Buccaneer (Dane Maddock Adventures) by David Wood Read Free Book Online

seventeen. The entrance was well hidden in the midst of large, jagged rocks where the surf ’ s ebb and f low surged with relentless force. He led the way, swimming confidently through the perilous passage.
    A few feet inside the tunnel the light melted away. Dane flipped on his dive light, setting the passageway aglow. Like all the others they had explored, the passage was wide enough for a man to swim through comfortably, the way irregular, and the rough ed ges worn smooth over time. This time, though, something immediately caught his eye.
    A groove, two inches thick, had been carved up each side of the entrance and across the bottom. There was no way it was natural — the lines too sharp and straight, the groove almost perfectly square. His first thought was someone had slid planks into this groove to form a cofferdam.
    “ Matt, do you see this? ” he asked through the transmitter. The long-range communication devices were state-of-the-art, and came courtesy of Charlie ’ s generosity.
    “ Yeah. Looks like someon e tried to block this channel . Pirates? ” He said the last in a comic, throaty growl.
    “ Or treasure hunters. Charlie isn ’ t the first to try to dam up the channels under the island. ”
    “ You, my friend, are no fun. ”
    Grinning behind his mask, Dane led the way into the passageway, which ran back only about forty feet before it made a sharp bend to the left and came to a dead end.
    “ That was easy, ” Matt said. “ We ’ ll check this one off the list and be back on deck, drinking a cold one, before Bones and Willis drag their soggy carcasses back. ”
    “ Hold on. ” Dane played his light slowly up and down the wall that blocked their way. He saw immediately that it wasn ’ t like the sides of the passage. Instead of a smooth, regular surface, a pile of rubble blocked their way. A thorough inspection revealed an opening at the top, and darkness beyond.
    “ Think we can make it through? ” Matt moved alongside him, reached out, and gave the topmost rock a shove. It gave an inch. “ I think we can move it. ”
    Dane nodded and together they worked the stone, which was the size of a small microwave oven, free, and let it fall. Matt vanished from sight as a cloud of silt roiled in the water.
    “ There ’ s no current carrying it away, ” Dane observed. “ I don ’ t think this tunnel goes much farther. ”
    “ Then there ’ s no point in wasting time waiting for things to clear up. Let ’ s keep working. ”
    Three large stones later, they had cleared a space large enough for one man to swim through. After securing one end of a strong cord to a length of branch that jutted up from the pile of rubble, Dane went in first. He held on to the rope in case he lost his way and moved slowly due to the limited visibility, not wanting to injure himself or damage his equipment on an unseen snag. As he cleared the pile of debris, he felt a tug on the cord and knew Matt was behind him.
    As he had predicted, the passage did not extend much farther, perhaps another forty feet, before it came to another dead end. This time, it wasn ’ t a pile of stones blocking their way.
    “ Holy crap! ” Matt ’ s voice was dull with disbelief.
    The twin beams of their dive lights shone against a wall of stone, and a carving of a Templar cross .

Chapter 6
     
    Morgan plucked the phone from its receiver on the first blink. Her sisters never answered immediately, thinking it a subtle way of showing they had more important things to do than to take a telephone call. She brooked no such nonsense. She was a firm believer in immediate, positive action in all things, even the smallest.
    “ Yes? ”
    “ Locke is here, Ma ’ am. He wishes to speak with you if you will consent. ”
    “ Of course. ” She hung up the phone, closed the file folder she had been reviewing, and stared expectantly at the door, which opened a moment later. Jacob knew  her philosophy on wasting time, and made a point not to do so. He