Spartan Gold

Suddenly dead on the bow, a towering rock wall veined with rivulets of whitewater appeared in the fog. The waves, stacking atop one another in the shoals beneath them, lifted the raft and shoved them forward.

“Sam!” Remi rasped quietly.

“Hold on! Drop flat!”

The spire loomed before the bow. Sam waited until the raft dropped into a trough, then twisted the throttle to its stops and pushed it hard right. The propeller bit down, shooting them toward the spire before veering away. The rock swept past on the left and disappeared in the gloom. Sam drove on for a ten count, then throttled down again. They listened.

“Closer on the right, I think,” Remi whispered.

“Sounds closer on the left to me,” Sam replied.

“Toss a coin?”

“No chance. Your ears are better than mine,” he said, and steered left.

“Stop,” Remi called ten seconds later. “Do you feel that?”

“Yeah,” he replied, looking around.

The raft was moving sideways, and gaining speed. They felt their stomachs rise into their throats as the raft was lifted on another crest. Ten feet to the right they caught a glimpse of jagged rock and then it was gone, lost in the fog.

“Paddles,” Sam called, and grabbed his from the floor of the raft. In the bow, Remi did the same. “Sharp eyes . . . ” Sam muttered.

“Behind you!” Remi called.

Sam turned, paddle coming up in his hands like a spear.

The spire was right there, within arm’s reach.

He slammed the tip of the paddle into the rocks, then leaned all his weight into it and pushed, but the wave was too powerful and the raft simply rotated around the pivot point the paddle created.

“Coming around,” he called between clenched teeth.

“Got it!”

Remi was already moving, turning on her knees to face the other side, her paddle raised and ready. With a splintering thunk she slammed it into the rocks. The raft, its momentum slightly slowed, bounced off the rock and spun again.

Sam leaned back, dropping his center of gravity back into the raft, and reached for the throttle. His hand was halfway there when he felt his stomach rising again and heard the suddenly unmuffled whirring of the motor as the raft’s tail end came out of the water.

He had only a fraction of a second to call “Remi” before he felt himself tossed into the air. Knowing the rock was close, but not how close, he turned his head, looking for it. Then out of the fog he saw it rushing toward his face.

CHAPTER 36

Seconds or minutes or hours later Sam felt his mind groping back toward consciousness. One by one his senses started to return, begi

Hair, he thought, hair brushing my face. Coconut and almonds.

Remi’s shampoo.

He forced open his eyes and found himself staring into her upside-down face. He looked around. He was lying in the bottom of the raft, his head resting on her lap.

He cleared his throat. “Are you okay?” he asked.

“Am I okay?” Remi whispered. “I’m fine, you dummy. You’re the one that almost drowned.”

“What happened?”

“You slammed headfirst into the spire, that’s what happened. I looked over just as you started to slip into the water. I threw you the line. You hadn’t blacked out yet. I shouted at you to grab the line and you did. I reeled you in.”

“How long have I been out?”

“Twenty, twenty-five minutes.”

He squeezed his eyes shut. “My head hurts.”

“You’ve got a gash in your hairline; it’s pretty long, but not very deep.”

Sam reached and probed with his fingertips, finding a stretchable bandage wrapped around the upper part of his forehead.

“How’s your vision?” Remi asked.

“Everything’s dark.”

“That’s a good sign; it’s night. Okay, how many fingers am I holding up?”

Sam groaned. “Come on, Remi, I’m fine—”

“Humor me.”

“Sixteen.”

“Sam.”

“Four fingers. My name is Sam and you’re Remi and we’re floating in a raft in the Black Sea trying to steal a bottle of wine from Napoleon’s Lost Cellar from a mafia kingpin. Satisfied?”

She gave him a quick peck on the lips. “You’re right on all counts except the raft part.”

“What?”

“After I pulled you in, I beached us. I’m not sure where we are.”

“You navigated through the rest of the spires? Heck, you should have been driving the whole time.”

“Dumb luck and desperation.”

“Sounds like a good name for a boat. How is it, by the way? The raft, I mean.”

“No leaks that I could find. We’re still seaworthy.”

“What time is it?”

“Just after midnight. Feel up to having a look around?”

More remarkable even than Remi having picked her way through the spires without suffering so much as a scratch was that she’d found the patch of shale beach on which the raft now rested. Measuring no more than ten feet deep and twenty feet wide, the beach narrowed in both directions to stone paths no more than two feet wide.

Once Sam was on his feet and had shaken out the cobwebs, they first set out to the south, but found the way blocked by a rock wall after only a few hundred yards. To the north they fared better, walking almost a half mile before coming across a rickety wooden stairway set into the cliff. They climbed to the top and looked around.

Here, high above the ocean’s surface, the brisk wind had driven the fog away, but far below, the ocean was still shrouded in mist. Using the compass, they got their bearings. Sam said, “Well, you either headed farther south of the estate or past it to the north. How long was it until you found the beach?”

“Twenty minutes. But I made several loops, I’m sure, so don’t count on that.”

“How was the current?”

“For the most part, choppy and almost dead on the bow.”

“Probably headed south, then.” Sam lifted the binoculars and started sca

“In fact, I do. There it is,” she replied and pointed. Sam looked down her outstretched arm. “Wait for it,” Remi whispered.

A few seconds passed, then in the darkness a single white light pulsed.

“No more than two miles away,” Sam said. “We’re still in business.”

Ten minutes later they were back in the water and motoring north, taking care this time to keep within hearing distance of the waves hissing against the cliff face. It was slack tide now and the swells were slow and rolling, but still Sam and Remi were keenly aware that somewhere to their left were the spires. Ebb tide or not, neither of them wanted to risk another run through the labyrinth.

After thirty minutes of travel, Sam throttled down and let the raft coast forward. Remi looked over her shoulder, a questioning look on her face. Sam held a cupped hand to his ear and pointed off the bow and whispered, “Boat.”

The rumble of a high-powered engine at near idle echoed through the fog, seemingly crossing from left to right somewhere ahead of them. There came the squelch of a radio, then a ti

Ten seconds passed.

To their right, a spotlight glowed to life in the haze and began tracking over the water nearer the beach. After thirty seconds the light popped off and the boat began moving off, heading back the way Sam and Remi had come.

“Bondaruk’s guards?” Remi whispered.

“Or a Ukrainian navy coastal patrol,” Sam replied. “Either way, they’re someone we don’t want to run into. If it is part of Bondaruk’s security, we can take it as a good omen.”

“How’s that?”