Deep Gold: A Chase Gordon Tropical Thriller (Chase Gordon Tropical Thrillers Book 3) by Douglas Pratt

Deep Gold: A Chase Gordon Tropical Thriller (Chase Gordon Tropical Thrillers Book 3) by Douglas Pratt

Author:Douglas Pratt [Pratt, Douglas]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2021-06-14T16:00:00+00:00


18

We stood over the hole we had created this morning. Once we found the passage was sealed, we spent a few minutes beating the bricks with other rocks. Our progress was exhausting, and after a few minutes, we realized that the prudent course would be to return to Talitha and find some more appropriate tools.

When dawn broke, we were already loading a couple of small sledge hammers and a hatchet stored in the yacht’s engine room. The work moved fast as I pounded away at the bricks. Within two hours, the ground opened before us, and a dark shaft sank into the ground.

My legs straightened from where I had been squatting on the ground as I took in the breeze that cooled my sweaty skin. If I had a fedora, I would have donned it in a most adventurous manner as I stood over our excavation.

Rikki was pulling a coil of rope from her pack. We felt like the only people in the world, and from our vantage point, we could see a complete circle around the island. There was not a boat, plane, or person in view. We might as well have been the last couple on Earth.

“Do you want me to go down first?” she asked, reiterating the plan we came up with last night.

“Yes,” I confirmed. “I’ll lower you, at least until you can drive a few pitons into the walls.”

She laid out a couple of steel spikes with an eye on the end. As I let her down the shaft, Rikki would drive those pitons into the rock wall. Once they were secure, she could rappel down, leaving more pitons anchored on the way. Once she was down, I’d have to descend on my own.

Rikki drove a single piton into the ground and threaded her rope through it. With it secured to the piton, she dropped the remaining 200 feet of cord into the abyss. I wrapped my arm around the rope, gathering up some slack.

“Don’t drop me,” she ordered with a smile.

Her jest was just that. While anything like this has some risk, we were going down as safely as possible. My holding the line was only going to help her get the next couple of pitons driven into the wall.

She grabbed my cheeks in one of her hands and squeezed my face, puckering my lips. She kissed me through her laughter, took a step back, and dropped into the hole. The rope tightened around my arm, but the first spike she’d anchored held her weight.

Metal striking metal echoed out of the shaft. The rope twisted in my hand as Rikki moved around the cavern.

“One!” she shouted from underground.

More tinging as the hammer pounded against the next spike.

“Two!”

“Secure!” she informed me. “Let me go on three! One, two, three!”

The rope dropped from my hand as she pushed off the wall and released the grip on the brake she held in her hand. The slack in the line fell with her, and once she squeezed the brake, her descent stopped.



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