Chapter 13

CHAPTER 13

I DON'T THINK I totally lost consciousness. But I felt wobbly and out of it. I did my best to shake it off. A few seconds later, Kira started to stir beside me.

"We should have known," she said, rubbing her head.

"Booby trap."

She nodded.

Clearly, the knockout gas had lost some of its punch over the last century. Impressive that it still worked at all.

We got back on our feet. Slowly. I still felt a little woozy. I looked over at Kira.

"Now what?"

We only had one chest open. Four more to go. I was dying to know what was inside each of them, but I wasn't ready to pass out every time. I thought about the gas mask back on the Albatross , but I wasn't sure the filter was still any good.

No matter. Kira was working on a more immediate solution.

"Look," she said. "It's probably a contact spray. Only effective up close." She grabbed a shovel. "Hold your breath!" I filled my lungs and clamped my mouth shut. Kira did the same.

She jammed the shovel blade under the lid of the second chest and flipped it open. Then she went right down the row, one chest after the other. Sure enough, every time a lid popped up, I could hear the same little hiss.

At the end of the row, Kira threw the shovel down and pointed back toward the entrance. We ran back through the arch and stuck our heads in front of the hole we came in through. I felt a warm breeze on my face. We both exhaled and took in deep gulps of fresh air.

To be on the safe side, we waited a few minutes to let the gas dissipate. Then we made our way back toward the chamber.

I went in first and took a few tentative sniffs.

"My own personal canary," said Kira.

A few seconds later, I was still standing. "Seems fine."

We crossed to the first chest and took our first real look inside. The chest was about four feet wide and three feet high. I leaned down. Inside were a pile of scientific notebooks and rolled blueprints. It smelled like musty paper. I pulled out a few of the blueprints and placed one on the ground. Kira hung over my shoulder as I unrolled it, revealing a detailed drawing.

"That's ominous," she said.

She was right. The blueprint showed some kind of massive electronic cannon on a rotating turret. The margin had a chart of ballistic ranges. I flipped the plan aside and unrolled the next. This one had designs for a rocket that looked a lot like a German V-2. Another showed a schematic for a laser-firing satellite. Then I started flipping through the notebooks. More of the same. Designs for death and destruction on every page.

"Superweapons," I said. "Large-scale killing machines."

Kira nodded. "All invented by Doc Savage—but never built. This is the stuff John Sunlight was after. He wouldn't have had any qualms about building the weapons and using them. He was that ruthless. That sick."

I put the notebooks down and looked in the next chest. This one looked like it was filled with military gear. A utility vest. A set of rudimentary body armor. Camouflage clothing. A bizarre metal skullcap.

At the bottom of the chest was a leather case. I pulled it out and set it down on the sand. I flicked the latches. I glanced at Kira. We both held our breaths again and turned our faces away.

I lifted the top. No hiss.

I looked inside the case and poked through the contents. A collection of wigs. An assortment of false beards and mustaches. A set of contact lenses in different colors. Adhesive patches with simulated wounds and scars.

"Should we save this stuff for Denise?" I asked.

Kira waved her hand in front of her nose. Then it hit me, too. A funky stench. Probably all that fake hair. I closed the lid.

Clearly, plans for diabolical weapons were not the only things Doc stored here. This was the stuff he used to pretend he was somebody else.

We kept going. Another chest. Then another…

It took us an hour to sort through everything. Uniforms, masks, badges, maps, pistols…

I reached into the bottom of the last chest and felt something hard and flat inside a piece of burlap. I pulled it out and unwrapped it.

My pulse rate shot up.

Inside the fabric was a cutlass with a curved steel blade, about two feet long. It looked hundreds of years old, maybe a thousand.

I turned it back and forth in my hand. "Look at this thing!"

The blade was polished like a mirror. But that wasn't the most impressive part. The pommel and hand guard were encrusted with jewels. Sapphires. Emeralds. Rubies. Diamonds. Even in the dim light, the stones glowed and glittered.

"This is worth a fortune!" I said.

"Maybe that's why he stashed it here," said Kira. "Like cash under the mattress." She reached over just as I flicked the blade up. It caught the soft pad just below her thumb.

"Jesus! Sorry!" I dropped the cutlass and reached for Kira's hand. A small trickle of blood oozed out. She jerked away and pressed her other palm against the cut. "Not your fault," she said. "I got careless."

"I can't believe it held an edge this long."

"Better than a Ginsu knife."

I suddenly felt very tired. It had been a long day. I craved fresh air. I looked toward the entrance. "I think it's time to get out of here."

"Good idea," said Kira.

I grabbed the cutlass.

"Wrap that thing up," she said. "It's dangerous."