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“Could be,” Lazlo said. “How long have they been active here?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” Sam admitted. “But I got the impression that they were a relatively recent development.”
“That’s my understanding,” Remi said. “There was no mention of them in any of the accounts from the civil war in 2000.”
Lazlo shined the light beam on the far wall of the cave, which stretched into darkness beyond the water’s edge. “Not to be a materialistic pig, but back to the immediate concern—the treasure. Shall we continue into the void and see what we find?”
Leonid stared at the skeletons. “They certainly aren’t going anywhere.”
“Lead on, Lazlo,” Remi said.
“Wait,” Sam said, eyeing the surface of the pool. “I want to see how deep this is.”
“Why?” Leonid asked.
“In case our Japanese friends decided the best place to hide a treasure was back underwater.” Sam approached the pool, knelt, and probed at it with his machete. The blade hit stone. He continued until he was standing near the center of the pool in no more than three inches of water. “I think it’s safe to say there’s no treasure here.”
The group moved to the other side of the cavern, the walls lit with the eerie blue-white of their flashlights, and Lazlo took careful steps into the narrower passage at the far end. A few moments later, he stopped, speechless.
“What is it, Lazlo?” Remi whispered.
When he found his voice, it was tremulous. “Rather a lot more dead in here.”
The scene in the second, smaller chamber was one straight out of a nightmare: at least thirty skeletons of all sizes were strewn around the cave, their dead grins greeting the newcomers in humorless welcome. Sam stepped past Remi and focused his flashlight on the piles of bones. Remi shuddered at the grim spectacle.
“It’s a massacre,” she said in a quiet voice.
“Look at the size of them,” Leonid murmured.
Sam shook his head. “They were children.” He examined several of the skeletons. “But these weren’t bound when they died.”
“Some of them were,” Lazlo said from the wall near the entry, where he was regarding three more skeletons. “Same treatment here—zip ties, wrists bound behind them.”
“But no sign of what killed them,” Sam said under his breath. “That’s odd. Maybe there was some sort of deadly outbreak and the natives decided to take care of their own? A mass grave?”
“Doesn’t explain why some of them were tied up,” Remi said.
“There are a few shoes in here, too. Modern,” Sam said.
“Why would the rebels kill mostly children? That makes no sense,” Lazlo said.
They stood, puzzled, at a loss for words. Eventually, Sam edged to the narrowest section of the cave and peered into it, and then he called out, “Look at this.”
They moved to where he was staring at another skeleton, this one not completely decomposed. A swarm of maggots were finishing with their meal in the corpse’s rib cage. Remi frowned in revulsion. “Recent,” she said, her voice tight.
“Yes, and an adult, male probably, judging by his size—or, if not an adult, at least older than the rest of them.” Sam crouched by the bones and pointed at the skeleton’s shattered spine. “But check out the vertebrae . . . I’d bet money that was the cause of death. He died from a broken neck. Although look at his ribs and his left arm—also broken. And his ankle.”
Sam stood and played his light farther into the cave. He gasped at the spectacle before him and took a step back. Remi drew close to him and took his hand. Hundreds of skeletons were collected in a pit, the bones dull in the flashlight beams.
Lazlo’s intake of breath was a groan. “Good heavens . . . it is a massacre.”
They took careful steps into the new section of cave, Sam leading the way. When he neared the edge of the bone pit, he paused and examined the skulls closest to him. “These look older. And they’re adults. Larger.” He peered at the nearest skull. “This one died of a gunshot wound to the head. See the entry wound?”
“This one, too,” Remi said.
“Look at this chap,” Lazlo called out from their left. “Both his legs were broken, looks like, and only partially healed. You can see the calcification.”
“What’s that?” Remi said, directing her light at one of the skeletons. Sam’s eyes narrowed as he regarded where she was indicating.