Kill The Willing Read online

  6

  No killers around so far. Well, other than me.

  A quick aerial drone inspection of the area revealed no one remotely suspicious, and the only other people out on the lake were two older men on the other end. They were already pulling their rowboat out of the water and didn’t look like a concealed threat.

  She’d been able to roll her truck to the edge of the lake and unload all her equipment without having to deal with anything more troublesome than a stiff breeze.

  It was like the universe wanted her to find treasure that day, and Shay wasn’t one to question the universe.

  “Your will is my command,” she said, and chuckled as she got out of the black truck, stretching her legs.

  She eyed a few bent pine and spruce trees near the lakeshore and the line of younger trees planted after the loggers left. The place must have been stripped bare at one point. She could see how so many logs ended up in the bottom of the lake.

  Shay surveyed the area with the drone, taking one last look around to make sure no one was nearby. But, just because no one else was there right now didn’t guarantee that no one was coming. Shay decided not to waste a lot of time. Time to go after her target. She sent the relay drone into the dense green water, followed by her main scouting drone.

  Okay, my coordinates are right, and we’ve got three possible spots based on that satellite data cross-referenced with my other info. This should be relatively easy.

  Shay tapped a few commands into her phone and slipped on AR goggles to sync with the drone’s cameras. Even if she couldn’t use the goggles in the water, they’d at least make the search process with the drone a little easier.

  The drone quickly disappeared beneath the surface. Shay switched on its lights and watched through the drone’s cameras as it descended from the well-lit top layer of the lake.

  She tensed at movement in the left corner of the drone’s field of view.

  Am I already too late?

  Shay turned the drone to the left, hoping to get a clear view of her competitor. She didn’t see a mercenary or diver. Instead, she saw a fish hurrying away from the drone.

  Yeah, you better run. She chuckled to herself and took even deep breaths. Steady.

  The seconds passed as the drone dropped even lower. She spotted more than a few more fish, but nothing human or even humanoid. No lake monsters for that matter.

  A deep darkness swallowed the drone as it hit the lower depths, only allowing Shay to see what was floating nearby through an eerie tunnel of light via the AR googles.

  The drone closed in on the first location three hundred feet down as she activated more lights to illuminate the area.

  “Come on, treasure. Don’t be anno… What the hell? Are those…?”

  She maneuvered the drone closer to the lake bed. Shay stared at the screen, unable to accept what she was seeing on the bottom of the supposedly pristine lake. Not gold, jewels, or magical eagle pins, but several large cracked open crates filled with empty beer bottles. Environmental assholes. Nothing new. The labels were long gone, but she could make out words embedded in the glass itself.

  Stiegl? Congrats. You guys are still around. Good for you.

  Shay shook her head, annoyed and switched the drone’s sensors to cold thermal view. She couldn’t make out anything else of interest. The beer bottles had to be from jerkwads partying on the lake and not some sort of mystical artifacts. Then again calling a Nazi a jerkwad was redundant.

  Maybe I’ll be kicking myself in a few weeks when I read something about how a bunch of genies were trapped in beer bottles by Nazis.

  She sighed and began maneuvering the drone to the next set of coordinates.

  Her heart almost leapt out of her chest as she spotted someone in a diving suit with a spherical helmet, their head down and their arm flapping behind their back. She stopped the drone’s movement waiting for the other person to act. The seconds ticked by, and she realized it wasn’t an arm flapping, but a torn air hose.

  Shay nudged the drone forward, shining the lights more clearly on the head. She winced as the lights highlighted a fleshless skull. Whoever the poor son of a bitch had been, he’d been dead a long time before she’d shown up. The bulky diving suit dated the ill-fated attempt to the forty years prior to her attempt.

  Closer examination with the drone revealed tears in the suit, and huge cracks on the other side of the helmet.

  “Rest in peace, you poor bastard. Sorry it didn’t work out for you, but I brought better toys.”

  Shay took a deep breath and moved the drone away from the skeletal diver remains to continue toward her next destination.

  Unlike the accessible crates of beer bottles, a twisted mass of rotted logs rested, layered one on top of each other at the second set of coordinates, blocking any direct access to the lake bed. “A giant set of pick-up-sticks.”

  A few minutes of searching located a small hole that allowed the drone to slip inside. The latest treasure wasn’t crates with empty beer bottles but a pair of rusted SCUBA tanks. Not a good sign for someone. At least this time there were no remains.

  “How many people have died in this damned lake?”

  Shay rubbed her neck, taking off the goggles and letting her eyes adjust once more to the daylight. The evidence piling up suggested the only thing people found in Lake Toplitz was nothing but trouble.

  Her satellite data showed one more location of interest to the right. Searching the entire bottom of the lake might take days, if not weeks even with all her fancy tech, and that only increased the chance that some annoying asshole would show up with a huge team of divers and an entire navy of drones. Things had a way of happening like that when hunting for artifacts.

  Shay trooped over to the truck and looked inside at a crate resting in the back that had a false bottom. Her weapons were stored inside there to avoid suspicion. She weighed her odds. A small arms defense of her site was one thing, but the area was frequented by tourists, and they tended to report things going boom to local authorities.

  The harsh reality was that puttering around the bottom of the lake to find the fucking treasure could end as successfully as every other attempt had throughout the decades. Minus the lake becoming her last resting place, an important distinction.

  Even worse for her chances to have a lucrative career as a tomb raider, Shay had to consider the possibility she might have interpreted the data wrong.

  Damn it. Maybe my gut was off. One more thing for the list I won’t be sharing with Peyton. Screw his better business model, whatever the fuck it is. I still have one decent chance.

  Shay started maneuvering the drone to the last of her three likely locations. She let out an exasperated growl and walked back to the edge of the lake. “Fuck giving up,” she muttered as she put the goggles back on.

  She moved the drone to another location, revealing another tangle of rotted logs and vegetation, liberally covered by sediment. This time her metal scout had an easier time sliding through the logs. There was a wide access point, more than large enough for a certain sexy tomb raider to don the scuba gear and follow the drone’s path if there were anything worth recovering.

  Shay slowed the drone. The sunken logs formed a navigable underwater maze, but their stability looked questionable. She didn’t want to bump anything and risk collapsing the whole thing, burying any treasure down there for another few decades. Minutes passed as she piloted the drone through the maze to the lakebed, turning left, a sharp right, straight ahead, left again. Her lips were pressed together in a thin line as she concentrated, taking in every detail.

  “Wait… what do we have here?”

  Four metal lockboxes lay half-embedded in the mud, two small, two large. The larger two were cracked open, the reflected gleam of the light on gold bars, even obvious through the AR googles.

  “This is promising. Very promising.” Shay allowed herself a grin.

  See, Peyton. Never doubt the gut.

  Not an artifact but still gol
d. Even a single gold bar makes the trip worthwhile, despite what she’d said to Peyton. “One little hiccup,” she muttered.

  There was no convenient way to grab more than a few at a time, given their weight. Each bar would weigh twenty-seven pounds, the standard four hundred troy ounces. The two smaller lockboxes didn’t appear large enough to contain any gold bars, but that only made her heart race faster and a wider grin spread across her face.

  The boxes couldn’t fit gold bars, but they could fit a few pieces of magical pins.

  Shay kept exploring the small pocket in the log maze with the drone to make sure she wasn’t overlooking anything but there was no more to be found. “Four boxes, four chances.”

  She piloted the drone until it was out of the maze again, even though it took excruciating minutes. The fewer things in her way once she hit the water, the better.

  The tomb raider pulled off the googles, blinking her eyes and headed back toward the truck. It was time to put on her diving gear and grab herself some treasure.

  Shay took slow, deliberate breaths as she headed toward the log maze, slowing down her heart rate and getting ready for the dive. She was going to make it out of the operation with some serious gold, and if she really got lucky, she might find the pin.

  Even though each gold bar was worth over half a million dollars, it still wouldn’t be enough to make her reputation in the high-tier tomb raider community. She needed that pin. The gold would be a nice consolation prize though.

  Her high-pressure diving suit was rated up to four hundred feet, giving her more than enough of a margin of error since the lake bottomed out at just over three hundred. Even though the suit wasn’t any bulkier than a normal wet suit, its stiffness limited her movements. She had a good hour of air in her tank, with several more tanks in the truck if she needed to make more trips.

  Confidence filled her as she swam toward the entrance to the log maze. That confidence vanished as she approached where her drone had entered. She flipped her light on and off just to be sure. There was no doubt.

  Shit. Seriously? I thought you wanted me to the find the treasure, universe.

  The logs had shifted during her swim from the surface. She groaned and tilted her head up and down, looking for some other access point. Nothing. The lockboxes were there, beneath the annoying ass logs, with gold bars at the minimum, if not a damned magical artifact.

  I’d take fighting off twenty mercenaries over this shit. It’s not like I can kill these damned logs.

  Shay swam around the logs from left to right, taking the time to carefully examine possible openings, testing the logs but couldn’t find a new entrance. She floated silently in front of them, a school of small fish swimming between her and the logs as she grew calm, patiently considering the possibilities.

  More than a few of the logs lay balanced precariously on the others. A simple push or two could get her access to the interior, or it could result in a collapse of wood and mud on top of the treasure.

  No fucking choice. Great.

  Shay took a deep breath and swam down to a spot where only a few logs crisscrossed each other. She reached over and shoved at a log. Nothing happened. Good and bad news. She swam down further and pushed at another log. It rolled a few inches, just enough to clear the logs it was sitting on, and sank toward the bottom, clearing a path for Shay.

  Here goes nothing.

  The temporary lake raider swam slowly, doing her best not to jar any more logs with either her legs or her equipment as she entered the narrow opening. She swam down several yards, slowly rolling over and looking back up at the entrance.

  I think I’d like to bleed out in a kitchen rather than die buried beneath a bunch of logs and mud.

  The minutes ticked away as she continued making her way toward the lockboxes. She looked at her watch, making a note of how much oxygen she had left in her tank.

  The needlegun was still back in the crate, given the lack of obvious enemies. Instead, Shay brought a mesh bag that was connected to her belt and a rogue barracuda switchblade, useful for stabbing anything with a beating heart.

  Her own heart thumped hard in her chest as her head and wrist lamps cut through the murky darkness. The occasional movement of the logs sent bubbles to the surface and messed with her calm. Slow and steady. The situation called for less speed and more precision, no panicked movements. The passing minutes seemed like hours until she finally arrived at the lockboxes.

  Shay swam over to the first of the smaller lockboxes and tried to open it. She followed that lack of success with a quick bash from the handle of her knife to the rusted-out lock. It smashed open rather easily, and she pulled the top off.

  Her eyes widened as she peered into a small pouch filled with diamonds. She carefully picked it up, gently handling the worn pouch and tied it off before slipping it into her mesh bag.

  Diamonds might not be my best friends, but still very good friends.

  She took a few steady breaths on the respirator and turned her attention to the other lockbox. A few strikes from the knife took out another rusted lock.

  Fuck Yes!

  She felt a surge of what passed for joy pass through her body. Several golden eagle pins sat inside the box, no hint of tarnish or damage on them. The magical pin had to be among them.

  Shay reached down as a jolt of electricity shot through her hand. She winced and yanked her hand back. The top of the lockbox glowed a luminescent red. Runes burned themselves into the lid with no obvious source of heat. Shay’s eyes widened behind her mask as she recognized the symbols as Futhark, an old Germanic runic script.

  What the fuck is happening?

  She couldn’t decipher the runes but knew enough to tell several words were completed. A bright orange pulse suddenly shot from the box. Shay reflexively threw up her arms, shielding her head. A trap!

  Shay held her arms over her head, taking in that she wasn’t vaporized by a magical trap. She put her arms down slowly and turned around in the deep water, the light from her head lamp bouncing off the interior of the maze. There was a bigger problem.

  The logs all around her were shaking.

  No, not the fucking logs… Shit. The trap started an earthquake somehow. Perfect. Motherfucking perfect. I’m 300 feet down about to be buried alive.

  Shay glanced between her escape route and the lockbox filled with pins. No one bothered to put a magical trap on simple accessories. She reached down again, but an invisible force and another jolt of electricity stopped her.

  Her breathing grew ragged as logs above her begin to slip. If she didn’t hurry, she was going to end up like the poor bastard she’d spotted earlier.

  She tried to grab the edges of the pin lockbox to pull it out, but each touch only sent another nasty shock through her hand.

  Damn it! You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.

  The key to surviving any battle is to know when to stand and fight, and when you’re about to get your ass kicked. Shay was tough, but she knew she couldn’t win against a mountain of logs.

  She swam hard for the exit from the wooden tomb. A huge log slid forward, missing pinning her by mere inches. The logs continued to shake. How long will the damned earthquake last? As if she’d willed it to stop, the main shaking ceased, but the tangled maze of logs were left even more unstable.

  Her pace quickened even more, and her pulse pounded in her ears. Collapsing logs sealed off the path ahead as she swam to the side, rolling against other logs, causing another collapse that revealed a new path just behind her right shoulder.

  Need to go faster. Her training kicked in and she made herself take even, steady breaths, assess the situation and then fucking reassess it again.

  Shay spun to the side to avoid being crushed by two falling logs, banging against her shoulder. She spotted a way out of the collapsing logs, and kicked off, spying an opening to freedom. The lake raider just as quickly jerked to a halt at a sudden yank.

  What the fuck? Is some Nazi merman trying to drown me?<
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  She yanked out her knife and flipped out blade, looking down. There was no merman, Nazi or otherwise. Her mesh bag had snagged on a log. She pulled against the bag, swaying in the water, but the strong mesh wasn’t going to give. It was caught fast. Another log rolled away from Shay, reminding her that time was not on her side. She reached inside, grabbed the diamond pouch, and sliced the bottom of the bag away.

  Her glance up confirmed her exit would be sealed in a few more seconds. She screamed into her mouthpiece as she kicked hard, stretching for the opening and clearing the space just ahead of the collapsing avalanche of logs.

  Too… damn… close.

  Shay took a long, deep breath and looked down at the pile of logs. Their shifting movement had kicked up sediment from the lake bed, and her lights were having trouble penetrating the cloudy darkness. It was clear no one was getting back into that mess anytime soon without the generous use of a pile of explosives.

  That’s enough diving time for now.

  Shay lay flat on her back on the shore, her tanks and mask at her side. She sucked in the sweet alpine air and caressed the pouch of diamonds she’d managed to save.

  “No other assholes are gonna be able to get to that treasure anytime soon, and even if they did, they won’t be able to get past the magic trap,” she murmured to herself. “Okay, no magic pin and no gold bars, but I did get some diamonds. I’ll still count that as a win.” She sat up and stretched. “I still think I’m gonna avoid any underwater jobs for a while.”

  7

  Shay took a sip of her coffee as she glanced through the latest edition of the Journal of Archaeological Research on her phone. Conventional academic archaeology sources didn’t tend to point her directly at the kind of artifacts she wanted to grab, but every piece of information she learned about archaeology and history could only help her in the future. Sometimes pieces came together that pointed Shay in the right direction that separated out were just fun facts.