Dirk was already eyeing the topographic map. “The view of the bull is most prominent from either the southwest or the northeast. The northeast area is mostly rolling hills that descend toward Zimapán. To the southwest, where we are now, there’s a natural wash running along the mountain’s western flank.”
“We’ve already searched there,” Summer noted.
“But not here.” Dirk’s finger followed the wash, tracking beneath a low ridge that jutted from the base of the mountain. A half mile distant, the ridge grew into a high, steep bluff. The wash below disappeared into a large reservoir.
“You think the cave is in this small ridge that stretches off Lomo del Toro?”
“No, I think it’s beneath this high bluff.”
“That’s underwater,” Summer said.
“It wouldn’t have been when the Aztecs were here.” Torres’s voice had a new optimism. “The lake was created by a dam built some twenty-five years ago.”
Dirk dragged his finger to the middle of the reservoir. “If you were drawing a picture of the cave from this vantage point, the peak of Lomo del Toro would rise above and just beyond the top of the bluff. The codex image would still fit.”
“Yes, yes,” Torres said, his face lighting up. “Are you up to the task of searching in the water?”
Dirk gave the professor a wink. “Could an Aztec priest carve a turkey?”
15
They plunged into the reservoir from a shoreline ledge, finding the water cool and the visibility clear. Summer involuntarily shivered in the water that was not as warm as the cenote where they had last dived. She hovered a moment at the ten-foot mark to clear her ears, then swam after her brother, who was already descending rapidly. After Torres had found a path to the water’s edge, the siblings had assembled their dive gear in record time, leaving the archeologist to pace the shoreline.
Dirk followed the gradient until it leveled at sixty feet. The lake bed was a bland tableau of rocks and brown mud that resembled a moonscape. Any sign of a riverbed was long since hidden, covered by sediment built up since the dam was constructed. Dirk knew the original watercourse had followed the base of the ridge, and when Summer joined his side, he took off across its steep face.
They could look up the face of the ridge nearly to the surface. They swam in short spurts, methodically surveying the rock wall in hope of spotting a cave-like opening. Numerous times they were deceived by shadows and narrow fissures that led nowhere. Both were strong swimmers, and with little current in the lake, they quickly advanced several hundred yards along the base of the ridge.
The feature gradually sharpened to a near-vertical rise. Dirk was looking ahead to the next contour when he felt Summer grip his arm. She pointed to the rock incline at his side. A small indentation was visible where his fin had knocked away some silt. He stuck his fingers into the crevice and scooped away a thick handful of mud. The water turned murky, but a minute later it cleared and they could see the indentation was a carved step. Summer ran her hand above the cut and found another hollow. Scooping away the mud inside, she exposed it as another step, carved directly above the first one.
She pointed up the face of the rock and began ascending. Every foot or so, she found another step filled with sediment. About forty feet above her, Summer noticed a dark spot and her heart skipped a beat.
It appeared little different than the rock shadows that had deceived them earlier, but she became more intrigued when a pair of fish emerged from the darkness. Dirk followed Summer as she ascended, following the buried flight of steps. Drawing close to the rock shadow, she saw a thick ledge protruding from the wall above her, obscuring the view farther up.
With a strong kick of her fins, she broached the rim and peered over the top. Just beyond was an oval recess in the rock wall. Neatly concealed by the ledge, and accessible only by the steps when the land was dry, the cave would have been a highly defensible hideaway for its ancient occupants.
Summer waited until her brother joined her on the ledge. She then flicked on a dive light and swam through the slim opening, startling a large bass that darted out of the darkness. Dirk followed her, careful not to scrape the floor with his fins and kick up a cloud of sediment.
The small opening led a short distance before expanding into a house-sized cavern. Removed from the surface light, the interior was black and ominous, save for the thin illumination of their dive lights. The ceiling soared high above them, allowing the divers to float easily while surveying the interior. But there was little to observe. A rock fire pit occupied the center of the cave floor, while an orderly mound of crushed rock was piled against the back wall. There was no sign of the half stone, or any other artifacts.
Dirk swam to a side wall and examined it with his light. Crude scars peppered the surface, indicating the rocks in the pile had been hammered from the wall. He picked up one of the rocks and held it to his dive mask. It was a heavy chunk of granite flecked with silver. Someone had discovered a vein of the ore and made a primitive attempt to mine it. Could it have been the Aztecs?
He pocketed the rock and joined Summer, who was slowly swimming circular laps with her light pointed at the floor. The excitement in her eyes had vanished and she gave her brother a disappointed shake of her head. Dirk pointed toward the entrance and motioned to leave.
Summer followed, keeping her light pointed at the floor. As they crossed the center of the cave, her light caught the fire pit. She had examined it earlier but found only a ring of rocks over a mud floor. Now she noticed there were no charred sticks or signs of charcoal. Nor were the rocks blackened. She hesitated and then noticed the rocks’ alignment. They didn’t actually form a round pit but were instead positioned in a semicircle.
She reached out and snared Dirk’s ankle before he swam out the entrance, then dropped down to the fire pit. He turned his light on her as she glided above the pit and plunged a hand into its center. Summer’s fingers drove through several inches of sediment before reaching a hard surface. Sliding her hand against it, she could tell it was flat.
Her pulse quickened as she scooped the mud from the fire pit in thick handfuls. Fine particles rose through the water, deflecting their lights and turning the visibility to soup. Dirk released a shot of air from his buoyancy compensator and descended to the floor, feeling Summer’s elbow as she continued to sling mud. He felt her movements stop and they both lay quietly, waiting for the water to clear.
It felt like an eternity to Summer, but it was only a minute or two before the water began to become clear. She saw Dirk’s light appear, then the shape of his wetsuit. Together, they turned their lights toward the fire pit, where Summer’s hand still rested. As her fingers came into view, she traced the outline of a large, flat object. Brushing away a thin layer of sand, she pressed her face down to see.
The carved head of a bird gazed back at her, surrounded by an assortment of stylized glyphs like those in the codex. Summer winked at her brother and pointed at the figures.
She had found the Aztec stone.
16
The stone was too unwieldy to carry any distance, so Summer and Dirk left it in place and swam out of the cave. Dirk had carried a small lift bag attached to his buoyancy compensator. He inflated it with his regulator and tied it to a rock near the entrance. The small bag floated to the surface, providing a marker for the cave. Dirk and Summer followed it up, then swam along the ridge wall to where Torres waited impatiently.
The archeologist leaped like a drunken leprechaun when Summer described their find. “It was carved in a semicircle?”
“Yes,” Summer said, “exactly as if it had been cut in half. It was full of carved glyphs, just like the ones in the codex.”
“Fantástico! Can you remove it from the cave?”
“Yes, but we’ll never get it here.” She pointed to a tiny orange speck in the water. Dirk’s float bag lay almost a quarter mile away.
“We’ll have to move the van closer,” Dirk said. He eyeballed the top of the ridge, then borrowed Torres’s topographic map. “If we circle around the back of the ridge, I think we can drive over the top and descend directly above the cave. There’s a tapered gully nearby where we could access the lake.”
Summer nodded. “We could hoist it straight up the face of the bluff. There’s a coil of rope in the back of the van we can use.”
Torres laughed. “We have nothing to lose but my van. Let’s give it a try.”
They loaded their gear and drove around the east side of the ridge, following a weather-beaten dirt track that snaked down the hill to the reservoir’s dam. Finding a moderate incline to the ridge, Torres turned off the track and drove up the hillside. The ground was hard and compact, providing firm traction for the van’s worn tires.
The surface turned to solid rock as Torres reached the top of the ridge. Dirk got out and guided him down the other side and toward the edge, just overlooking the buoy marker. Torres stopped in front of a pile of boulders and stuck his head out the window. “How’s this?”
“Perfect,” Dirk said. “Just remember to put it in reverse when it’s time to leave.”
Torres applied the parking brake and turned off the engine. Summer was already out the door, uncoiling a length of nylon rope. Tying one end around the van’s door post, she flung the remaining line over the side, watching as it splashed into the water forty feet below.
“It’s a hundred-foot line,” she said. “Should be just enough to get us there.”
Dirk unloaded their dive equipment and two thin sleeping pads from their camping supplies.
“Can you grab my new camera?” Summer pointed to an underwater Olympus camera within her brother’s reach.
Torres helped them haul their gear to the nearby gully, which offered a steep but navigable path to the reservoir. “Be very careful, my friends,” he shouted as they prepared to enter the water.
“We’ll bring it up in one piece,” Dirk replied, knowing Torres’s chief concern was the artifact’s safety.
He slipped on his mask and stepped into the water, carrying the sleeping pads under one arm. Summer swam past him, retrieving the dangling rope. They met at the lift bag and dove to the cave entrance, another thirty feet down.
At the fire pit, Summer snapped multiple pictures of the stone in situ. Setting her camera aside, she helped Dirk muscle the heavy stone on top of one of the sleeping pads. Dirk wrapped the other pad over the exposed side, creating a protective cover, which he secured with Summer’s rope. Standing on the cave floor, he pulled the rope to give it a test. With a concerted effort, they slid the bundled stone across the muddy floor.
Nodding at Summer, he dragged the stone out of the cave, while his sister swam above it, guiding it free of any obstacles. Once clear of the entrance, Dirk pushed the stone upright on the ledge, then shot to the surface. They had agreed Summer would stay in the water and monitor the stone’s ascent while Dirk and Torres hoisted it to the van.
Dirk hardly had to assist Torres. By the time he had jettisoned his dive gear and hiked to the van, Torres was pulling like a madman. Adrenaline was clearly pumping through the archeologist’s veins. But his aged muscles began to fade as the stone broke the lake’s surface and Dirk pitched in for the remaining distance. Summer exited the water and joined the out-of-breath men as they removed the rope and pads.
The white half disk glistened under the afternoon sun. Torres dropped to his knees and grazed his fingertips across the surface. The glyphs were crisply cut, though along the edges they had worn thin.
Summer could see the glyphs were carved in bands that would have encircled the entire stone before it was cut in two. “Can you read what it says?”
“Portions,” Torres said with a nod. “This section relays an important journey across the water. Though we are missing half the stone, I suspect we’ll be able to piece together much of its intent.” He smiled. “Between this stone and the codex, you’ve given a pair of old archeologists quite a few years of steady work.”
“Just promise us,” Dirk said, “you won’t keep it all stored away in a dusty archive.”
“Heavens, no. This will easily be the centerpiece at the university’s museum. Which reminds me, were there any other artifacts?”
“No, I checked when I photographed the stone,” Summer said. “Oh, no!” she burst out suddenly. “My camera! I left it in the cave.”
“I’ll get it,” Dirk said. “I need to retrieve my float marker anyway. Maybe you can scavenge something to eat from the cooler while I’m gone.”
“No,” Torres said, “we shall have a celebratory dinner in Zimapán, and the tequila shall be on me.”
Dirk grinned. “A better offer I haven’t had in a month of Sundays.”
He hiked to the water’s edge, donned his tank and mask, and swam to the float. He took a quick glance up and noticed an odd swirl of dust rising atop the ridge. Thinking nothing of it, he emptied his buoyancy compensator and sank beneath the surface.
17
The white Jeep Cherokee came barreling up the ridge like a speeding cheetah, its tires chewing up the incline with ease. Reaching the summit, it made a hasty beeline for the university van. The Jeep’s driver didn’t bother picking an easy descent but drove straight down the ridge and slid to a stop in front of the van. A patch of loose gravel skittered over the edge of the rock face into the water below.
Summer casually kicked the sleeping pad over the stone and stepped in front of it as three men hopped from the Jeep. Each wore a baseball cap, sunglasses, and a black scarf wrapped around his face. Two held automatic handguns, which they leveled at Summer and Torres.
“What is this?” Torres snapped. “We have no drugs or money.” Though they were far south of the major drug cartel homeland states, Torres knew the violent organizations had a long reach.
“Shut up, old man, and stand aside,” one of the gunmen said. He waved his pistol at Summer. “You, too.”
Torres and Summer backed away as the other gunman stepped forward and threw back the cover from the stone.
“Is this it?” he asked.
The unarmed man stepped closer with a measured ease that was in marked contrast to the two men holding weapons. Clearly older than the others, he was the obvious group leader.
He studied the Aztec stone with a patient gaze. Satisfied, he nodded at his accomplices, then pointed to the back of the Jeep. The nearest gunman, who wore a red shirt, opened the deck lid and then joined the other man. They holstered their weapons and hoisted the stone off the ground.
“No!” Torres shouted. “That’s an important historical artifact.”
He stepped forward and shoved the nearest man, who lost his grip on the stone and fell backward. The other gunman let go as the stone thumped to the ground. In an instant, his pistol was back in his hand. Without hesitation, he raised and fired three shots into Torres’s chest.
Summer screamed as the archeologist staggered back. His eyelids fluttered and then he fell to the ground. Everyone else froze as the sound of the gunshots echoed off the surrounding hills.
“Imbécil!” the trio’s leader cried. He grabbed the gun and pointed at the stone. “Rápidamente.”
The two gunmen ferried the stone to the back of the Jeep as their boss kept a watchful eye on Summer. She knelt beside Torres but quickly realized he was dead.
“You killed him for a carved stone!” she cried, rising to her feet.
The two gunmen returned and spoke with their leader in low voices. One produced a knife and cut a short length from the rope. He then reached over and grabbed one of Summer’s wrists.
She swung her opposite elbow and slammed it into the man’s jaw. As he tumbled back, she took a step to run but froze as a gunshot rang out.
It was the group’s leader, firing a shot into the side of the van
inches from Summer. He eased the gun sideways, taking aim at her. “The next one won’t miss.”
Logic, and the thought of her brother in the water below, overcame her anger. She remained still as the woozy gunman rose and bound Summer’s wrists behind her. After a quiet conversation with the leader, the gunman in the red shirt approached Summer. “Where is the other man who was with you?”
Summer stared straight ahead and said nothing. The leader strode to the edge of the bluff and stared into the water. Dirk’s float bag bobbed directly below. The water was clear enough that he could just make out the ledge fronted the cave. He gazed back to the mass of small boulders in front of the Jeep. They were in perfect alignment.
He pointed at Summer and motioned toward the Jeep. Red Shirt grabbed her arm and pushed her into the backseat, then helped the other two drag Torres’s body and roll it off the bluff. Summer grimaced as the body hit the water below with a sickening splash. The man with the knife then went to work on the van, slashing each of its tires.
Satisfied with their handiwork, the three men returned to the Jeep. Red Shirt climbed in back and held a pistol on Summer, while the other two sat in front. The leader took the wheel, but instead of backing up, he let the Jeep roll forward against one of the blockading boulders. He put the Jeep in low gear and eased the accelerator, shoving the boulder forward. Smaller rocks in front of it began sliding over the bluff, raining down into the water below. The boulder soon gave way, tumbling into the lake.
The Jeep backed up and took aim at an adjacent wall of rocks stacked high near the edge. The driver nudged at the pile, backing up hurriedly when one slammed onto the hood. Another push broke loose a lower supporting rock and the entire pile cascaded over the side, taking with it a thick chunk of the cliff. The Jeep nearly joined the avalanche, but the driver shifted into reverse and gunned the engine just in time. He turned and headed up the ridge as several tons of rock and debris slid down into the reservoir.