow as it rocked gently in the water.
“Everyone out on this side. One at a time.”
Knee-deep for Clay was thigh-high to the others as they piled out from the middle, followed by Caesare, who walked forward and calmly jumped out near the front, grabbing a frayed nylon rope as he exited along with the boat’s makeshift anchor made from a plastic milk jug filled with sand. After dropping the jug with a thud, Caesare gently eased the boat off the pebbled shore and turned to face Clay and the others.
No one spoke. They all remained still, waiting for Clay, while Borger quietly lowered the volume on his Geiger counter.
When Clay finally looked up from his phone, he scanned the surroundings one last time and slid the device into his pocket. “What do you think, Will?”
“There’s definitely radiation here. But a short visit shouldn’t hurt us.”
“How short is short?” asked Goodwin.
“A couple hours, tops.”
“Wonderful.”
Neely turned to Li Na. “Any ideas?”
The teenager shook her head silently. “It’s everywhere.”
“This is a strange pattern,” said Borger, listening to the Geiger counter. “But it doesn’t sound especially powerful, which makes me think whatever the source is, there may be something shielding it.”
“Like what?”
“Rock, maybe. But it would have to be pretty dense. Maybe even underground.”
Clay nodded and turned to study the wall of shadowed foliage before them. “We can’t cover the entire island in two hours. Let’s take the middle and see if we can eliminate one side or the other. If so, we can then begin carving out cross-sections.” He looked down and activated the light on his watch. “If we don’t have something in ninety minutes, we leave.” He began walking, then paused and turned back around. “And we can’t use any lights here, so be careful where you step.”
The small island's interior was rougher than expected, presenting several obstacles in the form of large rock outcroppings the group had to scale or traverse a way around, carefully feeling with their hands and using short, tentative steps. Everything was beneath a patchwork of gangly trees serving to block most of the available moonlight. Clay led the way, attempting to navigate a line through the island's body, finally halting when the clicking on Borger’s counter unexpectedly intensified.
All five stopped and watched as Borger swung the small rod out in a wide arc, sweeping in front of him, before turning around and repeating the process.
“Got a direction?”
He shook his head. “Not yet. We need to go a little farther in, I think.”
Clay motioned to Caesare, then turned and looked for a way up a side incline, taking Borger with him. They trudged uphill until both men disappeared through a mass of bushes.
Neely examined the dense foliage around them and turned to the teenager. “Everything okay?”
Li Na was staring past her into the darkness. “There are no animals on this island. Or insects.”
Goodwin stared at Neely in the darkness. “How does she know that?”
“Women’s intuition.”
Neely’s reply was short, not from irritation but distraction—and concern.
If whatever was on this island was indeed related to the alien ship, something might be wrong. The ship, the hidden caves of alien DNA, even the green liquid they’d first discovered in Guyana all had the opposite effect. They attracted vast amounts of flora and fauna, providing a giant boost to their growth and vitality. Borger had even once said he thought the liquid could be both a nutrient and an energy source, explaining why the dolphins had located their massive birthing ground so close to the hidden ship. It turned the entire environment into something extraordinarily fertile. Plants grew three times their normal size and various aquatic life showed signs of advanced regenerative capabilities.
So why then would this island be devoid of animals or insects? What was different about this piece of the alien ship? Unless…that’s not what this was.
After a few minutes, Borger came to a stop behind Clay. “It’s getting weaker.”
“Okay, let’s head back.”
Thrashing back through the bushes, they returned to the group and climbed another small incline on the opposite side, disappearing again without a word.
Several minutes later, Clay returned and motioned silently for the others to follow him.
When they all reached Borger, he was standing still, slowly waving the counter back and forth.
“The clicking is faster and louder, but there’s no indication of which direction to go from here.”
“Then let’s keep straight.”
Another ten minutes again brought them to a stop, this time before a large mass of dark rock which towered roughly fifteen feet above their heads and stretched off into the darkness in both directions.
“Now what?”
Clay checked the map on his phone and shook his head. “Hard to tell on here.” He peered up, left then right, before rechecking his watch.
It was taking too long. At this rate, they would only cover a fraction of the island before having to turn back.
As if reading his mind, Caesare stepped forward and whispered to Clay. “You and I could do this faster if we were alone.”
“I know.”
“Uh…Clay?”
Both turned toward Borger’s silhouette standing near the rock wall.
“What is it?”
Borger’s shadow stepped forward and moved the Geiger counter rod closer to the wall. “This is interesting.”
The clicking on the counter increased, then slowed again as Borger stepped back. He brought the rod forward again and the clicking re-intensified. He then stepped back and followed the rock upward. “How big do you think this thing is?”
“It’s hard to tell.”
Borger nodded. “How thick do you think this rock is?”
It was a rhetorical question. There was no way to know. They could only guess at the circumference.
Borger began moving again, staying close to the wall, and pushing past Clay and Caesare. He kept his left hand on the rock while grasping the rod in his right along with the Geiger unit, carefully searching for footing as he continued out of sight.
The others followed, remaining several feet behind but keeping Borger in sight. It wasn’t difficult. Borger remained the most visible of all of them due to the reflection of the moonlight on his colorful shirt.
They all stopped in their tracks when the Geiger counter suddenly erupted.
71
“Whoa,” whispered Borger. He moved his right hand and the rod out ahead of him. “We’re getting a lot more…right here. If I were a betting man, I would say this rock in front of us just got less dense.”
Clay looked at Caesare. “Maybe an opening?”
Borger marched forward through a tall patch of weeds, remaining close to the wall. “All the way over–” He stopped abruptly when the activity on the counter slowed again. “…here,” he finished. Turning back, he said, “From there to here. Maybe eight feet.”
Both men stomped forward and examined the dark stone in the shadows, where rough crags covered the entire surface.
Clay’s hand stopped when he fingered something, and he raised his other hand to examine the same spot. “Feels like a small crevice here,” he whispered. “Stretching across…” he slowly inched forward, “and down.”
Next to him, Caesare found it too—a small gap just wide enough for his fingertips. He turned and looked over his shoulder.
“Li Na?”
The girl stepped forward and placed a hand on the rock. “It is very strong here,” she acknowledged. She remained still for a moment with her eyes closed before suddenly opening them and jumping back from the wall.
