Police Comandante Cortina was not a man who missed much. As his police helicopter rose from Cerro el Capirote for the return trip to his headquarters, he stared down at the stone beast and caught something that was missed by all the others. A pragmatic man, he closed his eyes and put it off as a trick of sunlight and shadows, or perhaps the angle of his view. But when he refocused his eyes on the ancient sculpture, he could have sworn the vicious expression had altered. The menacing look was gone.
To Cortina, just before it slipped out of view of his window, the fang-filled jaws on the guardian of the dead were frozen in a smile.
Pitt felt as though he were free-falling down a mammoth soda straw filled with cobalt blue mist. The sides of the vertical shaft of the sinkhole were round and smooth, almost as if they had been polished. If he hadn't been able to see his diving partner through the transparent water a short distance below, the shaft would have seemed bottomless. He cleared his ears as he descended, finning easily until he caught up with Giordino, who was towing their dry transport container past the elbow bend at the bottom of the shaft. Pitt helped by pushing his end through, and then followed in its wake.
He glanced at his depth-gauge needle. It was holding steady just shy of the 60-meter mark (197 feet).
From here on, as the feeder stream sloped up toward the river, the water pressure would decrease, relieving any fear of depth blackout.
This was nothing like the dive into the sacrificial pool on the jungled slopes of the Andes. There, he had used a strong safety line with communications equipment. And except for the brief foray into the side cavern to rescue Shannon and Miles, he was never out of sight of the surface. This trip, they'd be entering an underworld of perpetual blackness no man or animal had ever seen.
As they moved their bulky canister through the twists and turns of the feeder stream leading to the river, Pitt recalled that cave diving is one of the most dangerous sports in the world. There was the Stygian blackness, the claustrophobic sensation of knowing you're far beneath the solid rock, the maddening silence, and the constant threat of disorientation if silt is stirred into impenetrable clouds. All this could lead to panic, which had killed scores of divers who were trained and equipped to deal with the perils, and made cave diving a morbid fascination that could not be learned from a book.
What was it his instructor from the National Speleological Society had told him before his first dive into a saltwater cave in the Bahamas? "Anyone can die at any time on a cave dive." In that peculiar way a particular fact learned in youth can stick in your mind forever, Pitt remembered that during the year 1974, twenty-six divers had lost their lives in Florida's underwater caves alone, and that the world total of deaths must have been three times that figure.
Pitt had never suffered from claustrophobia and fear seldom distracted him, but under hazardous conditions he experienced just enough uneasiness to sharpen his senses to unexpected dangers.
As it was, he didn't look forward to diving without a fixed guide or safety line. He well knew this operation could quickly turn into an exercise in self-destruction, especially once they became uncontrollably caught up in the river's current. Then there would be no escape until they reached the treasure chamber.
The horizontal fissure leading to the river expanded and tapered in a series of hourglass shapes. At 100 meters (328 feet) from the sinkhole they lost 90 percent of the outside light. They switched on the lamps attached to their hardhats. Another quick glance at his depth gauge told Pitt they had slowly ascended to within 20 meters (66 feet) of the water surface.
Giordino ceased his forward movement, turned, and waved with one hand. They had reached the outlet into the river system. Pitt answered with the hand signal for OK. Then he slipped his arm through the strap attached to the transport canister so it wouldn't be torn from him by unforeseen turbulence.
Giordino kicked his fins powerfully and angled upstream in a vigorous effort to pull the canister broadside into the river as far as possible before the main flow of the current swung him downstream before Pitt could exit the feeder stream. His timing was near perfect. Just as he lost his momentum and the current caught him in its grip, thrusting him around, Pitt and his end of the canister popped out of the side gallery.
As previously planned, they calmly inflated their buoyancy compensators, released the lead weights on the canister to make it buoyant, and calmly drifted upward while being carried downriver. After traveling close to 50 meters (164 feet), they broke surface, their lights revealing a large open gallery. The ceiling was covered by a strange black rock that was not limestone. Only when Pitt steadied his light did he recognize it as volcanic. Fortunately, the river's flow was smooth and uninterrupted by rocks, but the walls of the passage rose steeply out of the water, offering them no place to land.
He spit out his regulator mouthpiece and called to Giordino. "Be ready to cut to the side when you see an open spot on the bank."
"Will do," Giordino said over his shoulder.
They quickly passed from the volcanic intrusion back into limestone that was covered by an odd gray coating that absorbed their light beams and gave the impression the batteries were giving out on their lamps. A steady, thunderous sound grew and echoed through the passage. Their worst fears-- being swept through unnavigable rapids or going over a waterfall before making a landingsuddenly loomed in the darkness ahead.
"Keep a tight grip," Giordino shouted. "It looks like we're in for a tumble."
Pitt angled his head downward so the lights on his hardhat pointed directly to the front. It was a wasted motion. The passage was soon filled with a mist that rose out of the water like steam. Pitt had a sudden vision of going over Niagara Falls without a barrel. The roar was deafening now, magnified by the acoustics of the rocky cavern. And then Giordino passed into the mist and vanished.
Pitt could only hold on to the canister and watch with strangely paralyzed fascination as he was enveloped by the spray. He braced himself for an endless fall. But the endless fall never came. The thunder came not from the river plunging downward, but from a furious torrent that crashed down from above.
He was pummeled by a surging deluge that burst in a great plume from the limestone roof of the cavern. The huge torrent of water barreled down a tributary that fed into the subterranean river from another source. Pitt was baffled by the sight of so much water rushing under an and and thirsty desert no farther away than the distance a good outfielder could throw a baseball. He decided that it must feed into the river by great pressure from a system of underground aquifers.
Once through the curtain of mist, he could see the walls had spread and the roof sloped upward into a chamber of vast size and proportion. It was a bizarrely decorated cavern filled with grotesquely shaped helictites, a family of stalactites that ignores gravity and grows in eccentric directions. Mineral deposits had also formed beautifully sculpted mushrooms over a meter tall and delicate gypsum flowers with graceful plumes. The spectacular formations would have been described by veteran spelunkers as a showcase grotto.
Pitt couldn't but wonder how many other subterranean worlds sprawled through the earth in eternal darkness, waiting to be discovered and explored. It was easy to let the mind run amok and imagine a long-dead and lost race who had lived down here and carved the magnificent calcite sculptures.
Not Giordino. The beauty was lost on him. He turned, gazed back at Pitt with a big I'm-glad-to-be-alive smile and said, "Looks like a hangout for the Phantom of the Opera."
"I doubt if we'll find Lon Chaney playing the pipe organ down here."
"We have a landing thirty meters ahead to the left," Giordino said, his spirits lifting considerably.
"Right. Start your turn into shallow water and swim like hell to get out of the main current."
Giordino needed no urging. He cut his angle sharply, pulling the canister behind him and kicking his fins furiously. Pitt released his grip on the big aluminum tube, swam strongly alongside until he was at its midpoint, and th
en, using his body as a drag, he heaved it after Giordino.
The approach worked as Pitt had hoped. Giordino broke free of the current and swam into calmer water. When his fins touched the bottom, he climbed ashore, dragging the canister with him.
Now unhampered, Pitt easily stroked into the shallows, landing ten meters below Giordino. He crawled out of the water, sat down, removed his fins and goggles, and carefully walked back upstream across the smoothly textured rocks as he removed his air tanks.
Giordino did the same before he began dismantling the canister. He looked up at Pitt with a look of profound accomplishment. "Nice place you've got here."
"Sorry for the mess," muttered Pitt, "but the seven dwarfs are on a break."
"Does it feel as good to you as it does to me that we've come this far?"
"I'm not sad to be alive, if that's what you mean."
"How far have we come?"
Pitt tapped in a command on the computer strapped to his arm. "According to my faithful wonder of technology, we have traveled two kilometers through damnation and dropped another two meters toward hell."
"Twenty-eight to go."
"Yes," Pitt said, smiling like a magician about to bedazzle an audience. "But from here on, we go in style."
Five minutes later the eight air chambers of the Wallowing Windbag were filled and the hull fully inflated, deployed, and ready to do battle with the river. Known as a water rescue response vehicle, the ungainly Hovercraft could ride on a cushion of air effortlessly over boiling rapids, quicksand, thin ice, and polluted quagmires. Vehicles in use by police and fire departments around the country had saved countless victims from death by drowning. Now this one was going on an endurance trial its builders never conceived.
Three meters (10 feet) in length and 1.5 meters (5 feet) wide, the compact craft mounted a four-cycle, 50-horsepower engine that could propel her over a flat surface at 64 kilometers (40 miles) an hour.
"Our engineers did a fine job of modifying the height," said Giordino.
"Adopting a horizontal engine and fan was a stroke of genius," Pitt agreed.
Amazing how much equipment they crammed inside the canister."
Before they cast off, they stowed and tied down ten reserve air tanks, extra air bottles to reinflate the Hovercraft, a battery of lights including two aircraft landing lights built into waterproof housings, spare batteries, first aid equipment, and three additional breathing regulators.
From a watertight container Pitt retrieved his battered, old .45 Colt automatic and two ammo clips. He smiled as he also found a thermos of coffee and four bologna sandwiches. Admiral Sandecker never forgot the details that make for a successful operation. Pitt put the thermos and sandwiches back in the container. There was no time for a picnic. They had to push on if they were to reach the treasure chamber before it was too late to save Loren and Rudi. He inserted the gun and extra ammo clips into a plastic bag and sealed the opening. Then he unzipped the front of his wet suit and slipped the bag inside next to his stomach.
He stared for a moment at the black collapsible Hovercraft. "Oh, Circe, who will guide us on this journey," he quoted. "To Hades no man ever went in a black ship."
Giordino looked up from coupling a pair of steering oars to their locks. "Where did you hear that?"
"The Odyssey by Homer."
"Verily among the Trojans too there be men that dive," Giordino recited glibly. "The Iliad. I can quote Homer too."
"You never cease to amaze me."
"It's nothing really."
Pitt climbed aboard. "Gear stashed?"
"All buttoned down."
"Ready to shove off?"
"Start her up."
Pitt crouched in the stern just ahead of the engine fan. He engaged the starter and the air-cooled engine sputtered to life. The small engine was well muffled and the exhaust sounded only as a muted throb.
Giordino took his position in the bow of the craft and turned on one of the landing lights, illuminating the cavern as bright as daylight. He looked back at Pitt and laughed. "I hope no one fines us for polluting a virgin environment."
Pitt laughed too. "A losing proposition for the local sheriff. I forgot my wallet."
The Hovercraft moved off the shoreline, suspended on its self-produced 20-centimeter (8-inch) cushion of air into the mainstream of the river. Pitt held the vertical grips of the control bar in each hand and easily steered an arrow-straight course over the flowing current.
It seemed strange to be skimming over the water surface without a sensation of contact. From the bow, Giordino could look down into the remarkably transparent water that had turned from the cobalt blue of the sinkhole to a deep aqua green and see startled albino salamanders and small schools of blind cave fish darting amid the spherical boulders that carpeted the river bottom like fallen ornaments. He kept busy reporting the river conditions ahead and snapping photos as Pitt maneuvered and recorded data on his computer for Peter Duncan.
Even with their rapid motion through the large corridors, their sweat and the extreme humidity combined to form a halo like mist around their heads. They ignored the phenomenon and the darkness behind them, never looking back as they continued deeper into the river-carved canyon.
For the first 8 kilometers (5 miles) it was clear sailing and they made good time. They skimmed over bottomless pools and past forbidding galleries that extended deep into the walls of the caverns. The ceilings in the string of river chambers varied from a high of 30 meters (98 feet) to barely enough room to squeeze the Hovercraft through. They bounced over several small, shallow cascades without difficulty and entered a narrow channel where it took all their concentration to avoid the everpresent rocks. Then they traveled through one enormous gallery that stretched almost 3 kilometers (slightly under 2 miles) and was filled with stunning crystals that glinted and sparkled beneath the aircraft light.
On two different occasions, the passage became flooded when the ceiling merged with the water surface. Then they went through the routine of deflating the Wallowing Windbag until it achieved neutral buoyancy, returned to breathing from their air tanks, and drifted with the current through the sunken passage dragging the flattened Hovercraft and its equipment behind them until they emerged into an open cavern and reinflated it again. There were no complaints over the additional effort. Neither man expected a smooth cruise down a placid river.
To relieve the stress they began giving nonsensical names to the galleries and prominent features. The Fun House, the Wax Museum, Giordino's Gymnasium. A small spout from a cavern wall was labeled Postnasal Drip. The river itself they called the Old Sot.
After traveling through a second submerged passage and reinflating their boat, Pitt observed that the current's pace had quickened by two knots and the river gradient began dropping at a faster rate. Like leaves through a gutter drain, they rushed into the eternal land of gloom, never knowing what dangers lurked around the next bend.
The rapids increased frighteningly as the Hovercraft was suddenly swept into a raging cataract. The emerald water turned a boiling white as it cascaded through a passage strewn with boulders. Now the Wallowing Windbag was rearing up like a rodeo bronco as it surged between the rocks and plunged sickeningly into the next trough. Every time Pitt told himself the rapids couldn't possibly get more violent, the next stretch of river slammed the Hovercraft into a seething frenzy that buried it completely on more than one occasion. But the faithful little craft always shook off the froth and fought back to the surface.
Pitt struggled like a madman to keep the boat on a straight course. If they swung halfway around broadside to the tumult, all chances for survival would have been lost. Giordino grabbed the emergency oars and put his back into keeping the boat steady. They swept around a sharp curve in the river over massive rocks, some partly submerged and kicking up great waves shaped like rooster tails, others rising above the turbulence like menacing monoliths. Several boulders were skinned by the little vessel. Then one rose out of the tr
ough that seemed certain to crush the boat and its occupants. But the outer hull sideswiped the unyielding stone without a puncture and was carried past.
Their ordeals never ceased. They were caught in a swirling eddy like a cork being sucked down a drain. Pitt braced his back against an airfilled support cell to stay upright and pushed the throttle to its stop. The howl of the racing engine was lost in the roar of the rapids. All his will and concentration were focused on keeping the Hovercraft from twisting broadside from the force of the speeding current as Giordino assisted by pulling mightily on the oars.
Lost when Giordino took up the oars, the landing lights had fallen overboard into the froth. Now the only light came from the lamps on their hardhats. It seemed a lifetime had passed before they finally broke clear of the whirlpool and were hurled back into the rapids.
Pitt eased back on the throttle and relaxed his hands on the grips of the control bar. There was no point in fighting the river now. The Wallowing Windbag would go where the surging water threw it.
Giordino peered into the black unknown ahead, hoping to see calmer water. What he saw was a fork in the river that divided the mainstream into two different galleries. He shouted above the tumult, "We're coming to a junction!"
"Can you tell which is the main conduit?" Pitt yelled back.
"The one on the left looks the largest!"
"Okay, pull to port!"
The Hovercraft came terrifyingly close to being smashed against the great mass of rock that split the river and only missed turning turtle by a hair as it was overwhelmed by a giant backwash. The little vessel dug into the turbulence and lurched forward sickeningly, burying its bow under a wall of water. Somehow it regained a level keel before being thrown forward by the relentless current.
For an instant Pitt thought he'd lost Giordino, but then the burly little man rose out of the deep pool filling the inside of the boat and shook his head to clear the dizziness brought on by being spun around like a ball in a roulette wheel. Incredibly, he cracked a smile and pointed to his ears.